Canter Bridge

A sermon preached at Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church, Wethersfield, Connecticut, USA

17 December 2023

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

Luke 1.1-4 (ESV)

I have always felt different. 

It’s OK, I muddle through. I’m not having a public crisis and I’m not about to reveal any un-Christmasy, awkward secrets from up here today.

But it’s true. I have always felt different.

In high school, I was the Christian kid on the basketball team, never at the parties and rarely at the dances. (That was probably a mercy for the art of dance.)

In retrospect, our Christian tradition kept me from falling into some of the life-twisting sins that mess up teenage lives. I’m grateful for that. But it also distanced me from my friends. Maybe unnecessarily.

I got good grades, but that wasn’t a thing that was valued so much in the little town where Pastor Scott and I grew up. In fact, a high grade didn’t really earn you any friends.

But I was competitive, so I didn’t like coming in second in a class. I would actually work hard to get the highest grade while making sure it wasn’t higher than it needed to be. It was a successful week when I could get the best grade of the class on the mid-term exam and not have it be more than, say, a 92. 94 gets icky. Don’t even talk to me about 97.

I was introverted and not good with girls. (Again, probably a mercy to the young women of our valley.)

But this business of feeling different wasn’t something that ended when I could finally grow a beard and pay taxes.

I still feel different. Maybe you do, too.

In terms of my vocation, my professional calling, I’m a biblical scholar. Can I share with you that for a person in my line of work, listening to sermons is an agony?

I sit there thinking, ‘Well, OK, but ….’ or ‘Wow, you sure bungled that one … ‘ or … ‘Really???’

I have nothing against pastors. I generally love them and spend the lion’s share of my life shaping new ones as biblical interpreters and human beings who I hope are worth following. I pray for Karen’s and my pastors and their wives every morning because I know something about how demanding their work is and how much they need God’s help if they’re to do it well. 

In fact, if you were to ask me what I believe my primary spiritual gift to be, I’d tell you as I’ve told others: ‘I’m a pastor, and God for some reason has asked me to exercise that gifting mostly in academic communities’ … like the Biblical Seminary of Colombia where we serve in South America.

Now in recent years, God has spared me much of that sermon-listening agony. One of the reasons I love the privilege Karen and I have of belonging to our WEFC community is that we have such a high standard of preaching here. I’m constantly in awe of Scott’s careful way with a biblical text. And, I can say the very same thing about Pastor Samuel in our church in Colombia. Sammy is an excellent interpreter of the Bible and a genuine shepherd of souls. So the Lord has been gentle with my quirky calling and its complications.

But in general, listening to a sermon has for me always been somewhere between uncomfortable and painful; participating in a Bible Study is a matter of measuring my words and trying not to say the wrong thing or over-complicate a perfectly good conversation among our brothers and sisters.

Even responding to a theological question asked of me by one of my son’s college friends sitting in the back seat of my car, led to my Johnny turning around and saying to his friend with a smile on his face…

I just gotta’ warn you, my Dad always complicates everything…

You see, I’m different. And I’ve always known it.

But I’m not quite done yet with this little public confessional.

My calling has meant that I have spent most of my adult life in Latin America … doing work cross-culturally. Much as Karen and I love and are loved in our Colombian context, I will never be Colombian. I’ll never completely belong in that place that, as of this year, some of you from this church family now know. And when missionaries return to the country they came from… as some of you can attest … we never exactly fit back in. Living over there  has changed us … made us different people. 

And, if I can get really personal, I live here in Connecticut on my wife’s home turf. Karen is a local girl. She grew up in Hartford, Wethersfield, Cromwell. Now we live just across the river in Portland. We have this thing that happens to us in the car where we’re going somewhere and she forgets to tell me to turn right until the right turn is back there already. She figures I know where we’re going, but I don’t. I sometimes say to her in exasperation…

Karen, I’m not from here…

I love New England. Living back here is a return gift of something I renounced painfully when my family and I moved to Costa Rica as missionaries back in 1988 after four years in Massachusetts … But I love New England as an insider-outsider. I will never be a true New Englander, just as my family back in Millersburg, Pennsylvania, was never truly from there. That would take another two or three generations. And I don’t have’em!

