"You, Child..."

"You, Child..."--December 14, 2017

Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

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

 He has raised up a mighty savior for us

     in the house of his servant David,

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

     that we would be saved from our enemies

     and from the hand of all who hate us.

 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,

     and has remembered his holy covenant,

 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,

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

 might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness

    before him all our days.

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

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

 to give knowledge of salvation to his people

    by the forgiveness of their sins.

 By the tender mercy of our God,

    the dawn from on high will break upon us,

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

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

You often hear the advice these days that parents should not try to be their children's friends, which is to say that the job of parents is not to be "liked" or to be "cool" or to be seen as a "peer" of their children, but rather that parents need to own a certain responsibility, authority, and willingness to be the "bad guy" from time to time in the eyes of their kids.

All of that is certainly true.  Good parents know when to tell their kids that the answer is "no," when it is a matter of safety, or principle, or wisdom.  Friends may well not care if you are up all night watching TV and eat only junk food, but parents impose boundaries because their job is not to win a popularity contest but to raise mature, good-natured children to adulthood. So, yes, it is fair to say that parents are not supposed to aim be their children's "friends" in childhood.  The purpose of parenthood is to grow young human beings into mature human beings with solid, good character, and you don't always have to be liked by your kids to do that.

But maybe we need to push even further than that.  Maybe it is also true that the job of parents--and of family more broadly, or even a church family generally--isn't even just keeping children forever safe and protected.  Maybe a part of being a good parent/aunt/uncle/grandparent/mentor/teacher is discovering the right ways to properly endanger children.

Ok, let's stop a minute.  Yes, you read that correctly: it is possible that good child-rearing--at least from a Kingdom perspective--is learning how to rightly endanger the children who are placed in our care.

Now will you grant me a minute to say what I mean?

To live in this world as a follower of Jesus means daring to see the world through a certain lens--to see the world, your life, and also, importantly, the lives of your children if you have them, in the light of the values and priorities of what Jesus calls "the Kingdom of God."  To be a parent (or grandparent, or uncle, or aunt, or adult family-friend, or fellow church member) and a disciple of Jesus at the same time means to commit to dare to see things from the vantage point of Jesus.  So when Jesus says things like, "the last shall be first and the first shall be last," or, "Those who lose their lives will save them," or even, say, "What profit is there for you if you have the world but have lost your soul?" we followers of Jesus are expected to share that conviction... and to let it affect not only our own choices, but the choices we make that influence those who come after us.

This is where things get scary and the stakes get high.

That's because it means recognizing that my choices, my priorities, and my values do not just affect me--they will shape and affect those whose lives I am responsible for guarding and training up.  After all, it's one thing to take your life savings and blow it all on a long-shot horse race or bad roll at the craps table if it's just you who has to live with the consequences.  But it's another thing entirely to take your whole family's nest-egg and kids' college funds and risk them all.  As a society, we might not recommend the first choice but shrug it off as "just how some people live their lives," but we tend to get very very uncomfortable with grown-ups whose foolish choices jeopardize their children's livelihoods or well-being.

But now, let me suggest something I don't think we really want to admit, we disciples of Jesus:  living from a Kingdom perspective will always to some degree look like foolishness and recklessness to others.  I don't mean in nonsensical ways like refusing to have your children vaccinated (there is, after all, a difference between being just a fool and being a damn fool), but I mean that following Jesus and seeing the universe from the perspective we call the Reign of God, or the Kingdom of God, means that we will make choices to value some things that the wider world things are pointless... and that we will also teach our children NOT to value other things that the world thinks are essential.

So, for example, the world says your value as a human being is tied up in the amount of money you have or earn... but the perspective of Jesus sees all people as made in the image of God and in fact announces particular blessing on "the poor," rather than saying "If you're rich, God must really love you!"  

Or, you might notice that we are increasingly living in an age in which the loudest voices seem to care only about whether you "win" or not, and not whether we are actually decent human beings to one another... but when you ask Jesus about the subject, he seems to have very little interest in whether you look like you are "winning" or not, and in fact Jesus seems to have deliberately not taken the path that would have looked like "winning" in the first century.  

The world in which we live seems to care less and less for facts, or for truth as something you can actually pin down and look at, and seems to be much more interested in "looking like you are right" than in actually being correct... and then there is Jesus, who teaches his followers simply to speak the honest truth, to "let your yes be yes and your no be no," rather than trying to spin your words or deny your past comments when they turn out to be wrong.  

And maybe most reckless of all in this world, while the world around us assumes that the best way to be safe is to keep yourself armed and ready to get the bad guys if they show up, Jesus teaches his followers to go out into the world like sheep among wolves and not to return evil for evil, even if the Romans come to arrest you and put you on a cross like Jesus.

To do any one of those things is to look foolish to the eyes of the world--it means risking your money, your reputation, your standing, even your physical safety!  And yet, Jesus calls his followers to see the world through his eyes and to live in all of those ways... all the time!

That's hard enough if it's just me... but even harder, even riskier, even more demanding, is teaching our children to participate in the Kingdom of God the same way.  It's one thing for me to say that I won't retaliate with rage or pettiness if someone attacks me... but it's much harder to teach my son that when someone else goes low, we will go high--because that is what Jesus has taught us... and yet, there it is: Jesus taught us to do this, and to teach our children to do the same.  This is the risk of being a follower of Jesus--we are called not only to stake our own lives on Jesus' way of life, but also to risk our children's futures on it, too.  And that is, quite frankly, scary.  It looks and feels very much like endangering our children, because it means teaching them to live in ways that run counter to the world's "common sense."

All of this comes to mind in this pre-Christmas season because of the words we know as Zechariah's song, a song from the beginning of Luke's gospel in the lead-up to the birth of Jesus, a song that is also very much about preparing for what will happen when the Messiah finally came.  And in this song, we don't just get Zechariah going out on a limb to pin his hopes on the promised Savior, but Zechariah brings his own baby son, John, into the mix.  

