Sing God's Liberating Lyrics

I discovered I’ve been fighting, and losing, a battle I didn’t realize I had joined. I’ve long believed that John Gray's idea that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, is lame. What little I’ve heard sounds like a theory with psychobabble, cute folktales, bits of eastern wisdom, and traces of Greek philosophy. My belief that he makes millions off a lot of nonsense had me thinking that I never give his notion any energy at all, much less am I fighting actively against it, until the other day.

We’re slowly rolling out Christmas traditions at our house. There have been quite a few changes since we’re in that semi-empty-nest position with our last child in college. Our daugher is here on break. Is our daughter home, or are we hosting a guest?

We went to a nursery to cut down our Christmas tree. This year only one son and our daughter joined in the work. I love that tradition. My excitement, however, doesn’t carry over to decorating the tree. Oh, there are ornaments I like to set thoughtfully because of the memories they hold. Once those 10 are up, I just want to get the job done. My wife and daughter, on the other hand, see hanging ornaments as the beginning of a mission.

Each room in the house becomes a shrine for particular decorations. Fortunately, they don’t mind my quitting the operation early. This year, with the crew short-handed, I stayed at the tree longer than usual. I did a great job filling in gaps, balancing shiny round things with hand-made relics from the kids’ preschool and kindergarten days. We got that baby decked out in record time. I went to bed while Rachel and Anna garlanded from room to room.

Next morning, reaching for a coffee cup, I found an ornament on each cupboard door handle. There was nothing new about that. What was odd was my certain memory that I’d hung all those on the tree. Obviously, this man had hung those ornaments in the wrong place. Moreover, my doing so disturbed the festival balance of nature the women I make home with treasure. Kindly, they restored order without wounding my ego. Women, it seems, often see, nurture, and express visions richer than men can ever imagine.

Luke knew that long before John Gray and I came late to the awareness. Luke boldly asserts Mary and Elizabeth front and center within the drama of the new thing God intends to do with John and through Jesus. (See Luke 1:39-55.)

We too easily miss their significance for many reasons. Our Christmas pageants don’t include the reality that both Zechariah and Joseph are late to come onboard. Both these men require an extra effort on God’s part before they are ready to join in.

We too quickly focus on the pageant’s larger than life characters. We’re awed by the adoring angels. We sympathize with the scared shepherds. We’re horrified by Herod’s charade. We warble a song for the three traveling wise men. Truth is, compared to Elizabeth and Mary all these male folk are just bit-players. Luke depicts these women as much more than passive incubators.

Luke gives them each a place more prominent than that of the women behind every good man. Their personas don’t merely propel the Christmas plot to Bethlehem. Their souls’ authenticity and genuineness are critical to the change God craves for the cosmos. They come to that place in their alertness for God’s presence and by their preference to let God’s ways be their ways. Through all that, they remain wholly themselves.

We marvel at, and so distance ourselves from, what we call miracles. They take pleasure in each other’s pregnancy. We pooh-pooh, and so retreat from, their pious ignorance of procreation. They ponder what power God is exercising. We draw doctrinal pronouncements from their meeting. They sing God’s praises. We see two poor, powerless women. They prepare for the problems and perils of everyday parenthood. We set them on remote pedestals. They proclaim the profound promise divine partnership with their ordinary womanhood will work in and for the real world.

Listen, first, because that’s what Mary does, to Elizabeth. Her hearing Mary’s greeting sets off her feeling a movement within. She expects that moment, like every moment, to be pregnant with the possibility of extraordinary meaning. In that expectant moment the Spirit fills her so full, she lets out a shout God still wants us to hear. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

Two realities; first, Mary is neither a superwoman, nor is she a conquered woman. Elizabeth’s praise toward Mary is recognition that Mary has received what God desires for all God’s children, namely, that we all hear and respond to God’s call that we each give birth to God’s holy will inside our own ordinariness. Second, Elizabeth thanks God for her ability to name and claim the always presence of God both within her and around her.

Mary’s response to all of this is both equally other-centered and likewise God focused. She rightly, and humbly – as in well grounded – or rooted in the favor God has shown her, acknowledges the gift she’s been given. She then immediately testifies that God’s favor toward her is already rushing toward and for the favor of the whole world.

God is, she sings, bringing about the fulfillment of the promises made to creation and creatures from the beginning of time. With strength and power, God is undertaking the merciful, compassionate rewombing this world requires in order to be reborn into God’s good news for all.

I hope you’re seeing and hearing the depth and breadth of these promises. God wouldn’t need all the strength and power described here if God were only interested in ratcheting up our piety. The world wouldn’t need a Mighty One if all that were at stake was which holy book congressional representatives swear their oaths of offices on.

God’s oath, sworn in word and in flesh, from the moment God created us in God’s own image and likeness, means that God has little interest in tinkering at the edges. God’s vision for us sees an honorable society. God’s rule over us requires a more gracious government. God’s extravagance to us demands a more equitable economy.

From the time of Abraham God has been writing, in one form or another, lyrics that make holy melodies just like that. Women, neither from Venus nor Mars, but of this good earth, seem to hear them easiest and to sing them loudest.

Today, God wants those lyrics to make their way, as they did for Elizabeth and Mary, from our ears, to our hearts, and deep within our souls. Then we, like they, can boldly, through the ordinary pain and messiness of life together on this good earth, give birth tomorrow and join forever, the only Messiah who means what he says to us and does what he means for us.

I Wonder as I Wander

Been there! Done that! This year I decided not to waste any mental or emotional energy railing against the commercialism of Christmas. I'm so proud of myself; even walked through Sam's Club just before Halloween and barely flinched at row after row of blinking Santa’s and chirping, robotic carolers.

I don't care what Newt Gingrich said, you do remember Newt don't you? Our American culture stopped adhering to the principles of the Gospel long ago. And it wasn't some anonymous "they" who did it to us. We allowed ourselves to be co-opted. Long before the time of William Penn, who claimed that Philadelphia would be the promised "city on the hill," faith language had been misappropriated. We have to ask ourselves, not have we been misled, but have we been misleading?

We Christians claim to live our lives inside a very particular story. Part of the way we keep faith with that story, we say, is by living inside of an alternative calendar. Since that story is to become, in some sense, our own biography, the way we move about our days and the things we do along the way ought to at least appear to be counter-cultural. We say, that makes us different AND makes a difference. Really?

Liturgical time, the seasons of the church year, can serve as memory guides - not nostalgic musings, but time-pieces and road maps. Liturgical seasons can only work to: prick our memories; shape our attitudes; stir our emotions; influence our behaviors; and, touch our souls if we ask the right questions. So Advent is a time to ask ourselves two questions: What time is it, and Where are we?

The Gospel readings we'll hear at worship this Advent come from Luke. This evangelist's sense of time and place is keen. We'd do well to listen hard. The clear and simple fact is we already know everything we need to know.

What time is it? The time for God's coming is now. Hence the name Emmanuel - God is with us. What difference does that make? Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am. Whatever you do to the least of these, that you do unto me. I am with you always, unto the end of time. Really? No wonder Americans dream of white Christmases, roast chestnuts and shout Bah Humbug!

Where are we? We're awake. We're getting ready. We're expecting. We're taking the ax to the root of things to ensure good fruit. What difference does that make? We're the enterprise that helps the blind to see, the lame to walk, the lepers to be clean, the deaf to hear. We bring good news to the poor. AND, we're not afraid! Really? No wonder Americans can be convinced by the culture's preachers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid, or suit up for a ride on a space ship trailing a comet's wake.

Their time-pieces and road maps are all out of sync. How will they ever know? Who'll help them to wonder as they wander? Our keeping Advent can help to reset their time-pieces and reorient their maps.

When we invite people to come home to themselves in our presence, because our love and regard helps to bring out the best in them, we incarnate Emmanuel.

