Come As You Are

Come As You Are--December 20, 2017

"The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, 

     because the LORD has anointed me;

 he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

     to bind up the brokenhearted,

 to proclaim liberty to the captives,

     and release to the prisoners;

 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor....

 Because their shame was doubled, 

     and dishonor was proclaimed as their lot,

 therefore they shall possess a double portion;

     everlasting joy shall be theirs." [Isaiah 61:1-2a, 7]

Okay, I'm just going to get this off my chest and get it said: sometimes preachers are a real pain.

Sometimes religious professionals (yes, like myself) make a real melluvahess, if you know what I mean, with bad theology that is badly said (although, I guess bad theology that is poorly communicated is a little safer than bad theology that is packaged in a polished rhetorical package--at least bad theology that is boring is less likely to be remembered!).  And one of our worst habits, we preachers, pastors, proclaimers, and church "professionals", is to make everything into a morality lesson like the old Goofus and Gallant.

You remember them, right? The stock characters from the old Highlights magazine?  True to their names, Goofus was always the bad moral example--being rude or inconsiderate, bossy and coarse, and then Gallant was, much like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way.  If Goofus cut in line for the school bus, Gallant was the one who waited his turn.  If Goofus was the one demanding to pick what to watch on the family room television, Gallant was the one who chose to go do his homework instead of watching TV at all in the first place. 

And of course, the implication of these literally black-and-white drawings with captions was to teach children to be well-behaved, rather than to be jerks.  And, to be clear, that is a noble and admirable goal.  It is not ok to be a jerk, and frankly too many people go through life thinking that being a colossal jerk is the same as "telling it like it is" or "being a winner."  So, yeah, we could all probably stand to brush up on our Gallant-isms, to be honest.

But that said, we need to be even more emphatic, even more crystal clear, that the Gospel--the Good News of Jesus for whom we are preparing in this season--is not about how to be a good little boy or a good little girl, and thereby to gain God's love.  We need to get this set down like it is a matter of life and death: Jesus did not only come for the Gallants of humanity.  Jesus came for Goofus, too--every last one of us Goofuses, even the ones named Steve.

And I say we need to be clear about that because, unfortunately, there are quite a few religious professionals out there broadcasting the message that God is hung up on only working with Gallants.... which leaves the rest of us (all of us, if we are honest) wondering if there is any way that God can really work through the likes of us, or if God only does business with non-stinkers.

I was listening to the radio just yesterday, and I was taken aback to hear a well-known radio preacher, a fella with a national audience and some pretty significant public/civic appearances on his resume, whose take on the story of Mary and the annunciation of Jesus' birth was quite literally this (these are his words, to be clear): "God uses those who are pure... given a choice between using someone who is pure and someone who is impure, God will always choose to work through someone who is a pure vessel."  

You heard it: God picks Gallant and has no truck with Goofus.  A preacher said so.  Must be true. God must have picked Mary because she was a good girl, and therefore that also sets forth the guidelines for any others who wish to be considered for a position in God's company, because Goofuses, stinkers, and sinners apparently need not apply.

But see... here's the thing: that is literally never how God actually operates.  Not in the Scriptures, Old or New Testament, and not in our day, either.  Mary isn't picked because she's morally better than anybody else.  And God doesn't say that only Gallant-types are eligible to be used in God's work.  When the voice of the prophet says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me... he has sent me to bring good news..." he doesn't give a list of qualifications or moral milestones as his bona fides.  He only says, "Here's what God called me to do.  Here I am... as I am... I am ready to bind up the brokenhearted and announce liberty to the captives."  For that matter, in this passage from what we call the book of Isaiah, the assumption is that God meets those who are stuck with a "Goofus" label and chooses to lift them up, too.  Did you catch it there in the last verse from the passage above?  Those who are doubly shamed and dishonored--those are the ones promised "everlasting joy" and double blessing.  God doesn't stop and say, "Well, only the ones who are wrongly accused, or didn't do anything to deserve dishonor are really counted here."  There is a certain divine recklessness here... here in a passage that the people of God have understood for centuries to be about the hope of God's coming Messiah.  