"You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High," he says, setting his infant son on a course that commits him to a certain way of life.  John will indeed be the forerunner of the Messiah, but that is a life fraught with risk.  John would become unpopular because of his truth-telling.  He would risk (and give up) all claim to treasure or reputation or comfortable lifestyle by going out into the wilderness.  He would risk his own life when he poked at the scandalous life of the blowhard puppet king Herod.  And he starts on that trajectory, at least in part, because his father Zechariah raised him in a certain way, to see the world through the lens of Kingdom priorities.

This is the risk for us--whether you have children or not, whether you are an aunt or an uncle as well, a grandparent or a neighbor or a Sunday School teacher or a church member who influences the life and faith of children around you: if we dare to take Jesus' way of life seriously, we will risk not only our lives, but the lives of children, too, as we teach them to live the Jesus way of life.

It means not only that we would offer our lives to protect someone else who was in danger... but that would teach our children to do the same.  It means not only that we ourselves commit not to respond to cruelty or hatred with the same, but that we teach our children not to hit back or to resort to pettiness and hate even if they are shown it.  It means not only that we choose for ourselves to go without some of the luxuries or perks of life, but that we raise our children in the same way.  And it means, in sum, that we not only sign ourselves up to be losers in the world's eyes, but that we teach our children to be losers, too.  It means teaching the next generation that there are things more important than money or success or popularity or safety, even if it costs them those things along the way, too.  And that is hard.

In these days, if I am going to prepare, truly and deeply, for Jesus, it will mean listening to Zechariah's song on his own terms, and to hear him speak to his own infant son as a model for how I raise a young man and a young woman in my family.  I hear him say, "You, my child... will go before the Lord," and I know that my calling as well is to teach these children in my world to see life through the lens of the Kingdom, too, even though that will cost them.  It will mean I am sending my children into a world full of bullies, having taught them not to sink to the level of bullies themselves.  It will mean sending them out into a world that is comfortable with lying, having taught them to tell the truth even when it will cost them.  It will mean, perhaps not steering them toward the jobs that will make the most money but would rob them of their souls... and instead teaching them to value what they do for the sake of others, regardless of how well it pays.  It will mean teaching my children--as well as the other children whose paths cross mine in a lifetime--to do risky, potentially painful things like forgiving people who do not deserve it, and loving people who do not love you back, and being lied about without giving into lies back.  And quite often that will risk their comfort, or their safety, or their lives.  It will look like sending them into the path of danger... because it will look like teaching them to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

To prepare for Jesus this Christmas isn't just to teach my kids the words to Christmas carols or train them in the traditions of trimming trees and hanging stockings. It means teaching them the Kingdom way of life, regardless of the costs they will endure while they live their own lives. 

It will mean looking at the children in our own lives and saying to them, "You, my child, will go before the Lord and prepare the way..."

Lord Jesus, give us the courage not only to follow you ourselves, but to teach children to share in this risky, dangerous, costly adventure of being your disciples.

The Shape of Our Hope

The Shape of Our Hope--December 13, 2017

And Mary said, 

"My soul magnifies the Lord, 

   and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

 Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed;

    for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

        and holy is his name.

 His mercy is for those who fear him

    from generation to generation.

 He has shown strength with his arm;

    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

    and lifted up the lowly;

 he has filled the hungry with good things,

     and sent the rich away empty.

 He has helped his servant Israel,

     in remembrance of his mercy,

 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

     to Abraham and to his descendants forever." [Luke 1:46-55]

I had a proud-parent moment a few weeks ago.

We were coming to the end of the weekend that was the Christmas-tide decorating bonanza in our house, and I had said something in the presence of my children about needing to make sure we got all the boxes from decorating back down in the basement, or something like that.

And my son says, "Daddy, you know that's not what Christmas is really about...."  

I pressed him to find out what he thought, at six, Christmas was, in fact, "really about."  And, much to my surprise, my kindergarten theologian "reminded" me that it was really all about Jesus.

I was taken aback--not because I had forgotten myself that Christmas is "really about Jesus," but because I really wasn't sure what to expect out of the mouth of a child who lives in the same culture and society I do, where the clear emphasis in every commercial on television is on stuff--the acquisition of stuff, the buying and selling of stuff, and the quest for the perfect presents to give to other people to show them your "Christmas spirit."  I was, to be perfectly honest, prepared for an answer like, "Presents!" or "Santa!" or "The tree!" even some maudlin, sentimental gobbledygook about "being with your family," all of which are perhaps secondary (or lower) parts of an answer, but none of which are the bull's eye.  But there he was--telling me that Jesus was the focus--and not the fuss over whether we got the decorations up by a certain day.  He knew, in other words, that we don't just get excited about Christmas for no reason--but that there is a particular reason, a particular focus as the reason to look forward to this day.

Now, while it is still also possible that my son was just as much trying to get us to put off the boring work of putting  away boxes, that moment reminded me, both of the promise, and of the great and urgent challenge, of shaping the hope we hold onto in this season.  Saying that Christmas (or Advent, for those more liturgically-minded) is about "hope" is a sort of half-answer, because hope has a direction as well as a motion to it.  Hope is a vector, so to speak--it is not just any old thought about the future; hope is always aimed at a particular future.  

And the real question to be asking at this moment, in this season, is this: for people who are preparing for Jesus, what is the "direction," the "object," the "focus" of our hope?  What shape is our hope--and do we just take our existing wish lists and assume that Jesus' coming will give us those things, or do we let Jesus himself shape the form of our hope?  Do we allow Jesus to direct what we are hoping FOR?  And maybe we have to ask an even more basic question:  Are we clear on why we are taught to pin our hopes on Jesus, and his coming?

This is part of why I find myself needing to keep coming back to the words of Mary's song, that we sometimes call "the Magnifcat" (from its opening words in Latin).  Because these words are words of hope... and they are words of hope about Jesus, and they give us at least Mary's expectation for why and what we are all supposed to be hoping for from Jesus.

And this is the curious thing to me, the more I spend time with Mary's song: she gives a whole new shape to the hope we locate in Jesus.  Mary is teaching me to see in Jesus the table-turning reign of God.  Mary is teaching me to see that Jesus has as much to do with re-ordering the way we human beings live in community with one another as it does with life-after-death.

