The Naked God--December 31, 2019

The Naked God--December 31, 2019

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.... And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." [John 1:1-3a, 14]

I think it's fair to assume that God is not naïve. That just seems like a given.

Similarly, it seems evident from the Scriptures that God knows what God is doing--in other words, that God doesn't just stumble into a situation unprepared or half-cocked and then later regret not thinking things through.  We never get the sense from the storytelling of the Bible that God rushes into a scene, provoked and reckless, without thinking out an endgame strategy.

Just the opposite, in fact: as the scribes, evangelists, and prophets tell it, God is supremely patient, deliberate and thoughtful, and has had from the beginning the consistent goal of restoring and renewing all of creation.  From the beginning, God has been about the business of bringing us to life, whether from the chaos of nothingness, or from the darkness of death.  And even if God's tactics sometimes seem unorthodox (like, say, sending an army around the walls of Jericho with only trumpets, or sending away most of Gideon's army so that he was vastly outnumbered when he won), you never get the sense that God didn't have a plan in mind in those times.  God, as presented to us in the story of the Scriptures, is infinitely creative, using things we think are too broken, too small, too weak, or too dead for the purposes of bringing life.

Neither can we say that God is unaware of just how rotten and crooked things are in the world. The God of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses and Miriam, knows all too well our violence and cruelty, our destructiveness and our deviousness, our apathy and avarice.  So there's no way you can read the story of the Bible and coming away saying, "Maybe God is wearing rose-colored glasses and only sees a world of unicorns and rainbows." 

So what does it say that God's way of ultimately dealing with the brokenness and bitterness of things is to enter into it, not armed with lightning bolts and angel armies, and not carrying a sword or a gun, either, but naked with our humanity?  You can't read it as a mistake on God's part, or a lack of forethought, or an overly optimistic view of humanity.  God enters into this creation vulnerably, stripping down all of the invincibility we usually associate with the Almighty (the letter to the Philippians calls it Christ "emptying himself"), and bearing all of our frailty and fragility as God's only wardrobe.

This is not a cosmic accident or an unfortunate oversight.  This is not God being naïve and wrongly expecting the world to be a perfectly safe place.  The incarnation--God taking on human flesh--is God's chosen, open-eyed response to our cruelty and crookedness, because God is convinced that the way to bring us to life is not for the Christ to protect himself from danger, but to enter into the danger in complete vulnerability.  Let us make no mistake about it: God could easily have made another pillar-of-cloud-and-fire appearance, or sent down a legion of angelic soldiers, if that would have been what God chose to do.  God could have sent a representative who shot lasers from his eyes the moment someone threatened him.  God could have at least let Jesus carry some weapons for self-defense, if that would have been what we needed. But God won't trade our lives for divine safety, and Christ wouldn't rather keep himself out of danger if it meant leaving us in danger.  The vulnerability of Christmas is God's chosen strategy.  And the nakedness of the Word-made-flesh is just as God intended.

In the midst of all of the speeches that get made in this season about "the true meaning of Christmas," I kind of think we don't go far enough.  We probably know to say, "It's not about presents," and maybe we even go beyond, "It's about family togetherness," to say that it's about the baby in the manger.  But chances are, we are too nervous to go further and say that the reason for the baby in the manger is that God chooses to be vulnerable, rather than invincible, in order to redeem us.  We are afraid of the implications of saying that God's clear-eyed choice is to come, naked and unarmed into a world full of violence and hatred, born a brown-skinned Jewish peasant child in the backwater of the empire, knowing the costs of that choice.  We are afraid, I suspect, that if God's way of being in the world is to choose vulnerable love rather than threats and violence, then we will be called to walk in the same path of vulnerable love as the Word-made-flesh, Jesus.

We are right about that.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to love this world vulnerably as you have loved it... and as you still do.

Contemplation and Participation--December 30, 2019

Contemplation and Participation--December 30, 2019

"But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart." [Luke 2:19]

There are these moments in your life when you know--and maybe you can't quite put your finger on the "why" of it, but you still know--that you are a part of something important.  Something vital.  Something life-changing, or maybe even world-changing.

And sometimes you don't know yet what is important about the moment, or why it will turn out to have been good that you were there, or even what the ripple effects will be of the moments you are a witness to.  But nevertheless, some voice says to you, "Stop.  Remember all of this.  Take a mental picture, and don't let this instant pass you by."  

Often, if we are glued to our rectangles of technology or in our own little worlds of socializing and self-amusement, we will miss those moments as they happen, and maybe only in hindsight as we see them in the rear-view mirror do we realize what was so significant.  Or maybe we know something momentous is on the horizon, but we are frightened of the consequences of participating rather than watching from the sidelines, and so we step back and stare at our feet while the important moment comes and goes.

But sometimes, we are graced with the courage, the wisdom, and the openness of our eyes to see one of those Important Moments as it is unfolding, and we both step into it to take our part in living it, and also commit that instant in time to our memory to become a defining piece of who we are.  I've got to be honest--it seems like it is a pretty rare bird in this life to find someone who knows how to do that with regularity.  But Mary, the Mother of our Lord, she does it twice in the first two chapters of Luke, all within a span of nine months.

At the beginning of her pregnancy, literally as she is being greeted by an angel with the news that she is being tapped to bear the Christ into the world, Luke says that Mary "pondered what sort of greeting this might be."  She does not run away from the huge significance of this moment, nor does she fail to understand the burden that comes along with the blessing.  But as she sees this moment that is unfolding in front of her, she "ponders" what is about to happen, and what it will mean for the course of her life, and for the life of the whole world.  She is wise to "ponder," to sort of let the reality steep like tea or simmer like a pot on the stove slowly becoming soup.  And she is brave to say "yes" even though all the costs of that yes are not yet spelled out.  And that is only on the day she finds out about the pregnancy.

