The Message On A Postcard
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
Dear Fellow Preacher,
We can learn much about the values and mores of a given society by noting the kind of persons who are treated as celebrities. Some churches celebrate saints or heroes of the faith, many of whom lived in self-abnegation for the welfare of others. In medieval Europe the knights and their code of chivalry were admired and venerated by many a youth. In North America today other kinds of persons, many of them in the world of popular entertainment, more often make the covers of the tabloids and the top-ten lists.
In this week's The Immediate Word, Carlos Wilton calls attention to the naming of celebrities in the two passages from Luke assigned in the lectionary. He alludes to celebrities in the news and then asks us to consider whom we choose to celebrate. What kind of celebrity was John? Jesus? Who deserves our attention and adulation? Important questions as we anticipate the Advent of the coming one.
Team members offer responses and illustrations, Chuck Cammarata provides worship resources, and Wes Runk a children's sermon.
The Celebrity
Luke 3:1-6; Luke 1:68-79
by Carlos Wilton
The Message on a Postcard
Pop singer Glen Campbell, who achieved his greatest fame in the late 1960s and 1970s, was arrested on November 24 in Phoenix for driving while intoxicated. Police records say he identified himself to the arresting officer as "Glen Campbell the Rhinestone Cowboy." The sergeant who booked him told the Associated Press how Campbell responded indignantly, "Do you know who I am? ... I shouldn't be locked up like this," before assaulting a different officer. Later, Campbell was heard singing his 1975 hit, "Rhinestone Cowboy," in his jail cell.
It's impossible to escape news stories like these. In any given week, the media are full of accounts of celebrities, their deeds and misdeeds. (Strictly speaking, no deeds are even required for the media to file a story; first-magnitude stars attract the paparazzi even while out shopping for socks.)
The media wouldn't spend such a large amount of time and money stalking celebrities were not we, the consumers, hungry to hear about them. Curious as moths circling a porch light, we're drawn to their ephemeral glow.
Campbell's question to the police officer, "Do you know who I am?" is indicative of the popular perception that celebrities are a breed apart. Yet, as the singer discovered -- and as another pop singer, Michael Jackson, is currently discovering, having been booked on more serious charges -- in the eyes of the law, celebrities are no different from anyone else.
The lectionary texts for December 7 are themselves concerned with celebrities. Luke 3:1 pegs John the Baptist in history with reference to the Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, King Herod, and others. The alternate psalm text, the Song of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79), speaks of the descendants of King David and of a savior who prophets foretell will come from his royal line.
This particular celebrity is of a different order, of course, than the kings and emperors and stars of various kinds who have populated news stories from time immemorial. He is literally unique, and his influence is both positive and enduring.
The word "celebrity" is related to "celebrate." Whom we choose to celebrate in this life makes all the difference.
Some Words on the Word: Luke 3:1-6
Two of this Sunday's lectionary texts lend themselves to a treatment of our society's fascination with celebrities. The first is the alternate psalm reading, Luke 1:68-79 (the Song of Zechariah), which celebrates John the Baptist's uniqueness as "prophet of the Most High," who "will go before the Lord to prepare his ways" (verse 76).
I will concentrate more on the second passage, Luke 3:1-6, which describes the prophetic activities of John the Baptist. While actually a prologue to Luke's account of the baptism of Jesus that follows immediately after, this passage appears here in the Advent lectionary readings because of the content of John's prophecy. Here Luke relates how John echoes the words of Isaiah 40:3-5, "Prepare the way of the Lord!" This message makes John quite the celebrity, and, by implication, it makes Jesus an even bigger celebrity, for he is the one the colorful John is devoting his life to introduce. John's mission is "to create an immense tide of messianic expectation, and then to make way for the Messiah" (G. B. Caird, Saint Luke [New York: Penguin, 1963], p. 73).
Some interpreters may be inclined to skip over the first verse of this pericope, but that would be a mistake. As he does in 2:1 with his mention of Augustus and the imperial census, Luke lists here the emperor's name (Tiberius, not Augustus, for it's now several decades later), as well as several other Roman and Jewish governmental officials. By including this list, Luke is doing more than providing a mere historical footnote. He's contrasting these high-ranking officials with the one whose coming John is heralding. In the words of Leonard R. Klein, "there is a critical edge of irony in Luke's citation. Just as it was Jesus in the little town of Bethlehem -- and not great Caesar Augustus -- who is acclaimed by angels and shepherds as the real Lord and King, so the really important news thirty years later is about John the Baptist, not the notables Luke lists. They in fact play negative roles in the story, although through their abuse of power God will work out his purposes and bring salvation to the world" (Roger E. Van Harn, ed., The Lectionary Commentary: The Third Readings, The Gospels [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001], pp. 308-309).
"In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius ... the word of God came" -- not to the celebrities in Rome or Jerusalem but "to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness." Luke turns the entire first-century concept of celebrity on its head. In placing the most important prophetic message in history into the mouth of a virtual nobody, who dwells in a you-can't-get-there-from-here kind of place, God does the utterly unexpected.
John proclaims "a baptism of repentance" (metanoia). This, too, is in contrast to Luke's reference to first-century celebrities. There's something socially leveling about baptism, John's rite of repentance. It's hard to imagine emperors, governors, tetrarchs, and high priests joining the common folk in wading out into the Jordan, getting their feet wet with all the other pilgrims.
Which, of course, is exactly what Jesus himself does several verses later (although that event takes place beyond the limits of today's lectionary passage). Jesus is not too proud to receive "the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (although the question of why the sinless Jesus needs baptism continues to provoke vigorous debate among theologians).
Verse 6, the final verse of this pericope, contains the line, "all flesh shall see the salvation of God." Jesus, in other words, will one day become the most celebrated of all celebrities. "All flesh shall see" the salvation he offers.
A Map of the Message
Each year, the Forbes Magazine website (http://www.forbes.com/static_html/celebs/2003/index.shtml) lists the "top 100 celebrities." The top ten from Forbes' 2003 list are as follows:
1. Jennifer Aniston
2. Eminem and Dr. Dre
3. Tiger Woods
4. Steven Spielberg
5. Jennifer Lopez
6. Paul McCartney
7. Ben Affleck
8. Oprah Winfrey
9. Tom Hanks
10. Rolling Stones
"How do you measure celebrity?" the Forbes people ask on their website. "Start with earning power and add media hits. Jennifer Aniston has a smaller bank account than George Lucas but shows up far more often on the magazine rack. But where's her husband? Brad Pitt didn't make the cut."
Earning power? Website hits? Are these the things of which celebrity is truly made?
The world would seem to think so. God's got a very different idea, as we can see in John the Baptist's proclamation of Jesus' celebrity.
The celebrities on the Forbes list are ephemeral. Some names carry over from year to year (Woods, Spielberg, Winfrey, and Hanks, for example, are all veterans of the 2002 top ten). Others -- such as 2003's number-one celebrity, Aniston -- are newcomers. Britney Spears (number one in 2002) didn't even make this year's top ten. Such statistics give credence to Andy Warhol's oft-quoted dictum, "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes."
In contrast to figures such as these, Jesus' celebrity is anything but ephemeral. Yet the contrast to the first-century celebrities Luke cites -- bluebloods such as Tiberius, Pilate, Caiaphas and Annas -- is stark. (Who even remembers "Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene"?)
I remember taking my son Benjamin to a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park. He was 9 or 10 at the time, and fanatical about the game. We had heard there was a stadium exit where players would occasionally stop and sign autographs for kids, so toward the end of the ninth inning we made our way down there.
No luck. Plenty of cars drove out of this exit with their tinted windows rolled up, but none stopped for the dozen or so hopeful kids gathered there, game programs and pens in hand. Finally we gave up, and as we turned to walk back to our car, I glanced across the street and saw someone who looked familiar. He was walking briskly along the sidewalk in the company of several other men, head down, as though he didn't want to be noticed.
"Hey, Benjamin," I said. "Look over there. Do you know who that is? That's Ted Kennedy!"
Ben gave me a blank look. "Who's that?"
The thought briefly crossed my mind of running after the senator and asking him to sign my son's program. But I thought better of it. Ben wouldn't have been impressed.