When people dislike our absence because they find promise in our nearness, we incarnate Emmanuel.

When our biography declares no greater love than the laying down of our lives, we incarnate Emmanuel.

As Jesus borns anew this year, let us proclaim and share what we remember and experience, '"Been there! Done that!"

Time for a Reality Check

Be alert! Keep awake! Cry out! Prepare!

Don't the words we hear from Scripture during Advent, from Isaiah, John the Baptist and Jesus, sound incredibly familiar? Maybe it's because lamentations such as these have been in the news so often lately. The vivid warnings of veiled threats issued by George Bush, federal and state homeland security officials, and police agencies at every level are alarming.

Holiday travelers might want to take a refresher course in the threat level color-code that charts the levels of danger. The dreadful words sound similar but the posture is very different. Those seeking to enlist our participation in preserving home-land security are on a different trajectory than our ancestors in faith. Characters in officialdom bid us to look over our shoulders to uncover plotters; scan the horizon for threats; shrink world to what we can see, hear, feel, and touch; so as to control the future. Not so our ancestors in faith.

The ancestors' words are loud, but that doesn't make them desperate. The ancestors' words are shrill, but that doesn't make them frantic.

Advent Scriptures invite us to recall the past we've experienced under God's loving rule; to stand firmly in the present where God comes close in amazingly fleshy and sometimes even messy ways; and, to entrust the future to a powerful God who's very much in control. The words reflect a clear grasp of who we are and Whose we are from a trajectory of hope - that's trust, not wish - that we're God-created, Christ-saved, and Spirit-anointed. There's even a color-code to remind us that God makes and keeps promises.

We surround our worship space in blue -not because we're down in the dumps, but because its hues recall promising skies and life-giving waters – reminders of what's really real. We need that in a season when civil(ized?) culture bids us to spend like there's no tomorrow and to distrust those whom our fear inclines us to identify as not blue-blooded!

Advent's journey is the gift of time to wait for and to relish in what God has done, what God is doing, and what God will keep on doing whether we are alert to God near and present, or shrink from that reality into the terror of tinsel and fantasy. The reality is, since we're not yet home, the only security abroad in the land is Emmanuel - God with us - yet and still.

God's Fired-Up Farmhand

When I was 16 years old, I worked at McDonald’s. To speed service, the manager often sent someone outside to take and tally people’s orders. Back then, our inside uniforms were white shirts, dark pants, a tie, a white hat, and a butcher’s apron. When we served customers outside, we wore a blue blazer.

As I was sent outside one day, the manager remembered that the blue blazers were at the dry cleaners. He said I should wear his red manager’s blazer instead. Heading for the door I heard him shout to me, “Wait, you can’t wear that white hat. Here, put on this red manager’s hat. That way, if any corporate inspectors see you, we won’t get dunned.” No problem; off I went.

Things were going well. With me taking folks’ orders, the lunch crowd moved quickly. Then a woman asked me, “How old do you have to be to work here?” “16,” I said. She asked, “Are you hiring? My son is 16 and he needs a job.” “Well, we always take applications. Have your son come by at 2:30 and ask to see the manager.” “But, you are the manager,” she insisted. Then I realized I had on the red jacket, as well as a red hat with the word ‘manager’ blazed on both sides. Without skipping a beat I said, “Yes I am. I’ll take your son’s application any time after 2:30.”

Quick thinking avoided a corporate embarrassment. What my thinking didn’t do was change reality. Costumed as a manager, I expanded the masquerade by talking like a supervisor. But the internal reality, my identity, remained unchanged. I was, and continued to be, a line-worker.

John’s shout to the crowds in Luke 3:7-18, an extension of his preaching from last week’s text, focuses on just that, changing identity. Both John and those who take his preaching to heart are concerned with the difference between walking the walk and talking the talk.

Now I know many of our Advent scriptures sound harsh. Some even frighten us. John’s language is stark and scary. His effort is to speak clearly. He’s seeking to convince his hearers to use his confrontational style as an opportunity to take an honest stock of themselves.

If we hear John that way, the cloud of fear that shadows his preaching might thin. Then, we, too, may see and hear something new about ourselves, our God, and our relationships with others. I’m not interested in softening John’s words. I am interested in having his preaching achieve God’s intended results for our identities.

We may not enjoy John’s calling us a brood of vipers. Still, there’s no denying we know how low we can go! We also know how quickly and eagerly we can slither away from both challenges and threats to our selfish security. We even know how capable we are of shedding one kind of socially acceptable skin, to masquerade inside another, when it suits our interests. Are there any viperous somebody’s out there not getting this? Raise your hand. I can get more specific because this viperous somebody gets it good.

We can hear this bold talk because John’s speaking in the plural. Yeah, it’s personal all right. See, John’s accusation is an equal opportunity indictment. He’s not picking on us merely as individuals. He’s challenging the way we commonly define the identity we have and share as children of God. John says clearly, to provoke a confrontation intended to change us, that, as we are, at our deepest roots, we are living neither into the personhood nor up to the people-hood God has in mind for us. And John brings that judgment in the name of God.

When God invites us to turn around, i.e., repent, and reenter that personhood, that people-hood, we will, John says, “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” Now this is a good time of year to have that phrase wrap around us.

Come Christmas day most of us intend to bear some gifts. We often measure the worth of the gift we’ll bear against the worth of the relationship we have with the one to whom we’re considering bearing a gift. Maybe you’re in a work-related or casual friend secret Santa group that’s set a price limit on the gifts to be exchanged. No one really expects a gift worthy of royalty.

John doesn’t use the words “bear” and “worthy” in quite those ways. The fruit tree image reminds us trees don’t choose the fruit they bear. Pear trees can’t decide to bear apples. “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” means the quality of the fruit you bear will equal the radius of your turn. If your turning from old ways is only half-hearted, then the fruit you bear cannot help but be half-hearted. That’s not a threat. It’s a fact. The image leads to John’s next tirade, meant to make a deeper challenge.

John says, “Don’t even think of playing the name game.” If he were a college admissions officer he’d be saying, “We don’t do legacy admissions. Your daddy graduated here, and that should mean what.” Just being black doesn’t get you into this historically black college. The question isn’t who are you related to, or who spawned you. John’s saying, rather, the way you live, your motives and actions, reveal your harmony with your heritage. If folks can’t see any relationship between your thin ways and thickness of your bloodline, it doesn’t matter. It’s simply not there.

If I must, I can say this in church language. It doesn’t matter if you claimed Christ at an early age. What matters is, by what you say and do, would Christ claim you today? It doesn’t matter when, how, where, or how often you’re baptized. What matters is whether your walk leaves wet footprints in your tracks. Doesn’t matter how long you been a church member. What matters is how your membership here makes a Christ-like difference out there.

It’s almost time to ask, with the crowds, the tax collectors and the soldiers, “What should we do.” We need to hear a few more things before we do that.

First, there’s a shift in John’s focus. He’s no longer shouting at a crowd. He’s in direct dialogue with particular people. That means, I think, the dialogue begins after these folks responded to his message. They heard it as good news, and received the baptism he offered. Second, because Greek has no word for ‘should,’ we translate the future tense of the verb “to bear,” using the word should. A more accurate translation is, “What shall we do;” as in, Now that we’ve been baptized, what’s next?” Last, the word ‘do,’ as in, “Now that we’ve been baptized, what shall we ‘do’ next;” is the same word translated as “bear” in v 8.

We ought to hear all this as, “Now that we’ve repented, turned around, got our old ways washed out of us, what are we bearing now and from now on.” I’m hoping that relieves us of overanxious measuring. You may have heard pastor of our Mission Partner congregation say it this way: since we have this new identity, what do we get to do and get to keep on doing. These questions don’t spring from our old identity’s gotcha, getcha, have-to, and should reality. Rather, they spring from our new identity that leans onto our true personhood and leans into our true people-hood as children of God.

