FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Isaiah 6:1-13

Psalm 138

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Luke 5:1-11

Prayer of the Day: Most holy God, the earth is filled with your glory, and before you angels and saints stand in awe. Enlarge our vision to see your power at work in the world, and by your grace make us heralds of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’” Isaiah 6:8.

From my first year in high school I looked forward to preparing for ministry. I longed to delve deeper into the scriptures and to share their treasures with God’s people. I looked forward to preaching the gospel and leading the people of God in living out its good news through acts of compassion, justice and reconciliation. In many respects, my yearning echoed the words of the prophet: “Here am I; send me!” There was just one problem. Unlike Isaiah, I had not heard God’s call. I had not “seen the Lord,” whatever that means. No seraphim ever purged my lips and no booming voice ever said to me “Go.” I never experienced anything leading me to believe that God had called me to the work of ministry. I wanted it. I was passionate about it. I thought I might be good at it. But was that enough?

I struggled with doubt about my calling throughout my college years, dropping briefly my double major in religion and classical languages for an education major. I pondered whether perhaps my calling might rather lie in something like social work and explored that option briefly. But somehow, I always found myself back on the ministerial track. When I entered seminary, I was surrounded by people my own age who were confident in their sense of call. My class consisted of many women who, against centuries of opposition to their ordination and systemic inequality in denominational politics, pursued confidently their sense of call. There were also in my class many older students who had given up lucrative and stable careers to follow their call to serve as ministers of word and sacrament. They had some powerful stories to tell about God’s drawing them to seminary. I had nothing comparable to say regarding my call-assuming I even had one.

My first pastorate at a small congregation in Teaneck, New Jersey went well enough. I enjoyed preaching and leading worship, teaching confirmation, hospital and home visitation. Community outreach and evangelism, always a challenge, was nonetheless exciting and rewarding. Still, I wondered, is this really where I am supposed to be? After five years, I resigned my call to enter law school. As I explained to my congregation at the time, I was not leaving the ministry of the whole people of God. I was just leaving the ministry of word and sacrament. I figured that if God had any objections, God could speak up for a change and tell me so. I accepted God’s continued silence as, if not approval, at least lack of objection. For the next twenty-two years I studied and then practiced law in the State of New Jersey. If making partner within my first five years at the firm I joined and winning more cases than I lost makes for success, then I was a successful lawyer. I had found my niche if not my calling. That should have solved my problem.

It did not. I never quite escaped the orbit of pastoral ministry. I was called upon regularly by pastors needing supply preachers during vacation and by churches with pastoral vacancies. The congregation I was attending at the time arranged to call me as a part time assistant to the senior pastor and so I remained on the clergy roster even as I was pursuing a full time legal career. Throughout this period in my life, the need for supply preachers in the state intensified and I found myself filling in at churches throughout northern New Jersey for two or three Sundays out of every month. Then one day I felt a yank on the thread tenuously holding me to parish ministry.

It happened one evening in a hospital. I had just finished up a deposition for a medical malpractice case my firm was defending. Such procedures are frequently held in hospital conference rooms in order to spare medical professionals being questioned the inconvenience of having to travel to our office. I was passing through the lobby on my way out the door when I heard a woman’s voice behind me. “Excuse me, pastor,” she said. “Could you take a few minutes and pray for my husband. He’s in the ER. We think he had a heart attack.”

“Of course,” I replied and followed her through the labyrinth of hallways leading to the emergency room. When I we got to the entrance, the security guard stopped us. “Miss, I see you have a visitor pass. What about you?” he said turning to me. “I’m a pastor,” I said without hesitation and somewhat to my own surprise. It suddenly occurred to me that there was nothing to identify me as clergy. I was wearing a suit and tie-standard attire for an attorney. I wasn’t carrying anything that could be mistaken as a Bible or a communion kit. Yet somehow, I was recognized as a pastor. [1] Furthermore, I had not thought of myself as a pastor since resigning my last full time parish. I hardly thought of my supply work as full fledged ministry. If questioned about my profession, I always identified myself as a lawyer. “OK,” he said. “Go ahead.” So we proceeded to the room where the woman’s husband was placed pending admission. I prayed with them both. I then realized that what I thought was, at best, a side hustle represented who I was at the deepest level. I recognized my call. Within weeks, I was in conversation with my local bishop, received an invitation to sit with a local congregational call committee-and the rest is history.

In fact, I had had a call from the beginning, even if I lacked ears to hear it. From this vantage point in my days, I can see the wind of the Holy Spirit directing me through the maze of life’s many possibilities, past the obstacles and through the detours leading to where I am. But I see that divine guidance only in retrospect and I cannot help but wonder whether the same was also true about the prophet. Could it have been that Isaiah’s call was not given by a blinding revelation in the immediacy of a single experience? Might it rather have been the poetic product born of reflection on a lifetime of experience? Could it have been that, in the ruins of a defeated land and among the scattered remnant of an exiled people, just beginning to turn toward the prophet for understanding of the terrible things that had happened to them, Isaiah finally found the purpose and significance of what occurred on that day in the temple, when he and so many others gathered following the death of a great ruler as the storm clouds of war were gathering?

The truth is, all children of God have a call from God. But that call is God’s baptismal work and becomes visible only by its unfolding in time. In the Book of Exodus, Moses asks to see God’s glory. But God replies that no mortal can see God’s face and live. Yet God does not leave Moses with nothing. God instructs Moses to hide himself in the cleft of a rock. God will then pass by, placing God’s protective hand over the rock until God passes. Then God will lift the divine hand and Moses will catch a glimpse of God’s back side. Exodus 33:17-34:7. Perhaps that is how it always is. Perhaps even prophets cannot know God’s intentions, God’s will or God’s design for their lives except in retrospect. [2] That seems to have been the case for Jesus’ disciples throughout John’s gospel where the evangelist tells us twice that only after Jesus’ death and resurrection do the meaning of his words and actions become clear. E.g., John 2:22; John 12:16. Maybe that is what Saint Paul means when he tells us that we walk by faith and not by sight. II Corinthians 5:7. God’s back side is all we ever see of God this side of eternity and God’s intent for us can only be seen in the rear view mirror. Yet God’s past faithfulness makes it possible to proceed confidently into the future, even when we cannot see what lies ahead. Our lives are, after all, God’s project. What God begins, God can be trusted to finish. Philippians 1:6.

Here is a poem/prayer by the great pastor, teacher and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer exploring the stew of conflicting emotions, self understandings and motivations at work within us and affirming the assertion that, whatever we might be and whatever direction our lives may take, we are finally God’s project.

Who Am I?

Who am I? They often tell me
I step out from my cell
calm and cheerful and poised,
like a squire from his manor.

Who am I? They often tell me
I speak with my guards
freely, friendly and clear,
as though I were the one in charge.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bear days of calamity
serenely, smiling and proud,
like one accustomed to victory.

Am I really what others say of me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning, sick, like a caged bird,
struggling for life breath, as if I were being strangled,
starving for colors, for flowers, for birdsong,
thirsting for kind words, human closeness,
shaking with rage at power lust and pettiest insult,
tossed about, waiting for great things to happen,
helplessly fearing for friends so far away,
too tired and empty to pray, to think, to work,
weary and ready to take my leave of it all?