See, that, I think is a new piece for many of us Respectable Religious Folks.  We are used to saying that the reason for hoping in Jesus is that he is the key to a good and pleasant afterlife.  We are used to saying, "You are supposed to get excited about Jesus because he is the one who gets us into heaven!"  

And again, that is, to be sure, a part of the answer for why Jesus is worth pinning our hopes on.  But what's funny to me is that it's not really Mary's answer.  Mary may well have had some inkling of resurrection in her first-century Jewish faith, but that's not what she spends her time singing about when she gets excited about the birth of her son.  The shape of her hope has a great deal to do with the creation of a new kind of human community, where the lowly are lifted up, the poor and hungry are fed, and the powerful, the privileged, and the puffed-up are deflated like you lance a boil.  Mary sings about God re-ordering human life so that those who are on the margins are welcomed in, and those who have put themselves high up on a pedestal are brought back down to earth.  And Mary sees all of that as the way God's justice and God's mercy will come to fruition in the coming of the Messiah--her boy.  It is about the keeping of God's ancient promises to Abraham and his family line, and the care God will give for those who only have their empty-handed need to offer the Almighty.

Mary, as I say, is teaching me a new shape of my hope in Jesus.

Now, again, to be sure, we could say that with the whole of the New Testament, there is more to say about what we are hoping in Jesus for.  And yes, it includes the promise of life beyond the grip of death, and the forgiveness of sins, and phrases like "eternal life" and "resurrection."  Yes, indeed, to all of that.  But even if it is true to say that Jesus' coming means more than just what is contained in Mary's song, it cannot mean less than what Mary sings about.  And sometimes we have forgotten that, to be quite honest.

Sometimes we Respectable Religious Folks act like God doesn't give a care about what happens to the hungry, or that God's verdict on the poor is simply that "They should get jobs if they want to have a better life, and then they won't be poor."  Sometimes we Respectable Religious Folks assume that Jesus' coming is our key to a raise at work and a happy home life, as though Jesus were simply a vehicle for me to get my wishes. Sometimes we Respectable Religious Folks make the assumption that you can gauge God's favor based on the close of the Dow Jones at the end of the day. Sometimes we Respectable Religious Folks assume that if you are IN power, it must be because you have God's endorsement on you, and that's how you know who God wants running the show.  And basically, all of those boil down to saying that the shape of my hope in Jesus is just the shape of whatever I want--rather than perhaps the possibility that Jesus himself gets to show us what he has come for.

Over against all the ways we tend to make Jesus into our religious genie, there to cater to my wants and wishes, Mary's song takes a rather different tack. She takes it for granted that God is in the business of feeding the hungry with good things, and she doesn't see it happening by giving a surplus to the already-well-fed and just hoping they'll share with their hungry neighbors.  Mary's song does not envision a God who operates by trickle-down economics.  Mary, in fact, explicitly describes a God who teaches the well-fed what it is like to go without, and who unseats the powerful rather than endorsing them. 

Whatever we make of that, and however we might want to qualify her words by saying, "Well, Mary wasn't an economist, and Luke's Gospel is not intended to be a treatise on monetary policy or taxation," (and those are both fair caveats to make), we cannot simply dismiss or ignore Mary's words, just because they probably make us a little uncomfortable.  We cannot silence Mary's voice just because she has things to say that shake us from our comfortable satisfaction with the status quo.

Mary is teaching us all, if we dare to listen to her words to see that the coming of Jesus does not only open a door to life beyond death, but it also turns the tables on how our lives are lived in community together now.  She is teaching us that Jesus' coming is not only about the promise of an afterlife, but it is also about a rightful re-arranging and re-ordering of what matters to Jesus' followers in this life, too.  She gives a whole new shape to the hope we find in Jesus.

Like I found with my son and his answer about what Christmas is "really" about, it is not enough just to be "pro-Christmas"--at least, not if the reason we think we should be "pro-Christmas" is just that we get presents and have decorations and eat meals with our families.  That may be a fine cultural answer to what Christmas looks like, but for actual followers of Jesus, the shape of our expectation at Christmas is decidedly manger-like: it is about Jesus.  And the same way about our hope in Jesus himself--it's not simply that Christians are "pro-Jesus" but get to make Jesus endorse whatever I want him to give me or do for me.  Mary's song reminds us that there is a particular shape to our hope--and that it is more about God's justice and mercy than my personal wish list.

It is worth listening again, in these days, to songs like Mary's from the Scriptures, to get a fuller sense of why it is worth getting excited about the coming of Jesus.  And from there, we can let Mary's words shape our hope to reflect the One in whom our hopes are fixed.

Lord Jesus, speak to us again, not just to name you as our Lord, but to let your lordship affect the shape of our hope in you.  Teach us what to hope for, and re-orient our hearts in light of it.

It's the Idols That Flex

It's The Idols That Flex--December 12, 2017

"See, the Lord GOD comes with might,
     and his arm rules for him;
 his reward is with him,
     and his recompense before him.
 He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
     he will gather the lambs in his arms,
 and carry them in his bosom,
     and gently lead the mother sheep." [Isaiah 40:10-11]

God picks strange ways to show “might,” don’t you think?

We are used to obvious, overt, “tough-guy” kinds of ways to show off strength and power—the cocky muscle-bound man flexing his biceps as someone else walks into the gym, or the arrogant dictator making wild threats about launching missiles or doing “military exercises” to threaten surrounding countries. We are used to “Superman” pictures of might and strength—where the bullets bounce off the strong, and the mighty leave a trail of destruction behind them so that everyone else will know how powerful and potent they are. These days we are drowning in a sea of pop culture superhero movies and TV shows, from the Justice League to the Avengers, with Wonder Woman bringing in big bucks at the box office and Supergirl, Green Arrow, a young Bruce Wayne/Batman, and lesser known vigilantes with names like "Iron Fist" or "the Punisher" all having their own tv shows. And for all the various movies, shows, and characters, in a way, they all just give us the same thing in different-colored costumes: people whose “specialness” is defined in terms of punching and kicking, whose “might” is measured in the body count of enemies vanquished in their wake. You see enough of that on big and small screens, and you come to believe that’s what “might” really looks like.