I really do hope your hearing this as good news. There’s still more. Look at what John describes, or rather, doesn’t prescribe. John doesn’t tell any of them to run to the synagogue, high tail their sinful butts to the temple, or read the bible three times a day.

Instead, John tells them they will bear are the fruits of authenticity, genuineness, integrity. He says they will bear the fruits of identity, relationship, kinship and belonging. He assures them they will live in the world and not of the world.

The judgment John has pressed them to face and the judgment they’ve accepted makes them ready to receive and to join the message of the One coming after him. Namely, the tyrannical principalities of state-sponsored oppression, the submissive powers of cowardly religious systems, and the devices of self-induced delusion that entrap, enslave and deal death, will all be undone by the coming, Spirit-fired Messiah.

The fire of John’s message begins to shine a light by which we can see some new things. It matters to God that the society we sow still selects for the rich and sorts against the poor. God is concerned that the culture we cultivate still raises too many homophobes, racists and sexists. God is disturbed that the economies we establish exploit and enlarge an underclass. God cares that the ways we tend to the least among us leave too many folk out in the cold. God expects an "otherwise," fruitful harvest because God’s empowered us to keep Sharin’ Plenty Good News by equipping us for inviting, welcoming, discipling, nurturing, healing and rejoicing. God and all the hosts of heaven still sing with joy over one repentant sinner. God hungers for our holiness, as God is holy.

We can also see, when we receive the grace to look with courage, a new thing about both our true selves and God’s deepest desire for us. What God seeks is to separate us from the chaff we cleave to, so we can be gathered into the granary of God’s ever-growing heart.

What’s not to rejoice in and love about a God who loves us enough to speak all that truth to us?

Keeping Jesus Real is More than a Game

I’ve stayed out of all the Left Behind hoo-hah, until now. I’ve steered clear for three reasons: never read the stuff; though it’s taken me awhile to learn this, getting into pissing-matches over whose ear God’s Spirit-dove is cooing is a slippery slope to nowhere; and, I’m pretty OK with Jesus’ counsel that no one knows the day or the hour! The latter makes me inclined to believe that, on this side of the grass, if we’re not going to get the “when” right, certainty about the “who” will also elude us.

What’s got my feathers ruffled is a story in this past Wednesday’s The Indianapolis Star. Seems someone’s invented a computer game called, “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” based on the “literature.” Notice, Bible Fans, this is just in time for Christmas. You do remember Christmas – celebrating the arrival of, among other titles: Savior of the world (cosmos in Greek); Prince of Peace; Wonderful Counselor; Emmanuel (God-With-Us); and Jesus (in Hebrew, YHWH Saves). I digress; Isaiah and Luke have those bases already covered.

The game is rated T, for teens. It offers, according to a web site quoted in the Star, “Our game includes violence, but excludes blood, decapitation, killing of police officers.” Well, so far so good. Must mean the gamers will have to wait for the prequel Calvary edition. Can you tell I’m not a gamer?

Regardless of this kind of eschatology’s (end-times) accuracy, veracity, and tenacity, apocalyptic (revelation) end-time stories rival Holy Spirit stories so far as pissing matches go. The game’s theology is thin, and the piety it promotes should be poured back into the horse.

Now, I hear, games are great fun; often wholly amusing, entertaining and sometimes educational. Some of my best friends are gamers! I confess to staying away since Miss Pac Man led me down too many blind alleys and into too many death traps. Ok, I had a brief fling with Mario but he kept robbing my purse.

Part of what saddens me is this. My dinosaur dictionary defines “virtual” as, existing or resulting in essence or effect, though not in actual fact, form or name. That’s all well and good for a computer game. It’s hardly a theology, a piety, or a spirituality, to say nothing of an attempt to portray a Deity.

You want reality? Try this. Located on the same Star edition’s editorial page are details about a Christian grandmother scheduled for trial on January 29th. She’s charged with trespassing on the grounds of the U.S. Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation, formerly the School of the America’s, at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. It’s here where the U.S. Army trains foreign soldiers, primarily from Latin America. Some alumni are from places with names like Panama, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Now folks down there could tell us all some details about end-times warriors.

Me thinks the woman wasn’t playing games, nor was she expressing a virtual theology, piety, or spirituality. Neither, it seems, is she discipling after a virtual-deity.

No matter her politics, this woman’s faith is for real, not virtual. That’s what this decorated Viet Nam veteran admires. She may have even heard of John the Baptist’s preaching in Luke 3: 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."
10 And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?" 11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" 13 He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." 14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

John, in the mode of Jesus, always keeps it real. The Good News, according to Jesus, was always expressed in concrete, relevant terms. For example, he did not offer to enroll the grieving widow in a support group; he raised her son’s corpse to new life – for real!

Jesus was such an inept picker-upper of John’s vitriol (winnowing fork, fire, etc.) that John himself, from prison, sent agents to be certain he and Jesus were on the same page (Luke 7). Jesus’ response: 22And he answered them, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. 23And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." Pretty real, huh?

In the manner of Jesus, we, too, are called to break ourselves open and pour ourselves out. This is neither a virtual privilege, nor a virtual responsibility. It’s recognizing that the grace which is ours, was, is, and always will be a costly grace. Walking the walk, even when we stumble or sin (miss-the-mark in Greek), is always preferred to, virtually, talking-the-talk.

Despite all the differences between me, Troy Lyndon, and his Left Behind Games, we do share one thing in common. The company is offering a free technical upgrade on December 24th. So are we. His is virtual. Ours is real, life-changing. It's rated E, for everyone.

We’ll be here at 7:00 P.M., to celebrate the Incarnation of our God, for real, as we gather for Candlelight Worship with Holy Communion. Losers from all over this city will be in attendance to remember and to relive the birth of the One Whose victory we share because of his willingness to spill his own, no one else’s, blood. If you're in the neighborhood, we'd be honored to have you give thanks here, too.

Therein resides, for real, all the wonder working power we need, in the precious blood of the Lamb.

Timing Is Everything

You’d think with the early deep freeze we had here in Indianapolis last week, plant life would know what time it is. Despite those bitter days, this week’s sunny weather, with temperatures in the mid-50’s, several hyacinths have begun poking through the grounds of this church’s courtyard garden. I’m frantic. It’s the wrong time. What will become of these early risers come Spring? If only there was some way to guard them from the error of their ways. They’re peeking too soon and peaking too soon!

The coming of Christmas can create timing issues for God’s human creatures, too. Many of us are very rushed. We’ve got parties to attend, “mandatory” gift exchanges (talk about a phrase full of paradox), cards to mail, work projects to complete before a holiday hiatus, safaris to make sale purchases during too late and too early hours of the day / night, as well as keeping some semblance of Christmas’ true spirit stoked within. Like those early rising hyacinths we run the risk of peeking and peaking too early.

The mid-point of an already shortened Advent season calls us to rejoice. In his Letter to the Philippians Paul puts it this way: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (4:4-7). Last time I heard a preacher address this issue, the punch-line was, “Well, I’m not always very delighted to be here.”

There’s the rub. Much of our inability to experience rejoicing comes from our desire to be somewhere else. Have you ever stood in a small group at a party and found yourself wondering how you could extricate from here and become embedded over there? Are you already planning an early exit from one entrapped holiday family gathering, only to find your mind projecting yourself ensnared in the grips of another one?

Try taking a cure from Paul. Sure, I know, saints are supposed to talk that way, and order their followers around in just that way. So what? Well, Paul wrote those verses from his prison cell – no doubt a place in which he, too, was not delighted to be. Besides that – and I haven’t taken time to check out the Greek – my guess, whether or not Paul is writing in the imperative (commanding voice) he’s feeling what he’s saying in the indicative (simply declaring) voice. “I’m rejoicing – not in where I am – but in Who I am with while I’m here, and wherever I am for that matter. You can too!”