Who am I? This one or the other?
Am I this one today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? Before others a hypocrite
and in my own eyes a pitiful, whimpering weakling?
Or is what remains in me like a defeated army,
Fleeing in disarray from victory already won?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest me; O God, I am thine!

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison, (c. 1953, 1967 and 1971 by SCM Press, Ltd.). Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident. He was a key founding member of the Confessing Church which rejected the Reich’s effort to impose Nazi ideology into its teaching. His writings on Christianity’s role in the secular world have become widely influential. In addition to his many theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Hitler’s euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of the Jews. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel prison for one and a half years. He was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp. Bonhoeffer was accused of being associated with the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, tried along with other accused plotters and hanged on April 9, 1945.

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[1] Though it is tempting to attribute this woman’s recognition to some pastoral “aura” I was projecting, the greater probability is that she recognized me from one of my many supply preaching stints throughout New Jersey. In any case, what I found striking was this sudden incursion of the call I had given up on into my now comfortable life as an attorney.   

[2] I am indebted for this insight into the Exodus story to author Mary Doria Russell and her book Children of God, a fascinating science fiction epic with deep spiritual themes. In one of the final chapters of her book, her character John Candotti remarks, “I wonder now if [the story of Moses and God’s glory] isn’t really about time? Maybe that was God’s way of telling us that we can never know His intentions, but as time goes on….we’ll understand. We’ll see where He was: we’ll see His back.” Russell, Mary Doria, Children of God, (c. 1999 by Random House Publishing Group) p. 428.

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Psalm 71:1-6

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Luke 4:21-30

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and ever-living God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and love; and that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” Luke 4:25-27.

It is not clear exactly when the crowd at Jesus’ synagogue went sour on Jesus. But somehow, they went from amazement “at the gracious words that came from his mouth” to wanting to stone him to death. Some commentators suggest retranslating “amazement” as “indignation” and “gracious” as “arrogant.” Personally, I think that is a stretch. But be that as it may, it is obvious that the synagogue audience was further inflamed by Jesus’ observation that God’s favor is frequently poured out upon those considered well outside the scope of God’s covenant promises. That goes against our natural human tendency to identify God with “us,” with “our people” and with “our country.”

I learned first hand just how deep this tribalizing, racializing, nationalizing of God runs when I placed the above passage from Leviticus on our church sign. I did that in early 2017, just after the Trump anti-Muslim ban went into effect wreaking havoc to the great satisfaction to his supporters. Within hours after the message went up, I got an anonymous phone call from an irate individual who accused me of betraying Christianity and undermining the president. A couple of my members took me aside to point out that this message was probably offending a lot of people in our community. It did not matter much that the message on my sign came directly from the Bible anymore than it mattered to Jesus’ audience that his examples came directly from the scriptures. Religious hate takes from the Bible only what it thinks it can use and disregards the rest. I should probably be thankful that no one tried to stone me.

God’s love for the poor, the vulnerable, the outcast and the outsider fairly echoes throughout the scriptures. From God’s promise in Genesis to make Abraham’s and Sarah’s descendants a blessing for all nations to John of Patmos’ vision of Gods new creation peopled by persons of every nation, tribe and tongue, the point is made that God shows no favoritism, knows no national boundary and respects no distinction of race, class or gender. Inclusiveness is a biblical fundamental, albeit ever so unpopular among so many who claim the Bible as their ultimate authority. A prophet who declares that the promises of God’s salvation have come is welcome among his own-until he begins to suggest that salvation might extend beyond his own. That is when the stones begin to fly.

Israel struggled throughout the biblical narrative with the temptation to view itself as a people blessed with privilege rather than privileged to bless the nations of the world. So, too, the church has had to fight the temptation to view itself as having for its own possession the privilege of God’s salvation rather than privileged with the task of proclaiming God’s salvation to the world. Nowhere is that struggle more visibly illustrated than in American Christianity. The lurid and bizarre examples of Christian nationalism and evangelical Trumpism that must of us mainline progressives find so troublesome has its roots in a deep seated conflation in our collective consciences of Christian religion and American mythology. In short, we are all more American than we are Christian. What else can explain the covenant between politics advocating punitive measures against refugees fleeing to our land for their lives and Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan? It can only be that the claim of nation, race, blood and soil runs deeper than the baptismal claim transcending all of these distinctions. As the popular saying goes, “blood is thicker than water.”

According to the faith in Jesus we profess, the opposite is true. Water is thicker than blood. Our baptismal covenant calls us to a higher loyalty than the claims of family, tribe, culture race and nation. As Saint Peter reminds us, “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Acts 10:34-35. The neighbors Jesus calls us to love and to serve live on both sides of every humanly drawn border and that call takes precedence over every nation’s interests in preserving, protecting and maintaining such borders. That is the truth of the gospel grounded in scripture. For all those who find it offensive to their politics, we can only suggest that they get themselves another politics-or another savior.  

Here is a poem by Tsitsi  Ella Jaji reflecting upon the struggles of the alien in our midst. Is there any question as to how Jesus would have his church respond to these folk trapped in the bureaucratic machinery of our broken immigration system and subject to so much public hostility?       

Document for U.S. Citizens Who Have Never Applied for a Visa and Have Had It Up to Here with Those Loud Aliens Who Go On and On about Some Letter

It is not like going to the bank.

There are no hard candies in a basket made in China,
and no Kleenexes on the counter.
There is no refund if someone forgets to wish you a good day.

There are no chairs for the aged,
no toys for two-year-olds with earaches,
no supervisor to speak to in case of the
Absurd.

There are no meal vouchers if it takes all day,
no list of local hotels with a negotiated rate.
No one wants to know if you are a doctor.

Plastic is not magic. Seals are not signs.
Your cousin-brother’s wedding is not relevant.
Hell, there is no such thing as a cousin-brother.

And it is always your fault: not enough planning,
the wrong color passport, the misplaced stress
in a word.

Source: Beating the Graves, Tsitsi  Ella Jaji (c. University of Nebraska Press, 2017.) Tsitsi Ella Jaji is an associate professor of English at Duke University. Her expertise is in African and African American literary and cultural studies. Tsitsi’s interests include music, poetry, and black feminism. She previously taught at University of Pennsylvania. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities/Schomburg Center, Mellon Foundation, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and National Humanities Center. Her poems have appeared in Harvard Review, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, Black Renaissance Noire, Almost Island, Prairie Schooner, Bitter Oleander, and others. You can learn more about Tsitsi Ella Jaji and her many literary contributions at the Duke University website.

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Luke 4:14-21

Prayer of the Day: Blessed Lord God, you have caused the holy scriptures to be written for the nourishment of your people. Grant that we may hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that, comforted by your promises, we may embrace and forever hold fast to the hope of eternal life, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

“Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen’, lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.” Nehemiah 8:6-8.

“And [Jesus] rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” Luke 4:20-21.  

Last summer I read an article published in the Christian Century by Matthew Schlimm, a professor of Old Testament at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary entitled “Violent Texts.” Schlimm begins his thoughtful reflection by recounting a discussion he had with his young daughter who, upon receiving her first Bible, happened upon Deuteronomy 20 and, more specifically, the following admonition:

“But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 20:16-18.

