Looking in the Wrong Places--January 1, 2025

Looking in the Wrong Places--January 1, 2025

"When (Jesus') parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, 'Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.' He said to them, 'Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?' But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart." (Luke 2:48-51)

There's a great line from early on in the film version of The Lord of the Rings where Ian McKellen's wizard character Gandalf the Grey says, "A wizard is never late. Nor is he early.  He arrives precisely when he means to." He doesn't say it angrily, nor to make an excuse for himself. He just states it matter-of-factly, as if to say, "If you were expecting me at a different time, that's an incorrect assumption on your part, not a miscalculation on mine."

I hear something similar in the way I read Jesus' reply to his mother after they have spent several days frantically searching for their lost son (and the Messiah announced by angels!).  When Jesus says, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" it doesn't come off to my ears as being rude or petulant, and neither is it really an apology, either.  It seems more like he is saying, with a straightforward matter-of-fact-ness, "If it has taken you three days to find me, then it seems that you have been obviously been looking in the wrong kinds of places."  The temple, after all, is the place that ordinary first-century Jewish families associated with the presence of God.  Where else would Jesus ben if not seeking after the presence of God, right? In a way, it seems like Jesus' response is meant to tell Mary (and perhaps us, overhearing) that Jesus is never lost. Rather, if we cannot spot him, it is because we have been looking in the wrong places or with the wrong sort of vision.

And again, I don't hear this statement of the pre-teen Jesus as a matter of disrespect to Mary or Joseph.  Luke the narrator even caps off the story by noting that Jesus goes back home to Nazareth and "was obedient to them" as a good and dutiful son.  But neither does Jesus treat this situation as moment for him to apologize or accept fault--he doesn't see himself as having done anything wrong, but rather that he has been in the most obvious place to be found all along.  From Jesus' perspective, the question is not, "Why weren't you where we expected to find you?" but rather, "Why was anybody looking for me anywhere else but here?"  Apparently, even for Mary the Mother of Our Lord, if we are looking for Jesus and don't spot him, the issue is that we were looking in the wrong place, not that Jesus was in the wrong place and had somehow gotten lost.

That's important to hold onto, because throughout his adult ministry, Jesus will go to some pretty unexpected and unlikely places.  And when he does--say, when he invites himself over to the tax collector Zacchaeus' house, or crosses the border into Gentile territory, or makes his way through the region of Samaria--we might be tempted to correct Jesus and send him back to the places we think he is "supposed" to be. You know, we want a Messiah who associates with "our kind of people," and who doesn't mix with the wrong crowd. When Jesus gets a reputation for being "a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and sinners," some impulse in us wants to scold him, "Jesus, don't you know people will get the wrong impression about you--and US--by the people you associate with?  Shouldn't you get back to more respectable places?"  We don't want a Messiah who goes to the Temple and then associates with doers of abominations; we want a Christ on a short leash who will only go to the places we approve of.  But to hear Jesus tell it, wherever he chooses to go is the right place for him to be.  Mary began to learn that when her son was only twelve years old.  We've had two thousand years to come to grips with it--and to be honest, a lot of Respectable Religious Folks still don't like it.

All of this is to say that when it comes to Jesus, none of us--even with the best of intentions--gets to chart out an itinerary or schedule of approved locations for Jesus to show up. Jesus himself reserves the right to go to the places where he will, as he determines is right, both in order to connect with the God who has sent him, and in order to love the people to whom he has been sent. If we can't spot Jesus, it's not because he's gotten himself lost and gone somewhere he's not supposed to be--it's that we have been looking in the wrong places.

What would it do to our perspective, for both the day ahead and the year ahead, to take the lesson that Jesus teaches even to his mother here in this story?  How would it affect our way of seeing the world if we remembered that Jesus reserves the right to be in whatever place he chooses to be, even if it's not where we expected (or approved of)?  And when we expect or assume Jesus to be in a certain situation or act a certain way but don't spot him there, could we be humble enough to consider that we might have been looking in the wrong place--and instead start looking for Jesus in the kinds of places he chooses to be? Are we willing to follow a Lord who does not run his schedule past us first, but who is loose in the world and who shows up precisely where he intends to be, at precisely the time he arrives?

We might end up recognizing him in all the places we didn't think God was allowed to be.

Lord Jesus, go where you will, and help us to find you where you are.

 

A Dangerous Pupil--December 31, 2024

A Dangerous Pupil--December 31, 2024

"When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers." (Luke 2:43-47)

The thing that makes Jesus worth following is the same thing that makes him dangerous: he doesn't get his insight or wisdom from the official Gatekeepers of Respectable Religion.  Rather, he amazes them when they listen to him, and he astounds them when he is the one posing the questions.

While there are certainly a number of things going on within this story of the pre-teen Jesus, which many of us heard read this past Sunday in worship, at least one thing that I think Luke wants us to note is that Jesus holds his own with the official teachers of religion even though he hasn't gone through their training.  Jesus hasn't become the student of a rabbi yet at his age, and his schooling would have been pretty minimal beyond what he could have learned in his hometown synagogue and from his family at home.  And yet, even though he hasn't gone through the official education process or studied Torah at the feet of these priestly leaders in Jerusalem, Jesus somehow (ahem) knows about God. 

Jesus' insight doesn't come from having learned the "official" version of things from the scholars and scribes; it comes, Luke wants us to understand, from Jesus' very being as God's own Son and the Promised One.  That is to say, Jesus knows about God, not from studying texts or memorizing verses, but from his own being. And at no point does Jesus have to get his personal theology approved by the appointed guardians of orthodoxy who are in the temple in Jerusalem.  Jesus' understanding of God arises from his own identity as God's Beloved.

And as I say, that fact makes Jesus simultaneously worthy of our allegiance and also makes him something of a threat to those Guardians and Gatekeepers of Respectable Religion.  On the one hand, Christians claim that Jesus is worth listening to because he actually knows what he is talking about.  As the Gospels say elsewhere, Jesus stands out because "he teaches as one with authority, and not as the scribes and teachers of the Law."  Jesus, we believe, doesn't simply parrot back the answers he memorized from flash cards or spit back the "correct responses" he found in a textbook. Jesus knows because he really is what the angels all said he was back in the Nativity story--this really is the Son of the Most High and the Lord long awaited. And to be sure, that's a big deal.  Jesus is different from all the snake-oil salesmen and televangelists of history hawking their guesses about God and their self-help suggestions, because he actually knows what he is talking about.  He is worth following and giving our lives to because he actually knows how the universe is put together and what sort of life brings us fullness of joy. All of that is hinted at here in this scene as the pre-teen Jesus astounds the formally trained and officially credentialed temple teachers with the knowledge he already possesses--without having gotten it from them.