Celebrity is in the eye of the beholder. Now maybe if Ted had played shortstop....
Fame is a seductive lure. Many, many people would do most anything to achieve it. Some would compromise their ethical principles. Yet neither John the Baptist nor Jesus does anything of the sort. Jesus actually seems to shun fame; he flees the crowds to go off to a lonely place and on many occasions instructs his disciples to remain quiet about his miracles. Both are inflexible when it comes to matters of principle, and both will sacrifice their lives rather than accommodate the whims of the crowd.
Somewhere in his writings, Aristotle observes, "Those who believe they are not loved seek to be admired." Sad to say, there's probably a lot of that soul-hunger among those most eager to achieve fame. Jesus and John, by contrast, are closer to what the psychologists describe as "self-actualized." They are people of absolute integrity, who know who they are and what their mission is. They're not dependent on others for their self-esteem.
For our part, the question of who in life we celebrate is an important one. Historian Daniel Boorstin once defined a celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness" (from Dan Rather's book, The American Dream [New York: Perennial, 2002], 134). Do we celebrate people just because the world celebrates them? Or do we celebrate those who are worthy of celebration for more profound reasons?
Christmas is coming: probably our culture's favorite celebration. Many of the secular festivities come rather close to celebration for celebration's sake. Others extol values that have little or nothing to do with the true reason for the holiday. In a certain sense, we are what we celebrate; if our Christmas is all about materialistic consumption or tipsy revelry, then that says something about who we are. Yet if our Advent preparations and Christmas celebrations are all about worshiping God incarnate in Jesus Christ, then that says something about us as well.
In the words of preacher John MacArthur,
Worship ... let me give you a brief definition ... is an attitude. It is a spirit, something on the inside. It is an attitude of the heart that is so filled with wonder and gratitude at what God has done that there is not a thought of personal needs or personal blessings, only total abandonment to God in praise and adoration. That's worship. It is the most selfless thing we do. It is, as the hymn writer puts it, to be lost in wonder, love and praise. It is to be so grateful and so filled with wonder at what the Lord has done that we lose ourselves in adoring worship, adoring praise. What better time for this than Christmas when we focus on the very giving of Christ who is our Savior?
--John MacArthur, "The True Spirit of Christmas," http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/80-152.HTM
Team Comments
Carter Shelly responds: I like the new preaching hook you provide to Luke 3:1-6 by exploring human and divine notions of celebrity. Since John's call, "Prepare the way of the Lord!" appears every Advent, finding fresh ways to present John's message is not easy. With this emphasis you offer a way for Christians to wonder what it is about contemporary celebrities that makes them so popular and also to ask who is worthy of celebration today. Who would our top ten include? Why doesn't Jesus get equal or greater print and face space in People, Us, The National Enquirer, Vanity Fair, etc. than do people like J-Lo, Ben, Jennifer Aniston, or the Rolling Stones? (Of the top ten listed in Forbes, I find the choices of Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, and Tom Hanks more substantial than some of the others identified. Both Woods and Winfrey offer positive role models for African Americans through successful ventures into professions previously dominated by Anglo Americans. Spielberg's more recreational movies have been balanced by some remarkable contributions to movie audiences' awareness of our human capacity for great evil and great good through Schindler's List, Amistad, and Searching for Private Ryan.)
Humans seem by nature to be drawn to physical beauty and glamour. Famous for her looks and allure, Cleopatra's arrival in Rome surely caused more of a stir than Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. Lillie Langtry and Oscar Wilde both made good copy in nineteenth-century England. The Hollywood movie stars of the 1920s and 1930s filmed in exquisite gowns and tuxes on luxurious sets were said to help Depression-era audiences forget for a while the pain and humiliation of mortgage foreclosures, unemployment, and despair. It's highly likely more people in the world knew who Princess Diana was than could name the founder of Christianity or Islam. Celebrity interest seems to have become more intense since World War II. Cheap, fast printing makes it possible to report on a famous couple's nuptials before their own photos get processed for their wedding album. People magazine, begun in the 1970s, has been a phenomenal success with its 52 issues a year, which are often not enough to sate its readership's demand. Special issues such as "The Sexiest Man Alive" and "The 50 Most Beautiful People" are sellouts each year.
Given a choice of People magazine or Karl Barth as reading material in the Wal-Mart Pharmacy waiting line, I take People any day. Why? It's fun to look at the beautiful clothes Michele Pfeiffer, Kate Hudson, Demi, or Nicole are wearing and mindless to read a few scribbled notes about their personal lives and film careers. Barth is work. So, as a matter of fact, are John the Baptist and Jesus.
John the Baptist calls us to repent of our sins. He's old news, and every year he's the same old news. What a party pooper! Who wouldn't rather read about Ben Affleck's detox efforts or how much happier Charlie Sheen's personal life is now that he's conquered his coke habit? Who wouldn't prefer to know exactly how many plastic surgeries Cher has endured to defeat father time than to hear, once again, that ordinary, bland, a tad overweight and uninspired you and me are not good enough as we are to receive our Savior? How much nicer it is to escape our own reality through a preoccupation with the lives and loves of celebrities, than it is to look in the mirror and see not only our aging reflection but also the misdemeanors and failures glaringly visible to ourselves no matter how hard we may try to conceal them from others.
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" Recognize your sin. Seek God's forgiveness. Change your sinful ways. Prepare the way of the Lord by changing your life and your heart. Relinquish the shallow for the substantial. No matter how many Advents we hear John's sermon, it's a hard call to fulfill.
Our sins are not that outrageous or detestable. We haven't been married as many times as Elizabeth Taylor. We haven't squandered millions of dollars on "sex, drugs, and rock n' roll." We come to church. We try to be faithful to our Lord and our spouses. We try to put others before ourselves in the home and in our lives as Christians. So is John's prophecy really for us? Aren't he and we on the same side? Yes and no. Yes, we seek to know and to serve Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Yes, we know we are unable alone to live the kind of righteous life John the Baptist calls us to fulfill. Yes, we understand that our own readiness for Jesus' birth requires self-examination and repentance in order to be open to God's fullest revelation Christmas morn. But don't we all have times when we wish John's message was meant only for others and not for us as well? Aren't there times when we want to pull out that old Newsweek from several months ago and say, "Hey! I'm not as bad as Rush Limbaugh, and goodness knows I'm not as strange or sinister as Michael Jackson. Give me a break. I don't cheat on my taxes. I give regularly to my church. I'm happy to support the United Way and the food closet in my hometown. Give me some credit here! I'm trying, for God's sake and my own!"
If one thinks about the populace to whom John the Baptist's words were addressed, it's intriguing to realize most of them weren't all that bad either. It's unlikely after all, that John's listeners came from the Temple elite or the Roman ruling classes. Surely John's audience consisted primarily of faithful Jews and Samaritans -- people oppressed for centuries by foreign armies and rulers, people who couldn't be charged with greed or conspicuous consumption because they barely had enough to feed and clothe their own families. Yet John understands that even those who have little need something greater than their daily bread. John understands the people to whom he preaches. John understands these people need to hear that God cares about them, that God is intervening on their behalf, that God loves them. John also understands that one cannot recognize or receive the love of God until one has opened one's heart to God by casting aside those little gods that occupy most of our time. That little god for an aging Hollywood starlet might be her physical beauty. That little god for someone else might be economic success, emotionally dependant children, keeping the church the way "it's always been" in the face of a changing neighborhood and demographics. It may be ... well you get the idea....