We have all fallen for it.

And that is at least part of what is wrong with us. That is part of what is literally broken with the human condition--we have all fallen for the mistaken picture that real "power" is demonstrated in the rattling of sabers or the waving around of guns. We have all bought the world's argument that the way to get things done in this life is in having bigger guns or bigger muscles or more fighter planes or a large enough stockpile of bombs and missiles to make the other guy afraid of you.

Surely, that was the conventional wisdom when these words from what we call the fortieth chapter of Isaiah were first spoken. The thinking of the day was that Babylon was the most important... because Babylon had the armies and the might to conquer the people around them--including the Israelites. And the rest of that train of thought was that since Babylon was winning on the battlefield, it must have also meant that their gods were stronger than Israel's God. If your army wins the war, you are more important... and your gods are more important... that was the accepted theology of the day. So, of course, it was no wonder that people felt--and so often still feel!--the need to have to defend the reputations of their gods with firepower. You can't let your "side" lose--it will look bad for your "god", right?

We do that, too, more often than we care to admit. We have the same thinking sometimes--that it's up to us to defend God, or to defend our religion, or else we'll look "weak" or we'll look like "losers," or--most frightening of all, we think--our God (or is it a "god"?) will look weak and like a loser, too. And that thought just scares us to the core.

But let's take a listen. Let's actually look at how the God of Israel gets introduced--and how there is a surprising turn when the prophet starts describing this God's kind of power. We start out here expecting God to flex some divine muscle or trample on some bad guys here. There are all these images that bait us for those usual shows of force: “God comes with might,” the prophet says, and we are a little riled up about the “recompense” he will dole out. We’re ready for the Superman-god, the Punisher god, the god of the Iron Fist who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake so that we will be impressed.

Now we're hooked. And the prophet is about to yank the rug out from under us. Because at the very moment it sounds like we're going to get Tough Guy Deity, the very next image is of God as a nurturing shepherd—carrying little lambs right up against his body. This isn’t the superhero/vigilante deity we are used to. There isn’t even any arm-flexing from this God: his arms are too full from having lambs in them to pose and posture to show off any biceps!

To hear the prophet tell it, God is just not interested in showing off strength in order to be fawned over or intimidating. God isn’t looking to flex muscles or do military exercises in order to attract attention. That's part of how you know the real living God from the idols--the living God doesn't need to impress or scare or protect the divine reputation or worry about looking weak. Bullies and blowhards worry about what other people think, and whether they are getting enough attention or respect, but not the real and living God.  It's the idols that have to flex--they are desperate for your attention.  The living God just doesn't care about that.

And that, dear ones, is the good news. The real and living God ain't so desperate for attention as to go around threatening and blustering just to get some semblance of respect. The real and living God doesn't need to get you to notice divine strength or firepower, because the real point of God’s strength, according to Isaiah, is for God to be strong for us. God is not looking to win any body-building championships or gain hero-like fame.

God is strong and mighty because we need a strong God to carry us, weakling sheep that we are. There is no path of destruction in this scene—there is, rather, the God who picks up the pieces that we leave behind. And God picks up those pieces—and us—precisely because we need a God who can be strong for us and carry us in arms. That’s the thing about the God of the Bible: we expect Superman and get a Shepherd. Of course, beyond our expectations, it’s a Shepherd we need after all.

Now, we Christians have been hearing these words from the book of Isaiah for two thousand years as a signpost pointing to Jesus. He's the fulfilment of these promises; he's the true object of the prophet's focus. And if that's true, then the surprise is even greater than we had first thought--because it means that ultimately the true strength in God's arms is the way they take nails. It means that the real power of God is the unexpected appearance of the divine in a food trough.

For us to take seriously the call to prepare for Jesus means to be ready to see in Jesus the true power of God. And if we dare to do that, it will also mean that we learn to unclench our minds' grip on the old idolatrous idea that "God" is just another word for "whoever has the most brute force to get his way." It will mean recognizing that the real power that orders and sustains the universe shows up in things we would usually call "weakness" or "surrender" or "self-giving." It will mean recognizing real power in the incarnation of the Eternal One in the tiny fingers of a Jewish baby who flees from the bluster of the local king and spends his preschool years as a refugee.

"See, the Lord GOD comes..." says the prophet. And we all turn to look, expecting to see a Divine vigilante locked and loaded to intimidate bad guys....

"See, the Lord GOD comes..." says the prophet again... and the one who shows up counter to the wisdom of the day is a powerless baby laid in a borrowed crib.

Look for God in such unexpected places, and you will see a whole new kind of power... and you will see that it is the same power that holds the universe together.

Lord Jesus, give us the eyes to see you, to see your kind of strength, and to dare to let go of our idols of might and force.

An Absence of Heroes

An Absence of Heroes--December 8, 2017

"For a child has been born for us,

     a son given to us;

 authority rests upon his shoulders;

     and he is named

  Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

     Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

 His authority shall grown continually,

    and there shall be endless peace

    for the throne of David and his kingdom.

 He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness

    from this time on and forevermore.

 The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. [Isaiah 9:2-7]

Lately I've had a epiphany of sorts that has changed the way I hear these ancient poems and visions of Isaiah, these words that were first ingrained in my memory set to the music of Handel and played by orchestras and choirs at Christmas-time. 

It was an obvious thing I had been missing, but then again, I am rather dense... and sometimes I think we are almost programmed to hear a Bible passage a certain way and then stop asking or inquiring or considering it from any angle.  And especially with the familiar ones--like these words about a "child born for us"--we have an especially hard time breaking out of old ruts.

But just the other day it hit me right between the eyes that Isaiah and I had something in common that I had never considered before: we are both dads.  And to some degree, I suspect both of us see the worlds we inhabit in terms of what kind of life we are handing to our children.  We care about the kind of world they will grow up in, the kind of community in which they will be raised, and the kinds of people they will have to look up to.  And when we each look around, Isaiah and I, at the landscape around us and our children, there is a vacuum at the center of things, an absence that leads us to look beyond the horizon for hope.