But by the very same token, that is precisely what makes Jesus dangerous--both to the Religious Experts, and in a sense, to us.  That's because Jesus has no obligation to give cookie-cutter, committee-approved, mostly harmless answers about God or the ways of God. Jesus doesn't have to prop up an institution (like the temple) or make sure his theology fits with the unquestioned tenets of Officially Respectable Religion. Because he doesn't have to worry about getting his credentials from the Temple Correspondence School or Jerusalem Theological Seminary, Jesus is utterly free to tell audacious truths about God, to question old assumptions, and to surprise us with the audacious mercy, urgent justice, and boundary-crossing love of God.  In other words, Jesus is able to show us where have been wrong and could not see it, because we had become so comfortably satisfied with the "official right answers" that we had stopped asking any deeper questions. Jesus reserves the right (and frequently exercises it) to overturn what we thought we knew about God and to stretch us into newer and deeper understandings.  A teacher who has not graduated from the Official School of Religion has the ability to lead us beyond our comfort zones--which is precisely what the real Jesus does.

So, just to be clear, when this same Jesus upsets the folks in his hometown synagogue by insisting that God loves foreigners and outsiders (enraging his home congregation to the point that they want to hurl him off a cliff!), or when Jesus announces God's blessing on the poor rather than assuming the rich are receiving God's favor, we don't get to dismiss him as someone who doesn't know what he's talking about.  He speaks with authority because he is, after all, the Christ of God. And when Jesus insists that God is doing a new thing that includes Gentiles and lifts up the voices of women and makes space for outcasts and sinners, we don't get to just ignore him because his teachings don't fit the expected "correct" answers of the accepted conventional wisdom. The twelve-year old Jesus who already comes to the Temple experts knowing the ways of God without having been taught by them is both a wonder worthy of our worship and also a challenge to our established orthodoxies. We don't get to declare Jesus our Lord without also being prepared to have him turn our world upside down.  He just might.

Lord Jesus, we dare to give you our allegiance and to invite you to challenge us, surprise us, and to pull us beyond our assumptions.

Jesus' Bedtime Stories--December 30, 2024

Jesus' Bedtime Stories--December 30, 2024

"Now every year [Jesus’] parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival." (Luke 2:41-42)

This is more than just the set-up to a Home Alone-style mix-up with the young boy Jesus, even though that's likely what we remember this scene for.  But before anybody jumps ahead to a pre-teen Christ telling his mother she should have expected him to be in the temple with the retort, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" let's just sit for a moment with the way Luke begins the story. 

Luke tells us that like all first-century faithful Jewish families, Jesus grew up immersed in the story of the Passover.  Mary and Joseph were apparently devout and went, as the Torah directed, to celebrate the Passover each year, and that meant pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem.  Every year, for certain, then, Jesus would have been reminded of that central truth of God's identity: God wasn't just an impersonal force or a neutral, morally-ambiguous "watcher" figure who saw human history playing out from a distance up in heaven. Rather, the true and living God was the One who heard the cry of enslaved Hebrews and struck down the oppressive Pharaoh to set them free.  Jesus surely heard the stories of ancient Israel's Exodus journey all the time, and on top of that, his family went every year to the Temple where the story of the Passover to freedom was rehearsed and celebrated in worship. In other words, with every celebration of the Passover story, Jesus was raised to believe that God took the side of the oppressed rather than rubber-stamping the decrees of their oppressor, and to look for God among those on the margins rather than the centers of power.  Jesus learned to recognize God at the edges of things with the lowly and powerless, not simply to equate the decrees of a king or Pharaoh with the will of the divine.

For whatever else we say about Jesus' divinity (and indeed, the Christian faith also hangs on the confession that Jesus brings us face to face with none other than God in the full humanity of Jesus), we can't get away from the notion that the child Jesus was taught things about the story of God and God's people.  Jesus, we confess, was and is "God from God, Light from Light," but also in his humanity learned everything that human beings have to learn--from how to walk and how to speak to how to read and how to understand his people's relationship with God.  So the handful of moments we are given in the Scriptures about Jesus' childhood tell us something formative about how Jesus would have learned to see God and God's work in the world.  Mary's "Magnificat" wouldn't have been just a one-time random exclamation before Jesus was born, but the kind of description Jesus heard in his lullabies and bedtime stories. Jesus would have grown up hearing his mother tell him that God was the One who remembered poor childless Sarah and Abraham and gave them a son... and that God was the One who fed the hungry with good things while sending the rich away empty... and that God was the One who lifted up the lowly and pulled the powerful down from their thrones.  And every year at the Passover, Jesus would have been retold the story of God's deliverance at the Sea overpowering the armies of Pharaoh and his fearsome chariots. Jesus would have been taught that God was a Keeper of promises, a liberator of the enslaved, and a judge of tyrants.

So when the adult Jesus declares God's blessing on the poor, the mourning, and the hungry, it shouldn't surprise us at all (and for that matter, when he pronounces "woe" to the well-fed, well-heeled, and comfortable, it's the other side of the same coin).  When Jesus declares that in God's Reign, the last are first and the first are last, it makes perfect sense since he has grown up immersed in the story of a God who humbled Pharaoh and delivered the enslaved from his grip. And when Jesus sets out his mission statement in his first hometown sermon, it is only natural that he announces (quoting from the book of Isaiah) that he has come to bring good news to the poor, freedom to the oppressed, release to the captive, the jubilee-year forgiveness of debts, and healing for the sick and wounded. He is only taking seriously what his parents first taught him about God, from their nightly stories and songs to the annual trips to Jerusalem for Passover.