Aristotle's comment, "Those who believe they are not loved seek to be admired," finds one of its most poignant contemporary examples in the life of Marilyn Monroe. Aristotle's words also demonstrate the void created by a feeling of one's own "unlovableness." This feeling is not a new phenomenon suffered only by modern people in our modern world. It is that very sense of our own wrongness and unlovableness that John and Jesus both seek to address and redress. Sure, most of us worshiping on Sunday morning aren't all that bad. We don't lie, cheat, steal, or abuse prescriptions or alcohol. We don't actively hate or despise other people. Yet, we still feel and know a sense of wrongness in our inner selves. In each of us there is a sense of lostness. A part of us that despairs of ourselves and our world; a part of us that looks in the mirror in the morning and sighs, "There's another wrinkle"; a part of us that sits at the office desk thinking, "I need more discipline;" a part that wanders through the routines of daily life cleaning, cooking, chauffeuring children, gardening, working, and wonders, "What's the point?" Each of us knows the emptiness of disappointment in ourselves, of unkind words spoken, of kind words left unsaid. Each of us has experienced dissatisfaction with our lives, our bodies, our friends, our goals. To be human is to be honest about ourselves, to admit we are lacking. We cannot satisfy all our own needs; we cannot meet all the needs of others. We know that the lives we live do not always please the God we serve. The wonder of Advent coming year after year, bringing John the Baptist along with it, is the reality that we always have another crack at repenting, changing and belonging to God. The good news John the Baptist shares with us every year is that our life and our hope depend not upon the star of an earthly celebrity but upon the solid and lasting love of "God who so loved the world God sent his only Son, that whosoever believed in him, would not perish but have everlasting life."
The year after I graduated from college I worked in medical records at Whittington Hospital in Manchester, England. During lunch hour, my medical records peers and I would sit around the records department reading and conversing. One day as I was occupied reading a biography, four of my colleagues were discussing the grim details of a baby whose teenage mother had deposited the child in a neighborhood rubbish bin. The baby had been rescued and taken to a social services facility while the young mother was now standing trial for the crime. Many lurid and unsavory details of the mother's boyfriends, drug habits, and irresponsibility were being described with lurid relish by my workmates. Finally, I jumped in and asked, "What in the world are you folks talking about?" "Khater" (Carter), one replied, pronouncing my name as it is pronounced by Brits, don't you read the newspaper? It's been on the front page of every edition for a week!" Well, as a matter of fact, I did read the Manchester Guardian regularly, but it contained nothing so dramatic or graphic as the daily contents of The Mail, The Mirror, etc.
George Murphy responds: "Do you know who I am?" is a natural demand to make and might even seem fairly harmless. We would all like to think that we're not just zeroes that can be ignored, and that other people recognize us. We want to get appropriate credit for the things that we've accomplished. But when the 'Do you know who I am?" card is played by someone who is stopped for driving erratically or who doesn't want to have to stand in line or something of the sort, more is going on. Then "Do you know who I am?" means, "I don't have to be held to the standards of other people. My reputation entitles me to special treatment."
And it can get uglier than that. Another recent celebrity story (in the Akron Beacon Journal of 28 November) tells how actor Don Johnson demanded special treatment in a restaurant. When the management told him that he had to pay for both the drinks and the food his party had consumed, Johnson reportedly screamed, "I will make it my (bleeping) mission in life to ensure that none of my powerful friends in Hollywood ever eat here again." Now "Do you know who I am?" means "I will destroy you if you don't give me special treatment."
It is easy to criticize such outbursts of famous people, especially if we reflect on the rather insubstantial claims to fame of some of them. (Some people are famous just for -- well, for being famous.) But the attitude is by no means limited to people who are well known. These are simply illustrations of what Augustine called the "curved in upon the self" character of sin. I am the center of the world, and what people do should be determined by how it will benefit me.
In the Advent season we prepare for the birth of the one "who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself (heauton kenosen), taking the form of a slave" (Philippians 2:6-7). This idea of the divine kenosis, or emptying, is of profound significance for our understanding of God and the way God relates to the world. The older King James Version translates heauton kenosen as "made himself of no reputation." If anyone would seem to have had the right to say, "Do you know who I am?" and demand special privileges, it would have been the Son of God. But instead he accepts the common lot of human life -- and human death.
It's common to picture this as just a temporary stratagem that God used to carry out a mission for the salvation of humanity. But if the Incarnation, and especially the suffering and death of Jesus, really are revelatory of who God is, then the fact that Christ "made himself of no reputation" tells us something about the character of God. Passages of scripture that suggest a deity who is jealous of prerogatives and insistent upon maintaining a reputation should be interpreted in the light of the cross, not the other way around. The God who is revealed in Jesus is the one of whom it is said, "Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior" (Isaiah 45:15).
Nancey Murphy and G. F. R. Ellis, in On the Moral Nature of the Universe (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), have developed the kenotic understanding of God and the way God acts in the world in order to deal with scientific understandings of the universe and the human place within it. "Kenosis," they conclude, "is the underlying law of the cosmos" (p. 251). The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), edited by John Polkinghorne, also pursues this theme.
If this is so, then it helps us to understand something that has been a difficulty for many Christians since the rise of modern science -- the fact that we can understand how the world works without any appeal to God's presence or action. If God does not insist on getting credit for what is done in the world, that is what we might expect. In the language of traditional doctrines of providence, God is the First Cause who acts through creatures as secondary causes. And if God acts through creatures in accord with rational laws (which itself is a gift because it enables us to understand the world), then God allows creatures to get the credit for what is ultimately divine action.
In our lives and our interactions with one another, it is finally what is done rather than who does it that should receive the greatest emphasis. Patterning our lives on the divine humility does not mean that we aren't to be concerned with accomplishing anything: Kenosis is not nihilism. But it is the good that is done, rather than the particular person who does the good deed, that is important. If we trust that God knows who we are, we don't have to demand, "Do you know who I am?" of other people.
Related Illustrations
Regarding distinguishing between fame and celebrity, Dan Rather says that the truly famous are "people whose names and deeds exist independent of their image." He quotes Daniel J. Boorstin:
"The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness."
"The sign of the celebrity is that his name is worth more than his services."
--Dan Rather, The American Dream (New York: Perennial, 2002), 134
* * * *
"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without getting bewildered as to which may be true."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
* * * *
Tom Brokaw tells about an experience he had after taking the lead chair on the Today show. He started at a small station in Omaha. Then he put in his time in Los Angeles, then Washington. Then he "made it" at the New York headquarters of NBC. Walking through Bloomingdale's one day, inhaling the fumes of his ego, a man stopped him and said, "You're Tom Brokaw, aren't you?"
He said, "Right."
"You used to do the morning news on KMTV in Omaha, didn't you?"
"That's right," Brokaw replied, impressed by the guy's knowledge of his career.
The guy paused, looked him over again, and said, "Well, whatever happened to you?"
--As told by James A. Harnish, "Are You Humble Enough to Be Wise?" a sermon preached in Tampa, Florida, September 21, 1997
* * * * *
The doctor took a patient into the conference room and said, "I have some good news and some bad news."
"Give me the good news," said the patient.
"They're going to name a disease after you."
* * * * *
"Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being 'somebody,' to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen."
--John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (reprint; New York; Crest, 1990), chapter 6
* * * * *
In the church, we often struggle with this issue of celebrity. In his April 15, 2003 e-journal, "On a Journey," Tom Ehrich asks the question, "When do crowds point the way, and when do crowds mislead?"
Some movies, restaurants (and even colleges), Ehrich points out, depend desperately on critics and reviewers for ongoing business; others seem to do well regardless of popular acclaim.
"Faith struggles with the phenomenon of crowd. Did the Incarnation begin to matter only when shepherds or wise men showed up? Was Jesus' teaching verified by the applause it initially received? Were twelve disciples more indicative than two? If the evangelists had counted female disciples like Mary Magdalene, would that larger number have signified anything? Did it matter that Jesus fed 3,000 or 5,000? Were the crowds correct when they welcomed Jesus as Messiah or when they shouted for his death? If Jesus was abandoned and left to die alone, did the departing crowds know any truth beyond their fears?
These aren't small questions. For crowds have played a critical role in religious history. The first apostles made sure to count the crowd being baptized. Once the persecution ended, Christianity sought larger and larger spaces, as if crowds proved their claims. A large monastery was judged better than a small. Even today, denominations parade numbers, as if large memberships proved denominational theology. A full house on Easter feels better than a sparse crowd in July. Full churches fare better in evangelism than empty....
Faith is a personal journey, a complex encounter between oneself and God, between one's sins and God's mercy, between one's dreams and God's love, between one's yearning for home and God's yearning for oneness. Crowds claim certainty, Bible warriors stockpile scripture citations as if they were cruise missiles, but truth -- one's own life-shaping truth -- can only be found in opening one's own heart, eyes and ears to God."