When the baby is born, of course, and the wild-eyed scruffy-lookin' sheep-herders come in from the fields with a story about angels as well, Luke notes that Mary once again "ponders" these words in her heart and treasures them.  She knows she is living through something important.  She knows that her role is just beginning.  And she knows that her part is just one piece of a much larger movement that God has instigated, which will culminate in the restoration of all creation itself.  She may only have glimpses and hints and hunches about all that is in store, both for her and for her son, but she knows to pay attention... and she knows not to run away from the action.  Once again, Mary shows remarkable and rare wisdom and courage, and she holds onto the moment, knowing that her actions in that night will reverberate far beyond the manger.

And in that, Mary is a good example for us as well.  I know, we among the tribe called "Lutherans" are not great at knowing what to do with Mary.  Sometimes we run away from any talk about her at all, because we are nervous about treating her as somehow more important than Jesus.  Sometimes we treat her only as a quiet, unthinking vessel who just smiles and nods like the nervous girl who plays her in so many church Christmas pageants, rather than seeing her as a strong, faithful, intelligent, and bold woman of faith who dares to sing about a God who feeds the hungry with good things and scatters the proud.  Sometimes we treat her as unapproachable, as if the fact that she is rightly called "Mother of God" makes her more than human... which just ain't so.

But this moment is one of those times when it seems clear, like shouting from the pages clear, that Mary offers us an example of how to respond faithfully to the Big Thing that God is doing among us.  We would do well to watch her wisdom and her courage, and to see how she steps up to the moment she is summoned into, both to act, and to reflect on what is happening.  We are called both to join in the movement God is stirring up, and to ponder what it means as we participate.  One with out the other won't do: just leaping in without reflection leaves us thinking ourselves the heroes and leads into recklessness, but all thinking without ever getting around to leaping into the roles we are called to is just a cover for cowardice.  Mary thinks AND she acts.  She participates AND she ponders. And she has her eyes open enough to know that the moment she has been brought to requires both of her.

It occurs to me that other heroes and role models of our faith have learned the same lesson in their own lives and actions.  There's Dietrich Bonhoeffer, honestly reflecting on the monstrosity that the Reich-Church had become in its fawning devotion to Hitler, and seeing that such a co-opted faith hardly fit with the God who loves and protects the marginalized and the lowly in the Scriptures.  And it was his pondering, much like Mary's, that led him to act in resistance to the Nazi war machine as well as gave him the resolve to keep at it.  There's Dorothy Day, whose devotion to the God who loves recklessly led her to act with prodigal care for those most in need and most ignored in the city streets around her.  Her "treasuring" of God's word did not stop in her head, but led her to participate in God's life-giving mission right at her doorstep.  There's Dr. King, and Bayard Rustin with him, both deeply committed to reflection and self-examination as a part of their commitment to non-violent resistance to Jim Crow, to segregation, and, frankly, to the apathy of so much of the white moderate Christian church in America at the time as well.

None of these wise and courageous voices from our history--from our family story as God's people--are the savior or the central hero.  But like Mary, they know they are being called to play a vital role, to contribute, in Whitman's words, their own verse to the song.  And each of them were both wise enough to think, to pray, and to ponder what was happening in front of them, and also courageous enough to act, to speak, and to love when the time came.

In that sense, Mary's work continues with all of us, because we continue to be called to step up as well as to study up, to contemplate and to participate, in the unending work God has begun to bring life to all things, to resurrect every corner of creation.

Where are you and I being called to both the tasks of action and reflection, as part of God's movement in the world to restore all things?

Maybe there's something to ponder in this new day.

Lord God, we are thankful for the examples and witness of those whom you have drawn into your work ahead of us, and we are thankful for your gifts of wisdom and courage.  Open our eyes to see where you are leading us today, and open our hearts to ponder what you are calling us to be about within it.

After the Manger--December 27, 2019

After the Manger--December 27, 2019

"Now after [the Magi] left, an angel of the Lord appeared the Joseph in a dream and said, 'Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.' Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I have called my son.' When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: 'A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more'." [Matthew 2:13-18]

Jesus is the alterative to Herod, like resurrection is the alternative to death.  And the way of Jesus is always the alternative we need to the death-dealing, fear-controlled, power-hungry ways of every Herod through history ever since.

I know we want to linger in the sentimentality of the manger for as long as possible.  I know that the familiar safety of singing "Silent Night" and "Away in a Manger" by candlelight exerts a powerful pull that keeps us from wanting to move on with the story, just like you want to maximize the days you get to sleep in or have one last gathering with visiting family.  But the story is not over yet--and in fact, we need Jesus to grow up, so that he can take on the death-dealing Herod by embodying a different way of being king.  So we must move on from the manger in order to go where Jesus goes.

Sometimes we forget that.  I think sometimes Respectable Religious folk beat the "Keep Christ in Christmas" drum so loud and so hard that we forget that Christ himself doesn't stay put in the Christmas scene, but leaves the manger behind when it is time. If you want to be where Jesus is, you're gonna have to leave the familiar trappings of the Bethlehem stable and go with the Holy Family across the border where they seek asylum as refugees in Egypt.  Herod himself pushes the issue, because he is ruled by fear and ego and insecurity, and so it is no longer safe for the Christ-child to stay in the comfort and familiarity of Bethlehem.  