So I am drawn to these first four verses of this third gospel, this Gospel of Luke. It’s tempting to think that Luke is just kind of clearing his throat in these early verses before getting on with the important stuff at verse 5.

But that would be a mistake. Luke has placed this little introduction here for a reason, and we ought to try to understand what that reason is. I think a close look at these verses will bring new light about the God of Christmas, the Jesus of Christmas, and even about us as we—joyfully, painfully?—celebrate Christmas together this year.

You see, Luke feels the need to justify adding a new report about Jesus. In his time, lots of them already exist. 

Luke seems to want this Theophilus to understand both his motivation and his method for adding to the pile of memories and teaching about Jesus. In adding to earlier reports that have served Jesus’ followers and inquirers for a half century already, Luke feels that it’s important for Theophilus to understand why this new project is necessary and how it relates to the accumulation of testimonies and accounts about Jesus that is already a done deal … already available to him and to Theophilus.

I think what he says is important for us also. Let’s look carefully at what Luke writes at the beginning of his work:

First, Luke pays his respects to his forebears in the faith and in the chronicling of Jesus’ words and deeds. He respects them and he honors their testimony.

We see this most obviously in verse 2, where he uses two critical expressions to describe those who have gone before him in the task he himself has now set his hand to.

Let me read those first two verses

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us…

Luke 1.1-2 (ESV)

Luke kind of tips his hat to these eyewitnesses and these ministers of the word. They’re probably two overlapping groups: The eyewitnesses over here knew what they knew because they’d seen it with their own eyeballs. It was undeniable to them. They’d lived those events in flesh and blood.

And then, over here, there are those who took those testimonies and the teaching of Jesus and served the early Jesus movement as servants of the word.

I think these would have been two overlapping groups.

Not all the eyewitnesses would have had this kind of word-based ministry as their calling. Some of them would have been quiet, everyday believers living local lives of faithful service. And not all these ministers of the word would have been eyewitnesses. Some of them would have come along later and met Jesus in something other than an eyewitness way.

But there’d be an overlap: The apostle John writes like one of the overlap people at the beginning of that little letter that we call First John:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

1 John 1.1-4 (ESV)

Luke is saying to Theophilus, ‘Look, I stand on the shoulders of such people. Luke himself is not an eyewitness and in his double volume (Luke-Acts) he doesn’t style himself as a typical preacher or teacher of the word either.

Luke is repaying a debt here, and I think he does it with some tenderness and affection for the people he’s describing. His faith and the faith of people he cares about wouldn’t exist without this legacy. Luke acknowledges that right at the outset, the way you and I can speak with appreciation of the people who testified of Jesus to us and nurtured us in the faith, even if our lives have long since moved on from those formative moments.

But the second thing I notice in these first verses demands some patience on our part if we’re going to understand Luke: he finds the accumulated mountain of testimony and teaching about Jesus to be … how do I say this diplomatically…inadequate.

Now, let’s pay careful attention to what he’s saying. 

He doesn’t say erroneous.

He doesn’t say superficial.

He doesn’t say misleading.

He doesn’t say obsolete.

What he says is something like this: ‘Look, Theophilus, I get you. We’re a little bit alike, you and I. We have this analytical bent about us. We need sequencing. We need order. We need logic. We need to understand the wiring behind the panel and how it works, not just whether the lights go on and the refrigerator keeps things cold and the Internet works.

And this legacy of testimony and teaching about Jesus doesn’t completely meet the need for people like you … and me. Admit it. You and I, we’re different. Not better, not worse. But different.

So here’s what I’ve done.’

Verses 3-4:

…(I)t seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Luke 1.3-4 ESV)

There are four critical expressions in what I’ve just read that explain Luke’s method. They shed light on what he brings to a table that’s already been abundantly served, on behalf of Theophilus:

…all things (πᾶσιν)

…for some time past (ESV) / from the first (NRSV) (ἄνωθεν)

…closely (α͗κριβῶς)

…orderly (καθεξῆς)

The first three of these expressions describe Luke’s research methods. The last one describes his published work.

