Jesus was a penniless king of unlimited wealth. But his wealth was not in money or property or palaces; his wealth was in people, in disciples, in those who decided to devote their lives to him and his causes rather than to themselves and their own causes.

This is the third in a series of four sermons about the poetic Songs of the Messiah which are found in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Previously we looked at two songs which were sung by the angel Gabriel when he announced to the virgin Mary that she was going to be the mother of the Son of God. Mary was a young teenage girl when she was confronted by the angel and his astonishing announcement. No matter how mature Mary may have been, she was still a young girl, presumably of very recent puberty. In her culture, she would have been thinking about marriage and eventual motherhood, because girls of thirteen or fourteen typically were given in marriage by their parents, so they likely thought about it.

Let me postulate a theory for you. There is no way of corroborating or “proving” what I am going to say, but I want you to think about it. Here is my thesis. The life and teachings of Jesus had a major effect on those who knew him and heard him during his lifetime, but the effect of Jesus was infinitely greater in the first fifty years after he lived than it was before he died. By the year 80 CE, when Luke wrote his Gospel, there were probably at most twenty or fifty or a hundred thousand Christians in the entire world. But those people were so transformed by a peasant carpenter from the Galilean town of Nazareth that already they had developed a system of worship not only for the God who sent Jesus into the world but also for the one who was sent, Jesus himself. Likely included in that liturgy were songs or hymns which the Church had created for every season of the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and the long period leading back to Advent once again.

The Gospels and the other parts of the New Testament are not really history. They are relatively brief glimpses into the most radically transformative century in the western world. A Galilean peasant was born somewhere in the Roman province of Judea. Two New Testament writers, and only two, say he was born in Bethlehem, which is the town where King David had been born a thousand years earlier. According to both of those writers, the angel Gabriel appeared to Joseph (in Matthew) and to Mary (in Luke). Gabriel is mentioned only twice in the Old Testament, and both times in the prophecy of Daniel (8:16 and 9:21). Daniel does not even refer to him as an angel, but in both instances as “the man Gabriel.” However, we may naturally infer that he is a special messenger from God (which is what the word “angel” means: messenger.)

If your politics run in one direction, you need to know that this is not the beginning of an entirely new world. If they run in another direction, you need to know this is not the end of the old world. This is still the same world as it was on November 7 of 2016, or on November 7, 1916, or 1816, or 716 BCE. Human beings have always shaped the world, but God is ultimately in charge: ultimately. That is what Isaiah told the people of Judah when his heart ached for them because of their blunders and their blindness. We can say with Katharina von Schlegel, a lady whose name suggests she might possibly be German, “Be still my soul, the Lord is on thy side.”

Whether you believe the Genesis explanation for why God created the universe and our planet in particular or you believe that every species of every animal or plant in the world is important in and of itself, we are all brought back to one key phrase in Genesis 1:28: we humans are intended by God to have dominion over the earth. We are in charge! God put us in charge. No other species is capable of having dominion. We are God’s stewards on behalf of God’s Earth! A steward is someone given responsibility to care for the possessions of someone else. Bankers are stewards of our money. Publicly-held corporations are stewards of the funds people invest in them. Government officials are stewards of the taxes people pay into the government. And, according to Genesis 1, we are the stewards of Planet Earth. God gave us that responsibility.

White lies have become widely acceptable as a form of social discourse. “We’re having a dinner party, and we want you to come,” someone says to you. But if you come, you know that So-and-So will be there, and So-and-So is such a revolting so-and-so that you don’t want to have to abide him again. So you say, “I’m so sorry, but we will be at another function.” And the other function you’ll be at is to watch the Green Bay Packers lose yet another close game on your TV at home. It isn’t a white lie, exactly, but it definitely is misleading, and it isn’t true.

The mid-eighth century BCE was a boom time in the land of Judah. The Judean Dow-Jones Industrial Average was at 24,853 points one Friday afternoon in 745 in the month of Aviv, and it never again got any higher, though it didn’t go down quickly either. Hedge fund managers were making money faster than they could bank it. The CEOs of the banks had huge town homes on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and vacations homes on the Mediterranean beaches and also among the date palm trees of Jericho. Times were never better.

The purpose of prophecy was to speak what was believed to be the will and word of God to the social, political, economic, and religious situations in which the prophets found themselves. Their words were almost always “present-centered,” not “future-centered.” And whenever the prophets made predictions about what would happen in the future, it was always based upon what was happening (or not happening) in the present. Prophecy is not fundamentally prediction; rather it is the proclamation of whatever is perceived to be the will of God regarding whatever is going on at any given period of human history.

