Holy Cowardice; a sermon for the First Sunday of Christmas

Matthew 2:13-23

13 When the magi had departed, an angel from the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod will soon search for the child in order to kill him.” 14 Joseph got up and, during the night, took the child and his mother to Egypt. 15 He stayed there until Herod died. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: I have called my son out of Egypt.

16 When Herod knew the magi had fooled him, he grew very angry. He sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. 17 This fulfilled the word spoken through Jeremiah the prophet:

18 A voice was heard in Ramah,
    weeping and much grieving.
        Rachel weeping for her children,
            and she did not want to be comforted,
                because they were no more.

19 After King Herod died, an angel from the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. 20 “Get up,” the angel said, “and take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. Those who were trying to kill the child are dead.” 21 Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus ruled over Judea in place of his father Herod, Joseph was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he went to the area of Galilee. 23 He settled in a city called Nazareth so that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled: He will be called a Nazarene.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

So we’re approaching this story backward. When last we met, Jesus was born and the Magi hadn’t appeared. Now they’re leaving and we’re learning of Herod’s plot.

Next week, we’ll bring the Magi into the scene.

Backward. We do that sometimes.

By the way, do you remember into what scene the Magi are wandering? It’s probably not the one you put on your mantle or your coffee table this season. Matthew tells us that the Magi come to a house, not a stable.

And there’s some vagueness about how old Jesus is when the Magi appear. Listen to Herod’s actions:

He sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger, according to the time that he had learned from the magi.

I, frankly, don’t know exactly what would cause some vagueness in the age of the child the Magi are seeking. Maybe they told Herod that they were seeking a nursing child, or an infant. I’m willing to bet that the way we define those terms today is different from the way the terms were defined in ancient Judea.

Or maybe Joseph and Mary don’t actually remember when this happens, either. We don’t know how much later they’re relating this story to the early Christian community, but it’s certainly after Jesus’s resurrection. Do they remember, decades later, exactly when it was that Herod sent out his mercenaries? Imagine the terror, the wailing of young mothers, fearful enough in those days of losing a child to natural death, now facing soldiers in their homes, stealing and murdering their infants in cold blood.

Parents mourn when children are lost in the womb. Mothers mourn when they are compelled to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy. It is never a decision made lightly, and we are callous fools when we trick ourselves to believe otherwise.

But when we have had time to learn the child, adapt to infant patterns, watch the child grow…

This, friends, is the stuff of nightmares. This is the stuff, specifically, of my very worst nightmares.

Maybe it is unfair that God warns Joseph about Herod’s plan. Maybe it is a callous God who warns one person but not another. What kind of God does that?

Or maybe God does warn the people of Bethlehem. Maybe they hear and do hide their children. But Matthew suggests that, at least for some, that doesn’t happen.

A voice was heard in Ramah,
    weeping and much grieving.
        Rachel weeping for her children,
            and she did not want to be comforted,
                because they were no more.

Perhaps ours is a God who warns all people, but some of us are unable to hear. I hope so. I confess as much, but I always leave room in my faith for mistake, for learning. At all times, I reserve the right to be wrong.

I hope God warns all of Bethlehem, but I know that God warns Joseph, and he flees.

Now, flight is one of two reactions to danger, to fear. The other reaction is fight.

One exemplifies courage. The other exemplifies cowardice.

Is cowardice a holy trait?

Is fear a God-given gift?

Is there a time when God calls us to be afraid?

When a rabbit is faced with a wolf, he doesn’t stand his ground. He uses those magnificent huge rear paws to blast out of that place. He uses his agility to find cover that the wolf can’t reach.

God gives the rabbit fear in the same breath in which God gives the wolf hunger.

Fear is natural. Fear is created for creatures to keep them safe.

And perhaps, sometimes, out of fear is born wisdom.

I can say this with relative certainty: wisdom is almost never born of hunger. Wisdom is certainly never born of violence.

In violence, we make rash decisions we often regret later, even if we spend years or lifetimes trying to rationalize our violence.

In hunger, we make starved, ill-nourished decisions that seem to benefit us in the short term, but hurt or destroy us as time goes on.

