God Is Not Ashamed--January 1, 2026

God Is Not Ashamed--January 1, 2026

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)

God isn't embarrassed to be seen with us.

God is not ashamed of being associated with us--not you, not me, not anybody.

God doesn't need to keep us at arm's length, or to stay up in the safety of heaven, hermetically sealed off from humanity, in order to avoid being tainted by our sin or disgusted with our messiness.

Whatever it means to talk about God's glory, it doesn't require some unearthly, ethereal bubble for God to live in far away where nothing unpleasant can get in. And for that matter, whatever it means when we talk about God being "holy," it can't mean some sort of allergy to sinful humans as though God can't stand to be in the presence of crooked, selfish sinners as we so often are. God comes right into the neighborhood, so to speak. More than that, God shares our humanity completely in Jesus--all the way down to the messy physicality of flesh and bone and blood.

We have to take that seriously if we are going to consider this powerful verse from the opening poem of John's Gospel, which sets the stage for the whole story of Jesus. John makes the audacious claim, not merely that God chose to communicate with humanity, and not even that God chose to appear in a vision or a dream to some lucky saint, but that God took on the utter fleshliness of human life.

We are, after all, basically walking, talking, bags of meat.  We are made up of muscle and tissue and bone, viscera and blood and assorted pulsing organs. To be human isn't a neat and tidy experience--we are not simply minds who think lovely and tidy thoughts, but we are physical beings, with bellies that get hungry, bodies that get tired, emotions that range from fierce anger to deep sorrow to fear that makes us tremble.  And as John tells it, God is not embarrassed to be associated with all of that--to experience it, to share it, and to take all of it into God's own being.  Whatever else it means to be "God," it has to include the ability--and the willingness--to walk the dusty roads of Palestine, eating at dinner parties with the tax collectors and sinners, and weeping outside the grave of his friend Lazarus.  All of it--the whole experience of being human, from sniffling noses and tear-stained cheeks, to gnawing hunger and bleeding vulnerability, is within God's life now, through Jesus.

And like I say, this makes a big difference in the way we understand the meaning of God's "glory" and God's "holiness."  I don't know about you, but over the years, I've heard plenty of religious voices that would have us believe that God's glory primarily has to do with God being untouched and unsullied by the messiness of the material world.  We think of it as God's radiance, like a blinding light that is undimmed and unaffected by the slings and arrows of mundane life--of eating and sleeping, of sweating and washing, and all the other stuff of our ordinary human routines.  I've heard plenty of those same religious voices talk about God's holiness in similar terms--that being "holy" means that God must be distant and damning toward our sinfulness, and that a holy God cannot stand to be in the presence of sin, lest God's purity and perfection be offended.  And to me, that always makes it sound like a flaw or a weakness on God's part--like some kind of allergic reaction to getting too close to scoundrels and sinners.

But again, if we take John at his word that in Christ Jesus, "the Word became flesh and lived among us," such that we "have seen his glory," then whatever that glory is, it can't be afraid of hanging out with the likes of us.  Whatever God's "holiness" is, it can't be a limitation that keeps God from touching our broken places, washing our dirty feet, or embracing us even while we are sinners. God has chosen, not only to come close to all of our mess, but to identify with it--to share it as God's own. That's the scandalous truth of the Gospel.

As a new year begins on the calendar, there's a certain freshness we often find at the turning of the page.  A new year often feels untainted and pure--no mess-ups yet, no broken resolutions yet, no disappointments or heartbreaks since the clock struck midnight.  It is easy to tell ourselves that God can come near when a new year begins, because we are starting fresh without red-pen marks on our permanent record.  But of course, the news John tells us is that God doesn't wait to come near only when we have a clean slate or a winning record.  God has come even knowing all the unresolved baggage we are still lugging with us from last year. God has come to us in Christ, knowing full well that the selfishness and sin we struggled with last year will still trouble us this year.  God has come to us, sharing the fullness of what it is to be human, because that is how God's love works.

And that sort of love--love that is willing to share with us the pains and the disappointments and the heartaches of life in this messy, physical, walking-meat-bag existence--well, that sort of love is nothing short of holy and glorious.  Indeed, we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth--it is the way God shares our flesh.

Lord Jesus, enable us to recognize your presence among us, and to know you are unashamed to share life as one of us.

The Rejectable God--December 31, 2025

The Rejectable God--December 31, 2025

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.... The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him." (John 1:5, 10-11)

God chooses to be, for lack of a better word, rejectable.

That's one of those notions which look simple at first blush, but which turns out to be utterly mind-blowing if you give it even a moment's thought. God--whom we often subtitle with words like "Almighty" or "Omnipotent"--choose to run the risk that we, who are God's creations and constantly dependent on God for our existence, will say "No" to God's good intentions and refuse to accept God's coming near.  

If that's how an all-powerful God acts, then we either have to radically reconsider what we mean by true power, or we may want to take up with a different deity. After all, conventional wisdom thinks that being powerful means demanding that you get your own way.  When you hear people at podiums shouting about being seen as "strong" and "tough," they tend to mean steamrolling over those who stand in your way, ignoring those who disagree, or silencing those who say "No" to your agenda.  When you hear authoritarian leaders describing their regimes as "powerful" and "great," they tend to mean pushing others around, getting rid of opponents who reject them, and taking by force what they want. God, on the other hand, chooses to be strong in a different way.  God's way of being God, so to speak, knowingly comes into a world that is going to reject God.  And God does it anyway.

That's the scandal of the Christian message. And yet, you can't say that John the Gospel-writer hides it in the fine print. Here in the opening verses of his telling of the story of Jesus, John begins with this poem describing Christ as both the "light" that shines in the darkness without being snuffed out, and at the same time, as the one who "came to what was his own, and his own people rejected him."  This is the paradox: Christ is the One by whom the world was made--and yet the same world didn't recognize or receive Christ. God took the risk of becoming rejectable in Christ Jesus, and we did precisely that: we rejected him.

The fact that John tells us this from the get-go means that both John the storyteller and Jesus, the very Word of God in flesh, know that this story is headed toward a cross.  We reject Jesus all the way to the point of killing him--and in him, we are rejecting God. God, of course, knows this already, and bears the pain of it.  God knows, not just from late on Maundy Thursday, or from Christmas night, that there are nails and a crown of thorns waiting--but from before "Let there be light..." and ever since.  And yet, God chose to be rejectable all the same.  That is God's kind of power. That is God's sort of strength.

