The Breaker of Weapons--December 29, 2023

The Breaker of Weapons--December 29, 2023

"For the yoke of their burden,

   and the bar across their shoulders,

   the rod of their oppressor,

    you have broken as on the day of Midian.

 For all the boots of the tramping warriors

    and all the garments rolled in blood

    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

 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." [Isaiah 9:4-6]

I'll bet you know those words.  They are often read on Christmas Eve, as they were this past Sunday evening in the place where I serve.  You might even hear these words set to the music of Handel's "Messiah" (and now I'll probably be humming that tune for the rest of the day).

But I'll confess for my own part that, for all the decades of hearing these words read or sung by flickering candlelight, with poinsettias or a Christmas tree in the background, I have been terribly slow to recognize just what is being said here.  The "child" whom the prophet Isaiah pictures as the coming king is remarkable for breaking the weapons of bullies, bringing an end to war, and liberating people from the grip of oppressors.

And while it's certainly true that all these centuries after Isaiah's time we are still fighting wars against one another, still oppressing and killing each other, and still wielding an ever-increasing array of weapons with which to strike one another, it's worth remembering that Jesus' mission--his purpose, if you will--includes bringing about God's kind of peace and justice, and not just taking souls " up to heaven."  Jesus doesn't accomplish that mission the way past kings or emperors have tried it (at the point of a sword or the muzzle of a rifle), but he has come to bring the peace and justice of God's Reign.  In fact, that may be the greatest reason to hope for Jesus to actually succeed in bringing an end to oppression and violence, because he doesn't use those as his tools to forge peace, like every empire in history has done.  Rome, for example, arrogantly announced that it had established the "Pax Romana" (or see 1 Thessalonians 5:3, when Paul seems to be quoting Roman propaganda about the empire bringing "peace and security"), but what Rome meant by "peace" was something like, "As long as you do what we say and bow before us, there won't be any need for us to kill you all."  When a bully intimidates the other kids into giving him their lunch money so he won't beat them up, don't call that peace.  And when the kids on the playground play the bully's own game against him and gang up to beat him up so that one of them becomes a new bully on the block, that isn't peace, either.  

Jesus' kind of kingship doesn't look like what anybody is used to, though.  For Christ-followers, now more than twenty-five centuries after Isaiah's time, we know that Jesus' life and ministry didn't look like a military campaign or worldwide conquest, and sometimes we end up (wrongly) concluding, "Oh, I guess we wrong to hope about the Messiah bringing peace or justice, too--I guess that isn't part of the deal, after all." But I think that's the wrong move to make: it's not that Jesus isn't really the Messiah, or that we were wrong to hope for an end to war and oppression.  But the way Jesus the Messiah accomplishes God's Reign of peace and justice isn't to fight bullying with more bullying or oppressors with more oppression.  In Isaiah's poetic vision, the promised king doesn't defeat the "rod of the oppressor" by brandishing a bigger weapon, but by breaking the weapon the bully has been using in the first place.  The hoped-for Messiah doesn't intimidate people into obedience by calling himself "Christ the Conqueror" or "the Divine Destroyer," but is known as "Prince of Peace."  The prophet's picture is of someone who uses his authority to break our weapons of war at last, not to launch an arms race so we can blast our enemies to smithereens.  The peace the Messiah brings is not the silence of the graveyard but the sigh of relief from people who had been intimidated and kept in fear.

So as we witness another Christmas day and week come and go from our calendars while wars rage still across the world, I know it is awfully tempting to give into cynicism and declare real peace is too hard to hope for anymore.  It is easy to believe the most we can accomplish is to be the ones with the bigger stick to hit the people we don't like with, so they'll be intimidated into doing what we want.  It sometimes feels like the only realistic hope is to just wish we end up on the side with bigger bombs or larger arsenals.  But that isn't what we are taught to hope for from the prophets.  Isaiah introduces us to Jesus, even if Isaiah himself didn't quite know how to picture what or who was on the way, as the one who brings justice by breaking the weapons of the bullies and oppressors.  This is the One we meet at the manger. 

All hail king Jesus, the Prince of Peace, who disarms us at last.

Lord Jesus, come and disarm us and liberate us from the vicious circles of war and violence in which we have been held captive all our lives.

The Company Jesus Keeps--December 28, 2023

The Company Jesus Keeps--December 28, 2023

"In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. 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 in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger'." [Luke 2:1-12]

I know you know the story, but consider something about these well-worn verses of the Nativity story with me: who gets the engraved invitations to the birthday celebration for the Messiah... and what does it tell us about who Jesus is?

Follow me for a minute.  We've all heard the old saw plenty of times that you can learn quite a bit about someone from the company they keep.  If you're the one trying to be seen associating with the popular kids in high school, it says you're either already one of the popular crowd yourself... or you're angling for a spot in their clique.  If your only friends are mixed up in suspicious dealings, well, people are going to suspect you of the same.  If you are hob-knobbing with the country-club set, it suggests you're trying to get an invitation to join the club, too.  You get the drift.

Similarly, I think it's fair to take as a given that Luke our narrator doesn't just give us random details or irrelevant historical facts without a purpose: he is a careful storyteller, compiler, and editor, who arranges his material with intention. For every name Luke drops and every detail he offers, it is fair to say, "This was a choice that Luke made in giving us this part of the story, rather than skipping over it or not bothering to mention it."  With me so far?

So then, what does it say about Jesus, even from his first hours of life, that on the occasion of his birth, God skips right over the powerful people in the imperial capital of Rome or the local governor's mansion, and instead makes a point of sending angelic messengers to invite a bunch of night-shift shepherds?  Luke has seemingly rubbed our noses in the fact that Caesar Augustus is the current emperor of Rome and Quirinius is the imperially-installed governor of Syria... and yet nobody goes to announce to them that the Lord of creation is now granting audiences in a borrowed food trough.  The puppet king Herod, allowed to be in power as long as he toed the line with Rome's wishes, doesn't hear about it at all, either, at least as Luke tells it.  But instead, the ones who are invited--by angelic herald, no less--are a bunch of anybodies with no power, influence, prestige, or status.  

There's some conjecture that shepherds in a first-century Judean context were seen in an even less flattering light--as shifty, untrustworthy, frequently at risk of being ceremonially unclean if they were constantly dealing with animals giving birth or dying (you have to figure this is a time before veterinarians come to deal with medical issues, so every shepherd has to be able to deal with healing wounds, birthing lambs, and cleaning up assorted unpleasant messes, too).  Without needing to pin down for certain how much of that possible baggage was true, at the very least, Luke's own contrast between the named Big Deals of the day (Augustus and Quirinius) and the ranch-hands who drew the short straw to be keeping an eye on the flocks during the graveyard shift is an obvious one.  The world focuses in on the big names in positions of power, and the God we meet in Jesus looks for the ones dismissed by the world as nobodies and sets up a home office among them.  That's the Incarnation for you.

