Outlasting Augustus--December 22, 2022

Outlasting Augustus--December 22, 2022

"In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David." [Luke 2:1-4]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Not Cutting to the Chase--December 21, 2022

On Not Cutting to the Chase--December 21, 2022

"[The angel said to Joseph in a dream:] 'Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 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 conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,' which means, 'God is with us'." [Matthew 1:20b-23]

Maybe it's really God who is the Patient One in all of this, even moreso than us.  And perhaps that is worth spending a moment to think about.

In these weeks before Christmas, we church folk often talk about our own patience--how we deliberately take these weeks called Advent to slow the pace down and wait for Christ's coming.  In many churches we hold off on singing "Christmas" songs until Christmas Eve itself. We wait to put baby Jesus in the creche set until the proper time.  We listen to cranky old John the Baptizer scolding us for our sins rather than only talking about cute baby Jesus and his animal friends around the manger.  And all the while we're telling our children and grandchildren to wait, wait, wait for all they are looking forward to with anticipation, from cookies to school vacation to visits with family to presents under the tree.  We can really work ourselves up patting ourselves on the back for being so good at being patient [sort of] for this season.

But what about God?

Seriously.  Even though God's experience of time is surely different from ours, the same God who has known and set into motion the great arc of redemption that culminates in Jesus has had to endure all of our complaining throughout the centuries that God wasn't moving fast enough.  God has been willing to let things unfold in their own time, in their own course, over generations and centuries, all leading up to an engaged couple from the backwater of the empire from a town so small they didn't bother to put it on ancient maps.  God has been willing to be patient to let things come to fruition--all the while, bearing plenty of accusations from religious people lamenting that God didn't seem to be acting in the ways they wanted, or at the pace they wished for.

And yet, God sticks with this deliberate, patience pace.  Somehow the waiting--the simmering, even--is important.  I don't know that we give much thought to that.  We church folks have a way of wanting to rush right to the adult Jesus, preaching, teaching, healing, and saving.  We are quick to move right from "he was born" to "he died on the cross for our sins," as though we could skip the rest of the lifetime between those moments.  Even the old Apostles' Creed itself moves from "born of the virgin Mary" to "he suffered under Pontius Pilate" in the same breath.  But God didn't.  God chose the pace of an actual human lifetime--which meant that God was willing, not only to bear the humbling humanity of being an infant in diapers or bleeding out in shame on a Roman cross, but everything along the way from being potty trained to learning to eat solid foods, to going to school, to making friends, to even grieving over them when they died.  God didn't just skip from the creche to the cross with the snap of a divine finger--God chose the same speed of life as we live it... which, to be honest, sometimes feels like it is crawling by through ordinary days and tedious routines.  All of that is what God chose to go through in Jesus.  Somehow all of that is important to the Incarnation.

All of this is to say that whatever else it means to say that Jesus "saves us from our sins" is more than just six hours of cross-born pain on Good Friday--it is Jesus' whole life that redeems our lives.  It is a whole span of years that God spends entwined with our humanity, not just a single night in Bethlehem while the angels sing in the background.  It was ordinary Wednesdays... and overcast Thursdays... and weeks that blurred into months that blurred into years.  God has shared all of our human life and experience, and apparently all of that is important.  After all, you have to imagine that if God had wanted to, God could have just "beamed down," a la Star Trek, onto the scene as a fully adult Jesus and just skipped right to the story of Holy Week, if all God needed was a cross and Easter morning.  But God doesn't choose that, which say something about the meaning of even the days that seem too plain to have any meaning to them from our vantage point.

And that also means God chooses the way of patience rather than following our impulse to cut to the chase.  God is willing to steep in our humanity rather than be a flash in the pan kind of presence.  When we think and talk about Jesus coming to be our "Savior," we would do well to remember it's not merely a day or a moment that makes it all happen, like a transaction or a magic spell.  Jesus' death flows from the same impulse of love that animates his whole life.  Jesus' cross is of one piece with his whole human life--and what he saves is the whole of our lives, not merely the "what happens to me after I die" part.