Like I say, I had never considered before that Isaiah was a father, or at least I had never thought about how that might have shaped the way he thought and spoke and prayed.  But the fact of his parenthood is there in the text of the book with Isaiah's name attached to it, in early stories in the first dozen chapters (see especially what we call Isaiah ch. 7-8), and in fact, if you read those stories, Isaiah was convinced that God was teaching theology and sending messages through his children.  He was constantly thinking about his children, and the world in which they would live, while he was listening for the voice of God.  In fact, there is reason to believe that Isaiah was a member of a sort of 7th-century BC "clergy couple", since he mentions having a son with a "prophetess" in ch. 8 and that she may have also been the "young woman" whose child gets the name "Emmanuel" back in Isaiah's day (Isaiah 7), before that was applied to Jesus in the New Testament.

Anyhow, the times in which Isaiah lived were... well, disappointing, and fraught with danger.  There were foreign nations rattling their sabers and threatening from a distance, and Isaiah was disheartened when he looked at the leader of his own people.  Ahaz was the king, and he was a far cry from the great and faithful giants of Israel's collective memory.  He was, not to put too fine a point on it, no King David.  David was remembered as Israel's greatest king, as someone who embodied servanthood and strength, who was a shepherd for the people in his best moments, and who could eventually own up to his mistakes and crimes after his worst moments.  And even if some of that reputation was a bit of nostalgia fogging up their view, at the very least, David's legendary character became a standard against which to compare the kings and leaders who came after.  And they never lived up to it.

Isaiah had lived through several different kings, and had seen a string of letdowns, each in different ways.  Sometimes they were arrogant and petty.  Sometimes they were cowardly and fearful against the backdrop of foreign powers.  Sometimes they tried to put their trust in their weapons and wealth.  Sometimes they were all bluster and pomposity with very little wisdom or substance.  But they were all... disappointments.

And when Isaiah looked at his children and thought of the lives they would be handed, the kind of nation they would become adults in, the kind of leaders they would know, well, Isaiah was more than a little discouraged.  So much of the culture, from its politics to its religion to its economics, was straining to even muster up to the bar of mediocrity.  There were official royal pronouncements about how "great" things were, according to the party line, but Isaiah saw through it. He knew better.  He knew he was living through decadent, disappointing times, and I can't help but think that some part of him was rather sad to think he could not give his children something better, someone better, to look up to, since so many of the powerful and big deals of his day were empty suits--well, empty robes, at any rate.

I read these early passages from Isaiah's book, and I feel like I have found a kindred spirit of sorts, removed from my times by twenty-seven centuries or so, but still someone who shared something of an outlook.  Maybe you do, too.  We look around and feel an empty place, like your tongue pushes into the space where a tooth used to be, an absence of substance, in the center of our communal lives.  I get the sense that Isaiah knew what it was like to feel like the only wind was the hot air of official blowhards and court prophets.  I get the sense that Isaiah longed for someone his children could put their hopes on, who would not let them down or disappoint them... someone who would be worthy of his children's admiration. 

And I feel that same disappointment for my own son and daughter.  People we used to look up to turn out to be more tragic than heroic. Figures I would have wished I could teach them to be proud of turn out to be shameless and shallow.  The public faces I would have wished could be examples for them, models of nobility, of grace, of strength, of character, of integrity, they turn out to be hollow and empty, so many of them--if not downright despicable.  Despite our constant bombardment with movies featuring the likes of Iron Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the rest, it feels in so many ways that ours is a time suffering from an absence of heroes. Even Atticus Finch let me down... but maybe he was never as good as I had thought he was anyhow. And I wish--sometimes it feels like all I can do is wish--that there were more I could give to my children for examples, for mentors, and for heroes.  

And I think Isaiah knew what that was like, too.

And yet--and this is the thing that pushes me back from the brink of despair--Isaiah didn't give up on hope.  He just looked for a source for hope that was further than the horizon.  He looked both backward and forward, west to where the sun had already set and east to where the new day would begin, to Israel's history and to its future.  And there, God whispered to him... hope.

That's part of why these old words envisioning a future king--an "anointed" one (literally, "messiah") had such power for the likes of Isaiah and his peers.  It was an act of hope in the face of disappointment and mediocrity that God would not simply let their story end with a whimper, but that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would write a new chapter.  Isaiah and the other prophets looked forward, but they also grounded that hope in real history.  They looked back to David, not to make an idol out of a man with obviously clay feet, but if nothing else as a reminder that they had once had good and faithful kings, that there were higher heights than the sad mediocrity they were living through, and that there was more they could hope for.  It wasn't just pie-in-the-sky--it was a hope for something better, but something in line with what they had known before.  And Isaiah, like the other prophets, dared to believe that God could bring about such a hope in their future and their children's future.

On the days when I am kept up at night, worrying about the society and world into which I will be sending my children as they grow, I am learning to find hope where Isaiah does.  I am learning to look beyond the horizon to trust that God is able to give us a better hope.  I am learning to see that for every disappointing Ahaz or heartbreaking fallen figure like Atticus, the living God has given us Jesus and the people whose lives have been marked with his own way.  My children will not lack for examples--there are pillars to whom they can look, and mentors from whom they can learn, even if there are no Davids around on the throne. They will grow up hearing the names and stories of Dr. King and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of Sojourner Truth and Julian of Norwich, of Martin Luther and Katie, of Oscar Romero and Rosa Parks, of Francis and Claire of Assisi, and they will know the faces of saints in pews alongside them, too, people who are trying--often struggling, but trying--to follow Jesus more faithfully in their daily lives.

But most of all, because they will know the story and life and way of Jesus--the one to whom, I am convinced, Isaiah was pointing all along--I believe my children will be able to be honest about the failings and disappointments of all the others around, without thinking they have to ignore those flaws, or defend them, or apologize for them.  But they will find a hope worthy of their futures when the other faces in the public square let them down or do not care.  