Why, asked this elementary school age girl, who had been taught from infancy that God is loving and merciful, does the Bible, which is supposed to be God’s word, have God commanding God’s people to kill whole populations of cities, including small children? As I read about Professor Schimm’s struggle to respond to his daughter’s question, it occurred to me for the first time that putting the Bible into the hands of impressionable young children might not be a good idea. Can you imagine the outcry in any community where it became known that the local elementary school was distributing a book to its students promoting genocide, describing gang rape in lurid detail and normalizing polygamy and sexual slavery? Yet our churches routinely hand out Bibles to Sunday School children, give them as gifts to confirmands and include them in the children’s section of their libraries. Nobody bats an eye at that because, after all, it is the Bible. Yet, clearly, there is material in the Bible that is not fit for the eyes of children.

The Bible is a nuanced book as layered and complex as the human condition out of which it arose and to which it addresses itself. It requires interpretation as both the gospel and our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures illustrate. I believe that Martin Luther was greatly mistaken in thinking that placing the Bible in the hands of the public would dispel the abuses of the medieval church and make the truth of the gospel obvious and clear. The Reformation Luther sparked proved to be a mixed blessing. While it gave rise to many faith traditions that have reformed and enriched the church catholic, it also spawned a host of bizarre and dangerous cults appealing to the worst human traits. In our twenty-first century American culture, the Bible has become a source of ammunition in a political culture war for power and dominance having little to do with Jesus and the gentle reign of God he proclaims. The Bible is routinely used as a club to bludgeon, shame and exclude in the name of God. In the hands of the wrong people, the Bible is a dangerous book.

None of this is to say that children should not be taught the biblical narrative or that troublesome texts should be expunged from the Bible. Nevertheless, as with everything else in life, what we share with children should be determined by their levels of development and maturity. When the nation was attacked on September 11, 2001, I told my children what had occurred. I did not, however, show them footage of the people who jumped out of the windows of the Twin Towers to escape the flames or the charred bodies of those who went down with the plane that crashed over Pennsylvania. Nor did I give them lurid details about threats made against Americans by Al Qaeda. I emphasized that while some evil people had done a terrible thing, there are good people all over the world, that we are all looking out for one another and that they should feel safe and secure. That was far from the whole truth, but it wasn’t a lie. It was as much of the truth as my children were able to absorb at the time and as much as they needed to hear.

Just as we should not be placing Bibles in the hands of children without a thought to how they will be read and understood, we should not leave the Bible’s interpretation up to any individuals who decide to take it upon themselves. God knows we have seen no shortage of individuals who, wrenching passages of scripture out of context and arranging them to their own liking, have constructed religious justifications for systemic racism, persecution of sexual minorities and all manner of state violence. Evangelical Trumpism proclaimed by the likes of Franklin Graham, Mike Huckabee, James Dobson and Scott Lively come to mind. As Saint Peter reminds us, “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.” II Peter 1:20. Just as scripture was inspired by the Holy Spirit, so it must be interpreted by the Spirit. Our lesson from I Corinthians reminds us that the church of Christ is not a voluntary organization of independent individuals. It is a body of interdependent members, all of which are responsible to one another and subject to Jesus Christ as their head. Thus, I can no more read and interpret the scriptures on my own terms and independent of the church’s input and guidance than a hand severed from the body can shuffle a deck of cards. The Bible is rightly interpreted only within and through communities of faith. Accordingly, even when I read the Bible privately, I never read it alone. I always read the scriptures in dialogue with Athanasius, Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, Theresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther, Hildegard von Bingen, Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, Jr., Phyllis Trible, James H. Cone, the pastors, teachers and colleagues whose influence has shaped me.

We need to be clear about what the Bible is and how its message is mediated. While some believers maintain that we as Christians are a “people of the book,” I think it is more accurate-or at least as accurate-to say that the Bible is the book of a particular people. Without the Jewish people and the Church, the Bible would be nothing more than an historical curiosity, such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It would be of interest to archeologists and historians of ancient religion, but of no relevance to anyone else. The Bible is given meaning by the life, witness and ministry of the communities in which it evolved and which it has formed. These communities, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, bear the responsibility of interpreting God’s word in and through the Bible. I would add that we are also responsible for speaking out against the abuse of our scriptures by political leaders and nationalistic pseudo Christian organizations and demagogues advancing hateful ideologies and agendas.

In the final analysis, we read the Bible because we find ourselves in it-cowards denying our Lord; martyrs putting our lives on the line for him; clueless disciples who follow Jesus without quite understanding why; mystics who grasp, however briefly and incompletely, the truth, beauty and goodness that is God; doubters longing to touch mysteries forever beyond their grasp; believers who walk by faith rather than by sight; people driven by violence, lust and greed; people inspired by love, hope and the vision of God’s gentle reign. The biblical narratives, prayers and teachings show us who we are and what we might yet become. They remind us that our stories, twisted, unfinished and painful as they may be, are the material out of which God is fashioning something beautiful, something we name as the reign of God, the new creation, heaven, the new Jerusalem and eternal life-though these terms can only scratch the surface of what it means for God to be “all in all.” I Corinthians 15:28.

Here is a poem by Jeffry Skinner about finding oneself in literature that reflects in some respects the experience of finding oneself in the Biblical narrative.  

The Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space 

You would expect an uncountable number,
Acres and acres of books in rows
Like wheat or gold bullion. Or that the words just
Appear in the mind, like banner headlines.
In fact there is one shelf
Holding a modest number, ten or twelve volumes.
No dust jackets, because — no dust.
Covers made of gold or skin
Or golden skin, or creosote or rain-
Soaked macadam, or some
Mix of salt & glass. You turn a page
& mountains rise, clouds drawn by children
Bubble in the sky, you are twenty
Again, trying to read a map
Dissolving in your hands. I say You & mean
Me, say God & mean Librarian — who after long research
Offers you a glass of water and an apple — 
You, grateful to discover your name,
A footnote in that book.

Source: Poetry, December 2015. Jeffry Skinner is an American poet, writer, playwright and emeritus professor in the Department of English at the University of Louisville. He is editor of two anthologies of poems, Last Call: Poems of Alcoholism, Addiction, and Deliverance; and Passing the Word: Poets and Their Mentors. Skinner’s poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Georgia Review and The Paris Review. These poems, along with his plays and stories, have earned him grants, fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Howard Foundation and the state arts agencies of Connecticut, Delaware and Kentucky. You can sample more of Jeffry Skinner’s poems at the Poetry Foundation Website.

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Isaiah 62:1-5

Psalm 36:5-10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

John 2:1-11

Prayer of the Day: Lord God, source of every blessing, you showed forth your glory and led many to faith by the works of your Son, who brought gladness and salvation to his people. Transform us by the Spirit of his love, that we may find our life together in him, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“You have kept the good wine until now.” John 2:10.

According to our gospel lesson, Jesus produced at least 120 and perhaps as much as 180 gallons of wine. That is a lot of wine for what must have been a modest wedding reception. And it was good wine, too-not the box variety. John the Evangelist tells us that this was Jesus’ first sign that God provides freely and abundantly all that we need, not merely to survive but to thrive. And that is good news for a generation convinced that we are running out of everything and that we do not have enough of anything. We have been convinced that the world is a shrinking pie among a growing number of hungry mouths to be fed. If you are smart, you will grab your slice before it is all gone. That is why we cannot afford to provide health care and housing for our poor at home, sanctuary for people coming to our shores fleeing violence and starvation or relief to needy populations around the world. The world simply cannot afford the poor.