We should probably be clear about that so that we can be honest about the kind of community we belong to if we are Jesus' followers.  We aren't joining forces with the biggest bully on the block in the hopes of getting the spoils when he pushes other people around.  We are disciples of the One who knew the world would reject him--and loved the world anyway.  We are children of the God who doesn't force, threaten, or intimidate the world into accepting God's presence or plans, but rather bears our defiance and temper tantrums with patient strength.  That's the family to which we belong. That's how we are called to love, too.

Once we hear John's opening description of what happens in Jesus' coming, we can't be the same anymore. And we can no longer be comfortable with the old strategies of bullies and authoritarians who impose their whims on others.  That is simply not compatible with the way of Jesus--which, as John keeps insisting, is the way of God.

Today, how might we be called to wield the power, not of cajoling or forcing others to do what we want, but to risk rejection and love anyway?

That, it turns out, is just the kind of love the world needs--even if it doesn't know it.

Lord Jesus, keep us from rejecting you any longer, and make us to love with your kind of enduring strength.

Every Face Divine--December 30, 2025

Every Face Divine--December 30, 2025

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being was life, and the life was the light of all people." [John 1:1-4]

We are going to have to come to terms with two things: first, that Christ (here called "the Word" by the evangelist John in a particularly poetic mood) is somehow one with God; and second, that Christ (the same Christ who is one with God) is also present in and through all of creation.

And that sure sounds like John is saying that the whole world--indeed the whole universe, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here--is steeped in the very presence of God and put together in the power of Christ. The whole world. All of it. Every nook and cranny. Every dark corner, deep sea trench, and dusty coal mine. Every sun-baked desert, tropical rainforest, and melting glacier. And every human heart, too.  It's all holy ground, just as every person is made in the image of God, and every face divine.

Both ideas--the idea of a human being (Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ and the Word) being somehow one with the Almighty and Eternal God, and then the idea that this Christ is somehow present to all of creation, in all of its messiness--are mind-boggling and scandalous. We could spend hundreds upon hundreds of pages probing at those mysteries--and in fact, Christians have spend an awful lot of time and paper and thought on the first of them. Indeed, what we have distilled for us into the handful of paragraphs we call the Creed was the product of a lot of arguing, thinking, praying, and the occasional slap from Saint Nicolas himself (true story!), all of it over the mystery of how Christ can be one with God and yet also distinct. Christians have been talking about that mystery with the convenient shorthand, "The Doctrine of the Trinity," for a long, long time now, and at least in the tradition I come from, we recite a summary of that doctrine every Sunday as part of our weekly worship. So even if we still don't quite understand it all, at least a good number of Christians have spent a good bit of time ruminating on the idea that Jesus Christ is one with God.

That doesn't mean we don't need to talk about it anymore, but it does mean that that particular mystery has gotten a lot of press over the years.

But the other, the perhaps less-considered mystery, still calls out for our attention and consideration. John the Gospel-writer also makes the claim that Christ touches every point of creation--that there is nothing in all the universe that doesn't bear his fingerprint, so to speak. And that does something very powerful to our view of the world, if we dare to let the idea seep into us. It means that, in a very real sense, it's all holy ground. Everywhere you step, you are both in the presence of God and in the handiwork of God. There is no place you can go where God isn't, and there is no face you can meet which is not made in the image of God. And because, as John the Gospel writer goes to great lengths to point out, Christ Jesus (the Word) is one with the living God, then there is no human being, anywhere, who does not bear the stamp of God's craftsmanship or the family resemblance to Christ somewhere.

That means Respectable Religious people bear the image of God... and so does the hot mess who has never darkened the doorway of a church but has walked in and out the door of rehab plenty of times without ever quite giving up their addiction. It means that the bald man who was your childhood neighbor is made in the image of Christ... and so is the woman who wears a head scarf, came here from across an ocean or two, and doesn't believe the same things you do about Jesus. It means that your town, your state, and your country are masterpieces of God... and so are the lands to the south, north, east, and west. It is all, irrefutably and inescapably, the creation of the God who made all things through Christ the Word. So whether a person or a place meets with my personal approval or not, they are already a creation of a God who takes ownership for all of it, the whole shootin' match we call the universe.

That doesn't mean we are all perfect peaches--just the opposite, actually. But despite the fact that every one of us is a hot mess in some way or another, and despite the fact that all of us constantly fail to live up to the fullness of love and creativity that God intends for us, God doesn't disavow making us or disconnect us from Christ who is the source of our life. Our very existence is evidence Christ hasn't given up on us, and in fact, longs for us to see that we bear the image of God.

For that matter, even though we collectively do a rotten job of taking care of the world that God has entrusted to us, it doesn't stop being God's creation. That's actually a pretty big idea to consider, because it means that even though God is apparently willing to risk that we will wreck the place, God still loves and claims ownership of this world, this life, and this day. The Scriptures do not give us permission to shrug and say, "This is our world to do with as we please," and then in the same breath say, "and God will just stop the wildfires we set or make some more turtles to replace the ones we've killed." No, in fact, God bears all the terrible things we do the world in which we have been placed--and the people who live in it--and still God claims ownership over the world, even while we are wrecking the place. When we do wreck things, though, we should be honest--we are wrecking a world made by God, through Christ, filled with the Spirit. We should be clear: the world we either care for or wreck, is holy ground, through and through.

Every face bears a family resemblance to Christ's face.

Every place bears the telltale scorch marks of the presence of divine fire like Moses taking off his shoes before the burning bush from which God spoke.

The Bible itself tells us so--so to take God's Word seriously is also to take God's world seriously.

Now, go step out into the world that is steeped in the presence of Christ--and live in it today, among other people today, like that is true.

Lord Jesus, reveal your face to us in the world around us, and in the faces you send across our path today.

God Enters Into the Story--December 29, 2025

God Enters Into the Story--December 29, 2025

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children." [Gal. 4:4-5]

Terrible things happen in the world sometimes.

God is not caught off guard by them.

Both of these are true, as hard as it is to hold them together.

In fact, both together are what the child in the manger is all about. And without them, we run the risk of sentimentalizing Christmas into mush.