Today, then, that means that there is no part of our lives that God does not value and cherish.  There is no moment in our lives that makes God yawn, or that God would choose to fast-forward through.  There is no part of this day that is unimportant, even if we cannot see the significance of individual actions and choices.  All of it is precious, and all of it counts.  In these days before Christmas it is easy to feel like the 25th is the day that "really" counts, while everything else is just a blur of busyness to get to the finish line.  But I think God's own choice to come among us in Jesus pushes against that.  There's no single day we've got to get magically perfect.  And we aren't supposed to rush through this day or the next day or the next to get to Christmas as quickly as possible.  Today brings chances to embody Christ for others around us--let's allow those to happen without rushing through them to get to Silent Night and stockings.  Today brings its own gifts of grace; we don't need to skip ahead to the ones under a tree.  All of this is to say--let each day take its own time and be its own chance to be present to God.  Taking that seriously will probably slow our days down some--we will see purpose and possibility in every encounter, ever conversation, every choice.  And maybe we need to be slowed down like that--after all, God seems to think it is worthwhile to take things at a pace that requires patience.  Perhaps by slowing down, even today, we will find ourselves more intentionally in good company as we walk.

Lord God, slow us down to walk with you through even the days we find ordinary or insignificant.

The Patience to Listen--December 20, 2022

The Patience to Listen--December 20, 2022

"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.

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.  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.

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.

The Invitation to Love--December 19, 2022

 

The Invitation to Love--December 19, 2022

"In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, 'Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.' But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus'." [Luke 1:26-31]

As much as it is a gift of grace to be loved in this life, it is also a gift of grace to be given the chance to love as well. And those who allow us to love them, for however long that invitation is extended to us, they are giving us an immense gift.

Sometimes I forget that.

Mary's story reminds me, though, when I get forgetful... or more likely, when I start taking this gift of being allowed to love others for granted. The way the story begins has a way of helping me to hear and see again that it is a gift of grace that God gives Mary the chance to love this child. Before we get to how the baby will be special, before we even get to the courage and faith of Mary's "yes" (and how the whole universe hangs on her "yes"), there is the announcement of the angel that it is a holy and precious gift Mary has been given.

The angel's greeting sets the table for the rest of the conversation: "Greetings, favored one!" You could just as well translate it (a bit more literally, if a little awkward in the English) as "Hello, having-been-graced one!" This is an important point to stay with for a moment, because later translations (and then even further down the road, a whole line of theology) would slightly skew the original sense and render it, "Greetings, Mary, full of grace." Yes, that's where the opening line of the prayer to Mary called the "Hail, Mary" comes from. But notice the shift in emphasis. If you hear the angel's greeting as "Hail, Mary, full of grace," it sounds like she is being given a reward for her accomplishment of being such a grace-ful person. It sounds like God went and found the most worthy person and gave her a big gold star of a prize by awarding her the right to birth the Messiah. But that's not really how the angel's message goes. As Luke tells it, this is all about grace. It is all about the gift Mary is being given in the opportunity to love a child.

It is, of course, always difficult to love people--anybody at all. To genuinely love someone means the inescapable risk that they will not return the love, or that they will bail out, or that they will grow distant, or that they will grow up. To love someone runs the risk that you will suffer at times because you are with them as they suffer... and it will mean sometimes you suffer alone because they have gone elsewhere, grown up, or moved on. That is true of every parent's love for their children, every friend's love for another friend, every spouse's love for their husband or wife. It is a strange grace, and a costly gift, to be given the opportunity to love someone entrusted into your life. And yet, of course, for anyone who has ever loved anybody else, you know it is worth the price of admission--not even to have the love returned, but simply because it is a holy privilege to be allowed to worry about them, to wipe their tears way, to make them laugh, to help in a time of need, to speak the right word, and to listen in silence. It is a holy privilege to pay the costs of loving. Mary doesn't yet know what the costs will be, but she and the angel both know that the costs, however high, are worth it.