Jesus would have us know that it is quite the other way around. The world can, in fact, provide more than adequately to feed human need. It cannot, however, afford to feed the bottomless pit of human greed. The earth and its ecosystems are not threatened by our basic needs for food and shelter. They are threatened rather by an economic system that survives by exploiting greed for profit, creating ever more markets for luxury goods and services designed to stimulate an insatiable thirst for “more.” This unrestrained pursuit of bigger homes, flashier cars, more exotic vacations and more sophisticated gadgets to feed corporate gain is finally unsustainable. Put simply, the world cannot afford the rich. The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures understood this well as did Mary the Mother of our Lord who sings of the day when God will level the field:

“[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.

The good news for a world convinced it is running out of everything is that it does, in fact, have enough and to spare. This lesson, graphically illustrated during the wedding at Cana, will be repeated at the feeding of the of the five thousand, with the healing of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus and, most compellingly, in the resurrection of Jesus. When it seems that the tank is empty, the road at a dead end and no way forward exists, God supplies for the need, opens up new possibilities and reveals a way through the impenetrable darkness we could not have foreseen on our own. For our part, we need simply to believe and trust. “We walk by faith and not by sight” as the Apostle Paul reminds us. II Corinthians 5:7.

Faith, however, is not a fatalistic resignation to what is waiting for God to fix it. As the Apostle James reminds us, “faith without works is dead.” James 2:17. It is because we believe that God is capable of providing all we need to live abundantly that we can afford to live generously. It is because we believe that God provides all that we need to live well that we can respond faithfully to the call for reparations to people of color for past and present injustice and inequality. It is because we believe that the earth is the Lord’s that we resist the temptation to guard jealously humanly drawn national borders and welcome the stranger into our midst. It is because we believe that God’s grace is inexhaustible that we dare to hope for a better future when all the indicators are to the contrary. As Martin Luther puts it, “Faith is a living, busy, active, mighty thing.”[1]

In this vein, I recall a visit I made to an aged pastor in a Brooklyn nursing home during my internship. He was a delightful gentleman from the Haugean pietist tradition with a deep faith and a quick wit. On parting, he always reminded me, “remember to say your prayers.” “Will do,” I always replied. One day I added on, “and you too.” “Oh, I’ll pray alright,” he replied. “That’s about all that’s left of my ministry.” Then he added, “and the funny thing is, I’ve never felt more productive!” This old child of God understood that, even as he drew near to the frontiers of death and had seemingly so little to offer, the good wine keeps on flowing and God always saves the best wine for last.

This ancient Passover liturgy reflects both the gratitude for and confidence in God’s generosity that should be reflected in our lives.

Dayenu (It Would Have Sufficed)

If He had brought us out from Egypt,and had not carried out judgments against them – It would have sufficed!I

f He had carried out judgments against them,and not against their idols – It would have sufficed!

If He had destroyed their idols,and had not smitten their first-born – It would have sufficed!

If He had smitten their first-born,and had not given us their wealth – It would have sufficed! Dayenu, it would have sufficed!

 If He had given us their wealth,and had not split the sea for us – It would have sufficed!

If He had split the sea for us,and had not taken us through it on dry land – It would have sufficed!

If He had taken us through the sea on dry land,and had not drowned our oppressors in it – It would have sufficed!

If He had drowned our oppressors in it,and had not supplied our needs in the desert for forty years – It would have sufficed! Dayenu, it would have sufficed!

If He had supplied our needs in the desert for forty years,and had not fed us the manna – It would have sufficed!

If He had fed us the manna,and had not given us the Shabbat – It would have sufficed!

If He had given us the Shabbat,and had not brought us before Mount Sinai – It would have sufficed!

If He had brought us before Mount Sinai,and had not given us the Torah – It would have sufficed! Dayenu, it would have sufficed!

If He had given us the Torah,and had not brought us into the land of Israel – It would have sufficed!

If He had brought us into the land of Israel,and not built for us the Holy Temple – It would have sufficed! Dayenu, it would have sufficed!

Source: Hebrew Children’s Songs; Translation source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayenu

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[1] I understand that there is some doubt as to whether Martin Luther actually said this. I am not overly concerned with that. I am reminded of the day I came home for Thanksgiving during my freshman year of college, filled with all the heady arrogance that goes with youth and a little bit of knowledge. At that time, I informed my mother in an erudite show of collegiate pride, that her favorite quote of Winston Churchill was not actually spoken by him. Without missing a beat, Mom replied, “Well, if he didn’t say that he should have.”

BAPTISM OF OUR LORD

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8:14-17

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, you anointed Jesus at his baptism with the Holy Spirit and revealed him as your beloved Son. Keep all who are born of water and the Spirit faithful in your service, that we may rejoice to be called children of God, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

 “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Luke 3:22.

One ought to hear in these divine words an echo of those spoken by the same God centuries before to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” Genesis 22:2. God is offering up God’s only Son as a sacrifice, not to satisfy some divine metaphysical necessity for the punishment of sin, but to fulfill God’s intent from the dawn of creation to “become flesh” and to “dwell among us.” John 1:14. If the Incarnation reveals God’s passionate desire to draw us to God’s self, the Passion Narrative illustrates God’s determination to see that incarnational intent through to the end-no matter what the cost.

I have frequently used the story of God’s command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in baptismal sermons. That might strike you as unduly macabre, but it helps cut through the excessive, suffocating “cuteness” that always threatens to swallow what is supposed to be a life and death matter. After all, what else are we doing in baptism than offering up a human sacrifice? We are essentially tying the destiny of the baptized to the destiny of a man who got himself crucified. And for those of us who baptize infants, they have no more say in the matter than did poor Isaac! Believe it or not, I once turned to the baptismal family during the sermon, all of whom were sitting in the first front pews, and nearly shouted, “Are you all really OK with this?”

I could have retired years earlier if I had a dollar for every time I have heard people say of their children, “I just want them to be happy.” I don’t believe I have ever said that to or about my children because that is not all or even chiefly what I want for them. I want for my children to be kind, just, honest, merciful, forgiving, generous, courageous and faithful. I want my children to be passionate for justice, ready to put themselves between the most vulnerable among us and the jaws of oppression that would exploit them. In short, I pray that my children will fulfill the baptismal vows I made on their behalf to “learn to trust God, proclaim Christ through word and deed, care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace.”  

Naturally, I do not wish unhappiness for my children. But I know that living faithfully into the gentle reign of God will likely bring them into conflict with a culture that measures success in dollars, an economy that runs on greed and politics driven by hateful ideologies. Honesty, integrity, courage and compassion can get you fired, imprisoned or even killed. Discipleship can rob us of all the hallmarks of happiness. There is a reason why Jesus told his disciples that following him meant taking up the cross. It was not an empty metaphor. So, yes, I would prefer that my children be happy. But if unhappiness is the price they must pay for following Jesus, so be it. There is more, much more to the life God would give us than mere happiness.

Here is a poem that captures the baptismal hope I have for my children and all the people I have baptized over the years.