The light that shines in Advents darkness isn’t meant to lead us to peak too soon, but it is there for us to peek all the time. What we get to see in remembering and experiencing again God’s gift to us at Christmas is this. From then / now on, our God is Emmanuel, God-With-Us.

God’s coming changes God’s timing and our timing, forevermore. Forever, the time to rejoice is now. Forever all ground is holy ground. There’s no holier ground over there. There’s no more sacred space than right here, right now. The key to rejoicing, holy gladness, is in the present moment, made wholly new, because we share it with Emmanuel.

Forever, even in places where we’re not delighted and with people who disappoint we can rejoice that the traps and snares cannot, do not, will not define us. Paul, in these verses, does not encourage us to be delighted by places, enthralled with persons or to ignore sadness and suffering.

He simply says that when we are present in gladness with Emmanuel, Jesus guards our heart and our mind. We can, and should, make our distresses and dis-eases known to this Jesus, thankful that the timing is always right to speak without worry to the one who can gift us with peace, the Prince of Peace.

Advent is an especially right time to spend some time wondering through these things. You might use the gift of time you’re given in long check-out lines, extended turn lanes and conversation places to breathe through those moments crowds keep you from breezing through.

You may not always understand, but gentle Emmanuel will lead you to peak at just the right time. That will, likely, lead to some heavenly delight.

Earth Movers Still Reshape the World

If you were eager for the Iraq Study Group to weigh in on the handling of the war in Iraq, you’ve been rewarded. For many folks, simply putting such a big problem into the hands of aging, formerly powerful, wealthy wise men – Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the only female member – offered real comfort.

This eminent group offered the president 78 recommendations to change not only the course of the war, but to reshape the world in which the war is being fought. They did that very publicly.

If Mr. Bush intended these “fresh eyes” to focus narrowly and quietly on his old problem, he got this week a completely new problem. Turns out it wasn’t just the president, or congress, or the military, or only average Americans who were waiting expectantly.

Inside Iraq Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds expressed displeasure. Within the gulf region Jordan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Israel registered complaints. Countries across Europe and Asia, as well as Africa’s Egypt listed criticisms. In all these places, editorial writers and ordinary citizens joined their government’s dissatisfaction with the ISG’s process, specific proposals, or both.

High profile communication has a way of getting beyond its intended audience. Luke’s Gospel is a bit like that. Look at Luke’s first four verses.
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 3I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.

This rather private sounding document is now in our hands. Moreover, John’s recommendations, intended primarily for faithful Jews, are now Gentile Christianity’s ritual center!

Good writers know their message and appreciate their audience. It shouldn’t surprise us to see Luke adopting a formal style to keep a cultured dignitary like Theophilus reading.

However, Luke is more than a clever author. He’s a theologian, a Jewish theologian. Luke adopts what Theophilus already knows from his own social, political and religious experiences. He then builds a bridge from his very Jewish message, across the cultural divide in order to connect with Theophilus’ Greco-Roman world-view. It’s a tall order.

So we see Luke adding explanations about Jewish ideas, laws, customs, and places to the similar message we read in Mark. We also see Luke determined to keep his message faithful to his very un-gentile proclamation. He’s not merely trying to expand Theophilus’ knowledge about an interesting local squabble.

Luke’s is a message designed not only to change Theophilus’ life-course, but also to reshape his world for all time. So he identifies Jesus as the Jews’ promised messiah. Luke also aims to show, persuasively and convincingly, that Jesus, not Caesar, is Savior of the whole world. That’s a huge undertaking. (He makes clear that’s his claim in 3:23 by extending Jesus’ ancestry all the way back to Adam. Matthew, writing primarily for Jews, ends Jesus’ family tree at Abraham.)

Luke is masterful. Luke says, in essence, that the era of the Pax Romana is in jeopardy, as the era of God’s Pax in Terra (God’s shalom) is breaking-in. (I suspect both Luke and God would make similar claims against the Pax Americana.)

Look at this list of dignitaries leading up to the call of John in 3:1-2.
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

For Luke, the list serves several purposes. It sets Luke’s story in a particular time and place. John’s call to prophetic office is anchored in Jewish tradition. Look quickly at Isaiah 1:1
The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

Also, Jeremiah 1:1-3
The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. 3It came also in the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.

You see the similarities.

The call is set in the wilderness. That’s the place where Israel has often met God. Think about Moses at the burning bush, or the giving of the law at Sinai. John’s ministry is located in the region of the Jordan. That river place is where Israel was transformed from a horde of slaves to the free nation of God’s chosen people. Last, and most importantly, Luke makes plain that before his story is about any human endeavors, these events he’s recorded show forth the intention and the activity of God. “…the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

3He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"
I said Luke is a master writer and theologian. We also believe his mastery is the inspiration of God. At one level, Luke’s use of these standard writing forms is a gigantic set-up. We get to the story of the Baptizer with the lyrics of liberation sung by two nobodies, Zechariah (Luke 1:67-79) and Mary (Luke 1:46-55), still echoing in our ears and stirring our hearts.

Authoring the story in this way, Luke sets the aims of Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, Annas and Caiaphas – powerful, high-profile, though unauthorized some-bodies - in direct conflict with the God-authorized voice of nobody-John and God’s soon-to-arrive authorized new word in nobody-Jesus. Each of these leaders is, in their own way, a messianic pretender. They - with their ambitions, aberrations, and accommodations - have altered God’s shalom. Now God accuses them of high crimes and misdemeanors, the annihilation of God’s beloved, as described in the testimony God delivered through Malachi 3:5

5Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts.

This course, Luke tells Theophilus, is now changed. Listen, then, to God’s deep desire to transform all people and to reshape world, as seen through John’s fresh eyes.

It sounds so simple. John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. God must have known how people like us, religionists, would neuter those deeply dynamic ideas and those potent, way-shaping, symbolic actions. That’s why John explains himself with Isaiah’s prophesying. Hear the power!

Prepare the way; make straight the paths; fill the valleys; lower the hills and mountains; straighten the crooked; smoothen the rough ways! This isn’t a call to tinker at the edges of our ethical decisions. This isn’t a cry for minor adjustments to our moral choices. The energy required to do this work come from tools heartier than doctrinal sandpaper and ritual nail files.

Some while back it took two years and $180 million to modify a short stretch of Interstate 70 West near the Indianapolis airport. That quite straight, nearly flat stretch was not quite level enough to move water off the roadway. Standing water, particularly in winter, caused numerous accidents, with injuries and fatalities.

John announces now as the time to reconfigure the landscape of our minds, and describes the processes necessary to reengineer the bedrock in which our hearts are grounded. The truth is we’re not sure we want to change our minds. The truth is we can’t change our hearts. Talk about set in stone! I think I’m fine. Don’t you think you’re fine too? I’m on course. Aren’t you on course? Look around. Are there any really bad folks on your Christmas card list?

What separates us from those on Luke’s list of unauthorized some-bodies are time, place, and opportunity. Our motivations, our desires, and our egos are no more legitimate than theirs were. We, too, want just a little more than our share. Like them, we’re willing to do almost anything to get that, and nearly as eager to do just about whatever is necessary to keep it. Staying the course isn’t working; is it? We need some fresh eyes; agreed?

Lost in the gloom of our own darkness we can still hear God crying through a voice seeing what we cannot. The voice has seen God on the move; moving toward us with an extraordinary invitation to be refined, purified, changed.