(To subscribe to "On a Journey," send an e-mail to: oaj2000@earthlink.net)
Worship Resources
by Chuck Cammarata
We begin this week with a Call to Worship that emphasizes simplicity in the face of all the glitz of the season, and in contrast to the pomp and circumstance of the cult of celebrity. This Call to Worship is based on the old Shaker hymn, " 'Tis a Gift to Be Simple." In my church we use these liturgies to lead into a time of lighting the candles for the Advent wreath. The candle this week -- for the second Sunday of Advent -- would be the Bethlehem (or Peace) Candle.
CALL TO WORSHIP
LEADER: 'Tis a gift to be simple,
PEOPLE: 'Tis a gift to be free,
LEADER: 'Tis a gift to be, just as we ought to be.
PEOPLE: And when we find ourselves in a place just right
LEADER: It will be in the valley
PEOPLE: Of love and delight.
LEADER: When true simplicity is gained,
PEOPLE: To bow down low, we won't be ashamed,
LEADER: To turn, and turn will be our delight,
PEOPLE: Until by turning and turning we come round right.
LEADER: 'Tis a gift to be simple,
PEOPLE: 'Tis a gift to be free,
LEADER: 'Tis a gift to have the peace of God in me.
(Light the Advent candles of hope and peace.)
A second option for this week would be to use the words of Isaiah 9:
ADVENT CANDLELIGHTING CEREMONY
LEADER: The people who walked in darkness
PEOPLE: Have seen a great light.
LEADER: They have been filled with joy,
PEOPLE: Like the joy of discovering great riches.
LEADER: Their burdens have been lifted,
PEOPLE: Their chains have been broken.
LEADER: All the weapons of war,
PEOPLE: All the blood-soaked garments
LEADER: Will be burned and forgotten.
PEOPLE: For to us a child is born!
LEADER: To us a son is given.
PEOPLE: And he will rule
LEADER: And his name will be -- Wonderful Counselor!
PEOPLE: Mighty God!
LEADER: Everlasting Father!
PEOPLE: Prince of Peace!
LEADER: And he will reign forever.
PEOPLE: And there will be peace
LEADER: And justice
PEOPLE: And righteousness
LEADER: Forever.
PEOPLE: Amen!
(Light the Advent candles of hope and peace.)
Another option might be to use Luke 3:1-6 as a basis for an announcement-type call to worship. If you choose this option the announcement should be done with boldness. Have the person enter (how they are dressed is up to you, but you could use period dress as a way of helping the congregation enter into the spirit of the announcement) and get the congregation's attention -- a trumpet blast would definitely wake them up. After the trumpet blast the scripture announcement should be made:
Prepare the way of the Lord!
Make his paths straight!
Every valley shall be filled up, and every mountain and hill shall be leveled out,
And the crooked shall be made straight,
And the rough ways shall be made smooth;
And all the earth shall see the salvation of God!
Prepare the way of the Lord!
The following Prayer of Confession is to be used in tandem with the Call to Worship based on Isaiah 9.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
LEADER: And his name shall be called -- Wonderful!
PEOPLE: Really?
LEADER: Counselor!
PEOPLE: Uh-huh.
LEADER: Mighty God!
PEOPLE: Is that so?
LEADER: Everlasting Father!
PEOPLE: Well.
LEADER: Prince of Peace!
PEOPLE: You don't say.
LEADER: Lord, forgive us for such matter of fact responses to your majesty and holiness
PEOPLE: And grace and love.
LEADER: And, as we enter the season of preparing for your entrance into our lives,
PEOPLE: Remind us of the honor
LEADER: And wonder
PEOPLE: Of knowing you. Amen.
Here is a second option for a confessional prayer. It deals more directly with our theme of being overly impressed by celebrity and measuring people based on superficialities.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
LEADER: He came to the table and sat to eat;
PEOPLE: His hands were dirty, his clothes not neat.
LEADER: Everyone stared, and embarrassed this man
PEOPLE: Who had not eaten in quite a long span.
LEADER: "Surely," one said, "you're not eating like that."
PEOPLE: "Of course not," said the man, before grabbing his hat.
LEADER: "Leave us and return when you're clean and straight."
PEOPLE: "I'll do that," spoke the man as he headed for the gate.
LEADER: And never again was he seen in that place,
PEOPLE: Where the people were more concerned with good form
LEADER: Than good grace.
(There should be a pause here.)
LEADER: Father, forgive us for putting form ahead of love.
PEOPLE: And for cleaning the outside of our lives,
LEADER: While neglecting to cleanse our hearts.
PEOPLE: For we ask it in the name of the one whose death
LEADER: Washed away our sins,
PEOPLE: Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
LEADER: Lying in that manger, on that long ago night, the babe, Jesus, silently sent a message to the whole cosmos. His message was this, "New! Fresh! Unspoiled! A clean start!" The message still rings out today, "We are new creations in Christ. Behold the old has gone, the new has come." Let us celebrate this good news, and live in our newness.
PEOPLE: Praise God for newness. Amen.
PASTORAL PRAYER
Heavenly King, as we live out our lives amidst a culture that adores the beautiful face and sculpted body, that fawns over the rich, and faints in the face of the famous and talented, help us to see and appreciate true celebrity. Lives that can be celebrated for more than looks, or wealth, or talent. Lives that make a difference. The one who uses wealth to supply the needs of hurting people; the one who uses talent to heal or lift spirits, the one who simply helps the needy neighbor, lifts a burden, offers a cup of cold water. Lord, help us to see, and celebrate these lives, and to live such lives ourselves. We ask it in the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS
"Jesus! the Name High Over All"
"Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus"
"Fairest Lord Jesus"
"Ye Servants of God"
"At the Name of Jesus"
PRAISE CHORUSES
"Majesty, Worship His Majesty," words and music by Jack Hayford
"His Name Is Wonderful," words and music by Audrey Mieir
"Jesus, Name Above All Names," words and music by Naida Hearn
"Jesus Be Praised," words and music by Handt Hanson
"Lord, I Lift Your Name on High," words and music by Rick Founds
A Children's Sermon
by Wesley T. Runk
"A Very Good Trade"
Luke 3:1-6
Text: "And he went into all of the region about the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (v. 3).
Object: a rubber band, pen, paper clip, pencil, pad of paper, or anything you want to use to trade for whatever the children have in their pockets.
Good morning, boys and girls. Today I am going to be a trader. Do you know what a trader is? (let them answer) That's right, I am going to trade the things that I have for the things that you have. If you have something in your pocket that you want to trade for what I have in my pocket, we will make a trade. I have a rubber band. It is a good rubber band, one of the best. It stretches around almost anything. It will keep important things together like mail, ponytails, and newspapers. Does anyone have something that they would like to trade for my rubber band? (let the children look at the rubber band and see if you can get a trade) Next, I have a beautiful ball point pen. This is a very nice pen. It writes letters, checks, and notes, and it is especially good when it comes to working on a crossword puzzle. Does anyone want to trade me for my pen? (again try to work a trade with someone) Now, I have a paper clip. It is a very important tool in my work. It keeps my sermon together. I love to work this paper clip, but I am willing to trade it for just the right thing. Does anyone want to trade me for my paper clip? (make as many trades as you wish on this last exchange)
Trading is fun, and it can also be very important. There was a man named John who did some important trading. You may have heard of him. They called him John the Baptist. He loved a certain kind of trade. He would preach about it day after day. His trade was this: He would baptize you and you would give up your sins. He traded a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It was quite a trade. John knew how filled people were with sin and how awful it made them feel. But they felt so awful that they did not know what it would be like to feel good. They were not sure that they wanted to give up their sins. John would preach and plead and pray that the people who listened to him would ask to be baptized so that their sins would be forgiven. It was the best trade that anyone could make and it still is.
John was a great trader. He was able to talk to a lot of people and many were baptized by John and gave up their sins. Even today when people think of baptism, they think of the man called John.
If you ever make another trade, I hope it is a good one, and when you make that trade, think of the time that John talked people into trading away their sins for baptism. It was one of the best trades that was ever made. Amen.