We cannot simply cover over the evil in our world with a slogan announcing that "God loves us" and ignore the fact that so often we feel as though our world has been abandoned. And we cannot chirp back easy defenses for God to resolve the tension that comes from believing in a God who is both good and almighty in a world where goodness sometimes seems so utterly impotent. (The book of Job will teach us that, too--Job's friends all offer explanations and defenses for God in the face of evil, and in the end God seems to affirm Job's angry questioning of the silent heavens. So let us not pretend that the Bible forbids us from bringing the hard questions right in God's face.) So, determined to be utterly honest about the tragedies of our world and our lives, we still come to this Word from Galatians looking for God to speak good news--and not just generically nice news, but genuinely good news that can meet us in this moment and this situation.

Paul here sketches out God's way of dealing with the ever-present tragedy in our world, and it has two edges to it. First, God's way of engaging the evil of the world (evil which is made all the more palpable because the Law points it out to us) is to come into the world among us--"when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son." It has been the claim of Christians from the beginning that this Son is no less than God, too, so God's way of dealing with evil is not simply to wave a wand from outside the evil, Deus ex machina style, nor is it to simply send a heavenly employee to represent God in the world. None other than God-in-the-flesh enters into the same world in which we live and suffer and weep with those who weep. We may become impatient as we wait for the "fullness of time," but the Christian story hinges on a God who enters into the story, into the world, into the face of evil--not just in Jesus (although most definitively in Jesus), but all along.

Now at the same time, the Christian story insists that God meets us in the pit, so to speak, in order to do something. Jesus comes as one "born of a woman, born under the law" in order to redeem those who are under the power and curse of the law--that is, all of us--in order to make us children of God. This is an important point--God doesn't just impotently sit with us crying in the pit, sorry that nothing more can be done. (Sometimes, it is all we can do, as believers in community, to sit with someone who is suffering and weep with them, and that is perhaps enough for us to do. But God has more in mind.) The story of the Christian faith announces that God is not afraid of being in the pit with us, but that God is then determined to bring this world out of the pit, to heal it, not just to weep over its sickness. The God of our story is more than a big gooey ball of feeling. Our story is of a God who acts, who really and truly acts in history, and in our presents. Paul dares to say that the central point at which God's suffering and God's acting meet to heal this whole world is in the human flesh of Jesus. But Paul yet affirms that this God is still suffering and acting in and with and under this world.

And so we will call on the living God to do both for us--perhaps it seem audacious to call on God both to act and to suffer, but it seems that it is precisely what God would have us do.

Lord Jesus, We give this day into your hands because it is all we know to do. We trust that they will be strong enough to bear us up and carry us through present trouble, even as we know they still bear the scars of weakness and of troubles past, taken on for us. Hold us, and all who grieve this day, always close in your strong embrace, with those same arms ever outstretched to us in love. We pray to be held there, even in the life-worn arms of those people through whom you love us, too. We ask it, Lord, in your own strong-and-weak name.

God's Peace-Bringing Presence--December 25, 2025

God's Peace-Bringing Presence--December 25, 2025

"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'.” [Luke 2:8-12]

If you are in a burning building and a firefighter runs into the flames, picks you up, and carries you to safety without speaking a word, it would be enough. Saving your life is the critical thing, and that doesn't require an explanation. But if the firefighter sees that you are scared and says to you calmly, "I'm here to help. It's going to be ok. You can trust me," and then carries or leads you to safety, there is an added gentleness that makes a difference somehow.

The outcome might look the same--either way, the person in the burning building gets out to safety. But the additional attention it takes to practice kindness certainly makes it easier to go through the scary experience. Going into a burning building demands bravery from the firefighter no matter what, but when the firefighter takes the time and energy to put the one being rescued at ease, it helps them to be brave as well. And it reveals that the rescuer cares enough to think about how the one being rescued feels. That might seem unnecessary or additional, but it sure does feel important if you're the one petrified by fear in the flames. It means a great deal if you are the frightened one to have someone tell you, "You don't have to be afraid. It'll be all right."

The same thing could be said about a good nurse or a doctor with old-fashioned "bedside manner" in the Emergency Department: they can give you medicine or perform surgery without being compassionate and still save your life, but it makes a world of difference to bringing you peace if they can do it while assuring you, "You are going to get through this. You are in good hands." Someone can save your life without caring for your troubled spirit, I suppose, but there is something genuinely beautiful about those times when the ones who come to the rescue also care about being tender with our hearts.

That's something I've found myself picking up on in the story of Jesus' birth lately. God doesn't simply save the world--God takes the additional time to tell the world, "I'm here to help. You can trust me." God doesn't just send a savior in secret, as Luke tells it, but goes to the trouble of finding other ordinary people who are struggling, as the old carol puts it, "beneath life's crushing load," and takes the time and effort to stop and say, "You don't have to be afraid." For us who know this story by heart from decades' worth of Christmas pageants and Charlie Brown specials, it can be easy to gloss over this detail. But consider for a moment that God didn't "have" to announce anything to anybody, even if God were determined to send a Savior. The child could have been born in total anonymity, without anybody aware of anything, just as the firefighter could step into the burning building and never do a thing to put the ones who are trapped at ease before rescuing them. It would still "count." Their lives would still be saved. But God knows that while the saving is happening, it does something to ease our fears to be assured that we are not alone--to know that God is at work even when we cannot see how we'll get out of the mess we're in.

It's worth taking this moment to see and understand this dimension of God's love--that God is willing to take the extra step, to go to the extra length, and to make the additional effort, to be kind to us even in the act of saving us. God loves us, and that love is not merely a duty-bound, no-nonsense piece of business, but comes with the kindness of making sure our fears are put at ease. God takes the time to tell a bunch of shepherds what is happening in town, and that they do not need to be afraid. God is not merely saving the world in Jesus--God takes the time to calm our fears in the act of saving us. God is like the gentle firefighter who knows how to reassure the people being rescued while they are being pulled out of the flames, or the empathetic nurse who assuages your fears while giving you the medicine you need.  Ultimately, this is how the peaceable kingdom we've been hoping for comes: by God's Word spoken tenderly to our fearful hearts until it finally gets through to us and our spirits unclench to let God's love in.