If our reaction to danger is to make a decision that we will regret, where is God in that decision?

If our reaction to danger is to flee, to react by running to safety to re-evaluate our situation, then we have a chance to learn and better protect ourselves.

We have a chance at wisdom.

Thank God that Jesus has given us a middle way, something between flight and fight, a way to stand against violence and oppression without becoming the oppressor but without spending generations cowering in fear. Thank God that Jesus has given us a way that King and Ghandi recognized and have modelled in grace and truth in our world today.

But that middle way sometimes takes forethought and planning that we don’t have time for in every situation.

Joseph has to flee immediately.

Get up, the angel tells him. Take the child and flee. Stay hidden til I tell you otherwise.

I think that, in essence, Joseph’s decision is holy because it allows room for God to speak, for wisdom to be imparted. But I think, more immediately, that Joseph’s decision to flee is holy because it’s what God says to do.

And what God says to do in the moment is more pressing and perhaps more important than what we may read in pages and pages of history covering decades and centuries of blood shed in the name of God the conqueror.

What God says to us, right here, right now, is exactly the Word that we need to hear, because God’s Word is alive and speaking today, not just the written witness of the ages but the living, breathing, inspiring voice whispered in our hearts and shouted by the poor and the oppressed of every age and place.

Sometimes that Word is a Word of courage. But sometimes that Word is a Word of cowardice, one commanding us to take flight from an immediate threat.

And when we escape, God will make space for a miracle. When we flee, God will still send Emmanuel to be with us today.

And eventually, the threat will leave. We may climb down from the attic, come out from our closet, come back home to remake our lives. But first, we must flee.

Sometimes, what God is calling us to is exactly holy cowardice.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Promise of Emmanuel; a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Matthew 1:18-25

18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. When Mary his mother was engaged to Joseph, before they were married, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph her husband was a righteous man. Because he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement quietly. 20 As he was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled:

23 Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son,
        And they will call him, Emmanuel.

(Emmanuel means “God with us.”)

24 When Joseph woke up, he did just as an angel from God commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he didn’t have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. Joseph called him Jesus.

Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Some of us take dreams seriously. We recognize them as the opportunity our subconscious takes to calm and be quiet and let other influences shape our minds. We assume, I suppose, that those other influences would be divine and not devilish.

Some of us don’t take dreams seriously. We recognize them as our brain’s way of organizing our daily experiences and processing them into some useful form. We assume, I suppose, that our subconscious mind is going to be better suited to that activity than our conscious mind.

Me? I don’t remember my dreams.

So it’s a moot point.

I suppose there are some that haunt me. I think that if I were to have a dream like Joseph’s, that might be the case.

Joseph’s dream is memorable for probably a few reasons, any number of which may or may not apply to you, but I think that any one of them alone would make the dream one that sticks with a person:

The angel. Who has an angel appear in a dream? A relative who has passed, maybe. Not usually an angel. The unusualness of the angel makes the dream memorable.

It’s a dream in first person. Again, this may not be unusual for you, but I don’t seem to have a lot of dreams in first person. Not as myself, anyway. When I am myself, present, seeing and experiencing everything in the dream as myself, the dream has a better chance of standing out and being memorable.

What’s going on in the dream is something that’s actually, factually happening in Joseph’s life. There’s no misplacing one person for another. There’s no hyperbole. It’s very real and completely in touch with exactly what he’s experiencing.

The angel makes this crazy detailed prediction. It’s going to be a boy: That’s something we can only know now because of modern medical developments. You’re going to call him Jesus. Well, that might be self-fulfilling, but it’s a detail that not every dream gets. It’s one last step making this a uniquely memorable dream.

Now, would one of those characteristics stick with you? Is one of them, at least, something unusual about your own dream life? Wouldn’t it haunt you?

But put all that together: Who’s going to forget this dream?

Not Joseph; that’s for sure.

He seems to have remembered it well enough that it got passed down through however many storytellers to get to Matthew, a quarter of a century after the birth itself. And it was a memorable enough dream, and important enough, that whoever heard it from Joseph remembered it, and whoever heard it from that person remembered it, and so on.