That's important for us to remember--especially any of us who are in roles that shape the faith of young people, whether our children, our grandchildren, or the young faces in our congregations.  If we teach the next generation about the God of the Bible--the One who frees slaves, feeds the hungry, cares for the foreigner, and opposes the arrogant and powerful--then we aren't allowed to be upset with them for calling out our hypocrisy when we settle for some counterfeit version of our faith that sells out for political power, glorifies greed, and rationalizes cruelty to the vulnerable.  I have seen and heard from too many young adults who reach maturity feeling betrayed by the voices of Respectable Religion in their lives, who all insisted that they read their Bibles and ask, "What Would Jesus Do?" only to be criticized by their elders when they actually took seriously the Bible's call to care for those on the margins and Jesus' priority for "the least of these." I have read the words of too many teenagers and twenty-somethings who truly listened in childhood when their Sunday School teachers instructed them to follow the way of Jesus, who calls us to dedicated servanthood, radical peacemaking, and expansive love of neighbor, only to see those same people embrace the self-centered "Me and My Group First!" thinking that smells of sulfur and runs counter to Christ.  For any of us who spend our time and energy teaching young people to follow Jesus, we should be prepared for them to hold us accountable when we are the ones who fall short of Jesus' ways, and we dare not criticize them later for actually taking seriously the character of the God we taught them about.

In all honesty, I have not run across many people at all who gave up on Christianity because they found Jesus lacking.  I have, however, known far too many who left the church because when they actually took Jesus' radical love and concern for justice seriously, it was Respectable Religious Folks who scolded them or derided them as "bleeding hearts." If we will allow this scene from early in Luke's gospel to speak to us, it might remind us that Jesus took seriously what his family and faith community taught him about God. He listened and took to heart that the God of Israel was the One who freed slaves and fed them as they sought refuge out of Pharaoh's grip, rather than endorsing Pharaoh's sort of law and order. And when that same Jesus came to maturity, he continued to live out of the faith he had learned from childhood. May we do the same, and may we raise children and young people in faith who take seriously the way of Jesus, wherever that leads them, and however it directs them to change the world.

Lord God, re-ground us in who you are, and enable us to teach those in our care about your ways that care for the vulnerable, the lost, and the left-out.

Standing on the Edge--December 27, 2024

Standing on the Edge--December 27, 2024

"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 significant. That you are on the verge of something vitally important. That you are standing on the edge of 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, like we are on the edge of a watershed event in life, 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 John Lewis and Bayard Rustin with him, all of them 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 we stand on the edge 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.

 

The Ecstatic Fire--December 26, 2024

The Ecstatic Fire--December 26, 2024

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ." [Titus 2:11-13]

Christ's coming is about bringing life... for everybody.

It really is just that big a deal. It really is just that amazing a grace. And it really is just that good a gift.

Getting that, like really and truly understanding that, has a way of clarifying everything else, doesn't it? About this season, about this life, about what you and I do with our twenty-four hours a day, too. When we stop back and hold everything up to the filter of, "How much does this thing matter in light of Christ's coming to bring life for all people?" a lot of stuff can be set aside, and other things become ever more important.

Like here's one. I'll be honest with you: there are a lot of things I don't fuss about at Christmas-time anymore, and I think it has everything to do with asking, "What really matters, knowing that Christ is coming to bring life for all people?" I don't get nearly so worked up about pulling off the "perfect" Christmas--I don't get bent out of shape if the tree isn't up by a certain date, or if it's up earlier than normal. I don't get upset if I can't find "the perfect present" for someone, because I know that Christmas isn't really about my ability to boast about my excellent present-getting ability. And I most certainly do not make a fuss over whether people say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" or if they spell out the word "Christ" in "Christmas" or just abbreviate it with the first letter in Christ's name from the Greek ("X", or "chi"), as in "X-mas." These things are not worth making a fuss about, because not a one of them can deflect God's way of bringing life for all people through Christ.

And in the bigger scheme of things, there is the same clarity. A lot of stuff I used to worry about, or care about, or waste my energy on, I am freed from being captive to any longer, because they just don't matter compared to God's infinite labor of love in Christ that brings life to all. I don't care anymore what people think of the car I drive--if it gets me from one place to another, that is what I need. I don't need to fuss over having the latest rectangle of technology so that I can stare into its screen with more of my life. I don't need to get upset if neighbors around me look different from me, or worship differently from the way I do, or speak a language that is not my own. I don't need to feel threatened by the presence of people from other countries living in the neighborhood where I live. And I absolutely do not need to worry about whether I look like a "winner" to anybody else. And honestly, it is freeing not to have to be entangled with those things, because I know what it's like to play some of those games, and they are all losing deals.

I think something like this is what the letter to Titus has in mind when it says that God's grace has appeared, "bringing salvation to all," and at the same time that this grace is "training us" to say NO to some things and to say YES to others. This passage, which many of us heard read on Christmas Eve, aren't about handing down new rules to follow or else getting sent to hell--it's about asking the question, "What do I not need to spend my life on any longer in light of God's desire to bring life to all people through Christ?" And then the follow up is about asking, "What becomes more important in light of Christ's coming, too?" It's about clarity--we learn what things don't require the drama anymore, and what things are worth giving our attention to all the more.

And here's what happens the more we hold all of our lives up to the light of Christ's coming. We care less about making money, and more about how we spend time. We get less fussy about demanding "my rights" and more invested in making sure everybody has enough to eat. We spend less energy insisting on putting "Me and My Group First!" and devote more of ourselves to asking about the folks who feel like they've slipped through the cracks or been stepped on. We are less interested in chasing after the mirage they sell called "happiness" or "the American dream," and will be more interested in spreading joy and in participating in God's dream of life given to all.

It is sad to me that we use this season, which is supposedly about rearranging our priorities in light of Christ's coming, to get so many other distractions added into our lives, and how we end up having less clarity about what matters rather than more. But just because there are so many other voices in the background noise of life these days (many of them singing, "Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland" or "Last Christmas", and accompanied by the sound of rhythmic sleigh bells), it doesn't mean we cannot pause ourselves for a moment and ask the liberating, clarifying, life-giving question: What really matters, and what is worth giving myself to, in light of God's desire to bring salvation and life to all people?

That kind of question will help us to take things seriously that matter, and to let go of the silliness and fussiness that does not need to be ours any longer. It will be, like Marilynne Robinson says about grace in Gilead, "a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essentials." Or like Rilke says in his beloved poem:

"God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand."

That's just it. Amid all the nonsense and melodrama that folks get worked up about in this season, you and I can be voices of clarity and sanity. We will hear that voice of God spoken to us as well, taking each of us by the and leading us into the country called life.