What difference does that make? Why is it better that God sends angels to tell a handful of unimpressive anybodies that there is good news for all people? Well, in a sense, it's the very fact that it's unnecessary that makes it noteworthy--God could save in secrecy and silence, but God knows our needs enough to tell us, "This is what's happening now. I want you to know so that you won't be afraid, and so you'll know you can trust me." God doesn't "have" to do it that way... but God chooses to. That's how God's love works--there is a kindness there that goes beyond a job description or a matter-of-factly assertion, "I'm just doing my job." God's love is kind--and that is such a beautiful gift.

Today, just let that sink in. God loves you, and me, and the likes of anonymous sheep farmers, enough not merely to send a savior, but to make sure we know we don't have to be afraid while that savior is going to work. God is willing to take the time and make the effort to put these fearful hearts at rest. Maybe our love, too, can begin to learn to take the time with other people as well, so that they'll get a glimpse not just of God's saving power, but of God's peace-bringing presence.

Lord God, thank you for the time and attention you spend to put us at ease in the act of saving this world.

Where Nobody Was Looking--December 24, 2025

Where Nobody Was Looking--December 24, 2025

"In those days a decree went out from Caesar 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 in the guest room." (Luke 2:1-7)

God does a clever bit of turning the tables here, in these opening words of the Nativity story, which many of us will hear read in worship this Christmas Eve.  Just when you think you know where the action is taking place and who the real movers and shakers are, Luke practically gives us whiplash pointing us in the opposite direction to see God moving, not among the Big Deals in the centers of power, but in a Podunk town in the backwaters of the empire, in a house so modest it didn't have a spare guest room. And it turns out the Lord of the universe chooses to come, not to the Imperial Capital among the powerful and the well-heeled, but among the anonymous nobodies of Bethlehem and their borrowed food trough from the barn.

That's at least part of why Luke our narrator begins the story of Jesus' birth this way. It's a bit of clever misdirection, like in a classic whodunnit or the latest Knives Out movie.  Luke points us at first to the Emperor in Rome, Caesar Augustus, who thinks he is the savior of the world.  Literally--Augustus had official proclamations issued throughout the Empire making his birthday a special holiday and decreeing that his birth was "good news for the whole world" and that he was both "god" and "savior." Augustus had the Senate rename a month of the year in his honor, and quite a number of cities and towns across the empire were renamed "Caesarea" to bring him glory, too.  Talk about a gigantically over-inflated ego, right? It would be funny if it also weren't so pathetic--and if Caesar Augustus also didn't casually wield Rome's military might like a petulant child to attack and invade whomever he wanted.  Everybody in Luke's audience hearing this story knew that Augustus thought he was the most important person in the world, and that he was the head of the most important empire in the world, ruling from its capital city. The regional oversight in the less-fashionable parts of the Empire fell to local Roman-appointed governors, like Quirinius whom Luke mentions, too.  But Luke doesn't ultimately leave his movie camera on the province of Syria, either.  

Neither the Empire's capital or the local seat of power are the important places for the real and living God.  This will be the last mention of Caesar Augustus or of Quirinius in the rest of Luke's story.  They are introduced in the opening sentences, as if Luke is saying, "Yes, I'm well aware that these arrogant bozos were around, and we ALL know that they thought they were the ones calling the shots in the world.  But they have no more to do with our story than just issuing the order for the census. They are self-important bureaucrats at best, and deluded egomaniacs at worst."  Luke tells us that Augustus is the one ruling in Rome when Jesus is born, and then promptly turns our attention elsewhere--to a laborer named Joseph and his fiancée Mary, who are nobodies in the eyes of the Empire.

They go along with Caesar's self-important census (tyrants always want to claim they are the Most Important by counting how big their "numbers" are, regardless of how irrelevant those statistics may be to their actual governance), and they make the journey from up in Galilee down to Bethlehem because that's where Joseph's family is from.  And yet, there, in whatever room they could find as the town was crowded with people coming home for the census, the promised child is born.  Mary had been told by the angel that this was the long-awaited Chosen One of God--the "Messiah" or "Christ" for whom the people of God had been hoping for centuries.  She had practically burst into song about this child when she was visiting her cousin Elizabeth, declaring that in him, God would fill the hungry with good things, lift up the lowly, and pull down the tyrants from their thrones and take the over-inflated egos of the powerful down a few pegs.  And now the child is born--laid, not in a palace or a room decorated with gold trim, but in a borrowed manger in a house that doesn't belong to him. It is precisely the opposite of Caesar Augustus and his self-important bullying reign.

The contrast Luke is making as the director of this movie is obvious: the Big Deals of the world think they run the world with their threats of invading army and gold-plated opulence, barking orders and intimidating their subjects into complying with their every whim.  But meanwhile, the real Lord of all comes into the world as a helpless infant in a backwater town.  The child's cries from the manger practically call out, "The emperor is wearing no clothes."  Caesar can tell himself he is the Savior of the world, but he's fooling himself.  He can claim to be bringing "peace" to the world, but the angels will declare otherwise.  God's way of saving the world will require no invading armies or flexing of imperial muscle; even the whole heavenly host will only be called upon to sing to some shepherds rather than going into battle.  God's way of saving the world comes where nobody was looking--because that is just the way God operates. 

And that's just what we need.

Lord God, come and visit this world in your unexpected and yet perfectly fitting way--away from the typical places of power and domination, and among the lowly and forgotten.

How Big Is Us?--December 23, 2025

How Big Is Us?--December 23, 2025

[The angel said to Joseph about Mary:] "She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
 “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
  and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” (Matthew 1:21-23)

It's always in the plural--did you notice that?

The great salvation story and the announcement of the birth of the Savior--it's always told as God's action for "us," rather than for just "me." Even when the scene is a heaven-sent angel speaking in a personalized dream custom addressed to Joseph about his precarious engagement to Mary, the message isn't merely singular--it is in the plural.  The child Mary is carrying won't only save Joseph, but a whole "people" from their sins.  And the callback to the scene from the book of Isaiah about a young woman who will name her son "Emmanuel" drives toward a conclusion that this name means, "God is with us," rather than "God is only with ME."  It's always in the plural--God's action is always for US, and never my private possession.