And maybe for Matthew, there’s something important about recognizing a new Joseph, having dreams that mean something important, just like Joseph of old telling the court of Pharaoh all the exciting dreams that he was having, bringing the tribe of Israel into a transformative new era. Maybe Matthew is pointing to Jesus as a new era for Israel as well, pointing to the dream and the covenant of David as it is passed beyond the borders of Jerusalem, which is flattened and evacuated by the time he’s writing.

Yup. That’s our context.

Not complicated at all.

Maybe there’s a statement Matthew is trying to make, but perhaps the most important thing for us to focus on today is who the proclamation is about. It’s not Joseph, and it’s not Mary, and it’s not the angel. It’s Jesus. It’s Emmanuel, as Matthew quotes the prophet Isaiah:

Listen, house of David! Isn’t it enough for you to be tiresome for people that you are also tiresome before my God? Therefore, the Lord will give you a sign. The young woman is pregnant and is about to give birth to a son, and she will name him Immanuel. He will eat butter and honey, and learn to reject evil and choose good. Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned.

But perhaps Matthew is onto something. After all, our Gospel writers don’t pick their quotes willy-nilly. Folk who are literate in the first century aren’t typically just a little literate. Putting yourself to learning the art of writing is hard work, and ostracizing work when everyone around you is illiterate.

You think maybe Matthew had in mind Isaiah’s context? Because we don’t tend to.

Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned.

Is that the promise of Emmanuel? That when God Is with Us, everything around us falls apart?

That would be a dark reading of both of these stories, and of the original Joseph story, too: as Joseph receives the dreams, the world falls into famine and his family enters into an eventually enslaved and oppressive situation.

But that’s not the promise of Emmanuel.

The promise of Emmanuel is that, even when things fall apart, God Is with Us.

And frankly, folks, that’s all we need.

When the day has gone from bad to worse, God Is with Us.

When every conversation has been an argument, God Is with Us.

When you just want to give in, God Is with Us.

When the world is falling apart, God Is with Us.

Who else do we need but our Rock, our Stronghold, our Comforter, our Salvation, our Redeemer. Our God who is everything for us, and better and more than we could ever ask. And differently than we could ever hope.

Jesus, the one who saves, but not in the way the people hope. Not the one who will save our political structures, or even our ecclesial structures. Not the one who will save the nation, the church, the environment, the budget, or the status quo. But the One who will save the world, who came not to condemn it, but to bring life.

The promise of Emmanuel isn’t simple. It’s hope, it’s justice, it’s mercy, it’s joy, it’s comfort, it’s salvation, it’s all that.

The promise of Emmanuel is a God Who Is with Us, in all the many meanings that may take on. A God Who Is with Us no matter what we’re going through, and sometimes in spite of our failure to recognize God present in this wretched situation. But a God Who Is with Us powerfully and unfailingly, everything we need even when, and often when, that God isn’t exactly what we want our Savior to be.

But God Is with Us.

And in every situation, whether the nation is falling into exile, the family is in famine, or the baby isn’t ours, whatever the situation, God Is with Us, and God is exactly what we need.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Emmanuel, Three in One, God Always with Us. Amen.

The Promise of Justice; a sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent

Matthew 11:2-11

2 Now when John heard in prison about the things the Christ was doing, he sent word by his disciples to Jesus, asking, 3 “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”

4 Jesus responded, “Go, report to John what you hear and see. 5 Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them. 6  Happy are those who don’t stumble and fall because of me.”

7 When John’s disciples had gone, Jesus spoke to the crowds about John: “What did you go out to the wilderness to see? A stalk blowing in the wind? 8 What did you go out to see? A man dressed up in refined clothes? Look, those who wear refined clothes are in royal palaces. 9 What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 He is the one of whom it is written: Look, I’m sending my messenger before you, who will prepare your way before you.

11 “I assure you that no one who has ever been born is greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

John is in prison. Prison is a place in which it’s generally difficult to get news. Somehow he gets wind of this nifty stuff his cousin Jesus is doing, and he gets a word out: Coz, who do you think you are? Are you Messiah?

Because he can’t see for himself. He had that voice-of-God-and-dove moment with Jesus’s baptism, but that seems to have been the end of it. He isn’t witnessing any of the stuff going on around Jesus.