Just so we are clear on this, then, that means the true king--the Messiah of God, long awaited by prophets and visionaries--spend his formative early childhood as a resident alien himself in a foreign country where he did not hold citizenship, while the pretender-king Herod destroyed families and killed babies in order to maintain his grip on his power.  The two ways of life could not be further apart, even from this early scene in Jesus' life.  And to be honest, we cannot choose both.  If you want to keep yourself comfortable and hold onto the reins of power and privilege at all costs, you cannot go the way of Jesus--he leaves all of that behind in order to become a refugee in Egypt.  And on the other hand, if you want to go where Jesus goes, you cannot walk the way of Herod, which is willing to kill and destroy and step on people in order to hold onto his hegemony.  You have to pick one, but you don't get to pursue the agenda of Herod and still say to folks that you are following in the footsteps of Jesus.  At least, you can't and still look people in the eye.

Now, I will grant you that it sure looks like Herod has the winning strategy, at least at this point in the story.  It sure looks like Herod is "getting results" in his paranoid campaign to kill all the infants in Bethlehem, because he gets to stay on his throne in his palace, while Jesus has to run across the border fleeing for his life with no official papers to grant him a valid legal reason to be in Egypt.  It sure looks like Herod is the winner, and Jesus is the loser here.  But of course, that just reveals how completely we have been suckered in to accepting the world's assessment of what real power or greatness look like.  The world sees Herod on his throne, with lots of buildings engraved with his name on them, and legions of minions willing to do his crooked bidding, and the world says that's what success and power look like.  But Jesus, simply in his very existence, calls that assessment into question.  

Jesus reveals to us that real power isn't about who you can kill, or who you can bully.  Jesus reveals that genuine "greatness" does not at all necessarily mean having your name etched in the marble façade of a building, or that you make people fear you.  Jesus reveals a greatness that is so secure, it isn't ashamed to go into a foreign land across a border to seek refuge. Jesus shows us that God is not ashamed of being a refugee--indeed, that God, the One who makes our sanctuaries holy, was willing to endure the humiliating process of seeking sanctuary himself in another land when the Holy family fled to Egypt. That looks like utter nonsense to the Herods of the world, who can only see as far as their popularity and their power, but whose vision too myopic to see a different kind of glory that is wider and deeper.

But at this point we are going to have to choose which path we are going to follow.  With the flight into Egypt, the road forks, and we will either have to choose to go with Jesus into seeking refuge among foreigners, as a foreigner... or we will have to accept the ways of Herod.  But we cannot pick both.

In this day, there are a million temptations to accept the way of Herod as our own. It always looks "effective" to be the bully, to step on people to get our way, to protect our own interests first even at the expense of others, and to ignore the way those choices harm others.  And it always seems dangerous and risky to walk the way of Jesus--it leads into foreign lands like Egypt, to vulnerability as a way of life, and to surrendering our interests for the sake of helping others.  But of course, as tempting as it is to keep on Herod's way, remember what happens at the end of that road: Herod dies, and that is the end of his legacy.  For all of his attempts to hold onto his comfortable position for as long as possible, he is dead and gone, and he is utterly forgettable now to history.    But the way of Jesus, while it leads to the cross and the tomb, is not ended with death--it keeps on going through to resurrection from the dead. And because of that, Jesus is unforgettable now.

What will you and I choose this day?  The old, ingrained reflexes of anger, fear, anxiety, and self-interest that we have learned from Herod?  Or the new way of vulnerable and hopeful suffering love that even the infant Jesus embodies?

Or to put it differently, will we choose death as a a dead-end, or will we dare to go with Jesus on the way of resurrection?

May God grant us the grace in this day to choose wisely.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to follow you, even if it means becoming strangers in strange lands like your days seeking refuge in Egypt.

A Place for the Night--December 24, 2019

A Place for the Night--December 24, 2019

"Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them..." [Luke 2:4-7]

Jesus is always borrowing places to stay for a night or two.

I never really thought about it until just the other day, but it's true.  And especially at the pivotal moments that bookend his life, Jesus just borrows space to lay down--or rather, a place for someone else to lay his body down to rest--but only for a couple of days, tops.

At his birth, of course, Joseph and Mary have to borrow space in the room where the animals stay for the night (and quite possibly where many others in the family were also staying for the night, since the ordinary home of peasant-folk in 1st century Judea was maybe two rooms, and the town would have been packed with relatives coming home for the census).  They don't have a proper crib for the newborn, so they borrow a place to lay their baby down... but just for a bit.  It wouldn't be long before Joseph and Mary and their new little baby would be on their way out of Bethlehem again, and presumably soon enough they got themselves a decent sleeping place for their infant son. The manger sufficed when he was born, because they needed something, and it was just a place for the night, after all.

But flash forward to a Friday evening a few decades later, and once again, folks are scrambling to find a half-decent place to lay the body of Jesus once again.  You know how that story goes, too, I expect.  The baby who was laid in a manger grows up and is perceived as such a threat to the Empire and the Respectable Religious Crowd that they put him to death on a cross, and in order to treat the corpse with at least some bare minimum of decency, his closest friends borrow a tomb in which to lay the body of their rabbi.  It wasn't what anyone had planned, it seemed--but then, of course, nobody seemed to expect the rabbi to be executed before that week's events, either.  So they use the tomb that was nearby, because they needed something.

And, as it turns out, that was just a place for a night or two, as well.

Funny, isn't it, how the story of Jesus begins with a borrowed place to lay his tired body as an infant for his first night of life... and how at his death, there is another borrowed place his mother has to borrow to lay down his weary bones.  Mangers and crosses.  A food trough and a borrowed grave.  These turn out, both of them, to be temporary accommodations.  And even the grave in which they laid him on Friday evening turns out only to be a place for a few nights, as well.  With resurrection on Sunday morning, Jesus is up and out the door once again, and loose in the world.