I suppose that also means that from the beginning of the Christian story, the news of Jesus has always also been news of belonging to a community--the people of Jesus.  It's not an exclusive clique or elite country club, but it is a community.  We belong to the people of Jesus--to the family made up of those who have been claimed and rescued by Jesus.  That may be all that we have in common, honestly--all of us, from a host of different backgrounds, coming from different languages and cultures, with different experiences and identities, we belong to the people of Jesus. We are the "us" that God has promised to be with.  It just turns out that this particular "us" is an awfully large group.

How big, really, is that "us"?  Who is it that God has come to be "with" in this "God-is-with-us" Emmanuel child?  Well, in a very real sense, with ALL of us.  The incarnation--the notion that God fully dwelled in Jesus' humanity--means that God has chosen to share something in common with ALL humanity.  Jesus brings us the fullness of God taking on the fullness of humanity and standing in solidarity with the entire lot of us. There's no fine print or exceptions by which God says, "I'm willing to enter into humanity... but NOT for anybody with RED hair!" or "I've taken on human existence in Jesus... but that DOESN'T include left-handed people!"  God has taken on the heart of our common human experience in Jesus, and that doesn't leave anybody out.  The "us" in Emmanuel's "God-is-with-us" is as big and wide as the whole of humanity!

The other implication of all this is that none of us gets to push the people we don't like outside of the "us" either.  When Matthew quotes that passage of Isaiah's about the child Emmanuel's name meaning "God-Is-With-Us," there is no implied "Them" who are outside of the presence of God.  The point of this coming Emmanuel figure, whom Matthew identifies with Mary's baby, to be called Jesus, is not to set up a contest between "Us-Who-Have-God-On-Our-Side" and "Them-Who-Are-Without-God," but rather to say, "God has chosen to come among ALL of us."  God has chosen to be with the whole of humanity.  It's you, but it's not just you.  It's your neighbors, both the ones you get along with and the ones who always forget to take their trash cans in. It's the people who dress, speak, vote, and think like you... and the people whose clothing, language, worldview, and choices are different from yours.  It's the ones who worship beside you in church, and the ones who have never darkened the door of a church in their lives.  It's the people you find it easy to be kind to, and the ones whose demeanor is as rough as a corn cob.  The "us" is just that big.  The angel said so from the beginning of this story, even before Jesus was born.

As we prepare in the very near future to celebrate again the birth of this Jesus, it's worth remembering that the Christ-child comes as a gift, but not addressed to me alone.  Christ is given as God's gift to the whole world. God chooses to dwell with "us" rather than only with you.  The "people" whom Jesus has come to save is not limited to my narrow "Me and My Group First" interests, but instead is as large a group as the whole human family.  It includes grubby low-class night-shift shepherds and traveling foreigners who practiced astrology. And it includes you and me.  That's just how big the "us" really is.

Lord God, come among us and gather us all to yourself in Christ.

The First Duty of Love--December 22, 2025

The First Duty of Love--December 22, 2025

"When [Jesus'] mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But when he had resolved do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit...." [Matthew 1:18-20]

It amazes me, now that I think of it, how much the whole divine plan to save humanity hangs on two people being patient enough to listen.

Mary, of course, is one of them. And when the angel comes to her with an outlandish notion that she bear the long-awaited savior, she is befuddled at how it will happen. She knows enough about where babies come from to know that she shouldn't be able to be pregnant yet... but she listens. And even though some part of her has to be increasingly worried about "what the neighbors will say" and how it will affect her reputation to be expecting a baby before the wedding invitations have been sent out, she is careful and thoughtful enough to consider everything the angel says. And after listening, thinking, and pondering the choice to trust God even when she can't see how it will all work out, Mary says "Yes." We're so quick to jump ahead to the scene with the manger and the shepherds that we often forget the power of that momentous conversation beforehand where Mary is clearly thinking things out and resisting the urge to panic by patiently letting herself soak in the words of the heavenly messenger. She isn't rash. She doesn't blurt out that it's impossible. And she doesn't rush to answer with her initial gut-reaction that she can't be the mother of the Messiah... because she knows she can't be a mother at all, yet. There is a deliberate pace, a slowness to respond, that makes all the difference. And if you think about it, it's exactly because Mary is willing to mull this whole thing over that the plan unfolds as God intends. It's because Mary thinks it over, listens to the angel's answers, and then says, "Yes," that the birth of the child proceeds the way it does. Her patience allows the breathing space for the Christ-child to be born.

But as this passage from Matthew's gospel, which many of us heard in worship this Sunday, reminds us, Joseph, too, plays his role in the great salvation story by being willing to be slow enough to listen, rather than rashly shutting everything down. Matthew tells us that when Joseph first finds out that Mary is expecting, he draws the only logical conclusion there is--Mary has been involved with another man. And whether out of feelings of betrayal at what he assumes is unfaithfulness, or because he doesn't want to keep her from someone else she might truly love, or all of the above, Joseph's initial plan is just to break everything off. He doesn't want to make a big public spectacle of things, although a stickler for the Mosaic law could insist that there be a public trial and a stoning. He just wants to break things off quietly and move on with his life. But again--Joseph is willing to consider things over. He is willing to be patient enough to listen when the angel comes to him in a dream.

And when the angel tells him it is OK to marry his betrothed, and that the child isn't the result of anybody being unfaithful to anybody, but rather of Mary being faithful to God and God being faithful to the ancient covenant promises, he is willing to let that new information change his mind and his plan of action. This really is an amazing turn in the story, if you think about it. Joseph had a plan, once which was decently thought out and reasonable given the circumstances and the data available to him, but he remains open enough to consider new information... and patient enough not to rush to judgment without listening to it. This isn't a story of a dramatic 180-degree turn from wicked or foolish choices toward wise and noble choices; it's not a matter of needing to "repent" from a sinful course toward a virtuous one, either. It's simply a matter of having enough openness and composure not to react rashly in a shoot-from-the-hip kind of way. Joseph is thoughtful, reasonable, and open to a fuller picture than what he had before going to bed the night before. And that willingness to listen--the humility to consider that maybe there was more to the story that needed to be factored in when someone presented it to him--is what leads Joseph to be the one to raise Jesus as his adoptive father.