We could spend all day looking at how every important name in the story of the Bible, from functional alcoholic Noah to murderous chicken-heart Moses to violent, cheating David to flaky Simon Peter to corrupt sell-out Zacchaeus turns out to have a pretty sizable Goofus score on their permanent records, but even just these words from Isaiah lay it out for us.  God just isn't in the habit of only using the ones identified as "pure" by the world, or by the standards of religion.  And God certainly doesn't restrict the divine plan to people who would have been labeled "pure" in the preparation for the coming Messiah.  God doesn't only look for "pure" people--and a significant part of the reason why is simply that none of us are really all that pure in the first place!  Every last one of us is a stinker, a sinner, a mess, with a Goofus-streak a mile wide.  The Messiah for whom we have been preparing this season isn't only recruiting from the ranks of people labeled "pure," but meets us where we are, calls us with what we are, and bids us to come as we are, and says, "You, too, you come and be a part of my Good News."  So the unqualified, sketchy characters who happened to have been herding sheep on the night of Jesus birth--they are included, regardless of being ceremonially "unclean" and impure.  And the pagan Gentile magi, the so-called "wise men" who visit the child Jesus, they are called and used by God despite the fact that they practice the "wrong" religion and surely had all sorts of other potentially disqualifying character traits and cultural practices.  And Mary, too, like you and me, surely had a bit of Goofus in her for whatever ways she might have also been Gallant.

All of this is to say, if you have ever found yourself mulling over these words from Isaiah, words about being "anointed" and "sent" to be used by God, and if you have ever found yourself thinking, "But surely not ME, right?  I'm a mess in this area of my life... I'm heartbroken in this other area of my life... I'm impure and unclean and broken," well, then the prophet himself says, "Yes, you too are included."  Have you been living with shame?  Guess what--God chooses you.  Have you been dealing with dishonor?  Surprise--God promises joy to stinkers in your shoes, too.  The whole modus operandi of the God we actually meet in the Scriptures is not nearly as picky as we tend to think--God doesn't hold auditions for the pure only, but instead casts a wide net for the anybodies and nobodies, the so-called "pure" and the "impure," the Goofuses and the Gallants, of humanity.  Every last one of us.

So sometimes the best way to prepare for Jesus is, I will confess, to know when to stop listening to the religious professionals around you (yes, he grasps the irony of what he is saying)... at least if you hear from them some nonsense about Jesus only wanting to work through so-called "pure" people.  There ain't none.  And the Scriptures actually seem to go out of their way to take note of how God's ways are notorious for deliberately seeking out the disqualified, dishonored, and outcast, and saying, "Today's your lucky day, O you beloved of God!" 

If you find your ears being bombarded by any of the Respectable Religious Crowd who are insisting that God will only and always choose the "pure" to work with, then let this be your official permission to ignore them.  Don't worry--God can still work through them and surely still loves them, but that's only because God loves Goofuses as well as Gallants, and God works through anybodies and nobodies.  

And maybe for these last few days before Christmas, if you are seeking ways to prepare your heart and your life for Jesus, let this be the day we get rid of any excuses like, "But I'm not worthy for God to work through me, so this Jesus stuff must not apply to me..."  Nope. Just as you are, you are called.  God has it in mind to send you with good news to others who need it.  Come as you are.

Lord Jesus, come among us, and bid us again to come to you as we are.

Tuning Out Augustus

Tuning Out Augustus--December 17, 2017

"In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger'...." [Luke 2:8-12]

You know how a smart person deals with bullies or brats (or, as is often the case, those who are both spoiled brats and blustering bullies at the same time)?  You intentionally ignore their tantrums... and you keep going on with whatever you were doing anyway.

It's brilliant in its simplicity, and it is surprisingly effective as a strategy, actually.