There is an inextricable connection between birth and resurrection, both for Jesus and for us.  It is a reminder, for one, that the story we celebrate at Christmas isn't an ending, but a beginning, and that the Good News of the Nativity is not simply, "Look, here's a cute baby," but "This human being will be the one through whom death itself is broken open."  The coming of Jesus isn't about a sentimental God wanting to stick a toe in the waters of humanity like a divine tourist just visiting.  Jesus is about the work of bringing us to life. From beginning to end to new beginning, from manger to cross to empty tomb, Jesus is about bringing life.  Whatever things in us are dead... whatever places inside our hearts are on the verge of giving up... whatever places in our bodies are hurting and wounded... whatever relationships between us are severed and estranged, Jesus is on the loose bringing us to life again... and life in the full.

Maybe that's why Jesus never stays in one place for very long.  The manger and the borrowed grave are only a place to lay his head for a night or two, along with all the upper rooms he used and couches he crashed on, in all the other nights of his ministry, because he is always headed to the next place, the next situation, the next face that needs to be brought to life again.  Jesus borrows a place for the night just long enough to resurrect what is dead in us, and then he's off to do it all over again somewhere else.

That's what we are brought into as followers of Jesus.  We are part of the ongoing procession, the parade of the Yahweh Administration, that keeps on moving from one dead end to another, and bringing life wherever folks are stuck in the grip of death.  And that's really what Christmas marks: the first stop on the tour, the first place this Jesus is laid for a night or two, before life breaks out in a new place, and another, and another.

May the frozen, dead soil of our hearts be brought back to life right now as he comes among us today.

Amen--Come, Lord Jesus.  Bring us to life here in the dead of winter.  And then let us be on your way with you.

Living Up to the Hype--December 23, 2019

Living Up to the Hype--December 23, 2019

"Then [John's] father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:

 'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

    for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.

 He has raised up a mighty savior for us

    in the house of his servant David,

 as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

    that we would be saved from our enemies 

    and from the hand of all who hate us.

 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,

    and has remembered his holy covenant,

 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,

    to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,

 might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness

    before him all our days.

 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;

    for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

 to give knowledge of salvation to his people

    by the forgiveness of their sins.

By the tender mercy of our God,

    the dawn from on high will break upon us,

 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

    to guide our feet into the way of peace'." [Luke 1:67-79]

Wow.  That's a lot of build-up, isn't it?  No pressure or anything, right ol' Zechariah?

There is so much going on in this poetic speech of Zechariah's, which is often borrowed by the church to be used as a song.  It's all about what the coming Messiah will do, and what Zechariah's son John will do to prepare for the Coming One, and, boy oh boy, it sure does raise our expectations, doesn't it?  (You've got to wonder what a song like this does to a boy like John if this is your lullaby as a baby--you're gonna grow up knowing there are a lot of hopes pinned on you!)

And maybe it's the cynic in me, but it has taken me a long time to listen to these words, to really hear them, without shrugging them off as too much hype.  Maybe that seems disrespectful or sacrilegious, but it just seems that for so much of my life--and I'll suspect yours too--there have been too many voices making impossibly big claims that don't come true.  And it is hard for me not to hear Zechariah's song and not think, "That's a tall order here, Zach..."

We have grown accustomed to the unending litany of political voices who make big promises that don't live up to the sales-pitch: the tax cuts that will make everyone richer, but which never seem to show up in your own paycheck; the stock markets that will roar endlessly, but which don't seem to help you be able to provide for your family any better; the latest program, the grandest slogan, the promises to make it all great... we've been living through one round of that carnival barker's spiel after another, and they have never lived up to the promises.  It's hard, after being let down so many times by big talkers, to believe that there is really someone who could live up to the hype.

And, not to rub salt in the cynic's wounds here, but we all know that Zechariah is singing about Jesus, who doesn't exactly fit our expectations. I mean, yes, Luke the narrator wants us to believe Jesus is the promised savior that Zechariah was singing about, but given the way the story goes from here, you almost wonder whether Zechariah himself pictured a cross or a borrowed grave as the way that Jesus saves the world.  You wonder if Zechariah pictured the smallness of Jesus' ministry--there is no violent uprising, no army of liberation, no angelic militia to help Jesus retake the throne.  Jesus' way of saving "those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death" doesn't seem to involve stopping death, so much as it means going through death with us, and breaking it open from the inside.  Jesus' way of bringing God's jubilee isn't through an armed conflict, and he doesn't do a single thing to look "tough" in order to "defend God" or to "fight for the rights of his countrymen."  Instead, we are given a baby laid in a borrowed food trough who becomes an itinerant homeless rabbi whose students are illiterate fishermen and outcast tax collectors, who tells people to love their enemies and give their possessions away before getting lynched by the Respectable Religious crowd and executed by the state for treason. Nobody was expecting quite that, and you don't even get a hint of it in Zechariah's song.

And yet... Zechariah's not wrong.  Jesus really is the one we have been waiting for.  Jesus really is the one through whom our feet could finally be trained to walk in the way of peace.  Jesus really is the one who lifts us beyond the shadow of death.  And Jesus really is the one who leads us beyond living in fear of those who are hostile to us.  It's just that his way of being all those things isn't what any of us were expecting.  To borrow a favorite line of another Luke whose story is popular these days (one with the surname of Skywalker), "This is not going to go the way you think."  