Before the child in the manger is old enough to say any words of his own or do anything beyond eating, sleeping, and soiling his messianic diapers, we are already getting to know something important about Jesus from the company he keeps.  In Jesus God bypasses the so-called "great" ones and overturns our expectations, leaving Caesar August in the dark and Governor Quirinius oblivious to the birth, and instead welcoming the lowly and powerless who are just trying to make ends meet to see the Messiah with their own eyes.  This is not simply a random assortment of facts, but an editorial choice that Luke has made in crafting the story the way he has for us.  He wants us to know something about the one in the manger--Jesus shows us God's choice to meet us in our ordinariness, messiness, and utter humanity, rather than only rubbing elbows with the elite, the well-heeled, or the powerful.

For whatever else is in store for us in the year ahead as we get to meet Jesus all over again, this is where the story begins: a Savior who shows up among the anybodies, who doesn't blush at all over the company he keeps.  It is a comfort, too, to know that such a Savior chooses to keep company with us, as well.

Lord Jesus, open our eyes to meet you among the anybodies around us, including in the mirror.

Great Expectations--December 22, 2023

Great Expectations--December 22, 2023

"In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, 'Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.' But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David.  He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end'." [Luke 1:26-33]

Wow.  This is a lot to put on a kid, isn't it?  These are some pretty big expectations placed on Mary's future baby--and thus on Mary herself--with this angelic introduction.  We probably can't even appreciate just how big a deal this pregnancy is, and just what the angel's words really meant to Mary's ears.  In particular, I think we miss the heft of all this angelic stuff about sitting on "the throne of his ancestor David" and a reign that will have no end.  That's not just pie-in-the-sky talk: in the context of first century Palestine, it's a promise that the empires of history won't get the last word.

When the angel came to Mary, the power of the day is Rome (Luke, the narrator, is careful to remind us that the birth of Jesus happens during the reign of Caesar Augustus, all the way down to who was the regional governor in the province of Syria).  But Rome was only the most recent player on the world stage, coming after the Greeks (Alexander the Great and his successors), the Medes and Persians before them, and the Babylonians and Assyrians before them.  And of course, in the back of Mary's awareness was the distant ancestral recollection of life under the harsh rule of Pharaoh's Egypt.  So by the time Gabriel appears in Mary's kitchen, all she and her neighbors, parents, and grandparents have ever known is being dominated by a foreign empire.  In fact, except for a brief blip on the radar during the time of the Maccabees, the place where Mary lived had been under the rule of one empire or another, all playing a terrible version of King of the Hill for more than five centuries. All anybody knew or remembered was the shadow of some faraway bully of a conquering king cast over their lives and their land.

So when the angel announces that Mary's boy will sit on the old ancestral throne of King David, it's a promise that God won't let the way of empire last forever.  The bullies will not win the day.  The conquerors will eventually end up in the dustbin of history, and the people who have been taken advantage of, exploited, and intimidated by one tyrant after another will finally be free of that machine.  All of that is the hope of the coming Christ.

Now, to be sure, you and I know that the way the story goes from there sure doesn't look like what many people expected for a defeat of empire.  Jesus ends up being crucified by the Roman Empire, and for many folks that became the clear proof that Jesus couldn't be the Messiah (because Messiahs don't get killed by their enemies, of course!).  For the Christian community, on the other hand, the cross of Jesus is actually an even deeper subversion and more revolutionary victory--not just over the Romans, but over the powers of death and evil themselves.  Christians came to see the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not as Christ's defeat by the Romans who put him to death, but as God's victory over the whole game of King of the Hill altogether.   Jesus wasn't going to get rid of the Roman Empire with another new empire, playing the same brutal game of domination that they'd all been playing for the last five hundred years.  Jesus was going to undo the whole logic of empire and conquest with a victory that broke the power of death itself (which is ultimately what empires threaten people with).

All of this is to say that when Gabriel tells Mary that her boy will receive (note: not take by force, but be given it by God) the throne of David, it means more than just "Jesus will get to wear a crown, so you'll get to live the good life in his palace one day." It means an end to the vicious cycle of domination, and the beginning of something new, even if it has the thread of continuity with ol' King Dave.  That's the hope we have placed in Jesus, even if his way of subverting the power of empire doesn't match our expectations.  Jesus was never going to rile up a violent insurrection against Rome--that's just another way of getting suckered into the imperial game of King of the Hill.  Jesus' way of breaking the power of empires altogether is to embody a different order altogether, what Jesus calls "the Reign of God." And on that promise, Jesus has delivered already--we are invited into his new way of being human, into his beloved community, even now, regardless of whose name is on the imperial letterhead. We participate in the Reign of God even now... and there's nothing that a Caesar, a Nebuchadnezzar, or a Pharaoh can do to stop it.

There's a lot more riding on the baby Mary carries than we might have realized, and it's all right there, at least in seed form, in the word the angel brings.

May we be ready, at last, to encounter this Child of Mary, who is also God's own.

Lord Jesus, come among us and free us from the powers of empire and bullying in which we are still entangled.

The Real McCoy--December 21, 2023

The Real McCoy--December 21, 2023

"Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen." [Romans 16:25-27]

My mother used to say that even when I was a kid, sometimes she would pray for the person I would eventually marry.  I don't know exactly what I thought that meant as a child, other than that certainly my parents cared not only about my present-tense needs of the moment (like clothes, food, and school supplies) but also about my future self and life.

Now, all these years later (more than twenty of which I've now been married to my spouse, Sarah) sometimes I find myself thinking about what it must have been like for my mother and father when we got engaged, or when we were actually married.  And while I don't know precisely what the inner monologue was like, it occurs to me that there had to have been a time at some point, whether at an official milestone moment like an engagement dinner, wedding shower, or the marriage ceremony, or just some flash of realization on an ordinary day, when my mom and dad looked at Sarah and said, "Oh--she is the one we've been praying for all along.  You are the one we have been waiting for."  I imagine that there had to be a moment, whenever it happened, that almost felt like a mystery being solved, or something uncovered, or maybe like watching the moon emerge from behind the clouds to reveal its light had been waiting there in the night sky all along.

It's funny to think how you can get to know someone at one level, and then in a moment of pulling-back-the curtain, realize that this was the person you had been picturing, praying for, and even hoping for over many years.  Somehow you are both surprised to realize, "This is it!" and also somehow it feels exactly right.  Maybe for you it's been when you've fallen in love, or when you first looked into the eyes of your children when they were born, or when you first stepped into the house you would turn into your home. I hope in some way it has happened, or will happen, or is happening to you when you find a congregation that feels like "home" to you, too, and you know you have arrived at a community of people with whom you belong.  But for however it has come in your own story, I am going to ask you to tap into that emotional memory to help make sense of these final words from Paul's letter to the Romans, as he thinks about Jesus' arrival on the scene of world history.

These words, which many of us will hear this coming Sunday in worship, have the feel of recognizing that Jesus of Nazareth turns out to have been the One for whom God's people had been waiting and hoping for generations, like seeing the face of the person you've been praying for or picturing in your mind for so long, now actually in the flesh.  There's both a sense of "Aha!" discovery, and also of surprise.  Paul sees Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophets' hopes and visions, but he also surely knows that Jesus' actual coming didn't fit a lot of people's expectations.  In his letters to the Corinthians, for example, Paul would point out that the notion of a crucified Messiah--whose way of saving was by dying rather than killing his enemies--sounded nonsensical to so many hearers, both Jewish and Greek.  Plenty of others expected God's "anointed" to look like a military commander or a conquering king, and to finally see that the One for whom they'd been waiting was a homeless itinerant rabbi... well, it certainly took them by surprise.