The Immediate Word, December 7, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
We can learn much about the values and mores of a given society by noting the kind of persons who are treated as celebrities. Some churches celebrate saints or heroes of the faith, many of whom lived in self-abnegation for the welfare of others. In medieval Europe the knights and their code of chivalry were admired and venerated by many a youth. In North America today other kinds of persons, many of them in the world of popular entertainment, more often make the covers of the tabloids and the top-ten lists.
In this week's The Immediate Word, Carlos Wilton calls attention to the naming of celebrities in the two passages from Luke assigned in the lectionary. He alludes to celebrities in the news and then asks us to consider whom we choose to celebrate. What kind of celebrity was John? Jesus? Who deserves our attention and adulation? Important questions as we anticipate the Advent of the coming one.
Team members offer responses and illustrations, Chuck Cammarata provides worship resources, and Wes Runk a children's sermon.
The Celebrity
Luke 3:1-6; Luke 1:68-79
by Carlos Wilton
The Message on a Postcard
Pop singer Glen Campbell, who achieved his greatest fame in the late 1960s and 1970s, was arrested on November 24 in Phoenix for driving while intoxicated. Police records say he identified himself to the arresting officer as "Glen Campbell the Rhinestone Cowboy." The sergeant who booked him told the Associated Press how Campbell responded indignantly, "Do you know who I am? ... I shouldn't be locked up like this," before assaulting a different officer. Later, Campbell was heard singing his 1975 hit, "Rhinestone Cowboy," in his jail cell.
It's impossible to escape news stories like these. In any given week, the media are full of accounts of celebrities, their deeds and misdeeds. (Strictly speaking, no deeds are even required for the media to file a story; first-magnitude stars attract the paparazzi even while out shopping for socks.)
The media wouldn't spend such a large amount of time and money stalking celebrities were not we, the consumers, hungry to hear about them. Curious as moths circling a porch light, we're drawn to their ephemeral glow.
Campbell's question to the police officer, "Do you know who I am?" is indicative of the popular perception that celebrities are a breed apart. Yet, as the singer discovered -- and as another pop singer, Michael Jackson, is currently discovering, having been booked on more serious charges -- in the eyes of the law, celebrities are no different from anyone else.
The lectionary texts for December 7 are themselves concerned with celebrities. Luke 3:1 pegs John the Baptist in history with reference to the Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, King Herod, and others. The alternate psalm text, the Song of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79), speaks of the descendants of King David and of a savior who prophets foretell will come from his royal line.
This particular celebrity is of a different order, of course, than the kings and emperors and stars of various kinds who have populated news stories from time immemorial. He is literally unique, and his influence is both positive and enduring.
The word "celebrity" is related to "celebrate." Whom we choose to celebrate in this life makes all the difference.
Some Words on the Word: Luke 3:1-6
Two of this Sunday's lectionary texts lend themselves to a treatment of our society's fascination with celebrities. The first is the alternate psalm reading, Luke 1:68-79 (the Song of Zechariah), which celebrates John the Baptist's uniqueness as "prophet of the Most High," who "will go before the Lord to prepare his ways" (verse 76).
I will concentrate more on the second passage, Luke 3:1-6, which describes the prophetic activities of John the Baptist. While actually a prologue to Luke's account of the baptism of Jesus that follows immediately after, this passage appears here in the Advent lectionary readings because of the content of John's prophecy. Here Luke relates how John echoes the words of Isaiah 40:3-5, "Prepare the way of the Lord!" This message makes John quite the celebrity, and, by implication, it makes Jesus an even bigger celebrity, for he is the one the colorful John is devoting his life to introduce. John's mission is "to create an immense tide of messianic expectation, and then to make way for the Messiah" (G. B. Caird, Saint Luke [New York: Penguin, 1963], p. 73).
Some interpreters may be inclined to skip over the first verse of this pericope, but that would be a mistake. As he does in 2:1 with his mention of Augustus and the imperial census, Luke lists here the emperor's name (Tiberius, not Augustus, for it's now several decades later), as well as several other Roman and Jewish governmental officials. By including this list, Luke is doing more than providing a mere historical footnote. He's contrasting these high-ranking officials with the one whose coming John is heralding. In the words of Leonard R. Klein, "there is a critical edge of irony in Luke's citation. Just as it was Jesus in the little town of Bethlehem -- and not great Caesar Augustus -- who is acclaimed by angels and shepherds as the real Lord and King, so the really important news thirty years later is about John the Baptist, not the notables Luke lists. They in fact play negative roles in the story, although through their abuse of power God will work out his purposes and bring salvation to the world" (Roger E. Van Harn, ed., The Lectionary Commentary: The Third Readings, The Gospels [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001], pp. 308-309).
"In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius ... the word of God came" -- not to the celebrities in Rome or Jerusalem but "to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness." Luke turns the entire first-century concept of celebrity on its head. In placing the most important prophetic message in history into the mouth of a virtual nobody, who dwells in a you-can't-get-there-from-here kind of place, God does the utterly unexpected.
John proclaims "a baptism of repentance" (metanoia). This, too, is in contrast to Luke's reference to first-century celebrities. There's something socially leveling about baptism, John's rite of repentance. It's hard to imagine emperors, governors, tetrarchs, and high priests joining the common folk in wading out into the Jordan, getting their feet wet with all the other pilgrims.
Which, of course, is exactly what Jesus himself does several verses later (although that event takes place beyond the limits of today's lectionary passage). Jesus is not too proud to receive "the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (although the question of why the sinless Jesus needs baptism continues to provoke vigorous debate among theologians).
Verse 6, the final verse of this pericope, contains the line, "all flesh shall see the salvation of God." Jesus, in other words, will one day become the most celebrated of all celebrities. "All flesh shall see" the salvation he offers.
A Map of the Message
Each year, the Forbes Magazine website (http://www.forbes.com/static_html/celebs/2003/index.shtml) lists the "top 100 celebrities." The top ten from Forbes' 2003 list are as follows:
1. Jennifer Aniston
2. Eminem and Dr. Dre
3. Tiger Woods
4. Steven Spielberg
5. Jennifer Lopez
6. Paul McCartney
7. Ben Affleck
8. Oprah Winfrey
9. Tom Hanks
10. Rolling Stones
"How do you measure celebrity?" the Forbes people ask on their website. "Start with earning power and add media hits. Jennifer Aniston has a smaller bank account than George Lucas but shows up far more often on the magazine rack. But where's her husband? Brad Pitt didn't make the cut."
Earning power? Website hits? Are these the things of which celebrity is truly made?
The world would seem to think so. God's got a very different idea, as we can see in John the Baptist's proclamation of Jesus' celebrity.
The celebrities on the Forbes list are ephemeral. Some names carry over from year to year (Woods, Spielberg, Winfrey, and Hanks, for example, are all veterans of the 2002 top ten). Others -- such as 2003's number-one celebrity, Aniston -- are newcomers. Britney Spears (number one in 2002) didn't even make this year's top ten. Such statistics give credence to Andy Warhol's oft-quoted dictum, "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes."
In contrast to figures such as these, Jesus' celebrity is anything but ephemeral. Yet the contrast to the first-century celebrities Luke cites -- bluebloods such as Tiberius, Pilate, Caiaphas and Annas -- is stark. (Who even remembers "Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene"?)
I remember taking my son Benjamin to a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park. He was 9 or 10 at the time, and fanatical about the game. We had heard there was a stadium exit where players would occasionally stop and sign autographs for kids, so toward the end of the ninth inning we made our way down there.
No luck. Plenty of cars drove out of this exit with their tinted windows rolled up, but none stopped for the dozen or so hopeful kids gathered there, game programs and pens in hand. Finally we gave up, and as we turned to walk back to our car, I glanced across the street and saw someone who looked familiar. He was walking briskly along the sidewalk in the company of several other men, head down, as though he didn't want to be noticed.
"Hey, Benjamin," I said. "Look over there. Do you know who that is? That's Ted Kennedy!"
Ben gave me a blank look. "Who's that?"
The thought briefly crossed my mind of running after the senator and asking him to sign my son's program. But I thought better of it. Ben wouldn't have been impressed.