Mary will be called upon to reorient her whole life around this child. She is not simply asked to endure the physical pain of childbirth or the gawking stares of neighbors during the pregnancy as the neighbors whisper and gossip about who they think the father is. No, her whole life will be poured out in loving this child--even when he grows up and becomes an adult on his own. Part of being a parent, of course, is that you hold a certain empty space in your life to be available for the sake of your kids, no matter how old they get or how independent they are. You don't get credit for that empty space, but you are indeed expected to hold your life open, intentionally empty in places, forever, for the sake of loving them.

That is a beautiful, costly, thing, that emptiness. Mary will pay it all her life long--not only on the ordinarily difficult days when her son has grown up and is roaming around all the surrounding towns, but also on the terrible Friday afternoon when she has to watch her son die, and to be helpless to stop it, but only able to keep watch.

All of that is encapsulated in the opening greeting of the angel: "Mary, you are graced, because you have been given the gift of getting to love this child... even though it will cost you a great deal of heartache." Of course, Mary is getting a window on the cost that God has chosen to pay as well in loving both Mary's boy (who is also God's dear child) and loving the whole world. God chooses day by day to keep loving the world, despite the costs and the heartache to God's own heart. And yet, just like Mary, God chooses this love, and chooses the pain of it, because that is how love works--it is a gift, even if a costly one, to get to love others.

So, dear ones, let me ask you this favor, and I will do my utmost to do the same myself: when you are given the opportunity to love others, do not take that lightly or dismiss it. Do not take that chance for granted, and do not rush to fill in the empty spaces we are meant to keep open so that we can be available for those it has been given to us to love. There will come a day soon enough for each of us when those opportunities have come and then gone, and it is a damn shame to miss out on the opportunity to love those God has graced us with, even when it means great sorrow, too.

Perhaps the best way to honor this season in which we remember the birth of our Lord and the announcement of the angel to his mother is simply this: to receive it is as gift of grace that we are allowed the chance to love others... and to give ourselves completely to that calling. And perhaps if we dare to treat each person we meet today as though it is Christ in front of us that we are being asked to love, we will get a glimpse of what ran through Mary's mind as the angel said to her, "Hi, Mary. You are being given such a gift..."

Lord God, thank you for the privilege it is to be allowed to love people. Let us not waste or miss the chance when we have it.

Keeping the Fire Going--December 16, 2022

 

Keeping the Fire Going--December 16, 2022

"As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord." [James 5:10]

Maybe being patient doesn't look so much like twiddling your thumbs with your mouth closed, but tending a flame to keep the fire going even when everyone else has gone to sleep. At least I think that's what James, and the prophets to which he looks as an example, would tell us.

See, here's the thing: if you aren't going to ignore this verse [which many of us heard read in worship for the Third Sunday in Advent this year], you can either use it to encourage others (and yourself) to keep on getting into holy trouble when it seems hopeless to keep trying... or you can misuse James' words to scold people into passive acquiescence to evil and silent acceptance of abuse.  And that, my dear ones, would be a terrible case of theological malpractice.

Let's back up for a second.  It's true that over the course of Israel's history, God raised up numerous prophets who were called to speak truth to power, to shock complacent people into a new state of wakefulness, and to envision new hope when all seemed lost.  The faithful prophets were tasked, as the old line puts it, with afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.  And they filled that vocation, not only when it was easy (which was rare) but also when it was difficult.  Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, and Ezekiel all persisted in speaking up even when it was costly--whether they were upsetting the political powers of the day, exposing the religious hypocrisy of the religious establishment, overturning tables in the marketplace, or calling on their neighbors to practice mercy and justice, they endured.  And yes, that involved a great deal of suffering--holy troublemaking usually does.

So that much is fair to say, and James is absolutely holding up the example of these prophets as examples from whom we can learn endurance and persistence.  They kept at their message, and they kept at their work, even when it seemed like it was going nowhere, and even when others around them preferred to drift off into a complacent sleep and ignore the trouble around them.  The prophets were patient in the sense that they kept at their vocation, like the watchman whose job is to tend the fire and make sure it doesn't go out in the night.