He needs to see more clearly. He needs to connect to the Jesus webcam. X-ray binoculars or something.

He can’t see.

I was running the other day, through the park, and I should’ve known to be more careful, because Ann Vicars told me about a fall she took just the previous week there.

Wet leaves, rain coming down; I rounded a switchback on the trail coming downhill and suddenly I was on my face, rolling across the trail. I couldn’t see how thick the leaves were, and how unstable my footing would be there.

I just couldn’t see.

Nobody saw, though, and I didn’t break anything. So even my pride wasn’t wounded. Well, except now y’all know. Oops.

What do we do when we can’t see? Put on glasses, turn a light on, squint? We have to find a way to bring something into focus, whether that’s by bringing in more light or introducing a light-refracting lens like spectacles or a telescope.

I want to introduce you to a word. A Greek word that Luke uses to translate Mary’s song: μεγαλυνο.

The Latin translation of that word gives us the title by which we know the song today: Magnificat.

Magnify, as in, “My soul magnifies the Lord”.

Those of us who have grown up on Mary’s hymn might not question the word, but it’s a bit of a strange one.

After all, how do you magnify God? Isn’t God infinitely big? How do we make God bigger?

But magnification isn’t about physically making something bigger. It’s about making something look bigger so that it can be more easily seen. A better, but less poetic, translation is, “clarify”.

My soul zooms in on God’s character so I can see better.

Running a nine-minute mile downhill in the rain, it’s a little difficult to zoom in on the ground cover, but you can bet I was more careful about where I placed my feet after that.

My eyes, my mind magnified the trail. I paid more attention to where leaves were loose and where I could see gravel and mud. I even slowed down on the curves, which isn’t something I tend to do.

Think about how you go about your day, what you do. What does your mind magnify? To what do you pay attention? What do you ignore?

What does your body magnify? In what ways does your body zoom in on things, clarify them, make them bigger than they actually are?

What do your emotions magnify? What gets to you? What do you allow to get to you?

What does your soul magnify?

When John asks to see Jesus more clearly, Jesus sends word to him:

Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them.  Happy are those who don’t stumble and fall because of me.

When God is magnified, what do we see? What do we witness?

I suppose it depends on what part of God’s being we observe. We confess that God is Love, but we also confess that God is Sovereign, that God is a Mighty Warrior, that God is Judge.

What gives us the best picture of the Divine? Is there a part of God we can magnify that will give us a clear understanding of the nature of the only truly Sovereign Being in creation?

I doubt that. Would you like your character to be determined by a single aspect of your character or decision you’ve made? What if it were the wrong decision? The one you’ve always regretted over all the others? What if it were that one?

What if God were seen only through the destruction of Jericho? What if God were seen only through the bloodshed of the Crusades? What if God were seen only through the Holocaust of the Jews?

Or what if we see God as Mary sees God?

Remember what her marital status is? Remember the stigma attached to being a woman of experience outside of wedlock? Remember that stoning is a perfectly valid option for her if her neighbors find out, if the Temple hierarchy finds out?

Why should Mary have a generous perspective on God at all?

Why should she not be like any number of people who go through unbearable challenge, inexplicable tragedy, unfathomable fear, and who decide that no just and loving God would ever allow this to happen? Therefore, either God is not just and loving, or God is simply absent.

I’ve had those moments. Have you?

How do we respond?

I’ll tell you what the least effective response would be: God is watching your faith fail and if you stumble, your very salvation is at stake.

That is also not just and loving. That is not a witness to our God. That is a witness to human fear.

Mary, the most unlikely of persons to have any courage at all, shows us exactly how to respond.

‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour 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 for ever.’

God looks at us and sees the potential, the promise, the good in us. God saw Mary, her hopeless state, and lifted up everything that was good about her. To this day, Mary is revered - not worshipped, not idolized, but profoundly respected - because God lifted her so far out of her hopelessness, because God magnified all that was good about her.

And so Mary, in turn, magnified all the good that she was able to see about God.

Is that a fair reading of the exchange? It’s only one perspective.

But that’s all we ever have: our own unique perspectives.