Your Calling

Let no one tell you, girl,

that the mountain is too high,

the evil too deeply entrenched

the valley too steep

or that it’s too far to the sky.

Let no one say, my child,

that your dreams are too big,

that you are too small,

that what your heart knows is right

can never be and so ignore its call.

Let no man convince you to be practical

or chide you for lacking common sense.

For it just may be that God’s been waiting

endless ages for someone

blind to conventional wisdom,

someone bold enough to be good

rather than merely successful,

someone brave enough to be compassionate

instead of simply strong,

someone who would rather die

for a good cause than live for none at all.

So ignore all words of caution

and shut out all well meaning advice.

Silence the timid voice of warning

and listen with your whole heart to the call.

Anonymous   

SECOND SUNDAY OF CHRISTMAS

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Psalm 144:12-20

Ephesians 1:3-14

John 1:1-18

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, you have filled all the earth with the light of your incarnate Word. By your grace empower us to reflect your light in all that we do, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

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

Christmas for Sesle and me did not go as we expected. Our plan was to host the holiday festivities at our house in Wellfleet with my son, his wife and our two grandchildren. Though she suffered a severe spinal cord injury in May of this year that left her nearly completely paralyzed, Sesle was making a remarkable recovery. She was walking again and had regained the full use of her hands. We were looking forward to a joyous and celebratory observance of the Nativity.  But on the evening of December 1^st, after an active day of cooking, worship and visiting with  friends, Sesle began to experience severe chills, high temperatures and slipped finally into unconsciousness. She was rushed to the hospital by ambulance where she spent a week in the ICU fighting for her life against septic shock. She was discharged from the hospital two weeks later to an acute care facility-otherwise known as a nursing home-where she is now undergoing physical therapy to reclaim the progress she fought so hard to achieve since her accident in May. So we spent Christmas together in a double occupancy room opening our gifts, listening to our church’s online service and chatting with our children by telephone.

I have been reflecting a great deal on the Word made flesh this season during which I experienced two very different manifestations of flesh. One version came to me through our roommate’s television set. She was watching a station showing non-stop, back to back Hallmark Christmas movies. The flesh on the screen was nearly perfect. Petite women, immaculately groomed and airbrushed to perfection shared the screen with equally well endowed, dressed and made up men acting out tales of romance, family drama and the magical effects of Christmas that seem somehow to make everything come out right. This was flesh seemingly immune to aging, deformity and imperfection. These were people who inhabited an enchanted universe of Christmas trees, ugly sweaters and skin as white as the snow falling in nearly every scene.

The flesh on our side of the screen looks a lot different. On our side of the screen flesh is frequently paper thin with age and ravaged by disease and bed sores. The flesh surrounding us is wracked with pain and often inhabited by confused and terrified minds crying out for attention from a medical system too strained to be attentive. The flesh we meet on a regular basis is worn by nurses, CNAs, therapists and other nursing home staff overworked, underpaid and often treated abominably by their corporate overlords. The flesh I have seen this Christmas resembles more the wounded body of the crucified Jesus than the fresh and tender flesh of the newborn Christ child.

I take comfort in knowing, however, that God is incarnate on my side of the screen and that I have indeed seen his glory. I see it in the devotion of frazzled nurses and aids who, exhausted as they often are, still find time to go the extra mile in caring for their patients. I see it in the face of a woman who seems not to recognize even members of her family, but still wears a tender and welcoming smile for them and for all who come into her orbit of attention. All around me I am witnessing “glory as of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Just as the wounds of Jesus become in his resurrected body the beautiful symbols of God’s love for the world, so the suffering flesh in our nursing home community is aglow with redemptive moments through which the gentle reign of God shines through. The Word has indeed become flesh, remains flesh and will redeem all flesh. Joy to the world. The Lord has come.

This Christmas was not the Christmas I planned. It is not the Christmas I would wish on anyone else. But it was the Christmas I needed and perhaps the most wonderful I will ever know.

Here is a poem by Jane Kenyon about a Christmas disrupted by illness.

Christmas Away From Home

Her sickness brought me to Connecticut.
Mornings I walk the dog: that part of life
is intact. Who’s painted, who’s insulated
or put siding on, who’s burned the lawn
with lime—that’s the news on Ardmore Street.

The leaves of the neighbor’s respectable
rhododendrons curl under in the cold.
He has backed the car
through the white nimbus of its exhaust
and disappeared for the day.

In the hiatus between mayors
the city has left leaves in the gutters,
and passing cars lift them in maelstroms.

We pass the house two doors down, the one
with the wildest lights in the neighborhood,
an establishment without irony.
All summer their putto empties a water jar,
their St. Francis feeds the birds.
Now it’s angels, festoons, waist-high
candles, and swans pulling sleighs.

Two hundred miles north I’d let the dog
run among birches and the black shade of pines.
I miss the hills, the woods and stony
streams, where the swish of jacket sleeves
against my sides seems loud, and a crow
caws sleepily at dawn.

By now the streams must run under a skin
of ice, white air-bubbles passing erratically,
like blood cells through a vein. Soon the mail,
forwarded, will begin to reach me here.

Source Collected Poems by Jane Kenyon (c. 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon; pub. by Graywolf Press). Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She attended the University of Michigan in her hometown and completed her master’s degree there in 1972. It was there also that she met her husband, the poet Donald Hall, who taught there. Kenyon moved with Hall to Eagle Pond Farm, in New Hampshire where she lived until her untimely death in 1995 at age 47. You can read more of Jane Kenyon’s poetry and find out more about her at the Poetry Foundation Website.

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Isaiah 12:2-6

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18

Prayer of the Day: Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God, and open our ears to the preaching of John, that, rejoicing in your salvation, we may bring forth the fruits of repentance; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Luke 3:8.

John the Baptizer does not mince words. “Think you’re special because you are a descendant of Abraham? A baptized Lutheran? A charter member of the congregation with deep roots in the community? God doesn’t give a flying fruitcake for your roots. In fact, the ax is about to fall on the roots of all fruitless trees, however deep, noble and well established those roots. It’s fruits, not roots that God cares about.”

Small wonder John’s audience is shaken to the core. “What shall we do?” they cry out in despair. John’s answer is almost too simple and direct. He does not direct them to a set of spiritual exercises, call them to a life of strict asceticism or the performance of some difficult heroic act. This isn’t rocket science. Share your food and clothing. Stop using your position of power for exploitation and personal gain. This sounds like simple common place morality.

But it is in the common place that one most frequently feels the pinch. The pastor of the congregation in which I grew up used to tell the story of a young man eager to join the communist party. The party leaders asked him a series of questions. “What would you do if you owned two houses,” they asked. Without hesitation, the young man answered,

“I would live in one and donate the other to the party.”

“And what if you inherited one million dollars?” they asked.

Again, without hesitation, the young man answered, “I would keep only what I needed to live on and give the rest to the party.”

