I-YOUniverse

In honor of the Epiphany, I offer my first sermon in print, Proclaim Oct 1977 (Baptist Sunday School Board). It’s a dramatic monologue in iambic pentameter (I was young.) The premise is that one of the Wise who followed the star to Jesus, 30+ years later encounters an early Christian missionary.

Those of us who graduated from Louisville in the early 70s held Alton H. McEachern in high esteem. Pastor of the St. Matthews Baptist Church, closely related to our seminary, he was the quintessential Southern  gentleman, and consummate preacher. He taught me preaching by his personhood, sermons, writing and friendship. He went on to other churches, eventually becoming Methodist and founding the Cornerstone United Methodist Church, near Greensboro.

If you aren’t familiar with his books, I recommend them, available through online booksellers, especially Dramatic Monologue Preaching and his book on preaching, too.

As his former student, I sent him this manuscript which he sent on to his publisher. With that introduction I made my first sale! In 1987 I attended a preaching seminar at Emory; the secretary put Al and me together in one room because we were the same denomination. I enjoyed hanging out with this prince of preachers, looking at miniature roses and seeing Children of a Lesser God together. (I think he thought it a bit racy.)

I hadn’t been in touch with Al lately, so I googled him to make a note of his present circumstances when I blogged the sermon. I am sad to learn of his passing January 3, 2009.

So, Al, enjoy your new mansion! Thanks for blessing my life!

Here’s the sermon originally titled “Wise Men Still Seek Him.”

Your sermons, Justus, stir the city as I have seldom seen. Remarkable!—the news that your Messiah of the Jews belongs to all humankind. Since when did the Jews begin to care for Gentile dogs? Take no offense, Friend! Once I was in Palestine, long years ago. I never will forget the priests and scribes, who felt unclean if they so much as touched us.

 But I have better memories. If one morning only had passed by, I would have no clearer vision in my mind of what I found. (I should say who I found.)

 Strangely, you remind me of myself. Your gospel presses you. It drives you to joy and, at last, to tears of peace. Your message tells me your beliefs, your memorized sayings are your life.

 Did you know him—Jesus—whose words you repeat? Did you know him as a man who trudged the hills of Galilee, teaching truths so plain a child could understand them, yet so deep they elude the wise?

 Why your smile? I do not count myself a wise man. You surely do not think my wealth could keep me happy, for I have seen God work his will among the very stars of heaven. Yes! I have studied the stars and wrested from them secrets angels long to know. It was a star that led me to a house in Bethlehem where a carpenter lived with his wife and his son, whose name was Jesus. But I’ve jumped ahead.

 Why study the stars, you ask. The glittering night to most is meaningless. To me the moving stars interpreted life and history. Jews like you cannot conceive of living blind and deaf without a hint of God’s existence or a hope of his care. Yet I, I grasped at specks of light in the darkness. I hungered for the truth. I searched. And long before I journeyed in the brightness of his star, I journeyed in the dark.

 To live and have no gospel to believe! Consider it, my friend. No hell could harbor torments any worse. So a star that filled the sky with light could fill my heart with trembling joy. I thought, it is no chance occurrence; it is a clue to those who will uncover it that God’s good news is soon to break over the world.

 Oh, no! We didn’t know about Messiah; we knew only God had spoken. The silent God had spoken. And on impulse we pursued the star across the desert to Judea. (My friend, obey your impulse: God speaks often to those he loves in fleeting whispers.)

 We traveled together, students of the stars whose life of theorems and of calculations had burst. We undertook the pilgrimage and did it fiercely. For, if we failed to find the promise of the star, then life—the dreams, the wealth, the wisdom we had had—would all be nothing.

 Isn’t that your gospel, Justus? That next to Jesus—whether as a baby or a man hanged or one raised by God from death—next to him the world is darkness, without form and void? And next to him our images of God are cracked and witless lies, and the Law you Jews revere is weak, little more than God  condemning us to death? But in his life the law becomes the Spirit, whose only law is love of God and neighbor. I have heard your preaching, Justus.

 In Jerusalem we went to Herod. He, by then, had killed his own sons, lest they steal his throne. And we, naïve, asked where to find the newborn King. Imagine! How it must have landed on those ears, so used to oily praise and fear, to hear us ask the whereabouts of a King that he knew nothing of. He summoned priests who squeaked their admonitions. Certainly they knew the Scriptures well enough to point out Bethlehem. They did not know it well enough to go and find their King.

 Justus, do religious people wrangle over texts discerning hidden meanings and missing the plain Christ? And why did shepherds, as his mother told me, greet his coming and foreigners, but his own did not receive him? Why do those who have the plainest truth of God reject it or ignore it? Why do those who walk in darkness seek his light, while those who live in it are blinded?

 We went alone to find him. Priests and soldiers and king remained behind. And, when they came, they came killing children. The news of the slaughter reached me here. Of course, I thought that they had killed the child, him the morning stars had sung together of and whom the one star shone to honor.

It brought us near who were afar off. We were strangers to the covenant of promise; we had no hope; we lived without God in the world. And you were his beloved people, but you killed him. So I thought. His cross is no surprise, for, from the first kings decreed his death.

I nearly lost my mind! Do you know, the deepest dark is not where the light has never shone. The deepest dark is where the stars glowed once but nothing now is there except the night. What gloom that is! Better never to know God’s salvation, than to see it, touch it, taste it, then to turn away. Old Herod has too many disciples, folk whose lives leave them no room to give a Christ child his rightful place. Telling you of my despair almost brings it back.

But, no, they could not kill him. You say he chose to die. You say he was held to that cross by his love. Though in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to grasp; he emptied himself, became a slave, a man; he humbled himself; he obeyed even to death, even to death on a cross. (He knew the dark.)

And God has highly exalted him, bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is God. Glory to God in the highest!

I knelt; I worshiped, Justus, though I did not know the full truth you have told me. I knew in part. That God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself I did not know. But this is what I knew as I knelt there: God had brought me to a child whose lullaby the angels sang. The world was not forgot, and God still ruled and brought his purposes to pass in sure, however secret, ways.

I gave him gold, all I had. I was impoverished, and rich! For I had hope I’d never had, and joy! I have known none greater till today. I gave him gold—today I give him all I am or ever hope to be.

Justus, send your brother missionaries here. They’ll find me a friend. And when you leave this city to preach elsewhere I will provide money and whatever else you need.

I followed a star. I made a journey there and back again. But now the night sky has gone bright. There is no star at all. Justus, here comes the Son!