We have to choose what to highlight, what to magnify.

Mary chooses to magnify God’s justice. So does Jesus.

Tell John:

Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them.  Happy are those who don’t stumble and fall because of me.

The promise of Jesus, the promise of Emmanuel, the promise of a God who is so intimately and unfailingly with us is justice. Because that God is our protector who desires that our wrong be made right. Because that God is simultaneously our judge who sees the irreconcilable harm we do to others.

And yet that God is unfailingly forgiving to we who repent, and that God expects us to repent thoroughly and not go back to the wrong we have done.

The witness of a faithful life is moving into that way of being in relationship with others and with God, moving toward Christ-likeness, moving toward Godliness, moving into the place in which every breath we take and every word we exhale is God’s own Spirit.

Go tell what you see. Let your soul glorify, magnify God. Bear witness to the amazingness you see.

And God will also magnify you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Promise of Peace; a sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

Matthew 3:1-12

3 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the desert of Judea announcing, 2 “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” 3 He was the one of whom Isaiah the prophet spoke when he said:

The voice of one shouting in the wilderness,
        “Prepare the way for the Lord;
        make his paths straight.”

4 John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey.

5 People from Jerusalem, throughout Judea, and all around the Jordan River came to him. 6 As they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. 7 Many Pharisees and Sadducees came to be baptized by John. He said to them, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? 8 Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. 9 And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire. 11 I baptize with water those of you who have changed your hearts and lives. The one who is coming after me is stronger than I am. I’m not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.”

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

The faith of Abraham in a single God whose authority surpassed all the gods of the surrounding peoples has morphed into something else.

Abraham wasn’t monotheistic, per se. He simply trusted in one God rather than others.

His sons and their families would call that God the Bull of Abraham.

The Bull of Abraham would become the God of the Israelites, a people defined by slavery; a people defined as sojourners, aliens; a people defined by history as conquerors; a people shortly thereafter defined as conquered, enslaved again, exiled.

The God of the Israelites became the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Temple that once was a tent.

That Temple developed rules, laws. Some today say those laws were given by God; some say they were, in fact, written by God; some say most, if not all of the laws, were written or reformed or expanded by people, specifically by the Temple hierarchy.

Following those laws became a burden to the people. The dietary laws, the sacrificial laws, the holiness laws all had become so expensive, so unattainable, so alienating that no one but the uniquely privileged could follow them.

The law had once been liberating, but now it was enslaving. It was intended to set the people free for their God, but now the powerless were given to the service of the powerful, the priestly class who stood to benefit from the people’s sacrifices and goodwill.

Now, in the first century, the powerful and the powerless are under the occupation of Rome. The oppressors have become the oppressed.

The Baptizer sees what has happened to his people. He sees the greed, the corruption of the Temple hierarchy echoed and magnified exponentially in the presence of Rome.

And that magnification makes the corruption of the Temple all the more clear, so John doesn’t mince words in calling them out.

You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon?

Now, here’s the thing about John, the thing that gets to me, and has since I recognized what kind of man Jesus is: John’s rhetoric is fear-filled, threatening, foreboding. Jesus admittedly gets that way toward the end, but most of his message is hope, though, and patience, and peace.

What I have to keep reminding myself is that Jesus is divine and John is not.

Jesus sees the broad scope of things happening. He is not immune to being affected by his environment, but he is divine, and John is not. He is fully divine and fully human: so we confess. Jesus knows all that God knows, and feels all that humankind feels. Jesus loves as God loves, but has the limited sight of any man born of woman.

There’s that difference, and there’s also a minor historical difference. John looks forward to the coming of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is the Kingdom of God.

Where Jesus is, the Kingdom of God is.

And John is the one sent to shout in the wilderness:

“Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight.”

He is come to make Israel ready for the One who will hack off at the stump every tree that isn’t bearing good fruit, who will make a brush fire of those fruitless trees.

He is come to make Israel ready for the One who will sort the husks out of the wheat, who “will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.”

But John is also called to make Israel ready for the one whom Isaiah speaks of:

A shoot from the branch of Jesse.

The one who 

won’t judge by appearances,
    nor decide by hearsay.