And that's true.  It's gloriously, wondrously, surprisingly true.  Jesus is the one that Zechariah was singing about, but not as one more military general trying to replace one rotten empire with another rotten empire.  Not as another boastful politician making promises he cannot keep, or selling us on lies we would be fools to believe.  Jesus doesn't come to stabilize the markets or to make it more comfortable and convenient for us to practice our religion.  He hasn't come to bolster any empire or endorse any demagogues, and he hasn't come to help us all achieve the American Dream.  He has come to bring about God's dream, in which we no longer live in fear, in which our many kinds of darkness give way to God's light, and in which sin and death and hostility no longer get the last word.  He will do it, of course, through the suffering love that heals lepers, weeps at Lazarus' tomb, washes feet, and gets nailed to a tree.  And in that sense, the Promised One of whom Zechariah sang turned out to be a surprise even Zechariah himself didn't see coming.  But he isn't a letdown.  For once, the one for whom we are waiting lives up to the hype.

So in this last couple of days before "the Day" of Christmas, let Zechariah's words lift your expectations.  Nothing less than light in the darkness, and nothing less than life beyond the shadow of death is what we have been given.

Don't settle for anything, or anyone, less than that.

Lord Jesus, come among us and surprise us as the one who at last lives up to our expectations and yet turns those same expectations upside down.  

The Reason for the Road--December 19, 2019

The Reason for the Road--December 19, 2019

"A voice cries out:

'In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,

    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,

    and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

    and the rough places a plain.

Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,

    and all people shall see it together,

    for the mouth of the LORD has spoken'." [Isaiah 40:3-5]

Here's a fun fact: God doesn't need roads.

Maybe you never really thought about it, but go ahead.  Give it a moment's thought.  As we get to know the God who is revealed in the stories of Israel and Jesus, it is pretty obvious pretty quickly that God doesn't "travel" like we do... or even experience time and space with the limitations we have.  God doesn't have any difficulty being in every location at once, and God is not slowed down or thwarted by obstacles.  You can't keep God out with a wall. You can't slow God's progress by slashing the tires of the God-mobile.  God cannot be delayed by inclement weather at the airport or a landslide on the highway.  That's just not how God's existence works.

And yet, here's the funny thing: prophets like this voice in the fortieth chapter in Isaiah keep envisioning God clearing out a pathway, a road, in the middle of the barren wilderness.  And long the way, the hills are leveled, the low spots are filled in, and the rough ground is smoothed out--like a major landscaping project for the local Department of Transportation.

But... if God doesn't need to travel by road, who is it for?

Us, of course.

I need to confess something.  This is one of those "Sometimes-the-good-news-starts-with-the-words-'I-was-wrong'" situations. For a lot of my life, I heard these visions from the prophets about a highway for God and a way for the Lord being prepared in the wilderness, and I assumed that the prophets were saying that God needed the road to travel on.  I assumed the picture was that we are here ("down on earth," I guess) and that God was somewhere else (our standard answer is "up in heaven"), but needed a way to come "down" to where we are.  I assumed that the road was necessary for God's convenience or access.

I was wrong.  Beautifully, blessedly wrong.

The prophet isn't picturing a distant God who has to hoof it on foot to come to where the people are.  These words are words of promised homecoming for people in exile, who were stuck in Babylon hundreds of miles away from their homeland, with nothing but wilderness and emptiness in between.  Part of the prophets' message was that God had not disappeared, but rather was with them in exile (sometimes they even envisioned God's glory getting up and going into exile in Babylon ahead of them as if to say that God would be waiting for them in exile).  But then that also meant that if there was going to be a homecoming, there would have to be a way provided--a way across the emptiness to get back home.  

So the prophetic voice we hear in Isaiah 40 isn't saying that some distant deity would love to come down for a visit but needs us to cut a road in order to come down from heaven.  Rather, it's that the same God who is with the people in exile will now clear the way for them so that they can go home--while God goes with them all along the way.

The way in the wilderness is for us.  The road in the desert is for our homecoming from exile, not God's field trip from heaven to check on us.  God hasn't abandoned us in the first place, and God will go with us on the journey from here.

And so the road has to be straight and smooth, not because God can't handle rough terrain, but because God knows that we need a cleared pathway.  The highway is for all of us, from the young to the old, the speedy to the slow, the folks who are stooped and hunched and the ones who just trained for a marathon, and everybody in between.  God makes the road way accessible for everybody, because God's vision is a homecoming for all the folks left in exile.

That really changes our picture of what this whole Advent thing is all about, doesn't it?  For a lot of my life I saw this season as our best attempt to clear away the clutter so that God could get through--as if God could not overcome the obstacles that I have in my life, from my busy schedule to my weary heart to my past sins to my present bad habits.  I sort of assumed that this was one of those times that "the church's job" was to remind me to clear away the bad things in my life, or else God wouldn't be able to get through--almost as if to say that if I didn't clean up my act, Jesus couldn't come in to my heart... or be born... or come down the chimney with spiritual gifts.  But this was never about God needing a way cleared for God's sake.  It's always been about God clearing a pathway for us to come home, with God already among us and leading the procession out of exile.

The Christian faith is NOT, then, a list of things you have to do to make yourself worthy in order to open up a highway for God to come down and visit.  It is rather about the God who has already come among us, who bears with our slowness and clumsiness to clear a pathway for us to go home together.  The child whose birth we celebrate next week is the sign of that God's coming to be with us, and he comes, regardless of whether we have made it easy or hard for him to get to us, whether or not we have cleared away the obstacles, in order to go with us all the way home.

The way in the wilderness was never to meet God's need.  But God's love for us was the reason for the road all along.

Lord God, walk with us, and clear the way for us to go as you lead us into your future.