Lord God, give us clarity like the crispness of cold night air in December--the clarity of what is worth holding onto, and what we can stop chasing after, in light of your saving love for all people. Here, take our hand.

 

God and The Singin' Angel Armies--December 25, 2024

God and The Singin' Angel Armies--December 25, 2024

"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 Savior, 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.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” (Luke 2:8-14)

It's an army.  A "host," that is.

You know, the word the Christmas story uses to describe the whole flock of angels that gathers to break into a praise chorus to God as the birth of the Messiah is announced to the night-shift shepherds?  It's "host"--and it means "army." (This is one of my pet peeves about translation--sometimes we lose meaning because a word in our own language has lost its earlier meaning, or we just all get used to bad but familiar mistranslations, like the Greek word often translated "inn," which isn't really the word for "inn" but rather the one for "guest room" or "spare room." Alas... soap box moment over...)

Anyway, the whole "heavenly host" is the standing battalion of angelic warriors at God's disposal.  The Greek word Luke uses here is the word for a military unit, an "army," and he just got the idea from the Scriptures of ancient Israel. Throughout the Hebrew Bible (what we sometimes call the "Old Testament"), God is described as having command over countless ranks upon ranks of angel armies, or "hosts," to the point that one of the most frequent titles for God in ancient Israel was "Yahweh, God of hosts." Even some English hymns and songs use that language, either translating it, or using English letters for the Hebrew word "tsavaot," so you'll sometimes see God referred to as "Lord Sabaoth." That's not a misspelling of "sabbath," but rather the word for "hosts," as in "God of the many angel armies." (The other word "host" meaning "person throwing a party" is a homonym, but that's a conversation for another day.)  

So anyway, just to make sure we're picturing the right thing here, the Savior of the world is born in Bethlehem.  God dispatches an angel to go tell, not King Herod or the high priest, not the local leader of the Zealot militia or the mystic Essenes out by the Dead Sea, and not any notable citizens of power or influence, but a bunch of low-ranking sheep herders (fans of Star Wars might add "scruffy-looking"). And then, after the initial announcement, the lone angel is now flanked by a "multitude of the heavenly host"--a vast number of angel armies, who are perpetually on call and ready at a moment's notice to snap into action at God's beck and call.

And what do these ever-ready angelic warriors do at this climactic moment in salvation history?

They--sing.

They break into praise of God, in those familiar words, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace..." It is the big show-stopping number of Luke: The Musical.

But what these angelic warriors notably do NOT do... is fight anybody.

Funny, isn't it?  After literally centuries of build-up in the Scriptures of ancient Israel, reminding us that God has a plethora of platoons of these supernatural warriors ready to snap into action, when they are finally called upon to do something, God sends them to sing.  They do not do battle at the birth of the Savior, because that is not how God saves the world.  Despite the fact that God has seemingly limitless numbers of armored angels ready for action, the way God actually saves the world is through Jesus, the helpless infant just being laid in a pile of hay.  The angels have a role to play on this day, but it's not as the warriors--more like the cheerleaders or the marching band.  That's because the way God saves is not ultimately through zapping, smiting, fighting, or destroying, but through self-giving, suffering love.  Salvation comes through the humanity of Jesus and the seeming weakness of a cross, not a SEAL Team of Supernatural Seraphim armed to the teeth.  The Christmas story insists that God doesn't need to bomb anybody, threaten anybody, or invade anybody in order to save the world. God saves through incarnation, death, and resurrection, not intimidation, shock, and awe. The angel armies are there that night--but they just sing.

And of course, it's worth remembering that on the night of Jesus' arrest, when the lynch mob is coming and Jesus' followers are contemplating an armed fight to retaliate, Jesus speaks up and reminds them, "Don't you know that I could call down twelve legions of angels to fight for me if I chose to?"  In other words, Jesus has the potential back-up ready and available. He just knows that's not how God's Reign works.  (Again, a Star Wars quote comes to mind: Rose Tico says, "That's how we're going to win--not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.")  That's how it works with Jesus and the angel armies, too.  They are there at the key moments: silent as Jesus is arrested by the police and put on trial; present on the night of his birth, but only to sing; testifying to the resurrection, but immediately handing the message onto the women at the scene of the empty tomb.  The angel armies are at the ready, but their role is ultimately not to fight, but to give glory to God as God does the saving.

As theologian N.T. Wright put it recently, "There are two ways of projecting power: there is Herod’s way, and there is Jesus’ way. Those who celebrate Christmas in a world of power plays and power struggles near and far should read" the gospels and rediscover that Jesus' way was never going to involve zapping enemies with the fire and fury of angel armies.  The heavenly hosts are called in, but to sing, not to slay. The way God wins, after all, is to save what God loves.

And that, most definitely, includes you.

Merry Christmas.

Glory to you, O God, in highest heaven.  And on this war-weary world, Good Lord of Hosts, bring peace.

God Comes Near... Anyway--December 24, 2024

God Comes Near... Anyway--December 24, 2024

"(Joseph) 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 2:5-7)

God comes near... even when we have not invited God in first.

God comes near... even when we do not set aside a special place for God to dwell.

God comes near... even when the most we will offer are secondhand barnyard furnishings.

The wonder to me about the Nativity story this year is that God bears with us even when we make no room for God. And comes among us even when the only spot available is a nook on the margins, off to the edges of our awareness.

You probably know these words of Luke's as he recounts the birth of Jesus.  They are the ones we recite every year on Christmas Eve (you can hear them in a church near you very, very soon, in fact!), and they are likely words you have pantomimed a Christmas pageant to as they were narrated by a Sunday School teacher back in your childhood.  They are the words good ol' Linus proclaims at the pivotal moment in the classic A Charlie Brown Christmas, too.  But I'm not sure that we really let it sink in (I know I surely don't always) that the Savior is born despite the fact that the world doesn't make room for him.

God doesn't un-save the world or back out of the plan to redeem creation because we were too busy to notice the Messiah about to be born.  God doesn't pass humanity by because we are occupied with other things.  God doesn't throw a fit of indignance because we didn't roll out the red carpet and break out into trumpet fanfare.  Even when the only space available was a makeshift delivery room where the animals were kept, God has been willing to come to us to find a place on the margins.