I have to be honest here: people of faith are not always known for their ability to sit down and calmly listen to new information. We are not known in the wider culture for being open to hearing more to the story and letting it change our course of action. We are not often known for being patient enough to listen or humble enough to admit we didn't have all the facts. Rather, a lot of times we Respectable Religious People have made Certainty into an idol, as though any openness to consider new information is a damnable sign of moral relativism and a perilously slippery slope to sin. A lot of the loud voices of pop religion in our day can only see things their own way and to even allow the possibility that there might be more to consider feels to them like they are losing a battle to the side of evil. Ours is a time when many think that the surest posture of faith is to dig your heels in and clench your first, rather than to sit with open ears and an open mind to new information. But Joseph offers us an example of the power of patient listening, and he shows us that sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is to stop and say, "Maybe I don't have all the facts yet--let me consider what this other voice has to say."

Of course, to take Joseph's approach means choosing not to let ourselves be rushed through life or forced to make hasty decisions. It means that certainty is not always a sign of true faith, nor of being correct. And it means nurturing that uncomfortable virtue of humility--of admitting none of us have all the answers, and being open to being corrected, redirected, or given more information. Since so many people have only experienced Christians as "people who are always shouting their answers" rather than "people who are willing to share tough questions together," it is indeed a hard path to walk by following after Joseph's way. But my goodness, his story shows us just how much difference it can make to be patient enough to listen. As theologian Paul Tillich put it, "the first duty of love is to listen."

So today, perhaps our calling is to be like Joseph in that way, and to learn how to love more deeply by slowing ourselves down enough to listen to others first before telling them whatever it is we have burning inside of us to say. Perhaps especially for us who name the name of Jesus--and who are so easily tempted to tell the world, "I have all the answers!"--it is all the more important for us to hold off on rushing to certainty or heel-digging or fist-clenching. And perhaps the way we are called to grow in love is to take the time to listen to someone else today, yes, even at the risk of letting what they share with you change the way you think, speak, or act in the world. That might not be a sign of weakness or wobbly faith, after all, but rather of love and faith that are sturdy enough to grow in new directions.

Today, may we practice like Joseph the first duty of love--to listen, even when it seems risky.

Lord God, whether you are sending angels our way or the life story of someone else whose experience is different from our own, give us the courageous ears to listen, and the patient love to take the time to hear them out.

For Fools Like Us--December 19, 2025

For Fools Like Us--December 19, 2025

"A highway shall be there,
  and it shall be called the Holy Way;
 the unclean shall not travel on it,
  but it shall be for God’s people;
  no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
 No lion shall be there,
  nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
 they shall not be found there,
  but the redeemed shall walk there.
 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
  and come to Zion with singing;
 everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
  they shall obtain joy and gladness,
  and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." (Isaiah 35:8-10)

Every time I come across these words, it makes me smile. I see myself in that line of fools, walking along God's pathway.

I caught myself smiling in self-recognition again this past Sunday when these words were read, too.  

This scene from the prophet Isaiah's book gives us a glimpse of the utter certainty of God's saving grace.  It is, quite literally, a fool-proof sort of salvation.  The prophet here is offering a vision of hope for people who felt stuck in exile in Babylon and couldn't imagine how they would ever make it back home to their own lands and their own lives.  The Babylonian armies had captured and deported countless people of Judea by brute force, and they now languished in limbo in Babylonian territory, hundreds of miles away from their homelands but without the means, power, or ability to go back to the only places they had ever lived.  Even if they could escape the watchful eyes of the Babylonians and leave, they didn't know how to get back home, and it was a dangerous and difficult journey through unknown wilderness to get there.  It seemed hopeless--there were a million ways it could all go wrong, you know?

So here comes, Isaiah, envisioning that God will make a way--nothing short of a highway to stretch across that vast wilderness, which will bring them all the way home.  You can almost hear Isaiah anticipating the worries and questions of the exiles and getting his responses ready to assuage them:  

"But how will we know how to get home?"  And the prophet answers, "God is building the road to go directly to Jerusalem, so all you have to do is just follow the pathway laid out for you."

"But what if there are dangerous Babylonians on the road following us, or what if people with leprosy who sometimes have to go live out in the wilderness come up to us and we're afraid of getting sick?"  Isaiah pre-emptively answers, "Nothing unclean will be on the road, so you don't have to worry about getting contaminated by anybody or captured by a Babylonian."

"Okay, but what if there are lions or other predators along the way? They live in the wilderness, and we would be defenseless against them if we went out there!"  So Isaiah says, like a parent calming a child who is afraid of monsters under the bed, "There will no lions, or any other kind of ravenous beast there--I promise!"

And as if to remove any other unspoken fears, the prophet also adds this beautiful, humbling detail: "No traveler, not even fools, will go astray."  What an absolutely stunning promise.  Even when our own stupidity would have gotten us lost, God's kind of pathway keeps us on the right road.  Even when our own blockheadedness would have led us into a ditch or gotten confused about the exit signs, God insists we will not end up in the middle of nowhere.  Even when our own fear might spur us to turn tail and go back to the now-familiar misery of exile in Babylon, God's road will get us all the way home.  God's saving grace is literally fool-proof: even we cannot mess it up with our own foolishness.

I am convinced that this notion from Isaiah 35 is not an exception: it is the Standard Operating Procedure for God in the world.   God's way of saving us doesn't leave loopholes that our own stubbornness or stupidity can get through.  God's kind of rescue doesn't leave open the possibility that we will mess it up by our foolishness, orneriness, doubt, or even our sins.  God's way of saving the world is utterly foolproof--which is to say, even fools like us cannot undo it.

So often at this time of year, when we tell the story of Jesus' birth, we take notice of how precarious and fragile the whole story seems. We ask questions, maybe like the exiles who heard from Isaiah did, naming all of our what-ifs:  what if Mary had said no? What if Joseph had broken off the engagement? What if Mary's parents didn't believe her story about a divine pregnancy and had her stoned to death? What if the shepherds didn't believe the angels' message?  What if mean ol' bully King Herod had successfully tricked the Magi into giving away the location of the child they found? What if they hadn't understood the meaning of the star? There are a million ways it could have all gone wrong, you know?

And yet, the assurance of the Scriptures is that even for all the ways God's movement in the world seems fallible and fragile, God's gracious saving is ultimately foolproof.  God has already figured our foolishness, our fearfulness, and our sinfulness into the recipe, and God's commitment to redeem and restore are unthwartable all the same.  Perhaps God has decided already that all salvation has to be foolproof, because all of us in need of saving are fools.  But just as the prophet said to those people despondent in exile centuries ago, so God says to us as well: "No matter what, my love will make a way.  No matter how big the fears are and no matter how small your confidence is, I will bring you home."