Paul talks about all this as "the revelation of a mystery," that is, the revealing of something you wouldn't have figured out on your own unless someone else had shown it to you. But it's also got the feel of that moment of realization that the thing, or the place, or the person you have been forming a mental picture of, is finally in front of you.  And at that moment, when you see the Real before your eyes, whatever other mental pictures, theories, or hypotheses you might have had are at last set aside.  The guessing game is done--the genuine article is there.

For people in Paul's time who had been nurturing a hope of God's promised Messiah (a reminder, too, that the title "Christ" is just the Greek word for "anointed one," just as "Messiah" is the Hebrew for the same), that certainly meant a revision of their mental picture. It's not that Jesus was a disappointment, but rather that his deliberate coming without an army of zealots or legions of the heavenly host to "take back their country for God" from the Romans was a reversal of many people's expectations.  When they discovered that the Messiah had come to bear a cross rather than to crucify, they would have to decide whether they would prefer to cling to their mental pictures or embrace the Real Thing who had come into their midst.  When it was clear that the community of Jesus' followers was now including people from every nation, background, language, and culture (whom Paul collectively calls "the Gentiles" here), plenty of folks had to revise their thinking, away from the Messiah as a mascot for one nation or ethnic group, but as Savior of all.  It was undoubtedly worth it, if you ask Paul, to receive Jesus on his own terms, but it was also a challenge for folks who expected (and maybe wished for) something different.

Maybe that's really what the Christian faith is supposed to be: the willingness to lay down our mental pictures, our pet theories, and our partisan agendas in the face of the genuine Messiah Jesus, no matter how much the Real McCoy surprises or startles us, and to say in joyful trust, "So you're the One after all.  You're the One I've been waiting for, praying for, and hoping for all along."  Maybe all our lives long will be spent getting to know Jesus more deeply and truly, beyond the shadows and sketches of our fantasizing.

To be honest, that sounds like a good way to spend a lifetime.  When the real has come, you don't need the mental picture as a placeholder any longer.  You just enjoy getting to know the real.

Come, Lord Jesus.  Come in your authenticity.  Come in your unpredictability and faithfulness.  Come beyond our illusions and expectations.  Come in all of your real-ness, and let us know you more truly.

Keeping Christ in...Christians--December 20, 2023

Keeping Christ in...Christians--December 20, 2023

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this." [1 Thessalonians 5:16-24]

Maybe you've seen it before.  You know, the internet memes and signs that say, "Before you worry about keeping Christ in Christmas, how about we first keep Christ in Christians?"  There's a good deal of truth in a sentiment like that... maybe more than we would like to admit at first.

We live in a time when church folk easily get baited into somebody's culture war nonsense at this time of year, letting ourselves get prodded into manufactured outrage about where you "can" or "can't" say "Merry Christmas," or what kinds of public displays we can have, or whether or not to feel offended by someone saying "Happy holidays" or "Seasons greetings."  And what ends up happening is an awful lot of church-going folks end up acting petty, spiteful, and angry, all while thinking they are doing it to come to the defense of poor baby Jesus, but ending up doing the opposite.  We end up looking like the opposite of Jesus (anti-Christ), all because we've let somebody rile us up into thinking we are being persecuted or our faith is being silenced... and instead we end up missing an opportunity to actually respond like Christ to the situation at hand.

What I love (but also find myself perpetually challenged by) about the New Testament, especially these early letters like what we call First Thessalonians, is that the focus is where it should be--on keeping Christ in Christians first, and not letting the early church get steered off course into picking a nonsense fight with an ambivalent culture.  Paul absolutely wants his readers to take the coming of Christ seriously, and he believes with equal conviction that the community of Jesus' followers has a calling to live, speak, act, and love in Christ-like ways.  He just doesn't expect that the rest of Greco-Roman society is going to cater to their preferences or celebrate their Lord's birth (or anything else about Jesus--the rest of the empire just sort of looked cockeyed at Christians for being so weirdly devoted to a crucified homeless rabbi).  Instead, Paul points his congregations to the kind of thing that really matters: how we wait, watch, and witness for Christ with the days we are given.

And what's additionally fascinating (and a little mind-boggling, honestly) to me is how much here Paul describes a way of life. Paul has almost nothing to say about what modern-day church experts call "evangelism strategies." There's nothing about how to get some stranger on the street to "accept Jesus as their personal savior" (largely because that's not at all how the New Testament-era church thought about such things).  And there's not even a pitch for inviting pagan friends to church (even if we have reason today to invite friends, neighbors, and strangers to worship with us, in our day).  

Instead, what Paul offers is a way of life aimed at two things: how to live in the waiting for Christ's coming, and how to embody the character of Christ in the mean-time, regardless of how many or few people join the church as a result of seeing it. Both of those go together, by the way; in fact, each only makes sense in light of the other, in Paul's mind.  We live differently right now because we are waiting for Christ's coming, and Christ's coming is the grounds for our commitment to the strange sort of life we are called into. One only makes sense in light of the other.

The Christ-shaped way of life that Paul has in mind here is fed by joy and gratitude in relationship to God, an openness to whatever God might speak through prophets old or new, the practice of peace, and a refusal to answer evil in the world with more evil.  And we live in this way, prayerfully and peaceably, both because it is consistent with the character of Jesus and because we are assured of his coming again.  In other words, the same Jesus we are expecting to come in glory is the same Jesus whose way of life shapes our own.  The Christ for whom we wait is also the Christ on whom we pattern our actions, words, and love now.

See, for Paul, the way to show the world we are Christians who expect Christ's coming again is simply to reflect the character of Jesus in the mean-time.  Paul has no use or interest in making a fuss about whether the rest of society looks Christ-like enough or participates in our particularly Christian celebrations or festivals.  He is just interested in seeing us share Jesus' joyful and peaceable way of life; that is our best evidence that Jesus is alive and moving in the world. While other folks might be fussy about wanting the wider culture to acknowledge Jesus or might insist that all of society pay some lip service to Christian lingo, Paul is just interested in getting disciples of Jesus to act in ways that point to Jesus.  He's trying to keep Christ in Christians themselves, rather than spending his energy on coercing the empire to go along with it all.

I'll bet that's our goal as well, for the same reason.  The question to ask on this day is simply, " How will we show forth the way of Jesus in our lives right now?"  Now, it may be that Jesus will come and make all things new between the time I write these words and when you read them... or it may be that I grow old and go to my rest for many many years before Jesus comes again.  Either way, the best way, according to Paul, to spend my day and my energy is to keep my eyes on Jesus and live in the ways that reflect his love in the world.

That seems like the beginning of an adventure that will take us the rest of our lives...

Lord Jesus, keep your presence knowable in us, for our own sake as well as for the world's.