The voice says, “Repent,” meaning, return, turn back, change course. The voice says, “Be Baptized,” not our effort to reach high for God. Rather, move toward the Jordan to receive rebirth and renewal by a promising word from a coming down God, attached to the most basic element of God’s creation, water. In that turning, by that washing, God offers us forgiveness, in Greek aphesis, release from bondage to sin, that old course on which we keep “missing the mark,” and remain stuck in a world that prefers death to life.

On a new course, within God’s shalom we’re free to see with new eyes, to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Inside the shalom of God’s reshaped world we’re bold to trust the promise given long-ago to low-born, low profile, un-wealthy, not particularly wise women and men. Refined, they received the stamina to do the heavy lifting. Liberated, they were guided to walk the promise’s straight paths.

Knowing that their freedom gave them not merely new eyes, but also new responsibilities, they courageously took the message public. They kept challenging the ruling oppressors by comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comfortable. They, then, entrusted the promise to us, that all flesh, especially we who are not worthy, shall see the salvation of God.

We sing, still, as we move to greet the God on the move toward us a chorus that marks us as movers and shapers, inheritors of the living faith of the dead: Rejoice, Rejoice, O Israel - chosen people of God - shall come to you Emmanuel.

Y'all Whistle While Y'all Work

We’re in this together. This way of seeing, hearing, following and, yes, teaching and witnessing to what God desires to keep doing for us, for world.

Theologian Marva Dawn recommends that whenever we English readers come across the word, “you,” in the bible, we pronounce it with a southern accent, as in, “y’all.” She claims that, more often than not, understanding that pronoun to be ‘second-person plural,’ rather than ‘second-personal singular’ we’ll be linguistically correct. I recall that she advised this strategy even before the publication of Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone.

That’s an important corrective in our era when so many spiritual sojourners describe themselves as on a solitary pilgrimage, rather than a shared journey. These wanderers give themselves away with words like, “I’m spiritual but I avoid organized religion.”

Now, to be sure, most of us who are part of organized religion have more than our share of Will Rogers’s moments. When asked about his political affiliation Rogers responded, I’m not part of an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

Still, from its advent, the Christian movement has been much more about God’s for us, than it’s ever been about God and “me, myself, and I.” Just look at the politically charged freedom-songs - lifted high and far - by Zechariah, father of John the Baptist (Luke 1:68-79), and Mary, mother of Jesus (Luke 1:46-55).

That’s the other important piece solitary sojourners risk missing. The Christian movement’s earliest liberation songs struck powerful chords against the political status quo. They were, if at all, only secondarily about reforms required or anticipated within organized religion – even when we take into account the emperor-worship that redounded to the Romans. The personal liberation these songs pronounced were sung in the context of political oppressors (plural) whose undoing would lift up the lowly and give salvation to the Most High’s people (both refrains plural).

In short, in this Christian movement’s ethos, I’m not free, when you and y’all aren’t free!

That, too, is a piece of the movement’s (really the Mover’s) first premise. What’s been gifted to one has been given for the sake of all. Solitary sojourners deprive the rest of us travelers the benefit of both their knowledge and insight. Without their God-given best nearby and available to critique or worst, from within, what keeps their hoarded gifts from being squandered?

There are outcroppings of gathered believers (the Greek, ekkesia, translated as ‘church’ means, literally, ‘called-out ones’) who’ve given up worship wars, who are done dueling over dogmatism and take the words of Paul to all members of the church at Philippi seriously.

9And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9-11).

Together we are alert for knowledge to help us assess the things that differ to our advantage, vis-à-vis, the powers and principalities that work to their exclusive advantage. Together we express our insights to one another so that we avoid self-rationalization and consequent arrogance.

Sharing our journey’s missteps we take seriously the promise that purity and blamelessness are realities we’ll experience in the day of Christ, by God’s remembering our failings through the lens of Christ’s faithfulness and works, not our own. Sharing our journey’s miscues we harvest good at all only when, by grace through faith, we produce in our own day, with our own voices, those long-ago lyrics of liberation - work songs, if you will - which are personal, powerful, profound, profuse, and plural.

Christmas is Un-American

The time of Advent offers us both an invitation and a challenge. As Christians, we're invited to recognize and to celebrate that God wants to make our hearts one of the places in which God will find a welcome. And our faith challenges us to live as though we believe that when Christ comes again - either in our celebration of Christmas or at the end of days - he is not coming to a place from which he has been absent.

Most of us are eager to accept this invitation. Many of us will look for time and opportunities to ready ourselves to greet this welcome Guest. As we do, we might begin to see that if we are invited, the Guest's list can't be too exclusive!

And accepting the invitation means taking up the challenge. The Christian life is marked by love in action. This is a delicate balance between time alone in prayer with God that leads us to act, and action that calls us back to deeper talking and listening to God in prayer.

It's become fashionable to criticize the current culture as one which does not support our growing in faith. But if the truth be told, it was never meant to be that way. The call of Christ was not to create a Christian culture, but to create a counter-culture.

In the culture of the new kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, it wasn't membership in a particular religion or nation that brought about salvation. Rather, it was a heart transformed and renewed by a right relationship. A gift God extends to everyone.

If anything, our experience of modem culture should serve as a reminder of our true identity. As Christians, we know that one day set aside to offer thanks simply will not do. Ours is to be a heart full of gratitude, marked by a lifetime of sharing and giving

We also know that the signs of Christ's coming are not counted by how many shopping days are left until Christmas. Ours is to be a life which shows forth the welcoming and saving grace of a God who comes among us as a non-threatening and helpless infant.

This sort of God needs our hands to reach those whose paths don't set foot near a manger. This sort of God needs our arms to extend welcome to those who have been hurt by self-righteous church-goers. This sort of God needs our hearts to express loving acceptance to those whom society has rejected or thrown away. This sort of God needs our voices to issue the words of forgiveness to those whose fear and failure has caused them to hate and to harm. This sort of God needs our votes to structure a politics of fairness, justice and equity.

Throughout this Advent season we'll hear the words of the prophets from the Hebrew Bible. Each of these texts declares a special word of hope - not a wish - but a confidence in the righteousness of God's way of being and doing. That faith, that way of being and doing, must mark our own Advent journey.

There is no good news except that which we declare in our loving action - action that flows from prayer and action that leads back to prayer. Our clear and compelling declaration of the good news - Christ is a 'borning - can never be heard or seen or felt, unless we make it flesh as invitation and challenge. Come. Lord Jesus.

It Runs in the Family

Mario Cuomo -there was an Italian politician to admire - always seemed more excited about the accomplishments of his second son than he was by the lack of achievement of his first-born son. When asked to explain the difference between his boys' success, Governor Cuomo is reported to have said, "Sons are like pancakes. Sometimes the second one turns out better than the first."

My guess is that the extended families of both Jesus and John the Baptist might have shared the same assessment. Both these "first-born" boys had lots going for them. Zechariah, John's father, had a rather cushy job at the Jerusalem Temple. Joseph, charged with the upbringing of Jesus, is said to have been a skilled craftsman. No doubt both "dads" had high expectations for what was to come. And, as far as we know, there were no second pancakes on either one's horizon.

We read about both of these boys-to-men during the season of Advent. John gave a pass on the Temple gig. Jesus' own wander-lust moved him well beyond the confines of Joseph's retail operation. As for what became of their "hoped for" futures, it depends upon who you ask. A noted theologian and story-teller, John Shea, has this to say about the teachings both John and Jesus passed on to any and all listeners:

What they said about sharing goods, services and money was economically naive. Their ideas about nurturing relationships between family members, friends, strangers and even the government, was culturally inappropriate. The ways they stood before the God of their ancestors appeared to be religiously insufficient.

My guess is much of the world, even the so-called Christian world, might make the same judgment. "If someone asks for your coat, give him your shirt as well." "Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me." "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven."

The Advent good news here is that we get to be the second pancakes! Jesus said that if we believed in him we would do even greater works than he did. I simply can't wait to see what this loving ONE dreams up for the family of God next.