His research:

‘All things’: exhaustive

‘From the first’: sequentially

‘Closely’: with attention to detail

His report:

‘Orderly’: in a way that speaks to your habits of reading/consideration/reflection/persuasion.

To what end: (4) that you might have certainty ( ἵνα ἐπιγνῶς: solid confidence, deep understanding) concerning the things you have been taught. Luke’s work doesn’t replace earlier testimony and teaching. Rather, it complements it. It bolsters it. Luke’s approach is a force multiplier in the discipling of Theophilus. It makes what already exists more adequate to Theophilus’ need.

It addresses Theophilus as the person God has created and ‘wired’ him to be without suggesting that he just get by on what works for most people. You see, Luke honors Theophilus, too. He doesn’t consider him a problem to be managed or an annoyance to be tolerated. He addresses him as ‘noble Theophilus’.

Now Luke is about to launch into his own unique retelling of the Christmas story, complete with all sorts of inside scoops that could only have come from him interviewing the people involved. He’s describing his careful method in these first four verses, but he will very soon put the results on display.

His account will very obviously aim at being exhaustive, sequential, detailed and orderly.

Can you see this? Luke’s gospel is a labor of love. That love reaches back to the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word whose shoulders Luke stands upon. And that same love reaches forward to Theophilus, whom Luke longs to see experience a mature certainty or confidence in his own life as a follower of Jesus.

Now there’s an open secret about Theophilus and this is probably the moment for telling it: We don’t have a clue who Theophilus is. It’s one of those names that has a meaning. It means ‘lover of God’ or ‘friend of God’.

Maybe this name belonged to a guy Luke knew and his research is meant to serve that friend. Theophilus is a masculine name, so it would have been a man, not a woman. Or maybe it’s a name that stands in for any lover of God who belongs to that minority of us who need to understand before we can believe and who need to have our hearts and minds well nourished if we’re going to continue to believe. Maybe Theophilus is not a man who lived and died twenty centuries ago … Maybe Theophilus is the 18% of us or whatever it is whose brains work in a way that requires this kind—Doctor Luke’s kind—of information.

In either case, Luke—by the insight of God’s Spirit—has seen Theophilus … has seen us. He has understood us. He has honored us. He has spoken our language, not asked us to just get by, by listening in.

When Luke moves on to talk about the incarnation of God in Jesus—the taking on of the human condition, the taking the form of a servant—he has demonstrated that same servant attitude by taking those of us into account who are different in this way. 

The birth of Jesus is good news shaped and shape-able even for those of us who are different.

Even for Theophilus …

Even for Dave …

Perhaps even for you…

Now it may have caught your eye that I have not stopped this morning with Theophilus. The text I have quoted from in Luke in gets to Theophilus by verse 4.

But then, when Luke has finished his preface and launched into his account, there is a verse 5, a verse 6, and a verse 7.

Now Luke is no longer describing his own methodology, he’s already done with that by the end of verse 4. Now he’s telling Jesus’ story.

In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

Luke 1.5-7 (ESV)

Look where Luke goes first with his fresh account of the story of Jesus. The first chapters of the gospel of Luke are full of the stuff, the content, of personal interviews. 

How do we know this?

Well, he’s scooping inside details that were only known to individuals who were alone when the thing they experienced went down. One example is Zechariah’s visitation by the angel when he was ministering alone in the temple. Zechariah happened to be there according to the priestly schedule that assigned him to temple service in the precise moment when totally unexpected stuff begins to happen. Only one of the priests went into that holy space at a time. The door was shut, the people were waiting outside, and it just seemed like Zechariah was taking forever in there (1.21).

But the angel Gabriel’s confrontation of Zechariah, his commissioning of John the Baptist’s childless father into the center of the mission of God, his being struck dumb when he asked the angel for a guarantee, that all went down between Zechariah and this angelic Man of God (Gabriel).

It seems that Luke eventually interviewed Zechariah.

And then there’s Mary’s experience with her own angelic visitation, quoted so often in the Christmas season.

Nobody was around to record those stories except the human beings who experienced them. By telling Zechariah’s story and Mary’s story, and other people’s stories, Luke is adding to our population of ‘eyewitnesses’, as he’s already called such people in verse 2. As he does so—although I have no idea whether he would have thought of it this way—Luke is becoming more and more like those ‘ministers of the word’ that he mentions alongside the eyewitnesses.