In a sense, this is the whole gospel in a nutshell: that God reserves the right to get the last word even when we decline to welcome God in.  God reserves the right to save us anyway, even when we won't carve out the space or time or attention to see what God is doing.  God reserves the right, as has been said before, to "reject our rejection" and enter the world despite our indifference about giving God space to dwell.

God doesn't insist that the Nativity be set up in the center of town with spotlight all around to draw all the attention. Rather, God so loves the world that God is still committed to coming into our midst even when the only space available is a borrowed food trough. It's a through-line of the whole story of Jesus, too: the One who is laid in a manger because "there was no place for them" is the One crucified outside the city gate on the margins and at the edges of Jerusalem.  And both moments underscore the lengths God is willing to go to in order to love us.

When you hear the story again, remember this detail: God doesn't give up on the grand design to mend the universe just because we haven't set aside a five-star hotel room or penthouse apartment for Jesus to stay in. The child is born for us, and the son is given to us, even when we made no room. God came near... anyway.

Thank God.

Overcome our resistance, our indifference, and our apathy again, O God, and come among us.

Withstanding the Worst--December 23, 2024

Withstanding the Worst--December 23, 2024

"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." [Luke 2:1-4]

It is hard work, but sometimes the best way to deal with blowhards and bullies is to outwait them and outlast them. I see that now, this year in our journey toward Christmas, more than I think I ever have before, even though it's been there in the familiar story all along. For whatever else the Nativity story is about, it begins with a reminder that God was willing to bear putting up with the outrageous arrogance of the empire while setting things into motion to save the very world that Caesar thought he ruled.  God withstands the worst that the empire could dish out, in order to redeem us all.

The familiar words of the story of Jesus' birth start out with the announcement of an imperial census, something that either seems like a random historical tangent or frames the entire story in a revolutionary light. For a lot of my life, I'll confess, I heard these opening verses as just boring exposition, a who's-who of imperial bureaucrats who happened to be in power when the familiar story of the shepherds and angels and manger happened. But now, somehow I can't shake the feeling that there's more going on here.

After all, Luke, the narrator, could have chosen anywhere to start this episode of the story, and he chooses to give us the backdrop of Caesar and his decree that "all the world" should be counted, registered, and assessed. Caesar Augustus liked to imagine that he was the gods' gift to the world, and literally called himself in imperial decrees "the savior of the world" whose birth was "good news for all people." Caesar was convinced that he ruled the whole world--or at least that the parts he ruled were the only parts that mattered. His official imperial propaganda declared that he alone could rescue a world in danger and bring order to the chaos all around. Caesar used things like this census to flex some imperial muscle, too--to get updated tax-collection information and to puff up his ego with ever-increasing numbers of subjects. And any time Caesar decreed something like this, it was a chance to consolidate his power, crush dissent, and reinforce his rule.

Seriously, even just simply complying with the edict to go back to one's own hometown to be registered must have felt like it was letting Caesar win. On his whim, everyone else has to put their lives on hold long enough to go back to their native country? You can't help but imagine poor Joseph muttering a few choice profanities about the emperor as he made plans to stop working for a while and pack a bag for himself and for Mary to go back to his family's hometown of Bethlehem. Even just going back home to be counted felt like you were a lamb being tallied in an inventory before the slaughter. Even consenting to being "registered" must have felt like you were giving the evils of the Roman Empire an easy win you wish they wouldn't get away with. It must have been hard for Joseph to comply and give the arrogant, god-complex-manifesting Caesar Augustus one more victory, no matter how small it might have seemed in the big scheme of things, and force his fiance Mary to come along for the bumpy ride that seemed to serve no purpose but to prop up the Empire.

Zoom out to a bigger scale, and it becomes clear, too, that it had to have been difficult, honestly, for God to give Caesar his moment. God was willing to work through the means of this imperial census, to use its procedures as a part of the grand design to save the world through the promised Messiah. But that also meant letting Caesar have this moment to glory in, when it looked like the Empire had everyone and everything under its thumb, even while God was at work right under the nose of the Empire to bring about something new. Much like you have to imagine God being patient during the childhood of Moses, when the child of enslaved Hebrews was raised right under Pharaoh's watch [on Pharaoh's dime, no less] before becoming the one to confront Pharaoh and insist on the freedom of those Egypt held in bondage, now before Jesus' birth God has to be willing to let the Empire's moves play out, even if for a moment that makes it look like Rome is all-powerful. God, in other words, is patient in letting the powers of the day have their moment. God will end up using the very circumstances that lead Joseph to Bethlehem for Caesar's census, but at first God has to be willing to bear letting Caesar and his empire brag about their power and greatness. And I've got to admit, that seems really hard to me.

Some part of us wants to see bullies immediately smacked down out of their positions of power. Some part of us wants to insist that they get their comeuppance, and sooner rather than later. And something inside us just wants to see the smug looks of the arrogant and smirks of the power-hungry wiped from their faces. It is hard to see them grandstanding, and hard to hear them crowing about their self-imagined greatness, and sometimes you really just want someone to come along and bravely say, "The emperor is wearing no clothes." And while I can't imagine what it's like inside the mind of God, I have to think it's an affront to God's goodness and character for a cruel military dictator like Caesar to go around claiming he's the savior of the world whose empire is the source of all good things, right in God's face. But God's doesn't lash out with lightning from the sky to zap Caesar [that's what the Roman or Greek gods like Zeus or Jupiter would do, of course]. God doesn't yell a big thundering, "No!" when Caesar issues his decree. Instead, God is patient. God is willing to let poor, pathetic Caesar bellow out all his orders, and still to work behind the scenes and right under the Empire's nose. God refuses to let the Empire's cruelty and arrogance push God into giving up or walking away from the world, but neither does God take the bait and play by the Empire's rules. God keeps working, without fanfare or imperial announcement, even while Caesar thinks he is the one calling the shots. I don't know what else to call that but patient love--love that is willing to put the good of the beloved [the world] before the ego's needs to look "right" or "victorious" for the moment. And that kind of love is hard--it just is.

But once we recognize that layer of this story, it adds a whole new dimension to the love of God. It means that Christ's birth--the event we celebrate at Christmas--isn't an easy gift, but one that comes with sacrifice. God chooses the patient, slow-moving, quiet way of redeeming the world, and that means the willingness to sacrifice God's reputation while the Empire brags and boasts about its glorious greatness, all for the sake of loving the world through the Christ-child. Apparently, God is convinced you are worth that kind of sacrifice. Apparently, God believes you are so precious that God can live through all of the bluster of every Caesar and every Empire in order to remain committed to you. Apparently, you and this whole world are worthy of such extreme lengths of love--God is willing to withstand the worst in order to love us.