"At Last, A Good One"--December 18, 2019

At Last, A Good One--December 18, 2019

"For a child has been born for us,

    a son given to us;

 authority rests upon his shoulders;

    and he is named

 Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, 

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

 His authority shall grow continually,

    and there shall be endless peace

 for the throne of David and his kingdom.

 He will establish and uphold it

     with justice and with righteousness

     from this time onward and forevermore.

 The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this." [Isaiah 9:6-7]

Nobody was hoping for a bully.

When the prophets dreamed of a future coming ruler, the thing they were excited about wasn't simply that someone powerful would come along.  They were longing for someone who was good.

The people of Israel and Judah had had their fill of powerful dictators from back in the days of Pharaoh when they were enslaved in Egypt, and they had lived through kings who were boastful bullies throughout their history as independent nations. (See, for example the unpleasantly tyrannical and embarrassingly graphic speech that Solomon's son Rehoboam gave to the people when he took the throne in 1 Kings 12:6-14.)  Israel and Judah had lived through more than their share of power-hungry dictators, boastful blowhards, pious pretenders, and shameless crooks on the throne.  And all of them had power.  All of them could yell and shout and bellow and declare their unquestionable right to rule over the people... but very few of them ever actually practiced justice.  Fewer still were wise.  And hardly anybody could do much to promote peace.

What the people longed for the most wasn't just one more loudmouth who rattled his saber and bullied his subjects; it was someone who would rule by servant-leadership, rather than his own self-interest.  (This, by the way, is literally what the wise advisors told Solomon's son Rehoboam to do: "If you will be a servant to this people to serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever" [1 Kings 12:7]; but that advice went in one ear and out the other.)  

And honestly, that's the thing that made the prophets' vision so powerful. They didn't just imagine a future king who would be "tough" or "strong" or look like a "winner." They didn't just imagine a future ruler who would be rich or loud or intimidating--that was old news.  The prophets dared to dream that God would at last create a new kind of community, a new kind of commonwealth, so to speak, where justice was done, where nobody was crooked or corrupt, where people lived in peace with one another, and where power was seen in servanthood, rather than self-preservation.  And that vision is what gave the people of God enduring hope.

So when these familiar words from Isaiah were first spoken, the idea of a "child born for us" and a "son given to us" wasn't, by itself all that new.  Israel and Judah had seen princes born before, and they knew how the routine went every time.  A king would have a son, and would declare that this new child would continue the family dynasty... and pretty much, the next king in line just kept the same old rotten habits and policies in place that everybody had gotten used to.  The kings became more and more like dictators, and the nation became more and more like a rehash of Pharaoh's Egypt, and they knew the next generation to come was likely to just keep the same pattern going.

What made Isaiah's vision so different was the idea that at last God would raise up someone who would break the cycle.  The beautiful idea Isaiah announced was that God would not just let the old routine of rottenness perpetuate forever.  There was a new way of being God's people together coming.  We know that way by the name Jesus.

Jesus, of course, we confess to be the long-awaited Messiah (literally, "chosen" or "anointed") that Isaiah and the other prophets dreamed of.  But what we often fail to connect is this promise of a different kind of king and kingdom with the actual things Jesus did.  And it gives a whole new depth to making sense of why Jesus' coming is good news to understand that he is doing what he does as the new promised king who rules differently.  Whereas Solomon's son (David's grandson) had balked at the idea of being a servant-leader, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, takes the time to heal and teach the crowds who are "like sheep without a shepherd," and lays down his life for his own, rather than expecting them to take a bullet for him.  Jesus does these things exactly because this is God's new way of reigning, and this is what God's new community/commonwealth looks like.  

In Jesus' kind of reign, we don't have to fight over who gets to eat, because loaves and fish abound--even for the folks who didn't make it to the party that day.  In Jesus' kind of reign, justice and mercy meet so that crooks like Zacchaeus are welcomed to the party and changed in the mean time to make reparations to the people they cheated.  In Jesus' kind of reign, people practice showing love even to their enemies because they see this is how God loves the world.  In Jesus' kind of reign, real power is the capacity to lay down your life for the sake of your own.

This is the vital, life-giving difference about Jesus, the king unlike any other.  Jesus isn't here to intimidate or self-aggrandize.  Jesus has come to rearrange and reorder our lives so that abundance, peace, and justice are given to all.  Jesus doesn't need to convince anybody that he's a "winner," but rather shows his strength by losing it all for the sake of his people.  Neither does Jesus need to convince anybody that he is "great."  The people of God had suffered through one terrible bully after another who were obsessed with looking "great," and it had only brought disappointment and misery.  What they really longed for was someone good.

In this remaining week until we celebrate Jesus' birth, don't forget why it's worth being excited over.  We aren't cheering because another strongman is on the world-stage--we are brought to awe-filled adoration because in Jesus we have finally been given the one who rules in serving, whose power is in suffering love, whose greatness is in his goodness.

All hail our true king, Jesus, you who reign in servanthood and lay down your life for us.  All praise to you, the son who was given for us.

Advent Anger

Advent Anger--December 17, 2019

"When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, 'Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?' Jesus answered them, 'Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me'." [Matthew 11:2-6]

Some people say that the "right" thing to feel in the season of Advent are emotions like "hope," "peace," "joy," and "love."  Sometimes we even say that's what each of the candles on the Advent wreath are for.  But John the Baptizer offers a minority report (doesn't he always?).  John's witness suggests that the right responses to this waiting season are doubt, anger, disillusionment, and outrage.

And he's not wrong about that.

Or at least, maybe Advent needs to be about those difficult emotions before it can be about the pastel pink and purple notions of peace and joy.