Isaiah is teaching me to teach my children to see the failings of authorities and to name them honestly, and, yes, to put the right amount of confidence in the decent heroes they find, but ultimately to teach them to look to Jesus as our hope... because he is the one who will not disappoint us. 

This Advent, Isaiah is teaching me to look to Jesus in a whole new way--as the one worthy of teaching my children to place their hope.

Lord Jesus, when we are let down, pull us from despair and settling for mediocrity by turning us back to you and to your way.

The Sickness and the Salve

The Sickness and the Salve--December 6, 2017

"We have all become like one who is unclean,

     and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.

 We all fade like a leaf,

     and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

 There is no one who calls on your name, 

    or attempts to take hold of you;

 for you have hidden your face from us,

    and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; 

     we are the clay, and you are our potter;

     we are all the work of your hand." [Isaiah 64:6-8]

Sometimes you only find out what the sickness was by learning what cures you.

It was a few years ago, a day in winter if I remember correctly, when I woke from the twilight of anesthetic on a hospital bed in one of those classy hospital gowns (what I maintain are the clothing equivalent of the mullet, which is to say, as the line goes, "business in the front party in the back").  I was waking from having had a colonoscopy, and the first things I recall were being handed a ginger ale and being told, "We found a polyp, and we removed it."

A great deal of information came and went in that short little sentence, and all so unceremoniously.  That lone sentence, a mere two independent clauses glued together with an "and," carried the specter of death and the relief of life all in the space of two and a half seconds of speech.   The polyp, had it gone unnoticed or undetected, would have (said the doctor) become cancer--and in my early thirties at that time, I wouldn't have even had it on my radar to be thinking about the C-word.  But there in one instant of time, the doctor simultaneously alerted me to the problem and to the solution that had already been provided.  I was waking to find myself saved, but at the very same time, the knowledge of the saving alerted me to the need to have been rescued in the first place.  I went into the procedure not knowing that there was any concern at all to be worried about, and came out of it hearing that there had been a problem... and that it had been dealt with while I was unconscious.  

In a very real sense, I did not even know what the real threat was until I was hearing that it had already been resolved.  The name of the malady came up in the process of telling me how it had already been treated.  And honestly, it had to be that way, because if you would have asked me before that morning if there was anything "wrong" with me, I would have sworn up and down that I was fine (at least medically--in terms of personality and character flaws, that list is a mile long).  I wouldn't have known at all what kind of "cure" or "treatment" I needed, because as far as I could see of myself, I was already just fine.

Sometimes you only find out what the sickness is by hearing what will heal you... or even hearing that the healing has already been provided for.

I want to propose that as our starting point here on this journey to know and love and to be shaped by Jesus.  I want to propose that we don't really know what our need is, until we see what Jesus does for us.  We do not know how we have distorted our humanity until we see the fullness of Jesus' humanity--and then we see how our own hearts are shriveled and bent, how our own courage and strength is stunted, how our own fear and hatreds are overgrown like an untended grapevine, and how we have disfigured ourselves with violence and avarice and insecurity and petty childishness. 

Catch us on an ordinary day without considering Jesus in the picture, and we would all swear up and down that we are all "just fine"... or at least, we would each say, "Well, I know that I--and people "like me"--am just fine.  If there's a problem, it's with... those people," and then we each trot out our own personal list of boogeymen, bad guys, villains, and identified patients.  The problem is "them"--the ones who think differently from me, the ones who don't look or act or pray or vote like me, the ones who make me feel insecure because they are "other"... because they are "they."  And, again, without having Jesus in the picture to compare ourselves to, we each have a way of inserting halos on to our own self-portraits, while adding secret devil horns to the pictures of the ones we don't like.

With that kind of view of the world, we will always, always, always diagnose "the problem" as something "out there"--you know, away from me and the people-like-me... the problem is "them." And if only somebody would do something about "them," then the world would be a better place.  You know, the problem is "those bad guys" over there, who are making it rough for "us good guys" here where I am... right?

We are all in this state of blissful self-righteousness like me before going under the anesthetic--all convinced that "I" am "just fine."

That's part of why preparing for Jesus is difficult--at least to do honestly.  See, if Jesus really is the healer, the salve (from the same Latin root as "salvation" and "savior," mind you), the help we deeply need, then to come face to face with Jesus is also come face to face with the diagnosis at the same time: I am not okay.  We are not okay.  We are, to borrow the line from the Joni Mitchell song, "so hard to handle, selfish, and sad."   We find that out the moment we compare our stunted, underdeveloped hearts (two sizes too small, like the Grinch) with the disarming love of Jesus... and yet that is exactly the same moment in which we find ourselves embraced by that same love.  The diagnosis and the cure come in the same breath. 

But that does make it scarier, in a sense, to face Jesus.  It means admitting, like the courageous old seer put it, even "all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth." It means I no longer get to break the world up into neat and tidy piles of "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys," not because all actions or words are morally equal, but because there isn't a single one of us who is immune from the sickness of the stunted, shriveled spirit--we are all "bad guys," at some level, and what we require is One who can make us well, not someone who can "get rid of THOSE bad guys OVER THERE." 

There are bad guys right here, wherever "right here" is--there is one typing at my computer right now.

This season is, for the intentionally out-of-step community called "church," one of hope and expectation, with our eyes trained on Jesus, the One we believe is the "savior of the world," the one whose coming is "good news for all the people," as one angel put it.  And it is with good reason that we are hopeful about the coming of Christ.  But to be honest with ourselves, really preparing for Christ's entry into our lives is rather like waking up from a colonoscopy--we should be prepared for the reality that we will find there was something wrong inside us at the same time we hear the news of healing and of a Healer.  The coming of Jesus means facing that we need a savior, because there is something inside each of us that is killing us.  The problem, like a cancer, is not some external foreign agent or body "out there" that came into make us sick--the problem is something inside each heart that has gone awry and twists our deepest selves to be bent inward.