“And what if you had two pairs of shoes?” they asked. Now the young man was at a loss for words. Obviously, he had two or perhaps more pairs of shoes and was not eager to part with any of them. If there is a moral to this tale, I suppose it is that we find it much easier to make great hypothetical sacrifices than real ones, however small they might be. Those, however, are the ones John is calling for: the extra coats in our closets, the food stuffed in our pantries, the income we frequently refer to as “discretionary,” the extra bedrooms in our homes, the excess real estate, endowments and funds held by our churches and whatever else we can unburden ourselves in order to fill the valleys of poverty, level the mountains of excess wealth, dismantle injustice and smooth the way to equity and wellbeing for all people. See Luke 3:5-6. That is what repentance looks like.

Repentance bears fruit. If it doesn’t, it isn’t repentance. It isn’t enough simply to confess one’s sins and feel sincere regret-though that is often a starting point. God knows that we white American Christians have good reason to regret our historic complicity with our nation’s legacy of slavery and the continuing curse of systemic racism left in its wake. We have good reason to lament the disparity in wealth, employment opportunity, access to health care and educational access between ourselves and the increasing number of impoverished people among us. But that is only the beginning. As author Marlena Proper Deida Graves points out in her reflections on this gospel lesson, … “producing fruit in keeping with repentance, as John compels us to do, means making amends. With the Holy Spirit’s help it means refusing to continue down destructive, death-filled, and toxic paths. It means choosing life in all its vulnerability, fragility, and glory-life in Christ. Such a life is a full life (John 10:10). Repentance in all its forms brings us life, healing, shalom. When we confess our sins to one another and pray for one another, we will be healed (James 5:16).” Christian Century, December 1, 2021, p. 20.

We and our churches have a tremendous capacity for producing fruit. There is, I know, a lot of hand wringing and consternation in mainline churches over the drop in regular congregational giving, loss of membership and increasing costs of maintaining our institutions. But these problems are more apparent than real when you recall that the original church could fit itself into a single room and that the only material stuff the church needs is a Bible, a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine and access to water. The rest is just frosting on the cake. Looked at from that perspective, my own Lutheran Church is filthy rich. Our concern should not be that we will run out of money, lose our sanctuaries or be forced to dismantle our institutions. Our concern should be that Jesus will return and catch us with money still sitting in the bank-along with that extra coat in the closet and all those cans of expired food in the pantry.   

So what shape might repentance take among us? What would John the Baptizer say if we had the temerity to ask him, “and we, what should we do?” We might try to explain to John that simply divesting ourselves is not a simple and easy task, that there are substantial legal, financial and operational obstacles to carrying out his radically simple demands. I suspect John would reply, “Who said anything about simple and easy? Since when has God ever called us to do what is simple and easy?”  

Here is a poem by Langston Hughes that speaks of freedom and liberation with the same passionate impatience we hear in the voice of John the Baptizer.

Freedom

Freedom will not come
Today, this year
            Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
            To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
            Freedom
            Is a strong seed
            Planted
            In a great need.
            I live here, too.
            I want my freedom
            Just as you.   

Source: Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (c. 1926 by Alfred A. Knopf, pub. by Random House, LLC, 1990). Langston Hughes was an important African American voice in the “Harlem Renaissance” of the 1920s. Though well-educated and widely traveled, Hughes’ poetry never strayed far from his roots in the African American community. Early in his career, Hughes’ work was criticized by some African American intellectuals for portraying what they viewed as an unflattering representation of back life. In a response to these critics, Hughes replied, “I didn’t know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too.”  Today Langston Hughes is recognized globally as a towering literary figure of the 20^th Century. You can read more about Hughes and discover more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website (from which the above quote is taken).

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Malachi 3:1-4

Luke 1:68-79

Philippians 1:3-11

Luke 3:1-6

Prayer of the Day: Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming give to all the people of the world knowledge of your salvation; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“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 1:78-79.

What a remarkable contrast this is to last week’s gospel lesson about savage seas, quaking heavens and deep foreboding over what is coming upon the world. This week Zachariah, father of John the Baptizer, assures us that “the dawn from on high will break upon us…giv[ing] light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.” Yet though the contrast is stark, there is no inconsistency here. For all of its dark imagery, last Sunday’s gospel was an announcement of impending redemption. So, too, this week’s gospel, for all of its joy and hopefulness, makes clear that the good news of God’s gentle reign does not come easily. Grace is not cheap. The way of the Lord needs to be “prepared.” That is the role of God’s “messenger.” The prophet Malachi tells us in no uncertain terms what that preparation looks like. It is “a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.” Malachi 4:2-3.  

The take away here is that we are not ready for the reign of God. We are not yet the kind of people capable of living gently and peacefully on the land taking only what we need and putting back more than what we take. We are not ready to be a people of many tongues, tribes and nations. We are not prepared to let go of our societal privilege, our sense of entitlement to a lifestyle that is impoverishing others and ruining our planet. We are not yet prepared to let God be God and content ourselves with being God’s faithful creatures. If we are to live under God’s gentle reign in a renewed creation, we must become something altogether other than what we now are. To use an old theological term, we need sanctification. We need to have the mind of Christ formed in us.  While it is true that God loves us just the way we are, it is also true that God loves us too much simply to leave us that way.

The great Fourth Century pastor and teacher, Athanasius of Alexandria, gives us helpful analogy:

“You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likenss is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek and to save that which was lost.” On the Incarnation, Athanasius of Alexandria, Translated by Sister Penelope Lawson (c. 1944 and pub. by Pantianos Classics), p. 30.  

Like his successors in the Orthodox tradition, Athanasius focuses chiefly on the miracle of the Incarnation as central to the gospel proclamation. For him, salvation and sanctification are indistinguishable. Christ’s Incarnation fully restores all of humanity to its full potential for reflecting God’s image in the world. Jesus is the first and only one ever to be fully and completely human. In so doing, he brought the image of God back to a humanity that had lost it. Jesus’ crucifixion was the expected outcome of his Incarnation. In his death, Jesus took upon himself the worst humanity could throw at him and voluntarily embraced the mortal destiny of the human race. Unlike Adam who grasped at godhood and found death; Jesus embraced humanity with all its created limits and was raised from death to eternal life.

In conclusion to his treatise on the Incarnation, Athanasius has this to say: “But for the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can, the truth concerning God the Word. One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life….[] anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds.” Ibid. p. 88. The dichotomy between faith and works, so vexing to the Western Church, was never problematic for the Church of the East. For Athanasius, faith is never divorced from practice. If you would have faith in Christ, then imitate Christ and the saints. If you would do that which is right, believe in the image of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes much the same argument in his Cost of Discipleship, where he insists that “only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.” Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Cost of Discipleship, (c. 1959 SCM Press, Ltd.; pub. by Macmillan Company 1963), p. 69.

The work of the church, then, is to be that refining fire forming people capable of recognizing, loving and living into the reign of God to the end that all people learn to become genuinely human reflecting the divine image. John the Baptizer will have more to say about exactly what that entails in next Sunday’s gospel lesson. Suffice to say that being human in an inhumane world challenges much of what we take for granted-such as our right to keep what we legally own; our right to employ violence in our own defense; our rights as citizens and our right to our very lives. Once we recognize the image of God where it is rightly found, namely, in each individual person, it becomes impossible to hate, discriminate, defraud, oppress or kill. That is what it means to be “refined” and “purified.”

Here is a prayer/poem by Michel Quoist about the kind of purification to which our lessons and the season of Advent point.

