Day 14 - Why did Jesus come to earth?

(Micah 5:1-5, Luke 1:39-56)  (Sermon at Northside Presbyterian Church, Dec 23, 2012)

Advent, the season of waiting is almost over. There are two shopping days left until Christmas and I haven’t even finished shopping because I can’t figure out what to get for someone who has everything. Friday I was driving around in all the heavy traffic trying to fix that frustration and making my wife Terry crazy honking my horn (not a toot but a long blaring honk) at some other driver who had pulled in front of me probably preoccupied with the same problem I have.

Thinking about it later, that incident made me realize I had received a blessing that morning from someone’s misfortune. Rev. Ben called me to ask me to preach on short notice because he is sick with the flu. Reading the lectionary the idea occurred that this sermon ought to ask the question, “Why did Jesus come to earth?” Our readings over the next six weeks explore the answer to this question and our passages today give us a snapshot of the answer.

Allow me ask you another question first. How often and how well do you read your Bible? Few of us do read it well, but the Jewish people know their scripture well. They or their leaders read to them every Sabbath from that account of their living heritage and covenant with God. They heard and memorized it; even those who failed to live it.

Jesus achieved power over the Hebrew religious leaders and alienated them by the way he quoted that Scripture to illumine their hypocrisy. When Jesus talked about the poor and aliens he recalled the rich heritage of Abraham, Jacob, the flight from Egypt, the Pharaoh, the wandering in the wilderness to the Promised Land, the commandments, and the blessings and curses for adhering or not to the covenant between God and Israel and the captivity. Jesus amazed those who hoped for the future in humility and angered the proud with words called from Micah and Isaiah.

We should know our scriptures well enough that today’s passages in Micah and Luke connect the deep memories of our religious heritage to our living presence. Those connections ought to come as naturally to us long-time residents of Chattanooga as a reference to Forest Ave, or Lookout Mountain or Missionary Ridge immediately recalls the agony of the War Between the States.

When you hear the Lord speaking through Micah, “²But you, O Bethlehem (of Ephrathah), who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days,” I hope your first thought is, “This is a portent of the coming of Christ!” If that is the case perhaps a closer look at what was going on in Micah’s world may reveal a clue to the answer to my question, “Why did Jesus come to earth?”

Micah lived in the Southern Kingdom of Judah during a time of turmoil and great uncertainty. Previously, Amos and Hosea had assailed the Northern Kingdom of Israel for its flagrant violation of their covenant with God. Wealth was highly concentrated into a very small number of Israelites who owned virtually all the land and abused their neighbors who were the abjectly poor Hebrews and aliens that worked the farms to increase the owners’ wealth. Their religious practices had become an abomination in the eyes of The Lord. Assyria had subjugated Israel and scattered the rest of its inhabitants across the ancient near eastern nations. Now Israel is gone and Assyria is standing at Judah’s door with rod in hand.

Micah, the small town guy is telling the high and mighty in Jerusalem that God’s hand about to strike their cheek.  Why?

And then almost 700 years later Luke writes this famous account of the meeting between two relatives about to give birth, Mary and Elizabeth. We know Mary and Elizabeth, like Micah, lived in Judah when it was under the heel of the brutal oppression of the Roman Empire, and that many of their religious leaders curried favor with Rome by abetting its oppression.

If you know Micah (6:8) I am sure you recall his words, “What …is required of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?” Micah spoke of a new ruler from the perspective of the spiritual poverty of the religious leaders of Jerusalem that created the economic poverty of the people of Judah, just as in Israel. The money in Judah was in Jerusalem with the religious and political leaders. They also owned most of the land and used the inhabitants of the small towns to work it for their profit. Their financial and moral excesses caused hardship on the people.

Elizabeth, like Sarah is a woman too old to have a child but is pregnant. Mary is young enough to have a child but in a predicament of being pregnant before she was married. In their culture, Elizabeth was disgraced by her infertility, and Mary was disgraced by her seemingly inappropriate fertility. John and Jesus will be born cousins by these women, probably share a common childhood, find their separate way into the desert like Moses and the Israelites, and come to their human end in weakness at the hand of the powerful. This passage in Luke is heavy with historical connections.

In these last days of Advent our excitement about Christmas grows but this passage makes it very hard to escape thinking about what the future holds for John and Jesus.  We cannot escape Mary’s grief standing on a hill watching Jesus dying on a cross, and feel her terror and the joy of her faith standing in an empty tomb.

Yet we are excited to hear Luke’s account of unborn John filled with the Holy Spirit leaping in Elizabeth’s womb at the sound of lowly Mary’s voice. Both signify the Lord’s presence. When Elizabeth says of Mary’s faith, “blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord,” we are excited to hear Mary’s declaration called The Magnificat,   one of the oldest hymns sung in the early church…excited until we hear some of her words (vv52-33): “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;  he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.  He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” 

The Message Bible translates this part of Mary’s song (vv51-53)  as  “He bared his arm and showed his strength, scattered the bluffing braggarts. He knocked tyrants off their high horses, pulled victims out of the mud. The starving poor sat down to a banquet; the callous rich were left out in the cold.”

If we have read well, we hear the echo of Micah from Bethlehem calling out the spiritual poverty of the proud and rich in Judah.

These are bittersweet passages but they are our heritage.

 On one hand, none of us are overjoyed to hear these words because we know they strike close to home in our wealthy country and Presbyterian Church; but on the other hand, words heard as the curse of spiritual poverty can also be a blessing. Do you recall, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven?” (Matt 5:3)

Yes, Advent demands we ask the question, “Why did Jesus come to earth?

He came to break the bonds of spiritual poverty. He came to give hope for new life to those who suffer in material want, to those who suffer in the chains of bondage of prison or illness. …He came to give sight to those who are blinded by their blessing and resist sharing it, be it money, intelligence, political or religious power.

Do we do we find the reason Jesus came to earth when we when we honk our horn at another driver like I did, or walk the malls of Hamilton Place, Northgate, K-Mart, Target or in Atlanta or up in New York shopping for Christmas gifts for family or friends who can’t even give you a good idea of what they don’t already have?

Or…do we find the reason Jesus came to earth when we walk over the Walnut Street Bridge into urban Chattanooga and see the dilapidated houses and people hungry for food and the Spirit?

Or…do we find the reason Jesus came to earth when, or if, we drive rather quickly down Riverfront Parkway through the Westside (because we are afraid to walk) wondering if those guys on the corner are gang members and have a gun?

Or…do we find the reason Jesus came to earth when we look under the bridge abutments, or on the hillsides or when continue driving down 11st Street past the Community Kitchen seeing the homeless people walking around, waiting for Good News?

Friends, and you are all my friends, do we find the reason that Jesus came to earth when we realize that our spiritual poverty needs that balm in Gilead that Jesus brings the sin-sick soul just as badly as the folks in the Southside, Westside and Highland Park? 

When we hear Micah and Mary’s declaration, shouldn’t we recall the command, “Feed my sheep,” not “buy more?”  

• Amen.