Gracious God, open our eyes to the depths of your love for us, today and always.

Listening to the Women--December 20, 2024

Listening to the Women--December 20, 2024

"In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord'." (Luke 1:39-45)

The women in this story know what they are talking about. The men are struck silent.

The untrained and unschooled turn out to understand the ways of the Divine in these scenes. It is the Respectable Religious Professionals who are dumbfounded.

The people in positions of power, prestige, and privilege are skipped right over as God breaks into history. The anybodies (who are more often than not treated as nobodies by the world) are the ones whom God seeks out and works through.  In fact, given the identity of the child forming in Mary's womb, I suppose you could say that they are the ones God comes to dwell inside of.

This is one of those patterns in the Christmas story that is there just shouting from the pages of the Gospels, and yet it is so easy to miss staring us in the face.  As Luke tells it to us, the story of Jesus' birth has the women speak and the men quiet--Zechariah is struck mute during Elizabeth's pregnancy, and Joseph doesn't get a speaking line at all.  Meanwhile, Mary and Elizabeth are open to trusting what God has told them, and they understand how their children will be a part of God's great sweeping new movement in history.  Zechariah is a trained, ordained, and pedigreed priest--a supposed expert on the way God is "supposed" to operate, and yet he can't bring himself to believe what the angel tells him. And at the same time, Mary and Elizabeth dare to believe that God is moving in their lives and through them in ways that will change the whole world. Over and over again, it's the ones who have been regarded as less-than who end up having the greatest awareness of what God is really doing--and the greatest openness to letting God do it.

In this scene from Luke, Mary and Elizabeth meet and embrace, both in awe and amazement at how God is working in their lives. Even the child in Elizabeth's womb seems to know what's going on, kicking at the presence of Mary and her unborn son, Jesus. These are not the ones you expect to be "in the know," so to speak.  Women often had much less formal education, and neither of them would have had the status or social standing of someone like Zechariah, a priest. And of course nobody expects a baby still in utero to know anything going on in the world beyond the womb! And yet, that's part of how God operates, isn't it? God is always finding the people on the margins, seeking the folks who have been disregarded, and showing divine power and wisdom through the ones counted as "weak" or "foolish."

The very fact that it's Mary and Elizabeth who are reflecting on the meaning of their pregnancies, rather than a conclave of learned priests, public officials, and religion scholars, is the dead giveaway that God is behind the scenes.  Lifting up the lowly and claiming the ones who have been overlooked for special purposes turns out to be God's calling card--this is precisely the sort of thing we should be looking for as the mark of divine fingerprints.  Mary and Elizabeth, it turns out, are attuned to the way God works and can see their place within the bigger picture of God's design, because they know that God is the sort of character who, as Mary will sing it, "fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty."

If this seems strange to our ears, maybe it's time for us to sit silently with Zechariah and listen to the wisdom Mary and Elizabeth have to share with us.  If God's choice to bypass the Big Deals and to silence the pompous Guardians of Respectable Religion makes us squirm, perhaps we need to let these women speak and allow ourselves to learn from these mothers who were the first teachers of Jesus and John the Baptizer. And once we do, we'll start to see the recurring pattern everywhere--we'll see signs of the God who finds the forgotten and bypasses the Big Deals all around us.  Maybe it will even start to rub off on us and the choices we make, too.

Let's dare to listen to these women... and see how it changes our perspective of God and the world.

Lord God, we give you thanks for your ways of choosing unlikely people to work through, for raising up the lowly, and for breaking beyond the boxes that the experts would put you in. Allow us to see your way of moving through the world in our lives, too.

God Waits, Too--December 19, 2024

God Waits, Too--December 19, 2024

"The angel said to Mary, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.' Then Mary said, 'Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.' Then the angel departed from her." [Luke 1:35-38]

In this moment, something amazing happens. Mary begins to wait for what the angel has promised... but so does God.

That's a strange thought, probably. We tend to think that one of the perks of being God should be not having to wait for things. After all, God could choose to snap a divine finger and make a baby appear, right? God just speaks the universe into existence, right? Jesus just shouts to Lazarus, and the dead man comes back to life, right? Surely a God who can launch creation with a simple, "Let there be light" and pulls off a resurrection by simply saying, "Lazarus, come out!" can also make a fully formed human being at the drop of a hat. Why even start with a baby, while we're on the subject? Why not just speak a cosmic, "Bazinga!" and have a fully-grown adult Jesus appear out of the smoke?

Because, of course, this moment is about God's complete embrace of humanity--God goes "all the way down," so to speak, to be completely immersed in our human life. And, whether we like it or not, human life involves existing within the bounds of time. That means waiting... both Mary waiting for a child now growing inside her to be born, and also God waiting for the same thing. God waits doubly, you could say: God waits on the outside, alongside Mary, for the nine months to pass, and God waits in the womb, too, as cells divide, as fingers form, as life grows there in the darkness. God waits because God chooses to--because fully entering into humanity requires the time for growing, developing, and becoming.

This waiting is really an amazing thing, both on Mary's part, and on God's. For her part, Mary commits to an entirely new course of her life with her "Yes" to the angel. Her consent is important, and maybe we don't often consider what a wonder it is that God hangs the whole story of the universe's salvation on the consenting response of a teenage girl (and, to be quite frank, teenagers as a rule are not known for their excellence in patience). But there, as everything depends on what Mary will say--and her willingness to live into the "Yes" she speaks. Because with her sentence, "Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word," she consents to the waiting of the nine months... and then the years of raising this child... and the heartache and sorrow that are waiting along the way, too. It won't be long once the child is born, after all, that old Simeon will warn Mary that there is a pierced heart in store for her, too, because she will ache over the suffering of her boy.