That is news that is worth holding onto today, tomorrow, throughout this Christmas season, and always: God's way of saving and bringing us home really is foolproof--even for fools like us.

Lord God, despite our fears and worries about what could go wrong along the way, bring us home and bring us to you.

The Divine Agenda--December 18, 2025

The Divine Agenda--December 18, 2025

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
  and the ears of the deaf shall be opened;
  then the lame shall leap like a deer,
  and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
 For waters shall break forth in the wilderness
  and streams in the desert;
  the burning sand shall become a pool
  and the thirsty ground springs of water;
 the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp;
  the grass shall become reeds and rushes." (Isaiah 35:5-7)

As it turns out, God has an agenda. In fact, God is up front about it and just lays it out there for everyone to hear.  God is committed to healing and bringing things to life.

This passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, almost hits my ears like a press conference, where God (through the prophet, playing the role of press secretary) announces a new set of priorities and plans.  And as Isaiah tells it, it is the policy of the Yahweh Administration (or, as we sometimes call it, the kingdom of heaven or the Reign of God) to help the hurting, to mend our wounds, and to fill our empty and barren desert spaces with signs of life.  This, the prophet says, is what God is up to.  These, Isaiah tells us, are the sort of things that matter to God.  This is the divine agenda: not destruction and warfare, not violence and bloodshed, and not conquest and domination, but relief of suffering and restoration of creation.

Over the course of my four-and-half decades of life on this planet, I've lived through plenty of televised press conferences, official statements, and presidential addresses.  You have, too, I'm sure. We've seen our share of Important-Looking People standing at podiums or sitting at ponderous desks, and we know their routines. We have seen their faces heavy with looks of gravitas, and we have heard the opening salutation, intoned almost like a liturgy: "My fellow... (Ohioans... or Citizens... or Americans...)." And we know what it is like to listen to the Official Agenda of the Day being set for us. We have heard the announcement of new wars... and the breaking of terrible and tragic news... and the warning of belt-tightening budget measures... or, in particularly rotten times, the scapegoating of new folks to be identified as "enemies" or "threats" for us to focus our hatred on and take the scrutiny off of the one behind the desk.  We have lived through plenty of those times to know the whole routine.  

And I suspect Isaiah had lived through plenty of that, too. Of course, for him, it was the official pronouncements of kings rather than presidents or governors, but he had seen more than his share of Official Agendas being pronounced for the people to hear. He had heard press releases announcing new taxes being levied to shore up Judah's armies in case the Assyrians came knocking. He had seen palace propaganda about how the new king would make everybody prosperous and restore the old glory days of King David and Solomon... only to be another disappointment. He had lived through declarations of war, denunciations of enemies, and promises from podiums about smiting their opponents and bringing back the "good ol' days".  And in response, Isaiah speaks a different word.  Isaiah reports on God's agenda, and even though at first blush it might sound like a list of policy positions and action items the same as any Official National Address he had heard before from the palace, on the prophet's lips, it is a whole new story.  God's agenda is about bringing forth life rather than doling out death.  God's agenda is about abundance out of dry desert ground, rather than the announcement of turning other people's homes into bomb-strewn wastelands in war.  God's agenda is about healing the wounds of those who suffer, not about labeling a new cohort of villains to scapegoat. Isaiah is giving us the policy priorities of the Reign of God.

It is worth noting, too, that Jesus takes these images and descriptions as hallmarks of his own ministry and calling in the Gospels.  Back on Sunday, and then in this past Monday's devotion, we heard the story of John the Baptizer sending messengers to ask Jesus if he really was the one they were waiting for.  And we heard Jesus' reply, as well, which should sound familiar now that we've been looking at Isaiah 35. Jesus tells the messengers, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them" (Matthew 11:4-5).  The restoration of life to those who are looking for healing.  The freedom to move for those who had been constrained and constricted.  To those who seek healing for their ears, their ears, their limbs, and their bodies, Jesus gives it freely. To those who were thirsty for good news like the desert waits for the rain, Jesus speaks it freely. Jesus sees himself as the embodiment of the press-release announcement of the prophet Isaiah, and so he points to those examples as evidence that he is bringing about the agenda of the Yahweh Administration.

We should note, too, as we hinted back on Monday, that John the Baptizer had had a rather different set of expectations of God's anointed one, the Messiah.  He had been advertising fire and fury, wrath and destruction on God's enemies and the unrighteous.  John had pictured something closer to the standard "Big Speech" from a demagogue at a desk: calling down condemnation on the ones labeled "enemies" and declaring God's vengeful war against the wicked, that sort of thing.  Jesus, however, deliberately avoids that kind of imagery. He points instead to the ways that he brings life, because he is convinced that these are ultimately God's agenda in the world.

I wonder: when people hear and see us in the world, what impression do they get of God's agenda in the world?  From what they see in us, do other people assume that God is embarking on a culture war, zapping the not-good-enough, and rounding up new "enemies "to be destroyed and new "threats" to be eliminated?  Or do they see signs of God bringing the world to life? Do they see healing and wholeness, and the restoration of creation to bring forth abundance? Whether we like it or not, and whether we realize it or not, we are all walking spokespersons and press secretaries for God, too, like the prophet Isaiah.  And what people hear and see from us they will presume points to the priorities and vision of God in the world.  What sort of messages do you think we have been sending?

And, with Isaiah's vision guiding us now, what kind of message do we want to send today? What would it look like to do that... now?

Lord God, allow us to reflection your priorities in the world today for the watching eyes and listening ears around us.

For the Days When It Hurts--December 17, 2025

For the Days When It Hurts--December 17, 2025

"Strengthen the weak hands,
     and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
'     Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
     He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
     He will come and save you'." [Isaiah 35:3-4]

There's not a day that it doesn't hurt.

Somewhere, in some way, all of us are carrying hurts and wearing scars from what we've been through. All of us bear the aches in our bodies or our hears, or both, and some days it is just a relief to be able to say so, rather than thinking the "religious thing to do" is to push it down and fake a smile.

But some days, we just can't. Our hands are weak, our knees are feeble, and our hearts are trembling with fear or tiredness or grieving or all of the above. And some days we don't know what to do with all of that.