That's because bullies and brats are like hurricanes--they need the added energy of heat to power up their fury.  Bullies and brats yell and shout and brag and taunt, not because they want to prevent you from sparring with them, but because they want you to take the bait... to engage and answer back, to give their angry outbursts legitimacy, and to see that they have gotten under your skin.  The same impulse that leads my young children to want to stomp around and grunt in frustrated futility when they are supposed to be cooling out in their rooms is the same impulse behind history's petty tyrants, kings, dictators, and emperors: they want attention, and they want you to push back.  They are begging for some acknowledgement of how "tough" or "big" or "strong" or "great" or "powerful" they think they are (or want you to think they are), and so they keep making noise, stomping feet, and rattling sabers to try and get the world's attention.  

So wise parents and insightful world leaders both learn that the best strategy for sucking the power out of a bully's fiery fury is intentionally to ignore their outbursts and go right on ahead with whatever you were doing full steam ahead... as if their high-powered bombast doesn't even register.  Such a tactic takes the wind out of their sails, by denying them any energy your response would give them, and taking away any credibility they would have if yo u engage on their terms.

And it is not only a good rule of thumb in general, but it is of particular importance for the followers of Jesus, because the story of Jesus' own birth shows us God's very own way of doing the same to the bratty bully named Caesar Augustus, the emperor of Rome.   In the birth of Jesus, we see the living God being the Mature One, going right on with the divine plan to redeem and rescue creation, without giving the Empire any ammunition or lending the Emperor any credibility.  It is brilliant--although I suppose we should expect nothing less from the living God.

Here's what I mean.  We have quite likely all heard the announcement of the angels to the shepherds more than a few times in our lives.  We know the line so well, we could probably recite it from heart, and at least I will admit that I hear it in my head spoken with Linus' voice from the Charlie Brown Christmas.  You know how the angelic message goes:  "I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people--to you this day is born a Savior...."  But I suspect that no matter how familiar those words are to our ears, we are not hearing them with the same powerful edge they had back in the first century, when Luke the Gospel-writer first put them on papyrus.

See, Luke's recounting of the angel's announcement is full of loaded words--words that resonated in the first century world of the Roman Empire.  That's because the Emperor at the time of Jesus' birth (as Luke himself makes note) is Caesar Augustus, formerly known as Octavian, and Augustus (a title he gave to himself, which means, "impressive" and "renowned"--toot your own horn much, Octavian?).  And Augustus wasn't satisfied to just give himself the title "Impressive"--he went further and sold the empire on the notion that he was a god, and that his birth was the beginning of a whole new age in human history.  It was classic bratty bully bluster, and he was just begging for attention, poor pitiful emperor...

We have archaeological records (one famous one is call the Priene inscription) in which Caesar Augustus has this official imperial declaration made that they should all start their calendars all over again to mark his birth as the beginning of the age.  And here's the rationale, according to the inscription:  the birthday of Caesar, a "god," is to be taken as "the beginning of good news for the whole world" because Caesar is the new "savior."  Those are the actual words Augustus had used:  "good news/gospel," "savior," and "the whole world."  Caesar Augustus wanted everyone in the empire to start counting years from his birth, because he was convinced he was a god in human form, whose birth was good news for all people, and because he saw himself as a "savior" for the world.  Talk about a load of hot, steaming imperial propaganda!

Well, of course, all of the empire swooned over that.  Augustus got himself not only the fawning praise of the subjects of Rome, and not only worship throughout the empire, but even his own month added to the year (we call it the month of August, and it is named for Caesar Augustus--guess who July is named for?).  Caesar got his wish from most people in the empire, who all fell for his bluster and self-promotion and fell down to worship the emperor and to thank him for "saving" them all from such horrible things like being free and not being ruled by his occupying armies.

Now, Caesar was looking for anyone who would pick a fight with him or defy him--he was looking for someone who would stop what they were doing and turn around to push back on his imperial decrees, so that he could unleash another round of bombast and big talk about his own supposed "greatness."  He was looking for someone to straight out defy him and to let Caesar himself set the rules of engagement.  That way any would-be deliverers, messiahs, or usurpers would have to face Rome's armies and military might.