A World Set Right--December 19, 2023

A World Set Right--December 19, 2023

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
   my whole being shall exult in my God;
 for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
   he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
 as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
 For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
    and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
 so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
    to spring up before all the nations.” [Isaiah 61:10-11]

So I've been letting an idea simmer in my brain for a few years, and I know it's not going to happen this December, but maybe one day.  In addition to the familiar figurines of the traditional Nativity scene--your shepherds, your magi, your Jospeh, Mary, and Jesus, and maybe an angel or a star--I want to make a scene for Advent of the world we are waiting for the Christ to restore and make new.

I know, I know, it would seem weird and untraditional (I sort of see that as a feature of this idea, not a bug) to have a display that somehow depicts peace and justice for all people.  Maybe there's a garden coming up and nobody is dumping chemicals into the ground beside it, or they are hammering their swords into plowshares.  Maybe there are wolves lying down beside lambs and nobody is afraid of getting eaten, or there's a big table with food and people from all nations and backgrounds all gathering around it.  Maybe it will be just people in a neighborhood showing love to each other--bringing over a casserole or fixing someone's porch steps, or welcoming a new family who has moved in down the block.  Maybe it will be outlandish in its diversity of people, animals, and styles, all finding a place in God's beloved community.  But what I want to keep in front of me is not just a tiny model of what it (might have) looked like when Jesus was born (although we'll need to have a conversation some day about how the traditional creche scene merges Luke and Matthew), but a vision of what we are hoping for in God's promised future.  And above all, what the Scriptures describe in the messianic vision is a world set right.

Now, I hope that isn't a controversial idea... but my guess is that a lot of us aren't used to thinking about Jesus' coming and "setting the world right."  We talk about Jesus "saving us" or "dying and rising for us," or God forgiving us.  Many folks talk about "going to heaven when they die" when they think of Jesus, or some variation on that theme.  But we've not done as good a job talking (or listening) on the subject of God making all things new and setting the world right.  But that's exactly what so many of the prophets actually envisioned when they thought about God's promised "anointed one"/"messiah" coming.  They were looking for the world to be set right, everywhere and for everyone, in every nook and cranny, every valley and every mountain.  They were waiting, as Isaiah 61 puts it, for "righteousness to spring up before all the nations."

I think we may need to rescue that R-word while we're at it, too.  All too often, folks hear the word "righteousness" and immediately tune out or walk away.  Maybe it's because we're used to hearing it in the context of religious pretenders who are "self-righteous."  Maybe it's because it sounds like vacuous religious jargon that we don't think is relevant to our daily lives (alongside words like "sanctification" or "holiness" or "transgression").  And maybe it's because if we have any sense at all for the notion of "righteousness," we hear it as a matter of religious rule-following that gets us access (or doesn't) into heaven.  But for the prophets, the concept of "righteousness" is so much more than spiritual bean-counting or Bible-thumping.  It is about a world "set right"--just like the word itself suggests.  And a world set right is utterly relevant to our actual lives, since we have to wade through the mess of an unjust, unkind, and indecent world every day.  What we are aching for is a world where justice is finally done, where compassion is the order of the day, and where nobody gets to bully or intimidate anybody else, because we trust in God's goodness to provide enough for all.  That's what it means to hope for "righteousness to spring up."

In a sense, this passage is Isaiah 61's attempt to do what I want to do with my idea of an Advent world-set-right display: it's an attempt to visualize how it will be when all creation is in right relationship, when all people have what they need, and when all things lost are restored.  The prophet pictures being clothed in salvation and righteousness (the state of things-being-set-right), and of that same righteousness rising up everywhere for all nations and peoples like the first crocuses in springtime.  In other words, this hope is for everybody--it's for a whole world put right, restored, and remade.  If our hope is any smaller than that, we are missing something.

I think for a lot of my life, I heard this business about being "clothed with the garments of salvation" as just an individual thing--like the prophet was saying, "God has given me the special status of being "saved" that covers me, so I know I'll get into heaven."  Sometimes church folks and theologians have talked about this concept of "righteousness" like it's a commodity to be traded, or earned, or sold, or given, and then each one gives their own "take" on how you get adequate righteousness applied to your account... you know, so you can get into heaven when you die.  But to actually hear this passage describe it, the hope is big and broad and collective.  We aren't just wishing for God to give me a passing grade in "righteousness class" so I can graduate on to heaven, but we are longing for God to bring justice, goodness, and mercy everywhere in all creation.  That's the idea: reconciliation and restoration to all of us, not as a deal or a transaction, but as a renewal of our deepest selves.

So in these days while we await the celebration of the coming of the Messiah, that child in a borrowed food trough on the outskirts of the empire, let's not allow our vision to be made too small.  We are not merely hoping for Jesus to be born as some individual ticket-supplier for admittance into the afterlife and away from this world; we are hoping for the One who comes to set all things right--all things, in all places, for all of us.  We are waiting for the One who brings new creation.

Whether you listen to Isaiah 61 describe it like a bridal party's fanciest clothes, or the shootings sprouting in the garden, or even if you make a little model of figures to display (and one day I will!), don't settle for a vision smaller than God's universal reclamation project: a world set right.

Lord God, come and make all things new--and don't let us settle for a vision smaller than that.

Surrendering Our Wish Lists--Devotion for December 18, 2023

Surrendering Our Wish Lists--Devotion for December 18, 2023

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me;
 he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the broken-hearted,
 to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and release to the prisoners;
 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn…” [Isaiah 61:1-2]

Lest there be any confusion on the subject, I'll just say it: for all the overlap of the holidays, Jesus is vitally different from Santa Claus.  

The trouble is, we often blur them together and confuse the logic of one for the logic of the other, and we end up missing out on what makes Jesus both distinctive and so deeply good.

And what I would argue is the critical difference between the gospel of Jesus and the myth we tell about Santa is that Jesus brings his own agenda... while Santa has basically become a genie to whom we make our Yuletide wishes.  In other words, we teach children to tell Santa what they want (and, in the transactional thinking of trading good behavior for presents, Santa is obliged to bring them the things they have asked for), but Jesus insists on coming with his own mission statement, whether or not it is what you or I would have asked for from our own personal wish-lists.  In the relationship between me and Santa, I'm basically calling the shots--I only have to believe firmly enough in Santa's existence and do an adequate job of staying on the "nice list," and then I am entitled (in our culture's thinking) to the things I have petitioned Santa for.  Jesus, on the other hand, crashes into our world with his own clear purpose that is tied to God's big-picture vision of cosmic restoration and reclamation.  Jesus hasn't come to grant wishes, but it turns out that his agenda is vastly bigger, wider, deeper, and fuller than anything we could have come up with for ourselves.

I mention Jesus, even though today's verses come from a Hebrew prophet centuries before Jesus' lifetime, because Jesus himself takes these words to be a sort of inaugural address or mission statement.  You probably know the story, retold in Luke 4, when Jesus goes to his hometown to speak at the synagogue on the sabbath, and he reads these words from what we call Isaiah 61.   After getting through, "...the year of the Lord's favor," Jesus rolls up the scroll and tells the listening congregation, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."  In other words, Jesus takes on for himself the job description of God's "anointed one" (that is, "messiah" in the Hebrew, in case that wasn't clear).  Jesus says he has come to be the embodiment of these words, spoken long before his own time, and that comes with a divine agenda.  Jesus has come to bring good news to the oppressed and poor.  Jesus has come to bind up the brokenhearted.  Jesus has come to declare release to people held captive and the start of God's jubilee year of debt-forgiveness, land restoration, and cancellation of indentured servitude.  Jesus says this is his mission, precisely as God's "anointed"/"messiah."