Finding God's Song in Christmas Songs

You may have heard that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers released, this week, its list of most popular Christmas songs. Who wants to guess the number one song? It’s the secular, “The Christmas Song: Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” The only so-called sacred song on the list, coming in at #8, is “The Little Drummer Boy.”

When I heard that, I started to go on one of my clergy rants, but I held back. What first gave me pause was my remembering that the composer was Mel Torme. He’s from Chicago and we share the same birthday. They call him the “velvet fog.” The song was originally recorded by another favorite of mine, Nat King Cole. Having a rational minute to think, it dawned on me that even though “Drummer Boy,” isn’t biblically based, it’s not fair to say it’s a so-called sacred song.

That song’s lyrics, about a young child, a kind of marginalized non-person, who recognizes the meaning of the newborn he sees, and searches inside himself to respond to the baby’s advent with a gift, represents an important reworking of the biblical tradition. Now by reworking the tradition I don’t mean altering it. Rather, reworking tradition means, “mining” it again; exploring “veins” that looked to be fully exhausted, but may still contain rich ore, or lead to new, unexplored riches. In this case, the songwriter reworks the traditional story as a way to take on the story’s meaning for himself, as well as his listeners.

Of course, readers of the traditional story, found only in Matthew and Luke, are aware that those authors use the shepherds as stand-ins for marginalized non-persons. And in their own way they, too, offer a gift, as they leave praising God for what they’d seen. Still, the drummer-boy does seem to allow present-day children - in any era - a place for themselves inside the story, which a more literal biblical telling does not.

This reworking is a task people of faith do all the time. We do it every time we hear the lawyer ask Jesus, “Who is my neighbor.” It’s happening as we then listen to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. It goes on at the end with Jesus asking the lawyer the same question, “which one was neighbor.” It continues as we realize that both those questions demand answers from us, for us, today. More often than we realize, we’re reworking the biblical tradition to enlarge our access to its God and God’s promises.

Now this reworking is more than simply applying a piece of ancient wisdom from the past into a present day situation. It’s more than taking a proverb from The Old Farmer’s Almanac, or quoting something your grandmother always said. Reworking is our faith’s way of trusting that God is still speaking. It’s or way of standing in, with, and under God’s living voice, speaking, again, a new word for God’s people.
See, the Bible, especially when it speaks of God’s promises to God’s people, is always doing two things. First, it’s telling us more about what God’s doing and why God is doing it. (The Bible seldom discloses exactly how God will get that done.) Secondly, the Bible is usually telling us about God’s fulfilling God’s promises in the future. That promised future has an impact in the present. That promised future stirs up a response from us now, even before that future fulfillment.

This season we call Advent, a four-week time frame before we celebrate Christmas, is all about reworking. It’s not a time during which we muddle ourselves into thinking that Jesus is born, again, as a baby. Neither is it merely a religious reminder to avoid our culture’s commercial Christmas rush.

Advent is a time of waiting, but not simply hanging loose in some sort of otherworldly holding pattern. Advent is a time of expectant waiting. It’s a way of preparing our minds and hearts to receive God’s coming again.

In much the same way as pregnancy’s waiting and getting ready transforms a couple and the home they shape to receive their newborn, Advent’s waiting intends to transform our church, our world, and us. Advent is a time to enlarge our access to God’s promises. Within a faith community that remembers, no matter the status of our souls, and as part of a world that exists, no matter the mess we’ve made of it, we live in, with, and under a God who became human, took on life like ours, and lived in flesh like ours.

God’s word, spoken so long ago by the prophet Jeremiah is a fine gateway into Advent. It’s a small piece of a four-chapter section from his 52-chapter volume that scholars call, The Book of Consolation. We’ll consider just a few verses here, 33:14-16:
14The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness."

Jeremiah is speaking from inside a prison cell to a remnant of God’s Chosen People, the kingdom of Judah. They’re all that’s left of once proud nation, divided a century earlier from the northern kingdom of Israel. Now, this kingdom, home to the Jerusalem Temple, is about to be conquered. They are in desperate need of a word they can trust, a word to carry them from desolation into hope. They’re waiting for a word from the living voice of their God, whose promises had brought them this far along the way.

So God reworks a long-ago promise made to David, grafts a new word, for a new future onto a present day disaster. It begins, “In those days,” a special phrase meaning, “When I (God) make full and complete all that I purpose.” Then, God says, you will see a mere shoot emerging from what for all appearances looks to be a hulking dead stump. It signals, from what looks to be the dead end, a new beginning. This is how you’ll recognize its new rule, its new reign.

The one who I send will not only rule in my name, he’ll rule by my will. You will see in his leading my mis-pawt, my justice, that is, my way of judging, my way of deciding in favor of a social, political and economic order in which all those made in my image can flourish. You will see in his guiding my tsed-aw-kaw, my righteousness, that is, my way of fashioning world, which both redresses the disadvantages inflicted on the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed, and cancels forever those systems which corrupt and deal death.

Are you beginning to see why there’s no way to keep politics out of the pulpit. We can keep putting band-aids on problems through our charitable works. Or, we can join the prophetic cry and engage the polis and its culture in a way that works toward God’s otherwise.

Now, no one in Jeremiah’s day would have imagined that God’s living word foretold the coming of Jesus. No good believer in Jeremiah’s prophesy, and there weren’t too many of them, would be on the alert for a baby born in a manger, but they did carry that promise into and through a second exile. And they did greet their return to Jerusalem, generations later, as, truly, the day of the Lord.

It was the inspired evangelists and the inspired church that first reworked and extended Jeremiah’s prophesy onto the new grafted word God speaks, still, in Jesus. His coming, his way of declaring justice, his way of proclaiming righteousness is God’s living voice for our promised future.

That promised future has an impact in the present. That promised future stirs up a response from us now, even before that future fulfillment, in this, our time of expectant waiting.

That’s why this congregation’s vision: Sharin’ Plenty Good News, as well as our core values: Inviting; Welcoming; Discipling; Nurturing; Healing; and Rejoicing, are all “ing” words. These reflect our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors in the past which impact the present and take us on a trajectory toward God’s promised future.
That’s what Jesus means when he says, in Luke 21:28, “Now when you see these things (signs) begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Because we rely on the promises made in the past and have no worry about our future - we who are free in the present can wait with expectancy - and join God in doing the work of God’s justice and righteousness. We don’t have to ask, “What would Jesus do.” We are disciples. We’ve learned what Jesus did. We are apostles. We’ve been sent to do what Jesus did and keeps on doing – saving world, not condemning it, by breaking self open and pouring self out.

If we don’t exercise the power of the promises, other powers will fill the gap. We’ve elected a good, well-meaning mayor. He intends to serve and protect. So he’s installed video cameras on the corner of 38th and Emerson. Now you can shop at CVS without fear. But if I were you I’d stay away from the Walgreen’s at 38th and Sherman, cuz there’s no cameras there!

See, people want to live in a better village. But if we who live in God’s promising power don’t use that power to act more like villagers, then the mayor is gonna do what the mayor’s gonna do, and noble as he is, that’s not God’s justice and righteousness.

George Bush, same thing. Wants to preserve and protect. Well, when you go so deeply into Afghanistan and Iraq, you leave Lebanon, North Korea and Iran without “crime cameras.” Surprise! If we want a more peaceable world, a beloved community, we who are free in the present, waiting in expectancy, need to take up the work of beloved citizens.

Same thing in our households, if we want more humane settings, we’ll live more humanely. If we want stronger families, we’ll orient our own lives with the strength of God’s justice and righteousness. If we want richer marriages, we’ll become more engaged, holier spouses.