But God, it turns out, is smarter than Augustus the bully-brat.  Thank God.

The living God doesn't get provoked when August tries to claim divine status (take note: a frequent sign of maturity is when you don't get riled up by someone else's petty remarks, no matter how dense they are).  The living God doesn't take the bait of letting Caesar derail the divine plan to save and bless and redeem all creation.  The living God doesn't let Caesar set the terms--in fact, the living God takes those terms and turns them inside out.  

So when the angel announces the birth of the long-awaited Messiah, notice how the same words August had already used get taken and flipped on their heads.  Instead of the emperor being a god and a savior whose birth is good news for all the world, it is a vulnerable baby born to powerless, poor peasant parents and laid in a spare food trough.  Instead of revising history and saying, "Well, because Caesar is in power, he gets to retroactively call the day of his birth a divine miracle," the angel announces divine presence in Jesus before he has done a thing!  Instead of measuring greatness in terms of armies, treasure, or fawning crowds, the living God turns our focus to see infinity held within the finite bounds of a seven or eight-pound baby.  Instead of sending an army back to Caesar to fight on the empire's terms, God just goes right ahead with the divine conspiracy to save the world through the suffering love of a cross.  And instead of defining "good news" like Caesar did--by pointing to military victories and good numbers at the Rome Stock Market--the living God defines good news in the birth of a child on the margins, announced to people on the margins, as good news for all people, not just the citizens of Rome.

In other words, when it came to a bratty bully of a blowhard like Augustus, the infinite wisdom of the living God was to treat Caesar like a petulant child having a tantrum--and to intentionally ignore his fuming and fury.  And it worked perfectly.  The divine rescue operation continued right along, regardless of Augustus' imperial proclamations or self-congratulatory edicts.  And now today, Augustus himself is the half-forgotten figure.  

There is a great observation of Frederick Buechner's on the subject.  Buechner writes:  "Caesar was only one of the titles Augustus bore. Others were rex, imperator, princeps, pontifex maximus, and so on. He ruled Rome and thus virtually the whole civilized world. He was worshiped as a god. People burned incense to him. Insofar as he is remembered at all, most people remember him mainly because at some point during his reign, in a rundown section of one of the more obscure imperial provinces, out behind a cheesy motel among cowflops and moldy hay, a child was born to a pair of up-country rubes you could have sold the Brooklyn Bridge to without even trying." 

All of that is to say, the divine strategy of ignoring Caesar's self-promotion did the trick--the living God ignored Augustus' bluster and just kept right on with the divine plan to save and bless the world.  In the face of Caesar's hype, the angels brought the true "good news" of a "savior" who was more than just an imperial manager, and who showed us real divinity in the presence of the ordinary and the lowly.

For us to prepare for Jesus in these remaining days until Christmas, part of what we will need to learn is how to listen to the Augustuses around us and then to intentionally ignore them--that is to say, not to be lowered to the level of giving them the fights they are spoiling for, but instead to go right on with the way of Jesus.  We won't have to bluster back at the Caesar-voices around us, but simply to keep on keeping on with the witness of justice and mercy we have seen in Jesus.  We don't have to get drawn into a petty fight with the bullies and brats who are trying to provoke us--we can be the ones who just won't be distracted from the in-breaking of the Kingdom, and the One for whom we have been waiting.  And we don't have to settle for any official imperial proclamations as our Good News--we have been given the announcement that right under Augustus' nose, the living God has brought forth a Savior who doesn't need a sword.

Train your eyes and ears to recognize that Savior and that Good News, amid all the background noise of supposedly "impressive" Caesars, in this day.  That is how we will prepare for Jesus today.