Now, to be sure, there's a LOT of good news in there--in fact, it's good news for all people and all creation.  Jesus' borrowed mission statement from this passage in Isaiah 61 is about lifting up the people who have been stepped on in life, tending the wounds of people who have been hurt, and freeing people from whatever constraints, whether physical, financial, or figurative, have been holding them captive. That sounds pretty all-encompassing to me. My guess is that you find yourself somewhere in that listing, at least in some way. So this is unquestionably good news, and seeing all this happen would be good, not just for any one of us individually, but for a whole world full of us who know what it's like to feel pressed down, heartbroken, or stuck.

But notice how different this messianic mission statement is from the kinds of wish-lists and wants we often bring to God (as though God is simply a grown-up version of Santa Claus for church folk).  How often do we take our own ambitions for success in our careers or desire for a bigger house and assume that this is what Jesus has come for--to help us attain "the American dream" regardless of what it means for anybody else?  How often do we treat Jesus like our genie whose job is to make our team win, our company post higher sales, our kids get on the honor roll, and our shopping trips find good parking places?  In other words, how often do we approach Jesus to endorse our agendas and grant our wishes, rather than meeting him on his own terms and letting him do what he himself says he has come to do?

I actually suspect this is part of why we fawn over the baby in the manger at Christmas time far more than we focus on the words, life, and actions of the adult Jesus.  Like Will Ferrell's character Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, praying to "Little Baby Jesus" because he prefers to picture Jesus as a baby rather than acknowledging that Jesus grew up, we have a way of focusing on the child in the manger who doesn't challenge us, surprise us, overturn our expectations, or call us out on our hypocrisy.  But the gospels don't give us the option of keeping Jesus as just "so cuddly, but still omnipotent," to do our bidding or grant our wishes.  The Scriptures give us Jesus as the One who comes anointed by God to fulfill this particular divine mission--to bind the wounds of all that is broken and to lift up of all who are bowed down, not to prod the Dow Jones to a higher close or improve your end-of-the-year sales numbers.

If we are going to meet the real and living Jesus (which, I would hope, is what both the celebration of Christmas and the whole Christian life are really all about), then we should be prepared to abandon our agendas and lists of demands, and instead to encounter Jesus on his own terms, including the mission he has claimed for himself.  That will always make Jesus different from mythical figures like the Santa of pop culture or genies and wish-granting elves from fairy tales.  But that is also what makes Jesus' presence actually good news: his work is always more than just granting my typically narrow-minded personal wishes to include a world in need of mending.

Let's prepare this week to encounter this Jesus--the real one--even if it means surrendering our wishlists to do it.

Lord Jesus, come as you will among us, for your own good purpose to make all things new.  Mend and set free all that is broken and held captive in this world.

Forging Hope--December 15, 2023

Forging Hope--December 15, 2023

"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?  But, in accordance with this promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home." [2 Peter 3:10-13]

So, true story.  I have this bell, a little one that fits easily in the palm of my hand, that I got years ago.  It looks like this:

And the thing about this bell is that it used to be a weapon.  More precisely, the metal in this bell used to be part of an artillery shell found in the killing fields of Cambodia.  After the bloody regime of the Khmer Rouge, there were countless such empty shells, bullet casings, and pieces of shrapnel left on the ground, and a good number of people living in poverty would collect it as scrap metal for additional income.  The folks at Church World Service, an international relief agency, started a program called "Shells Into Bells," where these pieces of scrap could be reforged into bells for their animals and livestock, so that these tools of destruction could become a part of something life-giving.  Whenever I see my bell, sitting on the ledge in my office, or hear its gentle tinkling sound, I think of these words from the writing we call Second Peter--because this is what our hope is like.  We are waiting for God's promised day when all of our tools of death and domination are melted down, and when at last all creation is a place where peace and justice (the same word in Greek is translated "righteousness") are, as Pete says, "at home."  We are pinning our hopes on God's commitment to reclaim the pieces of this creation that we humans have distorted, abused, and weaponized and to remake them, like a whole new heavens and new earth, into a world without things like "killing fields" or "collateral damage," and no more assault weapons or war crimes, either.

But it's in the light of that kind of promised future that we have to hear this talk from Second Peter about "the heavens being set ablaze and dissolved" and "the elements melting with fire."  This is blacksmith talk.  This is the metaphor of metallurgy.  This is the way of the forge--where some raw material, which might be neutral or even good on its own, is melted down from an older form into something new.  The same metal that had been an artillery shell, for example, can be heated and hammered into a bell.  Or as the prophets Isaiah and Micah imagined, swords can be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.  It's not the metal's fault that it had been fashioned into something terrible; the molecules of the bronze aren't to blame.  But they are in need of being reclaimed, remade, and reshaped, from something bent by evil and violence into something useful and good for the cultivation of life.  

All of this is to say that this "fire" language from Second Peter doesn't have the feel of "punishment" per se, the way we often assume, but of the foundry.  When the goldsmith melts down nuggets and pours the molten metal into a form, like a ring, it's not to punish the gold, but to shape it into something that is good, beautiful, and useful.  And when a blacksmith hammers a piece of glowing-hot iron on the anvil, it's not to make the metal "pay" or "suffer" for whatever it was made into before, but in order to repurpose the iron and reclaim it for new use.  The fire and the furnace are certainly hot, and they are not to be taken lightly or glibly, but they are essentially creative tools. The metal may have to be melted, dissolved, broken down, and hammered in order to for that to happen, but it's for the sake of reclaiming the raw materials and restoring them to good purposes.  (Like the old line goes, if you feel like you are being hammered, it may be a sign you are still on the anvil--that God is making something of us, even in times when we are under pressure... or maybe especially through those times.)  That's worth remembering here, because it is easy for us to hear talk of "fire" at the mention of Jesus' coming and assume it is meant as judgment, as destruction, or as damnation.  (It's true that sometimes Jesus will talk about fire in that way, using the word "Gehenna," often translated "hell," to describe final judgment on evil, but that's not the way fire is being described here in Second Peter.)  The same fire that can be used to burn garbage and render useless refuse into ash can also be used to melt down and purify metal so it can be worked, shaped, and used.  And at least here in today's passage from Second Peter, that's the way the metaphor works--God will melt down all that we have distorted and fashioned into tools for death and hatred, and remake creation like the artillery shells reforged into bells.

That's our hope: that by the end of the story, God will have taken all the worst tragedies and terrible horrors we have wreaked upon each other (and the rest of creation) and will make a new creation of us all.  God will not give up on the goodness of the creation God first made, even though we have distorted and twisted it.  God will bring life out of the ashes that remain from our most hell-bent choices.  And out of this world where injustice, cruelty, and violence are the coin of the realm, God will make a "new heavens and a new earth, where justice is at home."