The one who will bring the time when

The wolf will live with the lamb,
    and the leopard will lie down with the young goat;
    the calf and the young lion will feed together,
    and a little child will lead them.

This is the promise of peace.

You will hear it said that Isaiah speaks of a king, an emperor whom he has already seen, a Persian named Darius, but I say to you that history has a tendency to repeat and magnify itself. And the One who has an eye on history has hinted in Darius the shape of the Divine One to come, the Human One who is God come to earth.

And I would remind you: Where Jesus is, the Kingdom of God is.

Where Jesus is, the wolf is already living with the lamb, and the leopard with the young goat.

Where Jesus is, the nursing child is already playing over the snake’s hole.

Where Jesus is, there is no harm or destruction.

Where Jesus is, the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord.

Where Jesus is, he stands already as a signal to the peoples. Where Jesus is, the nations do, in fact, seek him out.

But Jesus is not in our fruitlessness.

Jesus is not in our violence.

Jesus is not in our callousness.

Jesus is not in our anger.

Jesus is not in our spitefulness.

Jesus is not in our bigotry.

Jesus is not in our superiority.

Jesus is not in our greed.

Jesus is not in our oppression.

So if we would prepare the way for Jesus today, we must allow Jesus to burn away with unquenchable fire all that destructive sinfulness. We must allow Jesus to burn it away from us. From us, because it is not ours to burn it off others.

We must take control of our own lives. Rather, we must relinquish control of what we claim as our own. We must give all our lives to Jesus and trust him to sort our husks out of us and incinerate them so that we might never reclaim them from the ash that remains.

We must relinquish control and allow Jesus to bring the promise of peace through us.

So today, let’s recognize in ourselves those parts of us that don’t reflect Jesus’s promise of peace. Let’s let them go, and let God purify us.

God will not burn off what is godly. We need not fear the flame. God will burn off what is sinful.

It will be painful, though. It will take courage. It will require vulnerability.

But it will make peacemakers of us. It will make us able to faithfully and unfailingly shine the Light of the World into the darkness. It will make us way-preparers and fruitful branches of the One True Vine.

Will you let Jesus refine you today?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Coffee as Relationship Building

This is a bit I wrote almost three years ago. I've just unearthed it and offer it here for your amusement.

Every weekday morning, I get myself cleaned up and wake Noah. Quietly, gently, so as to have a quieter, gentler morning. I talk him into consciousness and love on him and consistently as him one question:

Are you going to be my helper this morning?

Now, sometimes that might mean, Are you going to make good and appropriate choices and make the morning easier rather than harder. But for us, it means something a bit more specific.

When he agrees - and he almost always agrees, because he likes doing these things and spending this little alone time with me - we cuddle our way downstairs, and I put him on the kitchen counter. I assemble the espresso machine, fill the reservoir about halfway, and I ask him:

Are you going to turn it on?

And he pushes the button to heat the water and whatever other mysterious elements are inside.

Thank you, Noah!

Sometimes he sips on a glass of cranberry juice while we’re talking and slowly turning little lights on around the kitchen.

I pour some coffee beans into our grinder, and he turns the knob to grind them until they’re all done.

Thank you, Noah!

I put the grounds into the filter and attach it to the brew head.

Are you going to put the cup down?

He does.

Thank you, Noah!

We brew the espresso. I smell it. He smells it (mmm!).

We move over to another part of the kitchen, where we make Rebekah’s bottles (Noah assembles and installs the lids), label and put them in a cooler (Noah puts ice packs in the cooler), make mom’s lunch (Noah holds snack baggies open while I put in celery, carrots, maybe peppers), and then retreat back upstairs, far more awake, to get dressed and begin to wake Sarah.