For centuries in the life of the church, these days called "Advent" were solemn and sober, not because people were afraid of Jesus showing up and seeing their sins and then zapping them with lightning for not being good enough, but because it is precisely at the point we come face to face with Jesus that we see ourselves and our stunted humanity, and none of us can bear such a long and truthful look in the mirror. Only once we have come face to face with that stark reality will we truly be hopeful about the good news of Jesus, who not only shows us what our humanity was meant to look like all along, but who makes us truly human as well in his embrace. 

The diagnosis and the cure come all in one moment.

Lord Jesus, show us yourself.  And show us ourselves in your light... and then show us what you are making us into, so that we will not despair.

Preparing for Jesus

Preparing for Jesus--December 5, 2017

"A voice cries out: 

     'In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, 

           make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

     Every valley shall be lifted up, 

           and every mountain and hill be made low;

     the uneven ground shall become level,

           and the rough places a plain." [Isaiah 40:3-4]

After all these years, I am trying (still) to learn how to be ready for Jesus.

And, honestly, I think a lot of the energy I have spent over the years in the name of “preparing for Christmas” has missed the mark.

The more I read the Gospels and spend time in the Scriptures the more I get the sense that Jesus doesn’t care very much when your household puts a Christmas tree up… or how big it is… or even whether it is live or artificial.  I’m not convinced Jesus gets very worked up at all over whether you even have a Christmas tree or not.  (They’re lovely and all, but in truth, since Christmas trees weren’t even a “thing” until the 1500s, most of Christians over the span of history didn't have them.)  And yet, I have found myself over years… acquiring more and more decorations, spending more and more time digging through the boxes and forgetting what we had last year, losing my patience over tangled lights, impatient kids, and broken bulbs, and chasing after some impossible, imaginary idol, marketed to us by ads and Hallmark movies, as “the perfect Christmas."

I am ready to admit I have been missing the point.

I don’t think it has been just me.  We have all been taught the same, somewhere along the way.  And while it is still perfectly fine to trot out the old boxes and put up all the decorations, we should at least be honest and say that all of that is preparing for Christmas (as some idea of a day or season in our minds), rather than preparing for Jesus.

Preparing for Jesus is both a lot simpler and a lot more difficult.

There is nothing to buy.  There is nothing to fuss over.  But it will take all your life to do.

Preparing for Jesus, as opposed to simply decking your halls for a season or a holiday, is about letting the living Spirit of God do renovation work in our hearts, our way of thinking, our pocketbooks, our priorities, and our calendars.  Preparing for Jesus has little to do with whether you do, or do not, have a Nativity set put up somewhere, or have even lit an Advent candle, and instead has very much to do with the extent to which we let God sweep us into the “new thing” God is doing in Jesus—the thing that, as Mary sings, “lifts up the lowly,” “fills the hungry with good things,” and “fulfills the ancient promises.” It is about letting the living God make us into the reflection of Christ, and turning us outward from our self-centered bent.  It is about learning to see in Jesus—a child born to ordinary peasants in a backwater province of the empire, who flee for their lives as refugees from Herod—the very face of God.  And then, in that light, we see who we truly are, as well.

When the ancient dreamer's words that we call Isaiah 40 were first written, nobody was talking about decorations.  When the prophet says, "Prepare the way..." he's not interested in getting his fellow Israelites to put bows or bells on anything.  He's interested in getting people's attention to see God's promise to put things right.  It's a picture of God clearing the path for gathering exiles back, for leveling off the high places and filling in the valleys that would have been obstacles for bringing them back home.  To "prepare the way" was to be on the look out for God's in-gathering of the ones who had been pushed to the margins, left out in exile, and forgotten by the powerful in Babylon.

And for us who hold onto these words still, all these centuries later, and who hear in them the whisper of a promise of a Savior, to "prepare the way of the Lord" still looks a lot more like attuning our hearts and senses like satellite dishes to the kind of thing God is up to in the world. 

Christians believe--and maybe we should own that it is an audacious belief--that Jesus is the fulfillment of these ancient visions from the book of Isaiah.  That means that, even if Jesus' way of fulfilling the promises was ultimately surprising (no one expected a manger, or a footwashing basin, or dinner parties with tax collectors and prostitutes, or a cross), the point of Jesus' mission was precisely what the old prophets had been hoping for: a final great homecoming, an end of exile, an in-gathering of the people who had been scattered and stepped on, and a welcome of people far away.

To prepare for Jesus, then, and to dare to take up a whole new year's journey of falling in love all over again with a homeless crucified rabbi, will mean that we perhaps calm down our fussiness about bows and lights and trees, and turn our hearts again where Jesus would point us--God's work of gathering in everybody who feels they have been left out.

Lord Jesus, we are on the journey again.  Lead us back to you.  Clear the path in front of us from whatever obstacles that get in the way--even if they are our own Christmas decorations.  And teach us how to smooth out the path for others you are drawing to yourself, too.

Full of Stars

Full of Stars--December 1, 2017

"From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us." [2 Corinthians 5:16-20]
Every year about this time I come back to a few lines of T.S. Eliot:

"What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from..."

And then a bit later in the same poem, Eliot says, 

"And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

The church-nerd in me, the part of me that keeps time, not January through December, but Advent-through-Christ-the-King, sees this day as the end and the beginning of a year.  And with it, this is the end of a year's worth of devotions, the end of a year-long project we have called "Mercy Moves Us" in the places and congregations where I live, and the end of a twelve-month-long arc that has tried to, well, move us somewhere.  Today is the end of something... but Sunday will bring the beginning of something new.

And yet...

And yet, it's hardly like we have gotten everything all resolved.  There is no final big red bow to slap on this day or this year, as though the work of Jesus' people were done, just because we have come to the turning of the odometer on the liturgical calendar.  We are still just as much in the midst of the mess as ever.  Maybe even more so than usual, because this past month we have turned our focus toward mercy moving us... into the mess.  And it would seem to me that until Jesus comes, that is precisely where we shall stay--in the mess that is myself, in the mess that is the church, in the mess that is the world.  