Whatever other life plans Mary had made, whatever other cookie cutter vision of Plan A for a Successful Life she had grown up with, whatever other dreams for how her life would go, these things were set aside with her "Yes" to the pregnancy. That is a wonder, just by itself. It is a radical break from the childish way we have of demanding our own way, right away, "or else." Children (and childish grown-ups as well) like to bellow threats that go, "If I don't get my way, I'll knock it all down!" We who live in this age of push-button ordering of merchandise on our phones and computer screens, we who can instantly download movies on a whim, we who are used to instant gratification, we demand our wishes be granted, and we want it now, like we are a whole society full of Veruca Salts. But Mary doesn't insist on getting her way, right away. Instead, she agrees to be a part of what the angel has asked her to be a part of, even when the first step of that plan is to wait... for nine months... allowing her body to be changed, her comfort to be set aside, her plans to be put on hold, and her life turned upside down.

And God waits, too. After centuries of promises, centuries of working through (and working in spite of, sometimes) obstinate, ornery people, here the moment for the arrival of the Promised One was so close! We might have been tempted, if we had been in God's shoes, to rush through this last step, to short-circuit human biology and just have a Messiah emerge from the wilderness a full-grown adult, or beam down on one of those fiery chariots. But instead God waits as well--waiting even to have the angel speak to Mary first before just charging ahead with the divine design. God waits--and all of creation, too, in that moment--for Mary's "Yes." And then God waits the months of pregnancy, the years of childhood, the drama of adolescence, and the beginnings of adulthood, before Mary's boy Jesus steps onto the scene ready to live out the calling of "messiah."

All of those things--the teachings, the miracles, the dinner parties with outcasts, the foot-washing, the cross, and the resurrection--all of those are off in a distant future as the angel speaks with Mary here. And yet, with her "Yes," something has begun, and now God is present in and with Mary, within her own body, her own life, even in the waiting.

We keep coming back to this surprising and life-giving truth: even when we are waiting for God to act in some big way, God is with us in the waiting now. Unlike the childish voices of our day that shout, "If I don't get MY way, RIGHT away, I'm walking out!" ours is a God who stays with us in our waiting, who goes to Mary for her consent to share in the waiting too, and who endures the necessary waiting as a part of completely entering into our humanity.

For whatever places in your life you feel like you are waiting for big things to happen, or are caught in one of those big transitions in life where everything else is in flux, this is a moment to remember that God waits, too. Not passively sitting on hands up in heaven, but waiting all the same. God waits with us, and for us, and within us... even while we are looking ahead to God's great and promised future.

What else can we say back to a God who goes through all of that with us, but, "Here we are, servants of the Lord; let it be with us just as you have said"?

Lord God, here we are, your servants. Let it be with us as you say, and we will wait, while you wait, too, as you bring about great things among us and within us.

No Mascot for Bullies--December 18, 2024

No Mascot for Bullies--December 18, 2024

"The LORD, your God, is in your midst,
  a warrior who gives victory;
 he will rejoice over you with gladness,
  he will renew you in his love;
 he will exult over you with loud singing
  as on a day of festival.
 I will remove disaster from you,
  so that you will not bear reproach for it.
 I will deal with all your oppressors
  at that time.
 And I will save the lame
  and gather the outcast,
 and I will change their shame into praise
  and renown in all the earth.
  At that time I will bring you home,
  at the time when I gather you;
 for I will make you renowned and praised
  among all the peoples of the earth,
 when I restore your fortunes
  before your eyes, says the LORD." (Zephaniah 3:17-20)

Just in case it needed to be said, the God of the Scriptures does not take the side of the bullies.

God does not "punch down," as it were, either, to pick on those who are already being harassed. 

And while we are on the subject, the real and living God (as opposed to an inert or imagined idol) has a reputation for lifting up the ones who are beaten down, gathering the ones who have been cast out and left behind, and silencing the bullies to stop them.

Like I say, that much should be obvious--it's sort of Bible 101 stuff, since the Bible shows us God as the One who liberates of the enslaved Hebrews and humbles Pharaoh, who gives children to the childless, and who insists on special protections for vulnerable people like widows, orphans, and foreigners.  When the ancient Israelites thought about who God really was, these were the kinds of answers that came to them, over and over again: God was the One who healed the hurting, rather than inflicting more injuries. God was the One who carried the sick and the weak, rather than leaving them behind to fend for themselves.  And most certainly, God was not endorsing bullies or oppressors to give them permission to intimidate other people.  In other words, if you asked Joe or Joann Israelite on the street to define "God" for you, they would have started with phrases like "the One who gathers outcasts in" or "the One who saves the troubled," before nebulous answers like, "the Big Guy in the Sky" or some ambiguous "higher power." 

We need to start there because our hope as Christians is rooted in who God is--in the sort of character God has and the particular priorities that God has shown.  What makes our hope more than mere wishful thinking is that we count on God to be who God has always been, and we trust that God's character is reliable--that God will always be the One on the side of the bullied, the troubled, and the harassed, rather than the puppet of the power-hungry Pharaohs, Caesars, and Herods.  We are hopeful about the coming of God's Reign and the appearance of God's Messiah because we are convinced that the promised Christ is no mascot for bullies nor an ally of tyrants, but a binder of wounds and a gatherer of outcasts. It is because God is reliable that we can hope, rather than fear, the coming Christ.

These words from Zephaniah, then, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, are a reminder of why this season of looking ahead to Christ's coming (both at Bethlehem and in God's promised future) is one of expectation rather than dread.  This season called Advent is a time of hope because of who God is, rather than fear as if we didn't know what sort of deity would show up or which side of the bed God will wake up on each day.

To be honest, a lot of the other things, events, and people we have put our hopes in before have let us down because the folks we counted on didn't prove reliable.  We've all been let down by the broken promises of politicians and demagogues.  We've heard stories of abusers and addicts who all swear, "This time will be different!" only to slide back into the same old patterns.  We've been sold shoddy merchandise and misled by pundits on TV screens.  But the bedrock claim of the Scriptures is that we know ours is the sort of God who sides with the bullied and beaten rather than amplifying the blowhards who do the bullying and the beating. We know who God is, and that gives us reason to hope for the coming of God's Reign and the arrival of God's Chosen One--the Christ.

Don't forget that in these remaining days before the hoopla and hurry of Christmas.  Don't forget the reason why we can be filled with hope rather than dread in all this talk about the coming of the Christ: we know who God is, reliably and faithfully. We trust God to be the One who lifts up the lowly, and who gathers in the ones left on the margins.

Lord God, be your authentic self for this whole hurting world, and we will rejoice to see you at work.