But let's also remember that these prophets were constantly shouting their frustrations at God, too, when the people didn't listen.  As much as we may remember the quaint, "Here am I, send me!" of Isaiah's call story, we often leave out the immediately following verses when God tells Isaiah that he's going to preach to ears that won't listen and eyes that will turn away from the truth.  As much as we may love the hopeful image put on Jeremiah's lips of a "new covenant" with God's word written on our hearts, this is the same Jeremiah who complains to God that the people aren't listening, and who accuses God of tricking him and luring him into being a prophet with an offer he couldn't refuse.   The prophets were willing to endure suffering, that's true, but they sure didn't go quietly into that good night.  They raged--against the powers of the day, against the religious and economic institutions of their day, and even against God when they felt like they had been abandoned by God and rejected by the people.  When things were not fair, not right, or not just, the prophets saw it--and they made noise about it... to everyone.  For them, being patient did not mean looking the other way quietly when others suffered or people were selling their souls to the idols of power and money or literal golden calves.

So whatever the word "patience" means here as James calls his readers to be patient, it absolutely cannot mean silent consent to wrongs being done, or a stoic stiff-upper-lip when they or others were mistreated.  The prophets didn't resort to violence when the king threatened, or the priests banned them from temples, or an angry lynch mob came to terrorize them.  But they sure as heaven didn't pretend they were happy about the mistreatment.  They just refused to sink to the level of their enemies. The prophets were committed not to answer evil with evil, but they sure did call out that evil for what it was when they saw it.  So whatever it means that they were "patient," they also used their voices, their actions, and their pens to protest what was wrong in their society.  The prophets' patience was in their persistence to keep on agitating, to keep on speaking, to keep on challenging, and to keep on questioning what everybody else took as the God's-honest-truth.  As long as that's what we mean when we use the word "patience," then, yes, by all means, let us be patient like the prophets were.

All too often, Respectable Religious People have used the language of the virtue of patience to squash that kind of urgency, and to tell the people of God to be quiet, look away from injustices, and to fake a smile while we wait for our tickets to heaven to be punched.  All too often, Respectable Religion has said, "Being patient means to grin and bear the terrible things that happen to others as well as to yourself until it either goes away on its own or we die and get to the afterlife and don't have to worry about it anymore."  But that's not at all what the prophets did--their kind of patience was the persistence to call out what was wrong, to bear hatred and hardship for speaking up when they did, and to go at it again the next day and the next and the next, for as long as it took.  The prophets never sat back and said, "Maybe things will get better on their own without my saying anything, doing anything, or changing anything."  Rather, they insisted on provoking their fellow citizens, their rulers, their religious leaders, and even other nations, to wake up in the immediate present.

I can't help, when I think of James connecting "the prophets" with "patience," of Dr. King's witness in his powerful (and gut-punching) "Letter from Birmingham City Jail."  For one, King reminds his readers, including a bunch of moderate white pastors who had criticized him, that all too often the word "Wait!" has meant "Never," and that the language of patience has been used by kings and high priests and CEOs from time immemorial to wear out those calling for change.  But then, in a masterful stroke, King reminds us that the work of changing things here and now was not reserved only for a select few ancient prophets but was the calling of the whole church in its beginnings.  King writes:

"There was a time when the church was very powerful.  It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were 'a colony of heaven,' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment.... Things are different now. The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are."

Of course, as King wrote those words, calling for change to racist structures in Jim Crow America, he was also sitting in a jail cell, enduring suffering for speaking up.  That was his kind of patience--a willingness to suffer if need be, but more than that, a willingness to keep on speaking and calling for God's in-breaking newness.  That was not only Dr. King's kind of patience, but that's what James has to have in mind when he calls for us to follow the example of "the prophets" as a model of patience, too.  