The Promise of Messiah; a sermon for the First Sunday of Advent

Matthew 24:36-44

36 “But nobody knows when that day or hour will come, not the heavenly angels and not the Son. Only the Father knows. 37 As it was in the time of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Human One. 38 In those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark. 39 They didn’t know what was happening until the flood came and swept them all away. The coming of the Human One will be like that. 40 At that time there will be two men in the field. One will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill. One will be taken and the other left. 42 Therefore, stay alert! You don’t know what day the Lord is coming. 43 But you understand that if the head of the house knew at what time the thief would come, he would keep alert and wouldn’t allow the thief to break into his house. 44 Therefore, you also should be prepared, because the Human One will come at a time you don’t know.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

A people at war think that God’s will is to make them victorious warriors. A people victorious think that God has given them the victory. A people defeated write the kind of hymn that we hear from Isaiah today:

² In the days to come
    the mountain of the Lord’s house
    will be the highest of the mountains.
    It will be lifted above the hills;
        peoples will stream to it.
³ Many nations will go and say,
“Come, let’s go up to the Lord’s mountain,
    to the house of Jacob’s God
        so that he may teach us his ways
        and we may walk in God’s paths.”
Instruction will come from Zion;
    the Lord’s word from Jerusalem.
⁴ God will judge between the nations,
    and settle disputes of mighty nations.
Then they will beat their swords into iron plows
    and their spears into pruning tools.
Nation will not take up sword against nation;
    they will no longer learn how to make war.

The expectation of Messiah in ancient Israel has as much to do with their political context as it does with anything else.

Because here’s a little secret about prophecy that most of our evangelical Church doesn’t want to hear: Prophecy has more to do with proclaiming God’s presence in the current situation than it has to do with predicting future events. Biblical prophets aren’t writing to us. They’re writing to their contemporary audience.

Our job is to understand the context of that audience and glean an appropriate truth from our ancient writings.

Well, our job is to follow Jesus. Comprehending prophetic texts is secondary. It’s not unimportant, of course, but it’s not the primary task.

I hope that I spend most of my effort encouraging you to the primary task. I hope I spend most of my time urging you to follow Jesus.

But this morning, because of the words Jesus has to offer us through Matthew’s evangel, I think that addressing one of our secondary tasks is appropriate.

This morning, we are wandering into Advent. We’ve had our Thanksgiving feasts and our extraordinary Thanksgiving snow. Now, four Sundays before Christmas, we wander into a season of preparation.

This afternoon, Nickelsville will jump past all four weeks of preparation and proclaim Christmas already come with parade and face painting and our Americanized Saint Nicholas, and put us all in the mood for the great commercialization that began on Black Friday Eve this year. We get impatient. We rush this season, and we neglect the hope and the promise that Advent has to offer. That we’ve lost Jesus in Christmas isn’t the fault of the media or of flashy merchants. It’s our own fault for neglecting the time to look forward to Jesus coming.

If we want to have Christmas parties, let’s have them during the twelve days of Christmas, not during the four weeks preceding them.

We need to make room for walking through the time of preparation. It is good for our souls, for our families, for our communities.

Because preparation is something that’s important to God. God doesn’t typically just throw things at us. God prepares us for the things God has in store.

And not just by telling us about them. God prepares our hearts, our bodies, our souls, our minds if we will let God’s grace shape us.

So this morning, as the spinning Earth once more brings us into the season of Advent, let us commit to allowing God to prepare us.

Because this is God’s spinning Earth, defining our days. This is God’s moon, defining our rough monthly cycles. This is God’s solar system, wherein we cycle through our years. This is God’s time, so let us set aside the time God has given us to prepare ourselves.

Because even while God gives us this beautiful regularity, this ongoing cycle of days and years and lifetimes, God still gives us beautiful surprises, as well.

And part of being prepared for those surprises is falling into God’s preparation.

Jesus’s message to us today isn’t, “Here is a surprise from God smacking you in the face!” That’s not the way God is.

I know it feels like that sometimes, and believe me, I’ve had my own moments of being caught unawares by God. But that’s my fault, not God’s. God has always prepared me for what’s in store.

Jesus’s message to us today is, “Be ready. Be on guard. Be prepared.”

And that preparation isn’t something we do. It’s something God does.

Of course we don’t know God’s timing. That’s because it’s God’s timing, not our timing. God has an eye on the larger shape of history, and God is working through all us messy people to make that history happen. That’s a lot of free agents to depend on. That’s a lot of volunteers God is recruiting, and if you’ve never recruited and managed volunteers, trust me, that’s a task that requires a lot of patience and a lot of flexibility.