 

The Beginning of a Turn--December 17, 2024

The Beginning of a Turn--December 17, 2024

"John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, 'The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit'." [Mark 1:4-8]

Nobody "decides" to be loved.

You can't. It's not your choice.

If you are loved, it is a reality entirely out of your control, and depends on the choice of the one doing the loving--the "Lov-ER", so to speak.

But what can--and does--happen, and with some regularity on this planet in fact, is that people realize that they are beloved. Now that is a thing. And, I suppose, you could also say that once you realize you are beloved by someone, you do get to decide what you will do about that reality. Will you allow yourself to be loved, or will you run from it? Will you return the love, or will it go unrequited? Will you allow love to shape you (because love, like the river that carved the Grand Canyon will shape you in its likeness over time), or will you harden your heart? These are open questions, but to be clear, they are responses to finding yourself beloved, not conditions for acquiring that love.

The same is true with being forgiven, honestly--and this is a point about which we seem to be rather confused. You can't "decide" to be forgiven. It is, like being loved, a condition that one receives. Someone else does the forgiving (or not). Someone else decides not to weaponize the past and hold it against you anymore. But you cannot choose to be forgiven any more than you can choose to be found "not guilty" by the judge in court. It is a status that is given by someone else's choice--the real question is how you will respond to the gift of being forgiven. You can act like it is true, and allow the burying of hatchets (and the shovels that buried those hatchets, too) to restore the relationship you once had. You can decide to walk away, never to darken the other person's doorstep again. You can decide to stay bent in on yourself as though the forgiveness had not been extended. You can act like you never did anything wrong and never needed forgiveness in the first place. Those are all possible options, I suppose--but notice that among all of them, they are all responses (or non-responses, in some cases) to being forgiven, not conditions one must fulfill in order to "win" or "earn" or "deserve" forgiveness.

And, as with finding yourself beloved, you can choose whether or not to allow the reality of being forgiven to shape you--to allow it to leave its mark on you like the wind carving the hills in the Painted Desert. And that is indeed your choice--to be turned in the direction of the forgiver, or to hold on to your damned pride (and I mean that literally), dig your heels in, and turn away from the free gift of a new beginning. You may choose not to "like" the fact of being forgiven, and you may choose to continue doing the terrible things that broke relationship in the first place. But you cannot decide to be forgiven--that can only be given to you.

We need to be clear about all of those things to rightly understand the message of John, who prepares us for the coming of Jesus.  We need to be clear that being forgiven, like being loved, comes first, if we are going to understand what John the Baptizer was all about. When Mark the Gospel-writer summarizes John's project, he says John came on the scene "proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." And that could sound very much like John imagined that if you prayed the right prayer, or said you were sorry enough, or did enough good deeds to prove your contrition along with his Jordan River Dunking ceremony, you would be forgiven. It could sound like John's offer was that if you participated in his water ritual and then promised God that you would be a good little Gallant instead of a naughty ol' Goofus, then you would acquire forgiveness.

This would be a mistake.

I say that, not only because the nature of forgiveness itself is that, like being loved, it is someone else's choice to love you, not your choice to "be loved," but also because the deeper Biblical concept we translate as "repentance" has more to do with a change of mind and a new way of thinking, seeing, and responding to the world than it does with saying you are sorry, or feeling guilty, or walking up to the altar at church. "Repenting," at least as the Greek word was used in the first-century AD, looks more like a change of allegiance, a rearranging of priorities, or a change of mindset based on new information, rather than a matter of feeling "guilty enough" for sins or earning brownie points to get in good with the Divine.

So, rather than imagining that John the Baptizer's message boiled down to, "If you want to convince God to grant you forgiveness in the future, come out into the river with me and you will procure it for yourself," it's much more like John was saying, "Are you ready to decide to live in response to what God has already decided about you? Good--then let this be the moment you remember as the time you quit being defined by the old orientation of your life, and let this water be an object lesson for you of the way forgiveness shapes you like erosion carves rock." It was the beginning of a turn--a turning toward the direction of the Forgiver rather than being further bent in on oneself. But John, who was never one to be impressed by empty ritual, certainly wasn't saying that if you did his little aquatic ceremony, that you could earn something that can only be given to you in the first place.

That means, in the end, that preparing for Jesus' entry into our lives is less about trying to make ourselves look good in order to impress the Messiah when he comes (as though he couldn't see our present messes!), and more about whether we will decide to see the world as Jesus would have us... whether we will see ourselves as Jesus would have us... whether we will see our priorities and choices, our actions and words, through the same lens of love that Jesus does. There is a cost, to be sure, to taking John up on his offer of repentance--the cost of the old orientation in exchange for the new. There is a loss, you could say, but it is a loss like the lumpy jagged boulders that are smoothed out and transformed by the shape of the wind over eons, until they are works of art in stone in the desert. What is lost is only what was not the shape of the wind.

I am reminded of a lyric from Jon Foreman of the band Switchfoot, who sings as in a prayer, "Oh Erosion--Spirit, fall like rain on my thirsty soul... Erosion, Oh sweet Erosion, break me and make me whole." Such a prayer is what repentance looks like--a choice to let Love shape us into Love's own likeness, a turning toward the One who has already done the forgiving, a daring to see the world from the vantage point of finding yourself forgiven and to act like it is true. Like the old hymn goes, "Love to the loveless shown... that they might lovely be."

To prepare for Jesus' entry onto the scene in our own lives is not about trying to show enough effort to win the status of being forgiven or being loved. It is to make the choice to see the world and ourselves as Jesus teaches us to see it, to give our allegiance to Jesus' way in the world rather than our own, to let his Spirit shape us like the wind and the rain and the river shaping rocks. That's what John was getting people riled up in the desert about, and that is what his witness calls us to on this day, too.

Hear this now, then: you are beloved. You are forgiven. You cannot do a thing about it, neither to make it happen or undo it. Being loved and forgiven is not your choice--it is God's, who does the loving and the forgiving.

The only question that remains, then, is--how will you respond to God's choice to love and forgive you? And dare we let the Spirit shape us in the direction of such Love, like the boulders yield to take the shape of the wind?

Lord Jesus, we dare to believe what you say about us. We dare to pledge our allegiance to you and to your Reign. We dare to let your Holy Wind, your Divine Breath, shape us according to your love.