So please, let us not weaponize the word "patience" to silence or intimidate people God may well be raising up to speak truth that makes us squirm.  That is not the kind of patience the prophets, ancient or modern, embody.  Rather, our calling, like theirs, is to be persistent, resilient, and relentless in our commitment to speak love in the face of hatred, to practice justice in the face of crookedness, and to value truth in the face of pleasant lies. Our calling is to tend the flame even when everyone else has given up on keeping the fire going and gone to sleep.

May we be as restlessly, fiercely patient in our holy troublemaking as our God-given examples, the prophets.

Lord God, give us the fire you gave to prophets before us, to shed light into shadowy corners, to bring warmth to cold hearts, and to bring down with our witness whatever condemned oppressive structures need to be cleared away to make room for your new creation.

Scattering Our Pride--December 15, 2022

Scattering Our Pride--December 15, 2022

"[God] 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." [Luke 1:51-53]

Here is one of the places where Mary's words--the very words of Scripture, the words of the Mother of the Messiah no less--are hard for me. And yet, to be honest, it is the difficulty that gives me a surprising kind of hope.

What is hard for me about these words of Mary's is that she speaks them like they are accomplished facts, rather than wishful thinking. She doesn't simply long for the proud and puffed up to be taken down a few pegs. Mary doesn't just imagine, a la John Lennon's famous song, that things might be or could be different. Mary sings like it is true... like God has already done it.

And the thing is... in this life, it sure doesn't look like the proud and pompous have been scattered or quieted. The arrogant have a way of shouting more, barking louder, and patting themselves on the back, and it sure can look like they win the day. From the days of the obnoxiously narcissistic Roman emperors and generals going on victory tours to try and impress the crowds of the vanquished and conquered people, and ever after, there is this recurring impulse with the proud ones of history to overplay their hand. They can't just win--they have to convince you it was an utterly overwhelming triumph. They can't just leave wounded hearts to heal--they have to rub salt in the wound. They cannot imagine that somehow there are minority reports like Mary's that dare to say the emperor is wearing no clothes, and they cannot hear a word of reality to bring them back down to earth--that sounds too much like criticism to the ears of the proud. And here is the terribly irony--it is often the proud and puffed up who have the most fragile egos, in all reality. I suppose that makes sense by the laws of physics, too--a balloon that is fully inflated with the hot air of your breath will explode with just the slightest prodding from a sharp pin. So it is with history's "proud." But they sure seem to win the day an awful lot, though.

That's what makes it hard for me to hear Mary's words. So often, the proud aren't scattered--they are clumped together in seats of power and prestige, from Pharaoh in Egypt to Babylon and Rome and in every empire since. But Mary speaks with such confidence, such certainty. And that's odd just by itself, because surely Mary herself hadn't seen much evidence of the proud being scattered in her own lifetime. Just the opposite, really. Every year (at least), the Romans would march into Jerusalem, their occupied capital, with swords and helmets flashing and banners with Caesar's image flapping in the wind, just to remind everybody in Judea who was in charge. Thirty-odd years after Mary's pregnancy, of course, an itinerant rabbi would stage his own subversive version of this imperial parade coming into Jerusalem riding on a borrowed donkey while the crowds waved palm branches--but when Mary sang the words of Luke 1, that moment we know as Palm Sunday was barely a gleam in her eye.

So Mary has something in common with us--we still live in this world order where the proud don't seem particularly humbled yet, and they still lord it over everybody else. For that matter, if we are unflinchingly honest, there is that proud and puffed up streak in all of us to some degree, and we have a tendency of resisting anything that would let the hot air out of our balloons. We don't like to admit we are, or ever were, wrong. We are the ones who don't like to hear or consider the possibility that there is more to the story than we can see. We don't like to admit our own blind spots or biases. We, all of us, are all sure we've got it right, and "they" are the ones who have it all wrong. And we have conveniently engineered news channels, social media feeds, and our circles of friends to become echo chambers that will only reinforce what we already think. If all I ever hear are stories and comments that already fit with what I already believe, well, then, I'll never have to admit to being incorrect or incomplete, and I'll never have to have my perspective widened.