That is to say, as long as I live, I shall forever be a mess, a bundle of contradictions, of sin and righteousness, of bitter self-centeredness and joyful self-giving, of fear and privilege and envy and resentment and arrogance and truth and justice and humility and honest seeking.  And for whatever progress I make in this life, I will also still always be that mess of both, in whatever degrees I may grow or deepen or bend out of myself.

And that is to say, too, that for as long as it remains on God's green earth, the church will be nothing but a band of forgiven sinners trying to make sense of being precisely that.  We are cantankerous and ornery, fearful and stubborn, sometimes cowardly and sometimes brash, sometimes selfless and sometimes stingy, sometimes gracious and sometimes shamelessly graceless.  The association of struggling recovering rebels and sinners we call "Church" will always be a mess because that is all we can ever be--people who are broken but beloved, people who regularly fail but are also perennially forgiven, people who quite often miss the point but who are never outside of the grip of grace, people who, as Frederick Buechner once put it, "have at least some half-baked idea of Whom to thank."  The Church is a mess--not in some curmudgeonly sense that is upset at the contemporary church in particular, expressed with a nostalgic, "Back in my day, the Church was pure and got it all right!" kind of way, but in the sense that the Church by definition must always be a mess, because its only constituents are messes individually themselves, and put all together are an even bigger mess of disagreements on politics and morality, on tax policy and musical style, on theological questions and the matter of which color the carpet should be.

And to zoom out one level further, the we are in the mess because the world itself is--and always has been, and always will be, this side of glory--a royal mess.  You didn't need me to tell you.  We have been increasingly reminded every day on the news how so many seemingly respectable, prominent, and public figures have been brought down low with accusations of shameful treatment of other people.  We are reminded with frightening urgency that there is still the specter of nuclear war on the horizon, just when we thought we could put that fear out of our minds with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  We are reminded that the people we most deeply put our trust in and gave our respect to so often let us down, revealing streaks of hatred or abuse, corruption or bigotry, wickedness and deception, that we rather wish we could have remained ignorant about... and it reminds us that if so many public faces can let us down, well, then, the ordinary people all around us, whom we trust and respect and admire, are just as likely to be carrying around the same wickedness inside them... and that the same wickedness runs through our own hearts as well.  The mess is in me, in my church, and in my world... which includes me once again, too.

We are not at much of an ending, or at least not much of a tying up of loose ends...

...which means, in a very real sense, the adventure continues.  The work continues.  The movement continues.  

And here is the real surprise twist of that mission of God's people, the merciful "movement" of Jesus and his people:  we are sent back into a world that is a mess... but we are sent with the message that God has already reconciled with us.... indeed with the whole world.  Paul says it this way, "in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself... and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us."  God has already done the reconciling.  The forgiving is done. Accomplished.  The bridges we have burned with God have been rebuilt from God's side already, all the way across to our side of the shore.  And yet, we are sent into the world that, for all its messiness, has a hard time believing it is true.  We are sent into a world that is a mess, to tell that world, and every last mother's child in it, that God has already reconciled with them all... and that God has done it while we are all a mess.  

And with that, we are sent, too, to see every last mother's child, as the presence of Christ as well.

Think of that for a moment.  Think of how radical a difference such a practice would make--if our eyes really were conditioned to see every person we meet as the presence of Christ... or at least to dare to regard everyone whose path crosses our own, as we would regard Christ.  It would change everything.  It would begin a movement.

In these days when public figures are being revealed to have objectified, harassed, or mistreated employees or people under their authority, whether with lewd comments or invasive touch or the pressure that comes with their power, and in these days, too, when well-meaning folks may be scratching their heads wondering, "How do I know what kinds of actions are safe, what kinds of words are allowed, and what ways I should treat others?", what if it really were as simple as, "Treat the people around you--men and women, employees and employers, customers and clients, friends, enemies, strangers, and everyone else in between, as you would treat Jesus."  

In these days when there is vile, scurrilous, and downright ignorant garbage being volleyed back and forth across the internet as well as in small talk banter in the barbershop and shopping lines, in these days when it is easy to anonymously make some crass remark, or to bloviate on your personal hobby horse issues without having to actually face someone else with whom you disagree in the same room person to person, what if our commitment as disciples of Jesus was to regard people--including, and perhaps especially, the people we like the least or who seem the most in opposition to us--as the presence of Christ?  What if we were pushed to a civility of discourse because we really acted like the person whose page you were commenting on, or whose memes you were clicking on, was none other than the presence of Christ? 

What if, like Paul says, we no longer regarded anybody else from a human (literally "fleshly") point of view, but as Christ's presence among us?  What if we dared to see the world around us as full of reflections of Christ everywhere we turned? 

There's that moment toward the end of the classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey where the astronaut Dave Bowman enters the mysterious alien monolith outside of Jupiter, and what seems to be the end becomes the start of a whole new journey into a new kind of existence--and there inside the interdimensional star-gate (or whatever that thing is), Bowman says, "My God--it's full of stars...."  I rather think that the Christian life, this movement of mercy, is something like that--like passing through an ending to discover it is a new beginning and then to see the whole world is full of Christ, from stem to stern.  So... what if that was the way we stepped into this day... expecting to see Christ all around us, and treating the faces we meet in it as Christ among us.

It would be a small dent, perhaps, in the overwhelming mess of the world, and it would not be enough to put things right in a world that feels terribly wrong.  But our calling is not to save the world--our calling is to tell the world it has already been reconciled to God.  And our way of bringing that message of reconciliation through Christ is to act as though the world around us really is full of the presence of Christ, not just in the quiet tranquil places like the early morning woods or the sunset on the sea shore, but in the roiling mess of humanity, in the faces of people who are like us as well as people who are different, in the people who share our faith in Jesus and in the people who do not call on him, as well.

And that is where we are called to spend our minutes and our energy in this day... and in this life.  The work won't be over until the end of this life's adventures... and as Eliot says, the end of those adventures will be to come back to the place we started from and to know the place for the first time. 

If that feels like a beginning as much as an ending, well, maybe that's just about right.

Lord Jesus, here we are in the middle of things--between endings and beginnings and middles, in the midst of messes within and messes without--and we ask you to lead us out into the world around us to bring your news of reconciliation.