Celebrity is in the eye of the beholder. Now maybe if Ted had played shortstop....
Fame is a seductive lure. Many, many people would do most anything to achieve it. Some would compromise their ethical principles. Yet neither John the Baptist nor Jesus does anything of the sort. Jesus actually seems to shun fame; he flees the crowds to go off to a lonely place and on many occasions instructs his disciples to remain quiet about his miracles. Both are inflexible when it comes to matters of principle, and both will sacrifice their lives rather than accommodate the whims of the crowd.
Somewhere in his writings, Aristotle observes, "Those who believe they are not loved seek to be admired." Sad to say, there's probably a lot of that soul-hunger among those most eager to achieve fame. Jesus and John, by contrast, are closer to what the psychologists describe as "self-actualized." They are people of absolute integrity, who know who they are and what their mission is. They're not dependent on others for their self-esteem.
For our part, the question of who in life we celebrate is an important one. Historian Daniel Boorstin once defined a celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness" (from Dan Rather's book, The American Dream [New York: Perennial, 2002], 134). Do we celebrate people just because the world celebrates them? Or do we celebrate those who are worthy of celebration for more profound reasons?
Christmas is coming: probably our culture's favorite celebration. Many of the secular festivities come rather close to celebration for celebration's sake. Others extol values that have little or nothing to do with the true reason for the holiday. In a certain sense, we are what we celebrate; if our Christmas is all about materialistic consumption or tipsy revelry, then that says something about who we are. Yet if our Advent preparations and Christmas celebrations are all about worshiping God incarnate in Jesus Christ, then that says something about us as well.
In the words of preacher John MacArthur,
Worship ... let me give you a brief definition ... is an attitude. It is a spirit, something on the inside. It is an attitude of the heart that is so filled with wonder and gratitude at what God has done that there is not a thought of personal needs or personal blessings, only total abandonment to God in praise and adoration. That's worship. It is the most selfless thing we do. It is, as the hymn writer puts it, to be lost in wonder, love and praise. It is to be so grateful and so filled with wonder at what the Lord has done that we lose ourselves in adoring worship, adoring praise. What better time for this than Christmas when we focus on the very giving of Christ who is our Savior?
--John MacArthur, "The True Spirit of Christmas," http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/80-152.HTM
Team Comments
Carter Shelly responds: I like the new preaching hook you provide to Luke 3:1-6 by exploring human and divine notions of celebrity. Since John's call, "Prepare the way of the Lord!" appears every Advent, finding fresh ways to present John's message is not easy. With this emphasis you offer a way for Christians to wonder what it is about contemporary celebrities that makes them so popular and also to ask who is worthy of celebration today. Who would our top ten include? Why doesn't Jesus get equal or greater print and face space in People, Us, The National Enquirer, Vanity Fair, etc. than do people like J-Lo, Ben, Jennifer Aniston, or the Rolling Stones? (Of the top ten listed in Forbes, I find the choices of Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, and Tom Hanks more substantial than some of the others identified. Both Woods and Winfrey offer positive role models for African Americans through successful ventures into professions previously dominated by Anglo Americans. Spielberg's more recreational movies have been balanced by some remarkable contributions to movie audiences' awareness of our human capacity for great evil and great good through Schindler's List, Amistad, and Searching for Private Ryan.)
Humans seem by nature to be drawn to physical beauty and glamour. Famous for her looks and allure, Cleopatra's arrival in Rome surely caused more of a stir than Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. Lillie Langtry and Oscar Wilde both made good copy in nineteenth-century England. The Hollywood movie stars of the 1920s and 1930s filmed in exquisite gowns and tuxes on luxurious sets were said to help Depression-era audiences forget for a while the pain and humiliation of mortgage foreclosures, unemployment, and despair. It's highly likely more people in the world knew who Princess Diana was than could name the founder of Christianity or Islam. Celebrity interest seems to have become more intense since World War II. Cheap, fast printing makes it possible to report on a famous couple's nuptials before their own photos get processed for their wedding album. People magazine, begun in the 1970s, has been a phenomenal success with its 52 issues a year, which are often not enough to sate its readership's demand. Special issues such as "The Sexiest Man Alive" and "The 50 Most Beautiful People" are sellouts each year.
Given a choice of People magazine or Karl Barth as reading material in the Wal-Mart Pharmacy waiting line, I take People any day. Why? It's fun to look at the beautiful clothes Michele Pfeiffer, Kate Hudson, Demi, or Nicole are wearing and mindless to read a few scribbled notes about their personal lives and film careers. Barth is work. So, as a matter of fact, are John the Baptist and Jesus.
John the Baptist calls us to repent of our sins. He's old news, and every year he's the same old news. What a party pooper! Who wouldn't rather read about Ben Affleck's detox efforts or how much happier Charlie Sheen's personal life is now that he's conquered his coke habit? Who wouldn't prefer to know exactly how many plastic surgeries Cher has endured to defeat father time than to hear, once again, that ordinary, bland, a tad overweight and uninspired you and me are not good enough as we are to receive our Savior? How much nicer it is to escape our own reality through a preoccupation with the lives and loves of celebrities, than it is to look in the mirror and see not only our aging reflection but also the misdemeanors and failures glaringly visible to ourselves no matter how hard we may try to conceal them from others.
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" Recognize your sin. Seek God's forgiveness. Change your sinful ways. Prepare the way of the Lord by changing your life and your heart. Relinquish the shallow for the substantial. No matter how many Advents we hear John's sermon, it's a hard call to fulfill.
Our sins are not that outrageous or detestable. We haven't been married as many times as Elizabeth Taylor. We haven't squandered millions of dollars on "sex, drugs, and rock n' roll." We come to church. We try to be faithful to our Lord and our spouses. We try to put others before ourselves in the home and in our lives as Christians. So is John's prophecy really for us? Aren't he and we on the same side? Yes and no. Yes, we seek to know and to serve Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Yes, we know we are unable alone to live the kind of righteous life John the Baptist calls us to fulfill. Yes, we understand that our own readiness for Jesus' birth requires self-examination and repentance in order to be open to God's fullest revelation Christmas morn. But don't we all have times when we wish John's message was meant only for others and not for us as well? Aren't there times when we want to pull out that old Newsweek from several months ago and say, "Hey! I'm not as bad as Rush Limbaugh, and goodness knows I'm not as strange or sinister as Michael Jackson. Give me a break. I don't cheat on my taxes. I give regularly to my church. I'm happy to support the United Way and the food closet in my hometown. Give me some credit here! I'm trying, for God's sake and my own!"
If one thinks about the populace to whom John the Baptist's words were addressed, it's intriguing to realize most of them weren't all that bad either. It's unlikely after all, that John's listeners came from the Temple elite or the Roman ruling classes. Surely John's audience consisted primarily of faithful Jews and Samaritans -- people oppressed for centuries by foreign armies and rulers, people who couldn't be charged with greed or conspicuous consumption because they barely had enough to feed and clothe their own families. Yet John understands that even those who have little need something greater than their daily bread. John understands the people to whom he preaches. John understands these people need to hear that God cares about them, that God is intervening on their behalf, that God loves them. John also understands that one cannot recognize or receive the love of God until one has opened one's heart to God by casting aside those little gods that occupy most of our time. That little god for an aging Hollywood starlet might be her physical beauty. That little god for someone else might be economic success, emotionally dependant children, keeping the church the way "it's always been" in the face of a changing neighborhood and demographics. It may be ... well you get the idea....