All the deeply spiritual people of our own day, especially those who’ve found the depth of spirituality within their traditional religious communities, say it similarly. Howard Thurman reminds us that deep in the ordinary experiences of our everyday contexts, God breaks through. Sister Thea Bowman asks, “Do you know anybody who’s got enough Good News?” Eugene Peterson writes, “If you want more God you have to have more world.”

As we move through Advent the Scriptures keep inviting us to march to the beat of a different drum. When we do, we’ll be surrounded by a sacred song the world has yet to dream about!

The End is NOT Near!

What ends your world:
• a work project's missed deadline
• wondering if mom needs a nursing home
• hearing no answer to prayer
• plans gone awry
• tears over a breaking relationship
• fear of a bounced check
• terror about our country at war
• too few shopping days left until Christmas?

What creates your world:
• joy at a family's mending over a holiday meal
• certainty that your burdens are shared
• hope in God making a way out of no way
• hands and hearts joined at a communion table
• trusting forgiveness big enough to forgive yourself
• looking for, and finding, a prayer's answer
• believing that you're beloved of God
• reliance on an Emmanuel (God with us)?

Advent signals the church calendar's New Year. In much the same way our culture's New Year begins, our Advent new year begins with reflections, regrets, reminiscences, ruminations, and especially, reveling over what God has seen us through. Advent is a time when we remember God's coming, not necessarily a time of either our own easy arriving or our own blissful feelings. As time, Advent is a season - a season of expectant waiting, of expecting, and yes, of anticipating God's arriving in our midst. God's arriving amidst our pain; our loss; our fears; our shattered dreams. And God's arriving amidst our desires, our longings, our dreams and our hopes - not for more of the same, but for more of the new. More new life, new hope, new faith!

Advent isn't a make or break time, because our God is not an all or nothing God. If that were the way of God, the end of the garden story would have been The End of the God story, at least as we've come to live and thrive in it!

That's not at all how God chose to end the story. In fact, God's end of the story is just the beginning of the story... "I will put enmity between you (the serpent) and the woman, between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, and you will strike at his heel" (Genesis 3:14-15). And in God's own time - the fullness of time, as we pray it - in God's own way, we've come this far by faith.

Part of what Advent hopes to remind us, as God cradles and cherishes us in this time, is that though we've come this far by faith, we have a ways further to go. And we'll get to the "whatever" and to the "wherever" that farther is, the way we got this far - by faith.

That's why when we're with this God, in this Advent time and in any time, cradling and cherishing are parts of the journey, not part of a "holding pattern." One of the best English translations of the first verse in the Hebrew Bible puts it this way, "At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth..."

Understood this way, creation isn't done yet. More importantly, God isn't done yet either, which means, of course, we're not done. Never done, even when it looks like we're un-done and feels like we're done in! That means the only question we know the answer to is this one, "Are we there yet?" Well, that's not quite accurate. There is another question we can answer - in sure and certain hope - "Where is your God?"

God has not abandoned us. God will not leave us orphaned. God IS near. So clearly does God want us to re-member that, re-live that, that our God came among us in a way that surely invites us deep in our god-image roots and down in our god-likeness core, to cradle and to cherish a babe in a manger. Come, Lord Jesus! Let the church and the world say "Amen!"

A Circle in Time

The last three repair jobs I've paid for, the car, the washing machine and the garage door, each required a second effort by the same company. Worse, each second job required me to pay an additional charge. Didn't it used to be that things were repaired right the first time? Didn't it used to be that repairs were warranted and revisiting the same "fix-it" was a cost borne by the "fixer-upper?" Is it really the case that nobody seems to get it right the first time anymore? Have I just run into a string of bad luck, or is my imagination in over-drive? Whatever, it seems to be a hopeless, vicious circle!

Some days hopeless, vicious circles appear to be everywhere. During the very week we commemorate Rosa Parks' act of courage on a bus 51 years ago in Montgomery, Alabama, people in Elkhart, Indiana, bury a black teenager gunned down in still another act of cowardice, born of racial hatred.

As church, we mark the days of this season with a different circle; a circle of light we call the advent wreath. So little light amidst so much darkness.

As we light the candles of this circle that marks our time of preparation for Christmas, we pray that the Spirit of God would kindle within our hearts both the desire and the ability to become signs of God's near and present light. We've prayed that prayer before. Still, we know in our hearts it's time to circle back and pray it again, alone and together. Such a little prayer, amidst so much death-dealing.

Haven't we been here before? Does this seem like yet another repair job on the same old machinery – the machinery of our broken hearts, our sinking spirits, and dashed hopes? Shouldn't the sincere efforts of our past have brought us to a more delightful and enlightened present? Is it really the case that nobody, not even people of faith, seem to get it right the first time anymore?

Looking to our past, or clinging to the present, as a way toward our hoped for future is a blind alley. Our best hope, our only hope, our sure and certain hope is in the God whose light and life has already born, and borne, among us.

Jesus, Emmanuel, has both come among us and gone on ahead of us. From that time and place with God, Jesus beckons us into the dawn place of kingdom light. A light that's brightest amidst our own, and the world's, darkest moments.

In that light, we can see the darkness for what it really is. Not a circle of viciousness and hopelessness, but shadows amidst those "not yet" places of our own hearts, and all of creation, which await the new birth, the rebirth, of Jesus, God Emmanuel.

It was a wise spiritual director of our own day who said, "All those who claim to be born again know for certain that to be born again really means to be born again, and born again, and born again."

In faith, we people of faith come full circle, again. Trusting the God whom we know and who knows us, to encircle us again, alone and together, out of darkness and viciousness into kinship and belonging, into relatedness and rootedness.

The original repair job is indeed warranted. Moreover, it really was done right the first time. And it costs us nothing. The cost has been paid.

It is by our hearts broken open for others that Christ is born. It is with our spirits poured out to one another that God is Emmanuel. It is through dashing the false hopes offered by this world's viciousness that the Light of Christ conquers all darkness.

God, in Jesus, got it right the first time. And God, in Jesus, gives us the time, and the way, to stand in that rightness. It's not imaginations in over-drive. Neither is it luck. "What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

Niche Followers

My children call it, quietly, “Dad’s obsession.” My dream is that they mean that fondly and are not suggesting that I suffer either from an organic disease, like early Alzheimer’s, or have an emotional disorder.

What stresses them is my habit of straining to see a “God-thing” in the most ordinary of circumstances. For instance, I enjoy thinking that the gifts bestowed by the Wizard of Oz on the scarecrow, the lion, and the tin man, are not brain, courage and heart, but rather, represent the gifts of faith, hope and love. Likewise, I claim that Superman is our culture’s effort to deal with the complexities of Jesus’ having both a human and a divine nature. I see The Lord of the Flies as a tale of good and evil that rivals Genesis, and ET as a resurrection story. You get the picture.

My kids avoid me like the plague during the season of Advent! Weary of my theological lenses, my now adult children have long tired of playing the game. “So, Dad, what are visions of sugar plums dancing in children’s heads really all about?” “Hey, Dad, when folks camp out all night on Thanksgiving to be the first inside a box store on ‘Black Friday,’ what sort of biblical wilderness event is that, Exodus, or Jesus in the desert?”

The season of Advent seems to be a good time to give those lenses a rest. Our culture doesn’t offer too many pre-Christmas experiences that make a pair of “God-thing” lenses useful. It’s a tough time to “sell” practices like waiting and preparing when everywhere we turn we’re seduced to make right-now purchases of ready-to-wrap products whose prices have been reduced.

There is, though, a fun quiz-show on National Public Radio. Its host asks questions of famous people to “fill-in the-blank” with names of significant persons, places, and events that average readers of newspapers and watchers of TV news could have, should have, noticed. The contestant with the most correct answers wins bragging rights. The show’s name is, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!”

While the show isn’t as famous as Desperate Housewives, it does have a niche market. That’s where those lenses may yet come in handy. Advent, too, has a niche following.