This sermon is being preached because our island was hit by the worst hurricane to come here in the past 131 years. In 1885 a hurricane which no one knew was coming completely flooded every inch of Hilton Head in an enormous and probably unprecedented storm surge. Between Savannah and Charleston over 2500 people were killed, most of them by drowning. But for accumulated material losses, Matthew shall far outdistance that long-ago unnamed hurricane on a then-thinly-populated island. On Hilton Head Island alone there will be tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. However, it was not primarily because of flooding, but mostly as a result of the thousands of trees which crashed down in the Category 2 winds. A complete clean-up will take several months, and Hilton Head will never again look quite the same as it did before Matthew made his visit. So we begin with the theological and philosophical question, Are Natural Disasters “Natural”? The answer to that question is quite simply, “Yes, all natural disasters are natural.” They are acts of nature, and only of nature. They are never acts of God.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the best known of all Jesus’ parables. I believe it also is the greatest of all his many parables. It describes in exquisite detail an essential part of the nature of God, namely His extravagant forgiveness.

No one ever would have heard of Muhammad of Mecca had there been no Jesus of Nazareth. And no one ever would have heard of Jesus had there been no Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, no Moses or David or Isaiah. There are three major religions in the Western World. They are, in historical order, first Judaism, then Christianity, and then Islam. Without Judaism, there would be no Christianity, and without Judaism and Christianity, there would be no Islam. All the adherents of those three religions are called “The People of the Book.” And they are called that by none other than Muhammad himself in the Book of Islam, the Quran.

Weeks ago I decided on the title for this sermon. It was to be Is Hospitality a Religious Necessity? When I started writing the sermon last Tuesday, I concluded that isn’t truly the question I wanted to ask. Instead, what I really want for all of us to think about is this: Is Hospitality a Religious Obligation? In other words, is there a moral imperative in extending hospitality? If we want to try to be Christians, ought we to extend hospitality?

You may not have thought about this before, but there is a rapidly shrinking group of older clergy and other older lay people who address God as “Thou” rather than as “You.” But then, you probably have had no reason to think about that. There also is a much, much larger group of clergy and others, who are also shrinking, but far more slowly, who still refer to God in the third-person as “He.” I am in both groups, and this morning I want to try to tell you why.

The Hebrew Bible is an astonishing collection of writings. It paints portraits of people as they were, not as we might like them to be. There is no one of whom that sober observation is more valid than is seen in the personage of King David himself. He is portrayed in all his grandeur and gore, his fame and fallacies, his spiritual heights and his sinful depths. But in the end, in the end, David always returned to God in humble faith and contrition.

Jesus is many things to many different Christians. He is Christ (or the Messiah), the Son of God, God Incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity, and the Savior of the world, among other titles or concepts. During the time Jesus lived, he was probably perceived by his followers to be few if any of those things, except perhaps the Messiah. But one thing almost everyone would understand Jesus to be was a wisdom teacher. Even those first-century Galilean Jews who rejected him as well as his message would agree that he was undeniably a dispenser of wisdom in the long tradition of wisdom teachers throughout the history of Israel.

Is God close to you, or is He far away? Do you feel His presence with you daily, or does He seem removed from your daily life? What, for you, is the proximity of God?

The biggest mass murder in our nation’s history happened in Orlando three weeks ago. Yet another apparently mentally unstable man used an assault rifle and a semi-automatic military pistol to kill 49 people and to wound more than 50 others. And still the Congress has done nothing to outlaw assault rifles and pistols in the hands of ordinary citizens, or even to put up any serious obstacles to purchasing them. After the third-to-last mass murder in America, The Times of London had this cartoon on its editorial page. It shows the American flag. The 50 stars in the blue upper-left rectangle are bullet holes, and the white stripes have red running down into them, representing the blood that was shed by the victims. Is the USA a nation in peril?

Today I want to address another important subject, namely, the relationship we hope to establish between The Cypress and The Chapel Without Walls. This it addressed equally to those who have attended The Chapel for a long time as well as Cypress residents who have attended it for the first time during any of the previous three Sundays. All of us need to understand and appreciate the grace-filled decision of The Cypress administration and staff to approve our holding services here. I want everyone to know we are aware that the Cypress hospitality was offered to us both as a risk and as a sacrifice.

You know how, when you try a new medication or you buy a new electrical gizmo, the label tells you the potential dangers involved in using the medication or apparatus improperly? You are warned that you could acquire these or those complications, or, if you tried hard enough, you could actually kill yourself by using this particular product. Well, I feel compelled to warn you that I hope this sermon will be very instructive, and you will learn things that you haven’t thought about before, but you many not find it very inspirational. In fact, if we both are not careful, it could be downright depressing. With that caveat having been “caveated,” we press on.