Lord Jesus, help us to hear your kind of good news, and to see your kind of saving, while we tune out the tantrums of Augustus around 

Ready in the Outfield

"Ready in the Outfield"--December 15, 2017

"Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you.  For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night." [1 Thessalonians 5:1-2]

What makes the players on the local college baseball team better athletes than the kids just signing up for their first year of little league?  Why is it that when a ball gets hit out to center field in a little league game (or rolls there because none of the infield players got it as it went past), you either watch the outfielders act surprised to see a ball come their way at all, or you see kids fumbling all over each other, all trying to get the same ball?  And yet you don't see that kind of reaction by the time the kids are in high school and college and have been playing for a while. Why is that?

Of course, some of it is just physical growth and physical repetition.  But there's more to it than that, I think.  Somewhere along the way, good ball players learn to anticipate what is going to happen.  That's not to say they can predict which pitch will be a ball or a strike or a hit.  But they are ready for any one pitch to be "the one" and posture themselves to be ready to make a catch at any time.  In a game where even the best players only get a hit about a third of the time (only one major league player ended the season in 2017 with an average above .333, for example), you know that not every pitch will send a fly ball your way.  In fact, if you play the odds, you can bet that a majority of pitching will not end up in your part of the field.  And that can make it that much harder to keep yourself prepared for the one that does come your way. 

You have to be watchful, you have to be ready to move, and you have to be able to stay still, too.  You have to be postured, in other words, like any pitch could be hit out in your direction, and you have to be able to get there and get under the ball to catch it.  That's something the kids just starting out in little league haven't developed yet, because most of them are either afraid of the ball coming their way, not paying attention to what's going on all the way over at home plate, or convinced that every ball is their to retrieve and then colliding with the other outfielders when a ball is hit.

This is the posture Paul would have us take when it comes to preparing for Jesus' return.  It's very much like learning to be a good outfielder.  Paul's imagery for it--which seems to have been inherited from Jesus, who used the same comparison--is like a thief breaking into your house in the middle of the night.  And the point, whether it's Jesus or Paul who's making it, is that none of us will get to know when Jesus, or "the day of the Lord" is coming (the phrase "day of the Lord" is a phrase the prophets in the Old Testament used quite a bit to refer to numerous times when God stepped into Israel's history in dramatic ways, but the New Testament writers borrow the phrase to talk about Jesus' coming).  But the idea is about the same, whether we're talking burglary or baseball--you can never tell exactly what moment you will need to be ready, so you had better be ready all the time.  You have to be alert enough that a single noise in the night or the trajectory of the ball as it leaves the pitcher's arm can signal you that you are going to need to move.  But you can't be so tense that you lock up or expend all your energy being on "red alert" for nine innings, nor so worked up about possible burglars that you cannot get any rest.  In other words, for both baseball and burglary, you have to be ready, watchful, and flexible. 

Simply put, we are all called to be ready for Jesus' coming without ever knowing precisely when he will come.  The only choice for us, then, will be to live our lives now as though we would be glad to be caught doing whatever we are doing when he comes.  You don't want to be caught staring into the sun or looking out at the bleachers when a fly ball finally comes your way.  And you don't want to be working against the other outfielders, either, going after the fly balls that are in their territory and then colliding into one another.  You want to have your eyes on the ball, to be able to breathe and be ready to run, and also be prepared for the possibility that you could wait for a while, too, before anything comes your way.  For us, too, living in the time between Jesus' resurrection and his coming again, we want to be living our lives now in a way that we don't mind being caught at when he comes.  We don't want to be distracted by things that are not important, and we don't want to get so worked up that we can't snap into action when it is time to snap into action. 

As we keep exploring what it means to be keeping an eye on the ball and having our legs bent and feet ready to move, for today maybe it is enough to say this:  each day when we wake up, we are called to be ready in the outfield for whatever will come.  From your own days playing ball as a kid, or from watching it over the years, think about what makes a good outfielder, and consider how you could do the same with the day laid out in front of you.

Lord God, help us to be ready for the day when Jesus comes to restore all things and to put creation right, and let us have a posture ready for you to move among us.  Help us keep our eye on the ball today.

"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.