Aristotle's comment, "Those who believe they are not loved seek to be admired," finds one of its most poignant contemporary examples in the life of Marilyn Monroe. Aristotle's words also demonstrate the void created by a feeling of one's own "unlovableness." This feeling is not a new phenomenon suffered only by modern people in our modern world. It is that very sense of our own wrongness and unlovableness that John and Jesus both seek to address and redress. Sure, most of us worshiping on Sunday morning aren't all that bad. We don't lie, cheat, steal, or abuse prescriptions or alcohol. We don't actively hate or despise other people. Yet, we still feel and know a sense of wrongness in our inner selves. In each of us there is a sense of lostness. A part of us that despairs of ourselves and our world; a part of us that looks in the mirror in the morning and sighs, "There's another wrinkle"; a part of us that sits at the office desk thinking, "I need more discipline;" a part that wanders through the routines of daily life cleaning, cooking, chauffeuring children, gardening, working, and wonders, "What's the point?" Each of us knows the emptiness of disappointment in ourselves, of unkind words spoken, of kind words left unsaid. Each of us has experienced dissatisfaction with our lives, our bodies, our friends, our goals. To be human is to be honest about ourselves, to admit we are lacking. We cannot satisfy all our own needs; we cannot meet all the needs of others. We know that the lives we live do not always please the God we serve. The wonder of Advent coming year after year, bringing John the Baptist along with it, is the reality that we always have another crack at repenting, changing and belonging to God. The good news John the Baptist shares with us every year is that our life and our hope depend not upon the star of an earthly celebrity but upon the solid and lasting love of "God who so loved the world God sent his only Son, that whosoever believed in him, would not perish but have everlasting life."
The year after I graduated from college I worked in medical records at Whittington Hospital in Manchester, England. During lunch hour, my medical records peers and I would sit around the records department reading and conversing. One day as I was occupied reading a biography, four of my colleagues were discussing the grim details of a baby whose teenage mother had deposited the child in a neighborhood rubbish bin. The baby had been rescued and taken to a social services facility while the young mother was now standing trial for the crime. Many lurid and unsavory details of the mother's boyfriends, drug habits, and irresponsibility were being described with lurid relish by my workmates. Finally, I jumped in and asked, "What in the world are you folks talking about?" "Khater" (Carter), one replied, pronouncing my name as it is pronounced by Brits, don't you read the newspaper? It's been on the front page of every edition for a week!" Well, as a matter of fact, I did read the Manchester Guardian regularly, but it contained nothing so dramatic or graphic as the daily contents of The Mail, The Mirror, etc.
George Murphy responds: "Do you know who I am?" is a natural demand to make and might even seem fairly harmless. We would all like to think that we're not just zeroes that can be ignored, and that other people recognize us. We want to get appropriate credit for the things that we've accomplished. But when the 'Do you know who I am?" card is played by someone who is stopped for driving erratically or who doesn't want to have to stand in line or something of the sort, more is going on. Then "Do you know who I am?" means, "I don't have to be held to the standards of other people. My reputation entitles me to special treatment."
And it can get uglier than that. Another recent celebrity story (in the Akron Beacon Journal of 28 November) tells how actor Don Johnson demanded special treatment in a restaurant. When the management told him that he had to pay for both the drinks and the food his party had consumed, Johnson reportedly screamed, "I will make it my (bleeping) mission in life to ensure that none of my powerful friends in Hollywood ever eat here again." Now "Do you know who I am?" means "I will destroy you if you don't give me special treatment."
It is easy to criticize such outbursts of famous people, especially if we reflect on the rather insubstantial claims to fame of some of them. (Some people are famous just for -- well, for being famous.) But the attitude is by no means limited to people who are well known. These are simply illustrations of what Augustine called the "curved in upon the self" character of sin. I am the center of the world, and what people do should be determined by how it will benefit me.
In the Advent season we prepare for the birth of the one "who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself (heauton kenosen), taking the form of a slave" (Philippians 2:6-7). This idea of the divine kenosis, or emptying, is of profound significance for our understanding of God and the way God relates to the world. The older King James Version translates heauton kenosen as "made himself of no reputation." If anyone would seem to have had the right to say, "Do you know who I am?" and demand special privileges, it would have been the Son of God. But instead he accepts the common lot of human life -- and human death.
It's common to picture this as just a temporary stratagem that God used to carry out a mission for the salvation of humanity. But if the Incarnation, and especially the suffering and death of Jesus, really are revelatory of who God is, then the fact that Christ "made himself of no reputation" tells us something about the character of God. Passages of scripture that suggest a deity who is jealous of prerogatives and insistent upon maintaining a reputation should be interpreted in the light of the cross, not the other way around. The God who is revealed in Jesus is the one of whom it is said, "Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior" (Isaiah 45:15).
Nancey Murphy and G. F. R. Ellis, in On the Moral Nature of the Universe (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), have developed the kenotic understanding of God and the way God acts in the world in order to deal with scientific understandings of the universe and the human place within it. "Kenosis," they conclude, "is the underlying law of the cosmos" (p. 251). The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), edited by John Polkinghorne, also pursues this theme.
If this is so, then it helps us to understand something that has been a difficulty for many Christians since the rise of modern science -- the fact that we can understand how the world works without any appeal to God's presence or action. If God does not insist on getting credit for what is done in the world, that is what we might expect. In the language of traditional doctrines of providence, God is the First Cause who acts through creatures as secondary causes. And if God acts through creatures in accord with rational laws (which itself is a gift because it enables us to understand the world), then God allows creatures to get the credit for what is ultimately divine action.
In our lives and our interactions with one another, it is finally what is done rather than who does it that should receive the greatest emphasis. Patterning our lives on the divine humility does not mean that we aren't to be concerned with accomplishing anything: Kenosis is not nihilism. But it is the good that is done, rather than the particular person who does the good deed, that is important. If we trust that God knows who we are, we don't have to demand, "Do you know who I am?" of other people.
Related Illustrations
Regarding distinguishing between fame and celebrity, Dan Rather says that the truly famous are "people whose names and deeds exist independent of their image." He quotes Daniel J. Boorstin:
"The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness."
"The sign of the celebrity is that his name is worth more than his services."
--Dan Rather, The American Dream (New York: Perennial, 2002), 134
* * * *
"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without getting bewildered as to which may be true."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
* * * *
Tom Brokaw tells about an experience he had after taking the lead chair on the Today show. He started at a small station in Omaha. Then he put in his time in Los Angeles, then Washington. Then he "made it" at the New York headquarters of NBC. Walking through Bloomingdale's one day, inhaling the fumes of his ego, a man stopped him and said, "You're Tom Brokaw, aren't you?"
He said, "Right."
"You used to do the morning news on KMTV in Omaha, didn't you?"
"That's right," Brokaw replied, impressed by the guy's knowledge of his career.
The guy paused, looked him over again, and said, "Well, whatever happened to you?"
--As told by James A. Harnish, "Are You Humble Enough to Be Wise?" a sermon preached in Tampa, Florida, September 21, 1997
* * * * *
The doctor took a patient into the conference room and said, "I have some good news and some bad news."
"Give me the good news," said the patient.
"They're going to name a disease after you."
* * * * *
"Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being 'somebody,' to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen."
--John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (reprint; New York; Crest, 1990), chapter 6
* * * * *
In the church, we often struggle with this issue of celebrity. In his April 15, 2003 e-journal, "On a Journey," Tom Ehrich asks the question, "When do crowds point the way, and when do crowds mislead?"
Some movies, restaurants (and even colleges), Ehrich points out, depend desperately on critics and reviewers for ongoing business; others seem to do well regardless of popular acclaim.
"Faith struggles with the phenomenon of crowd. Did the Incarnation begin to matter only when shepherds or wise men showed up? Was Jesus' teaching verified by the applause it initially received? Were twelve disciples more indicative than two? If the evangelists had counted female disciples like Mary Magdalene, would that larger number have signified anything? Did it matter that Jesus fed 3,000 or 5,000? Were the crowds correct when they welcomed Jesus as Messiah or when they shouted for his death? If Jesus was abandoned and left to die alone, did the departing crowds know any truth beyond their fears?
These aren't small questions. For crowds have played a critical role in religious history. The first apostles made sure to count the crowd being baptized. Once the persecution ended, Christianity sought larger and larger spaces, as if crowds proved their claims. A large monastery was judged better than a small. Even today, denominations parade numbers, as if large memberships proved denominational theology. A full house on Easter feels better than a sparse crowd in July. Full churches fare better in evangelism than empty....
Faith is a personal journey, a complex encounter between oneself and God, between one's sins and God's mercy, between one's dreams and God's love, between one's yearning for home and God's yearning for oneness. Crowds claim certainty, Bible warriors stockpile scripture citations as if they were cruise missiles, but truth -- one's own life-shaping truth -- can only be found in opening one's own heart, eyes and ears to God."