Now, in the mean time, our friend Pete here raises an intriguing question:  if this is our hope, and if indeed God is going to melt every last warhead and every last tool of terror and recast them into some part of the new creation, like my bell, "what sort of persons should we be?"  In light of God's promised future, knowing that tools of domination, hatred, greed, and death will be dissolved in the fire of God's forge, what things are worth giving our lives to and spending our love on?  What is worth our time, energy, and voice... and what is not? And what might be ways that we take what is distorted, twisted, and bent from hatred and let them become new creations, even now, to point ahead to the day for which we are waiting?

What might it look like for us to commit ourselves to forging hope with the day in front of us?

Lord God, we believe that you will make all things new in Jesus, and that death, violence, and hatred will be dissolved until your new creation shines with love and justice.  Let us be a part of that work of reclamation even now.

An Unexpected Strength--December 14, 2023

An Unexpected Strength--December 14, 2023

"See, the Lord GOD comes with might,

    and his arm rules for him;

 his reward is with him,

    and his recompense before him.

 He will feed his flock like a shepherd;

    he will gather the lambs in his arms,

and carry them in his bosom,

    and gently lead the mother sheep." [Isaiah 40:10-11]

This is another of God's great reversals: we expect the fearsome fighter, and we get the sheltering shepherd.  We expect the conquering king, and God comes as the tender caretaker.  We look for punitive power, and God gathers us gently like we are slow sheep.

That notion takes our usual expectations about what "power" and "strength" and "might" really mean and turns them on their head.  And yet, throughout the Scriptures, God keeps doing this same reversal and running the same play that it shouldn't surprise us.  We keep expecting that God's awesomeness requires God to zap our enemies (note how often we assume that God will target "our" enemies), and instead the prophets keep saying, "Get ready for God's power not to be what you think it is--God comes as a shepherd leading the mama sheep and carrying the lambs in his arms."  The God for whom we wait is strong, but that strength isn't use to coerce or cajole--but rather to carry the weak, the slow, and the vulnerable. This is our God's upside-down (but really right-side-up) use of power.  And it is so completely the opposite of our typical assumptions that we generally reject this thinking out of hand, or completely ignore it.

But honestly, once we recognize that this is one of the great central recurring themes of the whole story of God and the world in the Bible, we recognize just how frequently it turns up and how everything in the Scriptures really hangs on that overturning of expectations.  God, as God is revealed in the story of Israel and the story of Jesus, is always seeking out the weak, the endangered, and the vulnerable and protecting them, rather than endorsing the powerful in their conquest of everybody else.  God is always resistant to letting us just call on the divine for firepower to zap our enemies or execute our agendas, and instead, chooses to come in gentleness for the sake of those most in trouble (apart from questions of "worthiness" or "merit").  God is always critical of those who use their strength and position to dominate or bully others, and God is always modeling an alternative use of power--to serve, to heal, to mend, to nurture.  That's God's unexpected strength: the sort that shows up in gentleness.

And so even though the story of the Messiah in a manger has the feel of the unexpected to it, in a sense, it is exactly the sort of thing we should expect from a God whose "coming with might" looks like a shepherd carrying the lambs in his arms, rather than marching troops in to overpower enemies.  Taking that seriously will change a great deal about how we engage with the world, too. We still live in a world where conventional wisdom says the way to get things done is to blow up your enemies, to devastate and demolish them, and to show them who's boss with overwhelming shock and awe... and the living God (especially as we see God in Jesus!) says otherwise.  Instead, if the coming of Jesus means anything, it says that the God who has infinite options and choice for how to engage with the world chose to come in the vulnerability of a human being--and from infancy, mind you, not even just materializing as a full-grown man who could defend himself.  God's choice, ultimately, is vulnerability. God's power, in the end, comes through gentleness.  God's strength is the strength to carry, not the capacity to conquer.  And if that is how God deals with the evil, rottenness, and suffering of the world (rather than laser-beams unleashed at all the unworthy ones or the threat of weapons to wipe out any resisters), perhaps we are called to approach the world with the same kind of unexpected strength-through-gentleness, too.

Honestly, I don't think anybody has ever been bullied into showing love, or threatened into goodness.  Coercion might make us rein in our worst impulses from time to time, but it also makes us bristle with defiance and wait for our moment to do what we've been forbidden to do at an opportune time.  But gentleness has a way of getting past our defenses.  And a child in a manger has a way of slipping right under the radar of the bloated and power-hungry empire. 

What would it look like for us to dare to practice such gentle strength in our lives today?

That's the challenge today--that's the invitation for all whose hope is centered on Jesus.

Lord God, come in your own surprising ways, beyond our expectations of domination and conquest, in the fragility of our own flesh.

Something That Lasts--Dec. 13, 2023

Something That Lasts--Dec. 13, 2023

"A voice says, 'Cry out!'
     And I said, 'What shall I cry?'

All people are grass,

     their constancy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

     when the breath of the LORD blows upon it;

    surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades;

     but the word of our God will stand forever." [Isaiah 40:6-8]

I know those words aren't very jolly, but we need them--maybe especially in this season.

Nobody wants to be reminded of their mortality in the first place, but this is even worse to hear.  The prophet here in Isaiah 40 isn't just reminding us that our lives are finite; he's also pointing out how fickle and flimsy our faithfulness is.  It's not just our lifespan or our energy that can "wither" like the grass or "fade" like the flower--it's our "constancy."  

We aren't terribly reliable, not as individuals, and not as a species.  We get distracted and detoured by the next shiny thing. We get easily flustered and led to give up on the things (or relationships) that prove challenging.  We break promises and look for loopholes.  We hunt for fine print to get us off the hook for following through on things we don't want to do anymore.  And on top of all that, yeah, sometimes our energy level just tanks and we don't have the stamina to do all that our good intentions planned for. 

I think all of that may be unavoidable in the human condition as we know it, but I also think that we live in a time that amplifies and feeds our short-lived attention spans and fickle faith.  Ours is a culture, after all, that turns disposability from a bug into a feature--why repair that home fixture, car, appliance, or shirt with the missing button, when you could just throw it away and buy a new one?  The makers of technology now bank on our being fooled into getting rid of the "old" simply because it's old, rather than repairing, restoring, or working with what we have.  They lob sales pitches, ads, and targeted messages at us to let us know the very moment a new model comes out, so that we'll start to salivate over the idea of the new-and-shiny, and leave the old in the garbage can.  Manufacturers have changed their business models, too, on all sorts of products: instead of building things that last and cost more (because they are made with more durable materials and workmanship), they build what is cheap and replaceable, and they tell us we're getting a better deal because we get the "new" faster, and for less money (as long as we don't actually do the math to add up how many of the cheap versions it takes to cover the lifespan of the well-made version).  We are collectively being taught not to value dependability and constancy, in favor of a world built on one-time use, single-serving, no-commitment commodities, from throw-away products and packaging to gig-economy jobs to flavor-of-the-month fads.

And yet, I suspect some part of us also feels deeply dissatisfied and empty living lives full of disposable "stuff" (and increasingly disposable relationships and people), and we are longing for something--or Someone--who will not bail out on us.  This is the One for whom we wait and hope.  This is the difference that the God we meet in Jesus makes.