I Would Like to Rise Very High

I would like to rise very high, Lord;
Above my city,
Above the world,
Above time.
I would like to purify my glance and borrow your eyes.
I would then see the universe, humanity, history, as the Father sees them.
I would see in the prodigious transformation of matter,
In the perpetual seething of life,
Your great Body that is born of the breath of the Spirit.
I would see the beautiful, the eternal thought of your Father’s Love taking form, step by step:
Everything summed up in you, things on earth and things in heaven.
And I would see that today, like yesterday, the most minute details are part of it.
Every man in his place,
Every group
And every object.
I would see a factory, a theatre, a collective-bargaining session and the construction of a fountain.
I would see a crowd of youngsters going to a dance,
A baby being born, and an old man dying.
I would see the tiniest particle of matter and the smallest throbbing of life,
Love and hate,
Sin and grace.
Startled, I would understand that the great adventure of love, which started at the beginning of the world, is unfolding before me,
The divine story which, according to your promise, will be completed only in glory after the resurrection of the flesh,
When you will come before the Father, saying: All is accomplished. I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.
I would understand that everything is linked together,
That all is but a single movement of the whole of humanity and of the whole universe toward the Trinity, in you, by you, Lord.
I would understand that nothing is secular, neither things, nor people, nor events,
But that, on the contrary, everything has been made sacred in its origin by God
And that everything must be consecrated by man, who has himself been made divine.
I would understand that my life, an imperceptible breath in this great whole,
Is an indispensable treasure in the Father’s plan.
Then, falling on my knees, I would admire, Lord, the mystery of this world
Which, in spite of the innumerable and hateful snags of sin,
Is a long throb of love towards Love eternal.

I would like to rise very high, Lord,
Above my city,
Above the world,
Above time.
I would like to purify my glance and borrow your eyes.

Source: Quoist, Michel, Prayers (c. 1963 Sheed & Ward, Inc.) Translated by Agnes M. Forsyth and Anne Marie de Cammaille. Michel Quoist (1921-1997) was ordained a priest in1947. A French Catholic of the working-class, Quoist reveled in presenting Christianity as part of gritty daily reality, rather than in forms of traditional piety. He was for many years pastor to a busy city parish in Le Havre, France serving a working class neighborhood and developing ministries to young people through Catholic Action groups. Prayers, the book from which the above poem was taken, has been translated from the original French into several languages including Hungarian, Polish, Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish and English.

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Psalm 25:1-10

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

Prayer of the Day: Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. By your merciful protection alert us to the threatening dangers of our sins, and redeem us for your life of justice, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Luke 21:28.

“Signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars,” “nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves,” “fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” “powers of the heavens….shaken.” Under these circumstances, I would be inclined to keep my head low. Jesus, however, exhorts his disciples to raise their heads. Despite all indications to the contrary, Jesus assures them that their redemption is near. 

This all has a grimly familiar ring to it. I have not seen any signs in the sun, moon and stars lately. But I have been following the assembly of national leaders in Glasgow “confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves,” expressing a good deal of “fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” and seemingly unable to do much about it. It helps to recall that the words of our gospel lesson come to us from two millennia past, long before climate change was a twinkle in anybody’s eye. The attention of the New Testament Church was focused on the impending collision between the people of Israel and their Roman occupiers-a conflict that ended badly for the former. When Jerusalem was taken by Roman forces in 70 C.E. after a failed rebellion, the temple was utterly destroyed. The Romans slaughtered thousands of people in the city. According to the historian, Josephus, who witnessed the event, most of those slain were peaceful, unarmed citizens. These hapless folk were butchered where they were caught. A pile of corpses tossed into the remains of the temple mounted high in front of the altar. Blood streamed down the temple steps. Of those sparred, thousands were enslaved and sent to toil in the mines of Egypt. Others were dispersed to arenas throughout the Empire to be butchered for the amusement of the public. From this vantage point, it is hard to image how the Jews of Jerusalem-among whom were the disciples of Jesus-could find any ground for hope.

But they did. After all, they had survived a prior conquest of their land and destruction of their temple by the Babylonians centuries before-to say nothing of four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, attempted genocide there and generations later under the Persians. When the heavens seem to be falling and the world is on the brink of coming apart, we, like our ancestors in the faith, need to be reminded that we have been here before. This is not untraveled territory. Generations of matriarchs, patriarchs, prophets, kings and apostles have traveled this road before. They have left in their narratives, prayers and preaching all the resources we need to weather the storms in our day. So, when it seems that there is no way forward and everyone else is running for cover, disciples of Jesus raise their heads. They know that salvation is never closer than when it is needed most and that God is never nearer than when there is no other help in sight. That is the sole ground of hope.

Hope must be distinguished from optimism-that blithe assertion that everything comes out right in the end. We know well enough that it does not-at least as far as human observation can take us. As I have often said, I am not a progressive. I do not believe in progress. I believe in Jesus. That is not to say that progress is never made or that the progress we make is insignificant. The Civil Rights Movement and the legislation following in its wake represented a significant step forward for American society. But it does not represent a permanent gain in the ever forward march toward inevitable improvement. As we have seen over the last decade, gains such as legislative protection for access to the polls can be erased with the stroke of a pen. The campaign and presidency of Donald Trump have made painfully clear how deeply imbedded racism is in our nation and how close to the surface it lies. Words and behavior once deemed so reprehensible that they were exhibited only in the darkest corners of locker rooms, sleezy bars and off track chat rooms are now a regular feature of public discourse. Nothing we accomplish for good is safe from reversal. It is far easier to destroy than it is to build. It takes the engineering genius, mechanical skill and hard work of scores of people to produce an automobile. It takes just one drunken fool to wreck it. Years of parental training, medical care and education go into raising a child. It takes just one idiot with a gun to erase it all in a split second. The odds are clearly on the side of violence and destruction.  

Hope does not ignore the odds. Hope recognizes, however, that there are factors other than those we can measure statistically involved in every transaction. Hope affirms that in everything there is a “God factor” at work favoring the fragile fruits of doing justice, peacemaking and pursuing reconciliation. Consequently, events sometimes turn in ways we could never have foreseen. Hope knows that some of God’s best work is done in the darkness, like the darkness reigning over the chaotic waters before there was light. Or during the dark night of the first Passover. Or in the darkness of the tomb. We have seen this darkness before, lived in it before and come through it before. It is perhaps more than a coincidence that our church year begins as we (at least those of us in the norhtern hemisphere) approach the longest night. Jesus’ disciples are tasked with showing the world how to walk in the dark.

The darkness we see around us today might be around for a good long time. It might outlive us. But the darkness will not outlive the one who commands light to shine out of darkness and speaks that light into flesh and blood. As real as the darkness of slavery, so real is the Exodus. As real as the cross, so real is the resurrected Christ. Jesus promises us that, though “heaven and earth will pass away…my words will not pass away.” Luke 21:33. Hope clings to these words, holds its head high and walks boldly through the darkness.