It can be especially tough to be wearing those wounds in December--not just because the cold can add one more layer of "blah," but because the songs on the radio and the lights in the yards all insist that it's "the most wonderful time of the year." And sometimes, it's all we can do to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

So, what do we do about it? What do we do with the sadness we cannot shake, or the disappointment and disgust that bubbles up when we turn on the news, or the smallness we feel at the size and scope of troubles that threaten to overpower us? And while we're asking things, is the answer from our faith only that "one day in the distant future it will be better in heaven?" Because, to be really honest, sometimes that's what it sounds like from a lot of Respectable Religious folk: sometimes the only hope they have to offer is a sales pitch that goes like this: "Everything will be terrible in this life, and there's nothing you can do about it to make the world any brighter now, but one day in heaven, it will all be sunshine and rainbows. So suck it up and get back to work making widgets!" And to tell the truth, that is not much comfort.

Well, there's good news--that's not really how the biblical writers see things, either. Voices like Isaiah's here don't just describe heaven and hope that visions of pearly gates or golden streets will goad us into working another day. To be sure, there is the Big Hope of the God who saves in the end. That much is certain, from the declaration, "Here is your God... he will come and save you." But Isaiah doesn't only have the hope of some distant future, or as Marty Haugen's famous hymn lyric goes, "not in some heaven light-years away." Isaiah speaks a concrete word of hope for us who are just limping along through our days, and he speaks encouragement for the present as well as the future.

Isaiah calls on the beloved community to strengthen each other. He tells us to build one another up and to lend our strength and stability to each other, so that we can endure the most difficult days. We are given not just End-Times-Afterlife-Big-Picture-Resurrection-Hope, but Present-Moment-Daily-Life-Immediate-Situation hope as well. You know, little resurrections within the found family of God's people. Small renewals that make it possible for us to endure the difficult days by having each other's backs. Ordinary miracles of healing that let our wounds become scars, and our scars become strength. Isaiah's word here is, "Until the day when all is put right and all our tears are wiped away by God's own hand, well, then, YOU be the ones God raises up to wipe each other's tears away!"

In other words, YOU be the ones to strengthen each other and steady each other, until the moment when God's hand touches us all to wellness. Until the day when "all will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be made well" as Julian of Norwich wrote, well then, YOU be the ones who make it at least bearable for each other. Lift each other up. Carry each other when you have to. Let yourself be carried. Let down your guard, and drop your fake smiles. Be present for one another, and there in your midst, God will be present through your love for one another, until the day when you see God face to face in glory.

That gives us a plan for facing the day, while holding out our Big-Picture Hope, too. Instead of just being told to tough it out until the afterlife, we are given the invitation and the calling to strengthen one another, and to encourage one another--and in turn, to be strengthened and encouraged by the promise that God will not let the hurt, or even death, get the last word. In fact, we are told to encourage each other, not simply with the promise "God is coming to save the day...someday," but that God is already present, right here and right now. "Here is your God," the prophet tells us to remind each other. Not merely, "Off there in the distance is your God."

So what do we do with the pain we are all bearing? We carry each other. We honor one another's hurts and let them be named. We offer our strength to one another, and we let others' strength be a gift to us when we need it, too. And we keep pointing, so that each of us will see when things are unclear, "Here is your God."

There's not a day that it doesn't hurt. But neither is there a day when God is not here in the hurt with us, sending people to us, and sending us to others as well.

Strengthen our weak hands and feeble knees, O Lord, and remind us that you are here with us.

God's Grand Restoration Project--December 16, 2025

God's Grand Restoration Project--December 16, 2025

 "The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
  the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
 like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly
  and rejoice with joy and shouting.
 The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
  the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
 They shall see the glory of the Lord,
  the majesty of our God." (Isaiah 35:1-2)

Apparently, God's intention isn't just to get people into heaven; God intends to bring all of creation fully to life.

That vision certainly includes our hope of life beyond death, or as our sloppy shorthand might put it, "going to heaven when we die," but it is also much bigger.  When God moves in the world, it is not merely to collect up the human beings in order to whisk them away off to float on the clouds somewhere--it is to bring the whole world to life, turning even dry and barren waste lands into blossoming gardens. God isn't interested in plucking us up and taking us somewhere "better" while the world burns; rather, God is engaged in renewing the earth completely.  The news of God's coming is good news for the crocuses, too.

This passage from the book of Isaiah, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, reminds us of just how widely God's concern reaches.  As the prophet pictures God acting in the world, and what it will be like when God's Chosen Anointed One (or "Messiah") comes, he doesn't limit his description to human terms.  We don't hear things like "You'll know the Messiah is coming because the markets will all be up," but rather the prophet says, "When God passes through, you'll see the crocus blooming in the desert." We human beings are a part of God's grand restoration project, but we are not the only ones.  We are a part of the vast and varied family of God, absolutely; but we are not the only members of that family.   God cares about the stream beds in the wilderness, the flowers waiting for the rain so they can burst into bloom, as well as the wolves and lambs we heard about last week, who are waiting a new and peaceable kingdom where old enemies can be reconciled and no one has to be afraid of being hunted by anybody.  All of it belongs. All of it is a part of the community--the commonwealth, so to speak--of God's Reign.

When we forget that, we end up shrinking our Advent hope into merely afterlife insurance.  We end up caricaturing God into the bearded fellow from the cartoons who lives up on a cloud and only cares about snatching up a handful of well-behaved saints to live in the sky while everything "below" crumbles.  And we end up missing out on just how big a family God has brought us into.  We have a place beside our cousins the crocuses and cats, our uncles the mountains, our aunts the butterflies, and all of our human sisters and brothers as well.  God intends to make it all new, not merely to settle for a segment of us and giving up on the rest of creation.

Hold onto that truth today--and throughout the rest of this season.  The One we are waiting for isn't merely recruiting for members of an elite social club; the coming Christ is intent on renewing all of creation.  The child in the manger isn't born just for the sake of getting a few souls onto the Good List; he has come to bring everything and everyone more fully to life. And we are longing for more than just a record close for the stock market--we are waiting for the restoration of all things.

Come, Lord Jesus, and make all things new.

Bringing Our Disappointment--December 15, 2025

Bringing Our Disappointment--December 15, 2025

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

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

And he's not wrong about that.

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

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

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

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

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

Honestly, can you blame him?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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