Let me suggest that we sit with this scene for a bit today, before we rush on to talking about hope and peace and joy.  John the Baptizer is in jail, and it's not fair.  He's gotten himself into trouble with Herod, the arrogant narcissist who sits on a puppet's throne, having been placed in his position by the foreign power of Rome.  And honestly, John's not there for anything "religious" that he said.  John ended up making enemies in high places because he got political.  John didn't say anything that wasn't true, but he called out Herod as a fraud and a crook, and he wouldn't keep his mouth shut about Herod's uncontrolled habit of dumping his old wives for newer, more attractive models when it suited him.  

John even saw through the way Herod pretended to be religious--he wasn't even completely ethnically Jewish (he was Idumean, actually), and yet he knew that if he undertook renovation projects to the Temple, he would puff up his reputation and get the support of the Respectable Religious crowd, as well as give him more large marble monuments on which he could have his name engraved.  But John had seen through Herod's bluster and propaganda and called him out for being a fraud and a crook--and it landed John in a dungeon waiting a date with an executioner's ax.  

Now, John was a brave and principled man, and he was willing to suffer for the cause of righteousness and for the sake of truth-telling.  But he also had pinned his hopes on the notion that Jesus of Nazareth was in fact the promised Messiah--and John figured that surely, the Messiah would strike down the pompous pretender on the throne, Herod, right?  Surely, the Messiah would not be able to stand such an arrogant and obviously hollow crook remaining in power.  And certainly, the Messiah would free John from being wrongfully imprisoned simply for having spoken truth to power... right?

And so, understandably, John finds himself in prison feeling outraged and angry, doubting and disillusioned.  He is angry that a rotten crook like Herod seems to be getting away with his crookedness.  He is outraged that the others around him either don't seem to be able to see how terrible and self-absorbed Herod is, or worse--that they can see it, and they just don't care!  And because it looks like Herod's pettiness and corruption are going to go unchallenged while he wastes away in prison, John is beginning to doubt whether Jesus really was the one he has been waiting for.  All of his mental pictures of a Messiah busting down the door, guns blazing, to break him out of jail are evaporating like morning dew, and John is on the edge of despair.

Honestly, can you blame him?

The trouble with Jesus, of course, is that he reserves the right not to conform to our expectations.  He is the one we have been waiting for--that much is true and certain--but he is not bound to be what we expected.  And that's part of what makes this season of waiting so difficult.  It's hard to be full of hope and peace and love and joy when you look around at the rottenness of the world around you and you can't shake the question, "Doesn't anybody else see this?  Isn't anybody else upset that this is how things are?  Isn't God upset at it all--and if so, why hasn't God fixed it all yet?"  Our wish is for God to come and zap the world into instant righteousness--of course, that's righteousness as WE want to define it, where God hates all the people I already hate, and where God's pet peeves are conveniently my own.  We want a God who busts down doors, locked and loaded, who stands his ground with righteous fury, and who cuts down the crooked Herods of the world instantly, rather than letting them think they are winning the day.  As Robert Farrar Capon has put it, we want a God who looks more like Superman, punching his way to victory, rather than a God who goes to a cross and dies at the hands of crooked pretenders like Herod and brutal heathens like Pilate or Caesar.

But what we are given is Jesus... and Jesus does not seems at all interested in catering to our bloodlust.  And if we have pinned our hopes on God fitting with our expectations, well, we like John are going to find that waiting for Jesus looks a lot more like doubt and anger than hope and peace.

And this is where I think we need to hold onto John rather than just dismissing him.  See, I'm convinced that John is right about the crookedness of Herod and the rottenness of a society that just accepted his claims to be "King of the Jews."  I think John is right to be angry, in the same way that outrage is sometimes a sign you are just paying attention.  If we aren't upset at the rottenness and crookedness of the world, we are complicit in it.  So in that sense, anger is appropriate for Advent, if it is the kind of anger over what is wrong in the world that also then leads to action to put things right.

But just being angry isn't enough.  And assuming that God has to work with our preferred methods is rather arrogant, too.  Jesus' response to John reminds him--and us--that God is indeed dealing with the brokenness of the world around us.  But God's way of dealing with it is to heal it and to bring it back to life, yes, even to raise what is dead in us, rather than to just zap and shoot and smash things.  

In a sense we all need to get to the place where John is at some point in our life of faith--we need to move from complacency to urgent outrage over the rottenness in the world.  But so long as we stay there, we will find ourselves imprisoned in that anger.  Jesus enters there into that dungeon and brings life to us so that we are not stuck there forever, but we can't short-circuit the process and skip the honest anger that John has.  We need to be upset over the things that upset God.  We need to, as the old prayer goes, let our hearts be broken by the things that break the heart of God.  And from there, we will be ready to let Jesus come on his own terms--not the conquering army general, but the baby in the manger.  The Jesus we are waiting for these days is indeed the One through whom God puts all things right that are broken and crooked, but Jesus insists that his way of doing it goes through the saving and giving of life rather than through Herod's same old violent tactics.  Ultimately, if Jesus gives in to John's revenge fantasy and would zap Herod with holy laser-beams out of his eyes, then Herod wins and the world really is just a game of King of the Hill.  If Jesus fights Herod's self-serving violence with self-serving violence of his own, then nothing has really changed or been redeemed.  So Jesus' way of putting things right will be, well, just what Jesus says to John through his messengers: the blind will be given sight, the lame will walk, the lepers will be cleansed, the dead will be raised, and the poor will be given good news.  