Here is a poem about hope by Emily Dickinson  about hope.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, (c. 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; edited by Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.) Emily Dickinson (1830-1866) is indisputably one of America’s greatest and most original poets. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, she attended a one-room primary school in that town and went on to Amherst Academy, the school out of which Amherst College grew. In the fall of 1847 Dickinson entered Mount Holyoke Female Seminary where students were divided into three categories: those who were “established Christians,” those who “expressed hope,” and those who were “without hope.” Emily, along with thirty other classmates, found herself in the latter category. Though often characterized a “recluse,” Dickinson kept up with numerous correspondents, family members and teachers throughout her lifetime. You can find out more about Emily Dickinson and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

SUNDAY OF CHRIST THE KING

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14

Psalm 93

Revelation 1:4b-8

John 18:33-37

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and ever-living God, you anointed your beloved Son to be priest and sovereign forever. Grant that all the people of the earth, now divided by the power of sin, may be united by the glorious and gentle rule of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“My kingdom is not from this world.” John 18:36.

Referring to Jesus as king is problematic on a number of fronts. For starters, we Americans are not overly fond of kings. We threw our last one out over two centuries ago and made it clear then that we are done with kings-except, of course, for the famous king who lets us “have it our way.” The American Revolution started a global trend that virtually ended monarchy worldwide. Such kings as remain are little more than figureheads. They are called upon to cut ribbons for new highways, christen ships and throw dinners for visiting heads of state. But the role of governing has been taken over by presidents, premiers, parliaments and legislatures elected and answerable to the people. Even ruthless dictators claim that they represent the interests and will of the people and use that excuse for all manner of atrocities. Every leader these days must at least pay lip service to our strongly held conviction that government draws its authority from the consent of the governed.

Not so, kings. A king is not the least bit interested in approval ratings, polls or what the press might have to say. Kings do not rule at the pleasure of the people. They reign by divine right. Understand, however, that kings are not dictators exercising power arbitrarily for their own selfish ends. They are themselves governed by a higher law-or so the scriptures tell us:

“Give the king your justice, O God,
   and your righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
   and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
   and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
   give deliverance to the needy,
   and crush the oppressor.

…………………………..

“For he delivers the needy when they call,
   the poor and those who have no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,
   and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life;
   and precious is their blood in his sight.”  Psalm 72:1-4; 12-14.

The office of monarch is conferred upon one appointed by God to ensure justice, protect the interests of the most vulnerable and punish injustice and oppression. This divine authority conferred upon kings must never be used for selfish and unjust ends-as both David and Ahab learned. See II Samuel 11-12; I Kings 21:1-19. As God’s vicegerent, the king is entrusted with the responsibility of enacting God’s will for justice, peace and the wellbeing of all people. Though not answerable to the public, the king is directly responsible to God in a way that ordinary individuals are not. Thus, the crown is as much a weighty burden as it is a privilege. Few there are who wear it well. The temptations coming with royal power and the difficulties of wielding it wisely are many. Martin Luther is said to have remarked that a good prince is a rare bird. Great literature from antiquity to the present day is filled with stories of mighty kings brought low by their fatal character flaws. The responsibilities of monarchy, it seems, are more than any human person can bear.  

That is true for Jesus no less than for the rest of us. Earlier on in John’s gospel, Jesus thwarted the effort of an adoring crowd to crown him king. John 6:15. According to Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels, Jesus was offered global kingship by none other than the devil. Putting aside the fact that it comes from the devil, that does not seem like a bad proposition on the face of it. What might the world be like today had the vast power of all the world’s kingdoms been placed in the hands of Jesus? Actually, no different at all. No kingdom that is “of this world,” even one ruled by Jesus, is capable of enacting God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.”  That is because God will not rule God’s precious creation by coercive means. Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord-but not out of fear and not by compulsion. Jesus will overcome the world, but not by military conquest, political maneuvering or the manipulative power of populist charisma. He will rule through love, winning one heart at a time, changing one mind at a time and transforming one life at a time for as long as it takes to turn us away from our self destructive trajectory and toward God’s gentle reign.

So we are left with the question posed by one of our hymns: “O Christ, what can it mean for us to claim you as our king?”[1] Jesus gives us a picture of what that looks like:  

“Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.” John 13:1-5.  

It is important to note that, at this point, Judas Iscariot is still among the disciples. Jesus washed his feet also. That is how Jesus’ disciples are to confront their enemies-the same way as they are to deal with one another. There can be no limitations on the love God lavishes upon the world and we are not to concern ourselves with doubts about whether our works of love for anyone are appreciated or make any difference at all. Though the gospels are not altogether consistent concerning the fate of Judas after his betrayal, it seems unlikely that he ever found his way back to the community of disciples. If, as Matthew’s gospel tells us, Judas ended his own life upon learning that Jesus had been condemned to death, then Jesus’ humble act of kindness toward him might well have been the last touch of human compassion he felt. Whether that made a difference we do not know. Neither does it matter.

In this polarized world in which kingdoms vie with each other for dominance, for control over limited resources and for supremacy based on blood, soil, race and national identity, Jesus calls together a community to begin living now in the promised reign of God to come. The church is to be a sign, a sacrament, if you will, of God’s reign. To be clear, the church is not the kingdom of God. It can, at best, bear witness to that reality in its always flawed and never complete efforts to follow in the way of its King. That way takes the form of the cross in a world bound and determined to reject its King. The hand extended in friendship into enemy territory may well find itself nail pierced. After all, Jesus told his disciples that “whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” John 12:26. As it happens, Jesus is among refugees most of America wants to keep out of our country. Jesus dwells in the midst of nations and groups designated enemies by our government. Jesus is among the incarcerated, the homeless and the sick and elderly poor warehoused in substandard facilities. Jesus calls us to join him in crossing borders, breaking down walls and building bridges over rivers of hostility. Claiming Jesus as our king means rejecting the nationalistic, racist and violent ways of this world’s kingdoms. His is a kingdom passionately devoted to loving the world, but does not spring from the same root as the many fleeting kingdoms vying to reign over it.   

Here is an anonymous poetic component of a Sabbath rite developed in the Galilean town of Safed in the sixteenth century. It is addressed to the Sabbath angels and was typically sung when the men of the household came in from their work. Though the prayer seeks peace of the household it points beyond itself to the larger harmony of existence under God’s gentle reign. As such, it is an appropriate meditation for the day.  

Peace be Upon You

Peace be upon you—

      ministering angels,

            angels of heaven—

from the King who is king of all kings,

      the Holy One, blessed be He;

      in peace be your coming—

            angels of peace,

                  angels of heaven—

from the King who is king of all kings,

      the Holy One, blessed be He.

Bless me with peace—

      angels of peace,

            angels of heaven—

from the King who is king of all kings,

      the Holy One, blessed be He,

      in peace be your leaving—

            angels of peace,

                  angels of heaven,

from the King who is king of all kings,

      the Holy One, blessed be He.

Source: Poetry, March 2012. This anonymous liturgy is translated by Peter Cole (b. 1957), a MacArthur-winning poet and translator who lives in Jerusalem and New Haven. He was born in Paterson, New Jersey and attended Williams College and Hampshire college.  Cole’s work as both a poet and a translator reflects a sustained engagement with the cultures of Judaism and especially of the Middle East. He currently teaches one semester a year at Yale University. You can find out more about Peter Cole and his work at the Poetry Foundation website.

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[1] “O Christ What Can It Mean for Us,” Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Hymn # 431 (c. 2006 by Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; pub. by Augsburg Fortress). Text by Delores Dufner, Music by Henry S. Culer