But Mary's song keeps calling to us and pulling at us. Mary sings about a God who has scattered the proud, and with that, at the very least she forces each of us to ask ourselves where we are in need of being brought back down to earth, and where each of us has been the arrogant one tromping on the people around us. And you know what else--Mary forces us to consider that God just might have already begun to humble the proud... by coming among us in Jesus. Maybe, just maybe, Mary was onto something--and the way to undermine the puffed-up and pompous powerbrokers of history is to begin to undermine the way they define themselves. Instead of accepting the rules they play by, where shows of power or influence or prestige or force or wealth are the measuring rods of being "great," what if you save the world without an army or two coins to rub together, and instead save the world with self-giving suffering love that breaks open the grip of death? What if you save the world, not by raising up one more empire to take down the last one, until the next one comes along, but by refusing to play the world's ridiculous game of "King of the Hill" in the first place? What if it turns out that God is an awful lot more subversive and surprising than we realized, and if God is not the one propping up the powerful in their comfortable positions, but rather the One who calls into question all of history's pompous victory tours by riding into town on a donkey toward his own execution? And what if Mary was on to that all along, and wants us to see that from the beginning, too?

If you have found yourself, now or ever, in that place of darkness and despair because it doesn't feel like the arrogant of history get the humbling they deserve, then maybe what we most deeply need is Mary's song to point us to Jesus, and then to take up the cause of dethroning the proud by taking an honest look inside ourselves for blind spots and biases we did not want to admit were there.

Thank God for inspiring the revolutionary voice of Mary, who sang this subversive tune into the ears of her infant son, so that he could indeed break open the stagnant old patterns of history.

Lord God, give us the courage today both to look at ourselves for places we have puffed ourselves up, and to look hopefully at your way of turning the tables on the arrogant and the pompous, so that all of us may find ourselves lifted up together.

What Mary Knows--December 14, 2022

What Mary Knows--December 14, 2022

"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 be blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name...'." [Luke 1:46-49]

Mary has a few surprises up her sleeve.  Or rather, Mary has the faithful vision to recognize the surprises hidden up God's sleeve. And before we relegate her to the non-speaking role she gets in the Nativity story on Christmas Eve [go check--Mary doesn't get any lines in the classic story from Luke 2], it's worth listening to her here, in these words we often call the Magnificat, as she points those surprises out for us to hear.

If you've heard this song of Mary's before, as we often do in worship at this time of year, you might well know that Mary recognizes how God's action in the world will turn the tables on things.  Mary sings, echoing another surprising mother from Israel's story named Hannah, about how God is pulling down the powerful from their thrones, filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich away empty.  That by itself is shocking to a lot of Respectable Religious folks in our culture, especially given how many "inspirational" books, tv shows, radio programs, and televangelists out there have made a fortune selling people on the idea that God wants you to be rich and that poverty is a sign of laziness more than anything else.  In a culture where a lot of folks thinking that God's job is to make us comfortable and that religion's job is to reinforce the order of things that keeps us in positions of comfort, Mary's song sounds downright subversive.  That's because it is, of course. And just that fact by itself is one of the divine surprises revealed in her song.  

Mary points out that God is committed to a rearranging of the whole world--including our economies, our way of building ladders of success to climb, and our way of putting our trust in our piles of stuff and money.  Mary knows that God is more interested in everybody getting to eat than in anybody having a hoarded supply of manna, and that God is willing to take the air out of the over-inflated arrogant and proud in order to do it.  That means changing, dramatically, "The Way Things Are."  And if we have come to the Christmas season looking for someone to just reinforce the patterns, routines, and systems we all live in that keep some people hungry and homeless while others are insulated in apathy, Mary removes those illusions.  She praises God for doing things that are utterly revolutionary.

So, inspired by a vision of nothing less than a total upheaval of "The Way Things Are" in terms of money, power, and resources, Mary's course of action is... pregnancy.  This is the second grand surprise up God's sleeve for us to consider.  Mary's response to the promise of the coming Savior who will rearrange everything... is to carry the baby growing within her own body.  Mary is convinced that this act of nurture, played out at first over months of expectation and morning sickness, and then over years of motherhood with all its sacrifices and sorrows, is her part of God's in-breaking Reign.  And given how grand and radical her song is, that's surprising.  