But I want to go somewhere very specific with this.

As Luke tells the Christmas story, how does he identify the first interviewees he brings into his account? Let’s look one final time at verses 5-7:

5. In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. 7. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

Luke 1.5-7 (ESV)

I imagine that Elizabeth gave Luke permission to disclose that last … really tender … potentially shameful detail. At least I hope he did. I don’t know what the protocols for such a thing were back then. Luke doesn’t just say ‘but they had no children’ and leave it at that. He locates the problem in Elizabeth’s body. Elizabethwas barren, he says.

As a result of this situation, Zechariah and Elizabeth are—like Theophilus but in a different way—people who are different.

I want to be careful as I describe this, because in a church family like ours infertility is without doubt the painful experience of at least some of us. It’s also one of those losses … in many cases the loss of a dream, the loss of something that was longed for but never possessed … that makes people feel different than their peers, especially in that season of life when their friends seem to be happily producing babies just when they cannot. Commonly, it’s an ache that lasts an entire lifetime.

Zechariah and Elizabeth know that pain. They’re aware that they are different, ‘that old couple with no kids’. And, like Theophilus, they are not left out when God’s redeeming love, made human in the Christ child, invades. They are seen, they are taken into account, they are brought into the story. In their case—unlike what some of us are asked to endure—they are healed, made whole, and gifted with a son.

Throughout this Christmas season, we have been singing that amazing song, O Come, All You Unfaithful. We’ll sing it again in a minute.

O come, all you unfaithful
Come, weak and unstable
Come, know you are not alone

O come, barren and waiting ones
Weary of praying, come
See what your God has done

Thanks to our brother Luke, we can now add to this description of those who are invited to come closer to Jesus in this season all of us who for whatever reason ‘have always felt different’. Like Theophilus, and like those of us who kind of are Theophilus. Or for any other reason.

For all of us, it’s time for us to come home.

If ‘feeling different’ in some way describes a burden you’ve carried, wouldn’t it be just like Jesus to draw you and your story into his embrace more tightly than you’ve ever known it. Even into this hospitable family, more fully than you’ve expected.

I began this sermon by breaking one of the cardinal rules of preaching: I talked about myself. Because you’re generally a patient bunch, let me end it in a similar way and let’s call this my testimony. I have breakfast regularly with Brian Hucks, our lead elder here at WEFC.

Because he’s an engineer and I’m a biblical scholar and we’re both guys, we always eat at the same place at the same hour. I always arrive four minutes late. We even sit at the same table, and we generally order the same breakfast we ordered a month ago. It’s just a little bit pathetic, but we like it that way.

Two breakfasts ago—as Brian and I measure time—something took the conversation to a point where I told Brian that, even at our beloved church and mostly because I spend half of each year or more somewhere else, I always feel like a bit of an outsider. I never learn enough of your names. I don’t know your stories. I’m somewhere else when big stuff happens here. I told Brian that I don’t feel as though I really belong yet.

Brian looked stunned. He didn’t interrupt me, probably because he was chewing and even two guys in flannel shirts try not to talk with our mouths full.

But when I gave him a chance he said, ‘Well that is certainly not how any of us sees you’ and he affirmed Karen’s and my belonging in this family.

It was a word from God for me.

It was an invitation to come home. It was like Luke saying to Theophilus, ‘Look, pal, we’ve got a place for you in this Jesus story, let me speak your language to you for a little bit.’

Wouldn’t it just like Jesus to come near to you as you remember the events of Jesus’ birth with this limping community of Jesus-followers?

O come, all you unfaithful
Come, weak and unstable
Come, know you are not alone

O come, barren and waiting ones
Weary of praying, come
See what your God has done

Christ is born, Christ is born
Christ is born for you

O come, bitter and broken
Come with fears unspoken
Come, taste of His perfect love

O come, guilty and hiding ones
There is no need to run
See what your God has done

PRAYER

Our Father, we ask you to bring us all the way into your embrace. Please reduce the distance between us and you down to the vanishing point. Please reduce the distance between each other in that same way.

In Jesus’ name.

Amen