(To subscribe to "On a Journey," send an e-mail to: oaj2000@earthlink.net)
Worship Resources
by Chuck Cammarata
We begin this week with a Call to Worship that emphasizes simplicity in the face of all the glitz of the season, and in contrast to the pomp and circumstance of the cult of celebrity. This Call to Worship is based on the old Shaker hymn, " 'Tis a Gift to Be Simple." In my church we use these liturgies to lead into a time of lighting the candles for the Advent wreath. The candle this week -- for the second Sunday of Advent -- would be the Bethlehem (or Peace) Candle.
CALL TO WORSHIP
LEADER: 'Tis a gift to be simple,
PEOPLE: 'Tis a gift to be free,
LEADER: 'Tis a gift to be, just as we ought to be.
PEOPLE: And when we find ourselves in a place just right
LEADER: It will be in the valley
PEOPLE: Of love and delight.
LEADER: When true simplicity is gained,
PEOPLE: To bow down low, we won't be ashamed,
LEADER: To turn, and turn will be our delight,
PEOPLE: Until by turning and turning we come round right.
LEADER: 'Tis a gift to be simple,
PEOPLE: 'Tis a gift to be free,
LEADER: 'Tis a gift to have the peace of God in me.
(Light the Advent candles of hope and peace.)
A second option for this week would be to use the words of Isaiah 9:
ADVENT CANDLELIGHTING CEREMONY
LEADER: The people who walked in darkness
PEOPLE: Have seen a great light.
LEADER: They have been filled with joy,
PEOPLE: Like the joy of discovering great riches.
LEADER: Their burdens have been lifted,
PEOPLE: Their chains have been broken.
LEADER: All the weapons of war,
PEOPLE: All the blood-soaked garments
LEADER: Will be burned and forgotten.
PEOPLE: For to us a child is born!
LEADER: To us a son is given.
PEOPLE: And he will rule
LEADER: And his name will be -- Wonderful Counselor!
PEOPLE: Mighty God!
LEADER: Everlasting Father!
PEOPLE: Prince of Peace!
LEADER: And he will reign forever.
PEOPLE: And there will be peace
LEADER: And justice
PEOPLE: And righteousness
LEADER: Forever.
PEOPLE: Amen!
(Light the Advent candles of hope and peace.)
Another option might be to use Luke 3:1-6 as a basis for an announcement-type call to worship. If you choose this option the announcement should be done with boldness. Have the person enter (how they are dressed is up to you, but you could use period dress as a way of helping the congregation enter into the spirit of the announcement) and get the congregation's attention -- a trumpet blast would definitely wake them up. After the trumpet blast the scripture announcement should be made:
Prepare the way of the Lord!
Make his paths straight!
Every valley shall be filled up, and every mountain and hill shall be leveled out,
And the crooked shall be made straight,
And the rough ways shall be made smooth;
And all the earth shall see the salvation of God!
Prepare the way of the Lord!
The following Prayer of Confession is to be used in tandem with the Call to Worship based on Isaiah 9.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
LEADER: And his name shall be called -- Wonderful!
PEOPLE: Really?
LEADER: Counselor!
PEOPLE: Uh-huh.
LEADER: Mighty God!
PEOPLE: Is that so?
LEADER: Everlasting Father!
PEOPLE: Well.
LEADER: Prince of Peace!
PEOPLE: You don't say.
LEADER: Lord, forgive us for such matter of fact responses to your majesty and holiness
PEOPLE: And grace and love.
LEADER: And, as we enter the season of preparing for your entrance into our lives,
PEOPLE: Remind us of the honor
LEADER: And wonder
PEOPLE: Of knowing you. Amen.
Here is a second option for a confessional prayer. It deals more directly with our theme of being overly impressed by celebrity and measuring people based on superficialities.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
LEADER: He came to the table and sat to eat;
PEOPLE: His hands were dirty, his clothes not neat.
LEADER: Everyone stared, and embarrassed this man
PEOPLE: Who had not eaten in quite a long span.
LEADER: "Surely," one said, "you're not eating like that."
PEOPLE: "Of course not," said the man, before grabbing his hat.
LEADER: "Leave us and return when you're clean and straight."
PEOPLE: "I'll do that," spoke the man as he headed for the gate.
LEADER: And never again was he seen in that place,
PEOPLE: Where the people were more concerned with good form
LEADER: Than good grace.
(There should be a pause here.)
LEADER: Father, forgive us for putting form ahead of love.
PEOPLE: And for cleaning the outside of our lives,
LEADER: While neglecting to cleanse our hearts.
PEOPLE: For we ask it in the name of the one whose death
LEADER: Washed away our sins,
PEOPLE: Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
LEADER: Lying in that manger, on that long ago night, the babe, Jesus, silently sent a message to the whole cosmos. His message was this, "New! Fresh! Unspoiled! A clean start!" The message still rings out today, "We are new creations in Christ. Behold the old has gone, the new has come." Let us celebrate this good news, and live in our newness.
PEOPLE: Praise God for newness. Amen.
PASTORAL PRAYER
Heavenly King, as we live out our lives amidst a culture that adores the beautiful face and sculpted body, that fawns over the rich, and faints in the face of the famous and talented, help us to see and appreciate true celebrity. Lives that can be celebrated for more than looks, or wealth, or talent. Lives that make a difference. The one who uses wealth to supply the needs of hurting people; the one who uses talent to heal or lift spirits, the one who simply helps the needy neighbor, lifts a burden, offers a cup of cold water. Lord, help us to see, and celebrate these lives, and to live such lives ourselves. We ask it in the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.
HYMN SUGGESTIONS
"Jesus! the Name High Over All"
"Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus"
"Fairest Lord Jesus"
"Ye Servants of God"
"At the Name of Jesus"
PRAISE CHORUSES
"Majesty, Worship His Majesty," words and music by Jack Hayford
"His Name Is Wonderful," words and music by Audrey Mieir
"Jesus, Name Above All Names," words and music by Naida Hearn
"Jesus Be Praised," words and music by Handt Hanson
"Lord, I Lift Your Name on High," words and music by Rick Founds
A Children's Sermon
by Wesley T. Runk
"A Very Good Trade"
Luke 3:1-6
Text: "And he went into all of the region about the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (v. 3).
Object: a rubber band, pen, paper clip, pencil, pad of paper, or anything you want to use to trade for whatever the children have in their pockets.
Good morning, boys and girls. Today I am going to be a trader. Do you know what a trader is? (let them answer) That's right, I am going to trade the things that I have for the things that you have. If you have something in your pocket that you want to trade for what I have in my pocket, we will make a trade. I have a rubber band. It is a good rubber band, one of the best. It stretches around almost anything. It will keep important things together like mail, ponytails, and newspapers. Does anyone have something that they would like to trade for my rubber band? (let the children look at the rubber band and see if you can get a trade) Next, I have a beautiful ball point pen. This is a very nice pen. It writes letters, checks, and notes, and it is especially good when it comes to working on a crossword puzzle. Does anyone want to trade me for my pen? (again try to work a trade with someone) Now, I have a paper clip. It is a very important tool in my work. It keeps my sermon together. I love to work this paper clip, but I am willing to trade it for just the right thing. Does anyone want to trade me for my paper clip? (make as many trades as you wish on this last exchange)
Trading is fun, and it can also be very important. There was a man named John who did some important trading. You may have heard of him. They called him John the Baptist. He loved a certain kind of trade. He would preach about it day after day. His trade was this: He would baptize you and you would give up your sins. He traded a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It was quite a trade. John knew how filled people were with sin and how awful it made them feel. But they felt so awful that they did not know what it would be like to feel good. They were not sure that they wanted to give up their sins. John would preach and plead and pray that the people who listened to him would ask to be baptized so that their sins would be forgiven. It was the best trade that anyone could make and it still is.
John was a great trader. He was able to talk to a lot of people and many were baptized by John and gave up their sins. Even today when people think of baptism, they think of the man called John.
If you ever make another trade, I hope it is a good one, and when you make that trade, think of the time that John talked people into trading away their sins for baptism. It was one of the best trades that was ever made. Amen.
The Immediate Word, December 7, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