That's the big punch line here in this passage from Isaiah 40.  After all the repeated reminders of how flighty and fickle we humans are, along with the fading flowers and grass of the field, the conclusion points to the difference God makes.  "The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever."  We humans will say one thing in one moment, and then backpedal, spin-doctor, or flat-out deny it in the next moment (in fact, many a successful political career has been built on such "talents"). But when God makes a promise, God will keep it.  When God promises to show up, God will show up.  And when God says, "I will always come through for you," you can count on God to come through for you.  (As an aside, it's probably worth noting that when the prophet says "the word of our God will stand forever," it's not precisely about "the Bible," even though it's tempting to turn this into a claim about the Bible proper.  Obviously the Bible was still far from being completely written when Isaiah 40 was first spoken. But beyond that, the writer isn't so much saying that "Whatever is in our official holy text is infallible and inerrant," so much as he is talking about the reliability of God's promise and the dependability of God's faithfulness--in contrast to human constancy, which is "like grass."  We modern folk have a way of taking the phrase "the word of God" out of context and treating it as identical to "the Bible," but that's not exactly the point here, for the prophet.)

Ultimately, the Word of God that stands forever is Jesus himself--the One we confess to be "the Word" who "was with God" and who "was God" and who "became flesh and lived among us."  In Jesus, we get a glimpse of God's determination to be faithful and constant with humanity, despite our fickleness.  The Christ for whom we wait is the central evidence to us that, as William Willimon put it, "God refuses to be God without us." It is Jesus, in the end, who shows us that God will not bail out on us.  He is the One we have been waiting for, and he is the One worth pinning our hopes on.

Look, we're going to keep facing down all the countless voices of disposability in the course of this day, and I can't make them go away.  But we can keep our bearings straight over against all those sales-pitches by remembering what the prophet wants us to hold onto:  despite the fragility and unreliability of so many things in life from the frostbitten brown grass of the December fields to the throwaway plastic packaging of countless objects in your day today, God remains reliable and faithful.  Even if everything else fades and withers, God's promise endures.  

What we have been after all along is something that lasts.  It just turns out to have been a Someone all along.

Lord God, be your faithful self for us today, and let us place our trust in you rather than the unreliable and disposable commodity culture around us.

All the Way Home--December 12. 2023

All the Way Home--December 12. 2023

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]

Okay, the question we have got to ask ourselves here with all of this earth-moving is simply this:  who is all of this construction and excavation work actually for?  

As the prophet imagines it, God is announcing new road work, like those big blaring lighted signs you see on the highway announcing lane changes, detours, and possible delays, because a new road or lane is being built.  This passage has the feel of a work-order from the Divine Department of Transportation:  the crooked has to be made straight, the low spots filled in, the high places leveled off, and the rough terrain needs to be made smooth.  And all of it is being done in open, rugged wilderness for a project God has in mind to build a highway in the middle of nowhere.

But that's not the weirdest part of all this: the real kicker is who the road is "for"... because ultimately, it ain't for God.

Well, at least not in the sense that God needs a road to get anywhere.  Sure, the prophet says that this highway is "for God" in the sense that God is the one commanding creation to carve out a road and clear a path.  Yes, God is the one who is calling for this divine construction project, but God doesn't need roads.  God is God, after all, and God has never been bound to traveling along paved highways or smooth terrain.  One of the perks of being God, you might say, is that God doesn't even need a straight line between Point A and Point B: God is already immediately present everywhere at all times, to all points in existence (and probably to all the points in non-existence as well).  In other words, God doesn't need a nice new flat four-lane highway to get anywhere; there's nowhere that God isn't present already!

So... why would God go to the trouble of announcing a construction project like this, and why would God insist that this road be smooth, straight, and level... in the middle of nowhere?  Why would God call for a road, if the Creator of All That Is doesn't need to take the turnpike?

Because, dear ones, we do.  Human beings do need to travel by road--at least the ones to whom these words from Isaiah 40 were first spoken sure did.  These words are addressed to the exiles who had endured decades of captivity at the hands of the Babylonian Empire.  Their parents and grandparents had been taken away like human plunder by the conquerors and brought by the Babylonians to be assimilated into their culture and to boost the Empire's gross domestic product.  And now, some seventy years later, here comes a voice speaking on behalf of God saying, "There is a homecoming in store for you.  You will come back from exile.  Even though you don't know the way, I will bring you home."  The road in question, then, isn't a road that God has to take in order to get from Point A to Point B, but rather it is the path that God will lead the exiles along to bring them back home--even though it's a way they've never gone before, and even though it means crossing empty wilderness to get there.  God will lead the people along the way, and because the people need a straight and reliable path, God will clear the way for them.

If this sounds a bit like the story of the old Exodus out of Egypt, you're on to something.  In fact, I think that's exactly the point:  to people who were hopeless and thought there was no way of ever getting to go back to the lands, the homes, and the way of life that their parents had told them about, God has to point them back further than they have been remembering.  God points them further back in their memories than just when the Babylonians first came and took them captive; God points them all the way back to that formative story of a wilderness journey out of Pharaoh's grasp and into the land in the days of Moses.  And so this prophet here in Isaiah 40 is trying to say, "Well, just like God did for us before, when it was the wilderness journey out of Egypt and the Sea, now God can be relied upon to bring us through the desert from Babylon to our homeland once again!"  The first exodus had the parted Sea, so now this journey will have a road carved out the leveled ground in the desert.  The first exodus had "the glory of the Lord" leading the people along the way as that pillar of cloud and fire, and so now in this second exodus, "the glory of the Lord" shall be revealed to all peoples.  The idea is that God has been with the people in exile all along, just like God heard the cries of the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, and God moved in history to bring them home.  So now, the journey home from exile will have God leading the way, guiding the exiles along a path already prepared for them.  God doesn't need a road to walk on, but we do--so God chooses to go on the journey with the returning exiles as well.  That's how God does things--going with us, sharing the journey, covering the same miles we do.  We need the way in the wilderness because of our limitations, but God will walk it with us so that we are not alone. The God we meet in the Bible always chooses to be God-with-us.

And that, beloved, is what this season's hope is really all about.  The One for whom we are waiting is the One who comes to share the journey with us.  The One on whom we pin our trust is the One who walks us home from exile on desert highway, not because God needs to have a paved road, but because we humans do.  And God is not above slowing down to match our pace (or use roads).  That's what the Incarnation is all about.  God in the human life of Jesus--sharing all that it is to be human, bearing the frailty and fragility of it all, choosing to live within our limitations, in order to walk with us all the way home.  In a sense, that's really what God's presence in Jesus is all about: God's commitment to bring the whole world back home out of exile, and sharing our humanity along the way like God once walked the "way in the wilderness" with the people leaving Babylon.  God becomes a human in Jesus, not because God needs it (or thinks it would be a fun "field trip" to find out what it feels like to be human), but because we do.  God shares our humanity and walks us home in Jesus.