You might expect someone who sings a song like Mary's to go rile up a mob with whatever weapons they can find and then incite a riot to take political power by violence and force.  You could imagine, as plenty of agitators and insurgents have done in history, a firebrand like Mary organizing a militia, arming her recruits, and sending them off to attack the halls of power in the name of "taking back their country" and saying it was all in the name of God.  There were, after all, plenty in the first century in Palestine who were organizing to do just that--we remember them now as the Zealots [and again, whether one thinks of those groups as "freedom fighters" or "terrorists" depends in large part on your social situation].  Mary very clearly is not stirring up political violence, and she is not looking to cast herself as a new Deborah the Judge commanding fighters to repel a foreign enemy or occupying force.  For as much change as Mary's song calls for--and it does indeed envision a turning of the world's tables--Mary knows that God's movement is not built on killing your enemies or starting an insurrection just because you don't like the way things are being run.

On the other hand, you could imagine just the opposite happening, too--you could imagine someone like Mary pouring all of her wildest wishes and most outlandish dreams into a song, and then leaving it all as mere talk.  You could imagine her pushing all of those hopes for the hungry to be filled with good things off into the distance, for some day in another world, in the afterlife, where there will be, as the old line goes, "pie in the sky by and by."  You could imagine Mary singing her heart out about what she hoped would happen, and then with a sigh, shrugging it all off as foolishness and then getting back to a life that fit right back into the machinery of "The Way Things Are."  Like old slavemasters teaching the enslaved people in their clutches about heaven after they died in the hopes of discouraging the need for them to hope for justice or freedom in this life, you could imagine someone like Mary giving up hope that her song was meant to be grounded in reality at all.   But again, that's not what happens.  Mary certainly doesn't use her song's vision to kindle a violent riot, but neither does she let it numb her into paralysis, either.

Mary's response is to bear the child growing in her body, to love him into being [as Mr. Rogers would put it], and to raise him with the same vision of a table-turning God who feeds the hungry and disarms the bullies as she has sung about.  It isn't nothing--my goodness, it will be her life's work.  And yet it isn't at all what the world usually expects for how to bring about change.  Mary is willing to play the long game.  She is willing to do small, imperceptible acts that seem insignificant to the rest of the world--she will teach her son the ways of God, the courage of the prophets, the passion of the Torah for justice and mercy.  She will teach young Jesus about God bringing down Pharaoh and setting captives free.  She will sing her song as a lullaby to him.  She will light a spark that will start a fire, even if it doesn't look "effective" or "efficient" by the empire's standards.  She is willing to be patient as she does her revolutionary work, because she is convinced that God, too, is willing to be patient in such work.

And if the same God who was able to create a universe in an instant merely with the words, "Let there be..." chooses to work through the natural process of a nine-month pregnancy and the years of raising a child into adulthood before we get to the public ministry of Jesus, then Mary is willing to trust that God knows what God is doing.  Mary knows that God's ways will not look like the playbook the world uses--it is both too radical and too peaceable at the same time.  But she is convinced that God's ways are the right ones for her to walk in, so she commits to the revolutionary--but slow--work of loving her boy into being, to raise Jesus of Nazareth to learn how to be who he is called to be as well.  

Perhaps our work is much the same.  We are not sent out, we followers of Mary's son, to "take back our country for God," any more than Mary was, and certainly not with weapons or partisan power-grabs.  But neither are we given permission to push Mary's vision off into afterthought of the afterlife.  We are called, like Mary, to do the slow but subversive work of bearing Christ forth into the world even in small and overlookable actions that embody God's Reign in love.

Mary knew how... perhaps we can learn from her today.

O God who turns the world upside-down and who waits in the fragility of a human life, teach us your ways and let us embody your Reign here and now.