It’s no wonder that the coming of the Human One is going to be such a surprise.

I suspect that we’d be a lot better off leaving the big picture to God. Let’s not assume that we know what and when and where or how to understand the words of our ancient prophets in the very different world in which we live today.

Let’s just do our job. Let’s be ready. Let’s follow Jesus.

It is, after all, only in preparing ourselves that we can make room for God to work. If I’m distracted by my own opinions and ideology, I won’t leave any space for God’s grace to work in me. I need to leave room for God to shape me and make me ready for Messiah. I need to leave room for God to shape me into the preparer that God needs me to be.

Jesus reminds us that there’s a lot that gets in our way. He compares those being prepared for the coming of the Human One to Noah’s contemporaries:

In those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark. They didn’t know what was happening until the flood came and swept them all away.

And Paul addresses his Roman audience with a like warning:

The night is almost over, and the day is near. So let’s get rid of the actions that belong to the darkness and put on the weapons of light. Let’s behave appropriately as people who live in the day, not in partying and getting drunk, not in sleeping around and obscene behavior, not in fighting and obsession. Instead, dress yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and don’t plan to indulge your selfish desires.

But here’s the thing: We have heard all that personal holiness stuff so often that we’ve either fixed our personal issues or we’ve stubbornly justified them beyond any hope of human reconciliation.

If you’ve done the latter, I hope God is working on you, because nobody else will be able to.

Either way, I don’t see any need wasting my breath on that. I’m either preaching to the choir or preaching to the wall.

I want to encourage us in a different direction.

When Jesus comes, things change. When Jesus first came, people weren’t ready. They were so unready that they nailed him to a cross like so many other Roman insurrectionists.

But when Jesus comes into our lives today, are we rejecting him like the crowds who cried for Barabbas, or are we welcoming Jesus into our hearts, into our homes, into our consumption, into our conversations, into our leading, into our following, into our families, into our friendships? Are we allowing Jesus to reshape all of us, or are we telling Jesus, “I’ll do A, B, and C for you, but don’t you dare touch my X, Y, or Z.”

We expect Jesus to be a certain way. In order to hold on to our lifestyles, we need Jesus to maintain our status quo, but Jesus isn’t ever, ever someone who lets us keep things the way things are.

Look back at what Isaiah has to share with us today.

⁴ God will judge between the nations,
    and settle disputes of mighty nations.
Then they will beat their swords into iron plows
    and their spears into pruning tools.
Nation will not take up sword against nation;
    they will no longer learn how to make war.

Isaiah doesn’t say that the king will judge between the nations. He doesn’t say that the public or the press will settle disputes of mighty nations.

God is going to do that.

Then they will beat their swords into iron plows
    and their spears into pruning tools.

That is our job. Our job is not to proclaim war. Our job is not to decide who’s right and wrong. Our job is not to go fight.

Our job is to take our weapons of war and crush and mutilate them into implements of production, of peace, of fruitfulness.

Now, most of us don’t want to hear that. But we need to hear it, because it is one of our greatest sins as a society and as a church that we proclaim our nation above our God. The two are not the same, and we must learn which comes first.

But we also need to hear this because we are a people called to love and ministry with our neighbor.

And that means the neighbor just down the street we’d rather not associate with because they’re that kind of person as well as our neighbor halfway around the world we don’t want to associate with because, what, they don’t speak the same language; they don’t believe what we believe; they are clearly sinners unworthy of our concern.

And we, clearly, are worthy of God’s concern, sinless as we are.

I don’t want to invite you to change some stupid selfish little sin in your life that you’ve spent a lifetime justifying. I want to invite you to change something much bigger, something that will redefine and reshape your conversations and your media appetite.

I want to invite you, this Advent, to reshape the way you see the world. When you watch the news, whatever you hear the reporter or commentator saying, see every person as a beloved child of God. Because they are. God has created every one of them, infant and insurrectionist, armed and unarmed, powerful and powerless, wealthy or starving, and God loves them.

Prepare yourself this Advent for not just Christmas, but for the coming of Christ. Because Christ is coming, and the world, whether we like it or not, is going to change.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.