I've got to tell you: for a lot of my life, I heard this business about "preparing a way for the Lord" as though God was the one who needed a clear pathway in order to get to us... or that we were supposed to walk this highway on our own to get "up" to where God was.  And so often, that's how pop religion talks about things, isn't it?  That we need to do these five things, or pray this certain prayer, or keep the following list of rules, and by doing so we "keep on the straight and narrow way" so that by the end of our lives we will be deemed acceptable to get to have companionship with God.  You know that old sales-pitch, right?  But when we hear these words as they were first spoken, it's not about us getting "up" to God, and it's certainly not about God needing some kind of obstacle-free, level-ground road in order to get to us.  Nope--it's always been about the God who has been with us even in our times that felt like godforsaken exile, who takes us by the hand, and who walks the way with us... because we need it.

That's why Jesus' coming is good news.  And that's why he's worth telling others about.  In Jesus, God walks us all the way home.

Lord Jesus, enable us to recognize your presence among us here and now, and to trust your guidance where you will lead us.

Beyond Our Comfort Zones--December 11, 2023

Beyond Our Comfort Zones--December 11, 2023

"Comfort, O comfort my people, 

    says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

    and cry to her

 that she has served her term,

    that her penalty is paid,

 that she has received from the LORD's hand

    double for all her sins." [Isaiah 40:1-2]

The old line says that the job of the prophet is to comfort the afflicted... and to afflict the comfortable.  Everybody loves the first half; nobody wants the second.

But it is important for us to be clear about just what is going on in these words many of us heard this past Sunday, as God speaks comfort through the prophetic poem that we call the fortieth chapter of Isaiah.  These are words of comfort, to be sure--and that means they are spoken to people who are uncomfortable, not to folks who are already insulated from suffering, numb to pain, and wrapped up in their own apathy.  And before we start borrowing these words to lull ourselves to sleep, it's important to remember how they were first spoken... and to whom.

This word of hope was first spoken for folks who had lived through the worst of what dominating empires could do, and who had seen their homes, temple, and way of life all destroyed by invading armies.  Some of them had been carried away into exile back in Babylon; others of them had to piece together a life left among the rubble of what the Babylonians left behind in their wake.  It would eventually be decades--nearly three quarters of a century!--before the exiled people (or more likely, their children and grandchildren) would be released and allowed to go home.  And so the people hearing the words, "Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God," are people whose hearts are still raw with grief, and whose hopes have been crushed.  They have been told by the powerful (the empire of the day) that their suffering is unimportant (collateral damage that comes from standing in the way of the empire's power) or that they deserve it.  And many of their own people have concluded that their God has either been defeated by the Babylonians (and their gods) or has turned away from them and abandoned them forever for generations of disobedience and idolatry.  The people to whom Isaiah 40 was first spoken had been told that their pain was incurable and their future didn't matter to anybody.

These were people who needed to know that God still cared about them, and that there was relief for them.  These were people shrugged off by the conquering Babylonians, and God raised up a prophet to tell them that they were not forgotten, not negligible, and not left to suffer forever.  God spoke comfort because they needed comfort, and because there was no one else willing or able to speak a word of hope to them.  And to be honest, these words from Isaiah 40 probably took those first hearers by total surprise when they heard them, because they didn't dare to imagine that there could be a new chapter to their story or a hope of coming home.

The temptation for us, removed from those people in exile by twenty-five hundred years and thousands of miles, is to hear them against the backdrop of our material abundance, our relative prosperity, our secure, undestroyed homes, and our habits of apathy.  It's easy to take these words, yanked right out of their original context and intended audience, and to hear this as God encouraging us just to stay comfortable where we already are, never troubled at the suffering of others, never provoked to care about neighbors in need, and never stretched beyond our own self-interest.  We are tempted to say, "Well, we're God's people, and here is God saying, 'Comfort my people,' so I guess what I need is more luxury, more pampering, more stuff, and more self-indulgence!"  It's easy at least to take these words as license not to care about those who suffer, those who are displaced, and those who have lost everything.  It's easy for us as pretty comfortable people living in a pretty comfortable time and place to take these words as permission to stick our heads in the sand, or turn the volume up on our smart-phone streaming personal playlists so that we don't have to hear the cries of neighbors in need or think about the people whose homes are being destroyed in a war or are missing family members held hostage.  But, to be clear, the prophet does not intend for us to use his words as approval of our apathy.  The prophet comforts the afflicted... and afflicts the comfortable, by God's design.

I'm not saying that God, or the prophetic voice of Isaiah 40, wants us to be miserable.  Not at all.  But I do think the prophet would point out that it is the height of privilege not to care about someone else's suffering just because you don't aren't also going through it. If we dare to hear these words of comfort for exiles honestly, we will have to come face to face with those who need comfort yet today--and we will have to ask what we are called to do to offer relief from our abundance. 

That's because the One for whom we wait--the One of whom the prophets dreamed--cares for all who suffer.  And the One in whom we hope has always called out the folks who keep the suffering of others at arm's length.  This One we know as Jesus spoke blessing on the poor... and called out the indifferent and indolent rich who let their neighbors go hungry.  This One whose birth at a borrowed manger we celebrate this season is the same one who told stories where the forgotten and marginalized are welcomed into God's embrace and those insulated by their wealth are doomed.  The One carried in Mary's womb is the same One who grew up hearing her lullaby about God filling the hungry with good things and sending the overstuffed country-club set away empty.  So let's be clear about who is it we are hoping for to come in this Advent season: we are waiting and watching for the same Jesus who identifies with the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, the sick, and the vulnerable foreigner at the door, but who calls out all of us who have turned those faces away because we didn't want to be disturbed from our comfortable routines.

I'm reminded these days of how very much of the prophets' work and words were meant to hit us like Charles' Dickens, A Christmas Carol--as something that offers comfort at the end only after waking us up and shaking us out of our apathy toward the needs of others.  Marley and the Christmas Ghosts are there to bring forth a change for old Ebenezer Scrooge, but it will come at a cost--he will no longer be able to turn away from the pain of others or the needs of his neighbors in the pursuit of making a bigger profit or piling up more wealth.  Like old Marley's ghost says it to his former business partner, “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"  Poor Marley only learned after it was too late, as Dickens tells it, that he was meant to care about the needs and suffering of his neighbors all along, not to stay sequestered away from their troubles inside his counting house.  The only hope for Scrooge is that he can be made uncomfortable enough with his own path along the same trajectory that he can be made to change his life and care about the ones around him who need comfort.  It's a powerful part of the story that, because we have seen it and heard it told and retold in so many different versions, we may miss because of its familiarity to us.  But in a way, it's exactly what the prophet wants us to know if we hear his words in Isaiah 40.  The hope of comfort is meant for the ears of the uncomfortable, the forgotten, and the disinherited.  If we are looking for permission to use these words as reason to stay, like Scrooge, insulated from those people and their needs, Isaiah won't give it.  Instead, we are dared to take our place with those who suffer, so that these words of comfort may both move us to offer comfort ourselves, and to receive it as well.

On this day, where you and I are hurting or feel forgotten, there is good news:  God will not leave us there in that place of suffering.  And at the same time, where you and I are indifferent or numb to the needs of others, there is another word of good news: God will not leave us there in that place of apathy, either. May we be ready either way.

Lord God, where we are afflicted bring your comfort... and where we are too comfortable with a world full of others' suffering, afflict us enough to be moved with Jesus' own love.