So here is my prayer for you in these Advent days.  I pray for you--and for myself as well--not the easy peace of just ignoring the rottenness of the world around, but the fiery love that can be awakened to anger about what is crooked, and the honest hope that looks to Jesus' way of putting things right rather than the same old tired ways of Herod the pompous puppet.

And when we have first been stirred up, we can then be given the deep peace of the God who deals with the brokenness of the world from a manger and a cross, rather than from a protected throne or behind a trigger.

May we be troubled over the crookedness of things like John is... and then may we be brought to life by Jesus who comes into our captivity and transforms us in his love.

Lord Jesus, where we are complacent, stir us up.  And where we need to let you redirect us, turn us around.

The Divine Resume--December 16, 2019

The Divine Resume--December 16, 2019

"Happy are those whose help is in the God of Jacob,
     whose hope is in the LORD their God,
 who made heaven and earth,
     the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
     who executes justice for the oppressed;
     who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets the prisoners free;
     the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
 The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
     the LORD loves the righteous.
 The LORD watches over the foreigners;
     he upholds the orphan and the widow,
     but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin." [Psalm 146:5-9]

So, there's a famous scene from early on the Bible (it's been recreated on celluloid famously by Cecil B. DeMille, for example) where a guy named Moses meets God up on a mountain.  And God--who first appears speaking out of a bush that is on fire and yet is not consumed--tells Moses to go tell Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to let the enslaved Hebrews go free.  Moses asks what, to him, is the obvious question:  "Who exactly are you?"  Or in other words, "Which God, exactly, are you?"

The Egyptians, along with many ancient cultures, had gods for all sorts of things, each with a different realm of power and expertise, and each with their own sort of "theme."  There's the sun god Ra, who is in charge of, you know... the sun.  There was a god for the Nile River, a god for harvests, a god for rains and fertility and death and the afterlife and anything else you could imagine.  They each had their "turf," and they were each known for particular interests.  The Greeks and the Romans did the same, as did the Babylonians and the Assyrians as well.  So there were a lot of gods and goddesses floating around in the ether when Moses asks the question, "Which god has sent me?"

And, of course, part of the beauty of God's answer back in that story from Exodus is that God answers, "I AM WHO I AM," which is something like saying, "I'm not some kind of mascot for one thing or another--I am the very Ground of Being in my own Self!"  The name God gives in that scene, "YHWH," (or, in our English Bibles, rendered as "the LORD") is simply the word for "I AM," as though God's identity is Being Itself--not some being powered by the sun or the moon or by sacrifices or whatever.

So, at one level, the God whom Israel came to worship and relate to--this YHWH, the LORD--didn't have a "theme" or a "logo" or an "area of expertise," but rather insisted on being beyond all representation, beyond all categorizing, and beyond all attempt to pin down.  But at the same time, this God--who was still understood to be the God of everything, the God of past, present, and future, the God of all creation--came to be known for certain character traits.  The people of Israel didn't just worship God because God was powerful, or ancient, or mysterious.  They were convinced that the Ground of All Being was also good.  And just.  And compassionate.  They believed that the God named "I AM WHO I AM" is also the sort of Person who cares about freeing enslaved people, giving justice to the oppressed, feeding the hungry, lifting up the folks who have been stepped on, and looking out for those who have no other protection, like foreigners and widows and orphans.

And that's what Israel came to celebrate about its God, YHWH, the LORD.  It's not just that God is the biggest game in town, but rather that God is just and merciful. The God who isn't pinned down to only one kind of "turf" or "territory" like the moon or the sun or the harvest turns out to care about bringing people to life, from whatever ways they are in need of being brought to life in the fullest.

The God who is the Source of All Being turns out still to care about everybody getting to eat... and about the needs of foreigners and widows and orphans.  The God who is infinitely beyond any of our conceptions still cares about doing justice for the people who are stepped on, releasing captives, and healing our maladies.  

And as generations passed, this came to be the divine "resume" so to speak--God's record of work experience.  The God of Israel wasn't just remembered as the Creator of all things, although that was also true; but rather, the God of Israel was understood to be the One who worked to thwart the arrogant and greedy, to deflate the proud and puffed up, to lift up the nobodies, and to provide for those with empty hands.  In essence, the God who doesn't need a "theme" or a particular "thing" to care about still chooses to be the God who brings life, the God who puts things right, and the God who provides generously to all.

This, in other words, is what God is about in the world.  If you want to be on board with the work of the living God, well, the psalmist says we had better be about the business of bringing people to life, feeding the hungry, lifting up the lowly, and caring for the vulnerable.  All of these are what I want to suggest as "little resurrections"--those small and big acts that bring people more fully to life.  Whether it be food for an empty belly, hope for a heart in despair, strength to widows and orphans or welcome for foreigners and strangers, the God of the Bible has chosen to be committed to bringing each of those faces more fully to life.

This is the God whom we meet in Jesus.  This is the God for whom we have been waiting.  And this is who God has chosen to be, even though God could have chosen to be a distant absentee landlord for the universe.  

Moses' question is still a pressing one--just who is it that we are waiting for to come in this season? Which god is it whose birth we are celebrating?  Because the Romans and Greeks and Egyptians all had fascinating stories about the births of their gods, too, and in fact, they also had edicts from their emperors and kings marking their own births as "good news for all people", too.  So who is it that we are celebrating, after all?  As God chooses to self-identify, God is the One who is both the Source of all Existence and also the One who cares for those most vulnerable, most at-risk, most pushed to the margins, and most stepped-on.  This is the One who is born in a backwater of the Roman Empire and laid in a borrowed food trough.  

This is the God who is worth waiting for.

O God of the universe, let us hear your particular voice caring for those most in need among us, and let us welcome your coming among us, too.