We still know believers eager to wait and prepare for the once again coming of Emmanuel, God-With-Us. Even the average among them refuse to play games, don’t need to win and reject bragging. Culture doesn’t easily seduce them. Without straining, they see a God-thing most everywhere. This time of year you’ll usually find them at ___________? Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!

The End is The Beginning

It's an odd way to begin a new year. (So-called liturgical churches follow a calendar that ends with the last Sunday in November and begins a New Year with the season of Advent on the first Sunday of December.) Rather than hearing songs of auld lang sine; or toasting with champagne, the church has us hear another version of Jesus' last will and testament. Like Matthew's parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25), Mark's Jesus speaks about what we've come to call, erroneously, the second coming. If Matthew's version of Jesus’ last words challenges his followers with the image of judgment, Luke's version (Luke 21:25-36 is a call to watch for signs of the end.

Speeches about the end of history often use the language of apocalyptic. Apocalypse means revelation and apocalyptic has been widely used to speak of the end of time and events leading up to it in colorful, sometimes coded, imagery. Old Testament images, such as those drawn from Isaiah 13, in Jesus' words about a darkened sun and dimmed moon, and falling stars, are very common. In the Book of Revelation we have elaborate descriptions of the end times. In Luke, Jesus is more restrained, sweetening the revelation with the parable of the fig tree.

Here Jesus is the focus, describing himself with apocalyptic imagery from Daniel, chapter 7, about a "son of man" receiving authority to rule after centuries of "animals," who symbolize foreign political powers. It's Jesus who subverted the powers which destroy people, as we heard Mark tell us in his account of Jesus ministry, throughout this past year. As we heard and saw that ministry unfold, we came to recognize that it's Jesus and his rule which will outlast all such oppressors.

The folks to whom Mark was writing were very familiar with that sort of oppression. In earlier verses of this chapter Mark refers to the horrendous consequences of the Jewish revolt in the years 66-70, which ended with the Romans starving out Jerusalem before breaking through the walls and destroying the Temple. With this horror fresh in their memory, Mark's first hearers would have been able to relate to warnings about false messiah's and false prophets. They were in a good position to read the signs of the times. In Mark's view their times must be the last times.

It's very hard for most of us to walk in those shoes, whether the cobbler is early-Mark or later-Luke. What does it mean to feel that things are so bad the only hope is a quick end to the world? The poetry of pain and despair, the fantasies of escape and resolution, challenge us to silence, to listening.

What do people in such a situation need to hear from their God? What would a faithful and loving God say to people in such despair?

Like those early church communities, we're living beyond what was for so many, the real and final end of days. Like Luke's community of faith, we, too, have some time to gather together and to hear. And in that hearing we need to listen to the clear and convincing word of Jesus that, energy spent trying to guess at the end, or chart the details of the final plot, is irrational. Jesus says, "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

The word from Jesus, the word which God's struggling people need to hear; the word from our faithful and loving God is this, "Beware, keep alert..." This isn't a mandate to focus on predicting the future in a kind of "I know something you don't know" game, where me and my group engage our powers of prediction or claims to privileged revelation, and get a religious buzz out of applying biblical prophecy and believing we know - like those folks who put a sticker on their bumper that says, "In case of rapture this car will become unoccupied."

The Word from our faithful and loving God, the Word we need to hear, and the Word God speaks in Jesus says, "Stand up; Raise your heads, Live! Live in the authority by which you can trust. Trust that the Lord is our Father, we are the clay, the Lord is the potter, and we are all the work of God's hands."

That's what we know. That's the bold claim on which it is our privilege to stand. We to whom God has given the time and the space to see, and to reflect on, and to speak against what's going on in the oppression of folks whose suffering makes it impossible to speak for themselves, have a crucial role for change in the world. "Be alert!"

Watchful living has less to do with speculation about the end of the world and more to do with carrying on in our trust. And carrying on, as Jesus tells it, makes the date of the end irrelevant. Readiness has as much to do with being ready for living as it has to do with being ready for its ending.

In every age, folks get misdirected here. When a brother working in the fields along side St. Francis asked what he'd do if he knew the end of the world was coming, Francis is alleged to have said, "Well, I'd really like to finish hoeing this row." When, one autumn afternoon, Luther was asked what he'd do if he knew that the end of the world was coming next Spring Luther is said to have replied, "I think I'd still like to plant a little fruit tree."

You see, we don't have to fear the end because we've already been through the end. In every new moment, the world as we know it has come to an end. And by that end, a new beginning has dawned; a beginning wherein God is still God - we the clay, God the potter.

Every day we live in and for that time when God will tear open the heavens and come down. Advent isn't a season of waiting; it's a lifetime of waiting. Watching for what we've already lived through to occur again. God tore open the heavens and came down:
• at creation
• to stay Abraham's hand and spare Isaac's life
• to tell Pharaoh, ten times, "Let my people go!"
• in a manger
• to unseal the tomb
• to fill the disciples' hearts with fire on Pentecost day.

In Luke's day, to watch was to live the life of a disciple, with an eye to what was happening in the world. Living as disciples of Jesus, in our day, means nothing less.

I wish 2000 years of failed predictions made us more sober. But, too often, we've given in to the fear and withdrawn from the world. Too often we've chosen not to speak against the cries of pain we hear all around us. Too often, we've narrowed our focus, watching only the private footsteps of our own moral goodness. It's an attractive religion that lulls us to sleep easy. It's a harmless religion that teaches us to live stress free. But that kind of religion doesn't have much to do with the kind of engaged alertness Jesus speaks about; the alertness by which we recognize new leaves, and take up the work given to us until the Master returns.

December 1st, marks the 51st anniversary of Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Rosa Parks was tired. At the end of her long day at work as a seamstress, no one would have faulted her for movin' back. Was God indifferent to her oppression? Was God absent? Was God no longer at work for those who were waiting?

Somehow Miss Rosa came awake. Somehow she knew that the work needin' done had been entrusted to slaves until the master's return. So she sat, and the world she'd known so well, came to an end. This secretary to the NAACP was arrested and sat in a squad car. This woman who'd been denied voter registration sat in court and was convicted. This Sunday school teacher sat in jail. And for all of us, on the day that Rosa Parks sat, God had the last word, the world as we knew it ended, and a new world dawned.

Jesus' last words become our first words in the Church's New Year: a call to be awake to what's happening in our world and to be looking for and in tune with the One who comes, whether for the final time - as in traditional expectations about the Second Advent - or for any time, for now.

Now. Can we make the prayer of Isaiah our own? What would it feel like if God tore open the heavens and came down? Can we trust that we've already been through the end with this God? Can we yield, again, to the power of this God who has, with the gift of every new moment, ended the world as we know it?

We:
• leave home, and the world as we know it ends
• get married, and the world as we know it ends
• receive a diagnosis, and the world as we know it ends
• lose a parent, and the world as we know it ends
• divorce, and the world as we know it ends
• go to sleep at night and the world as we know it ends.

In such situations what do we need to hear from God? What would a faithful and loving God say to us? Can we trust that we've already been through the end with this God? This is what we mean when we make our Advent prayer: Come, Lord Jesus!

When Jesus comes into our hearts, he brings along all the needy of the world. To whom else would the God who works for those who wait for God bring those lost and least but to we whom God has called into the fellowship of Jesus Christ?

We who know so well this lesson, that some days God does seem indifferent and absent, cry out in our distress and in our longing, full of trust that Christ holds the future for ourselves and the world. We keep awake, not for the birth of an unknown babe whose life has yet to unfold, but for the return of the one who knows us and is known by us; for the One whose presence we feel and hear and touch, in Word and Sacrament, whenever the world as we know it ends and a new world dawns. We keep watch for the teller of parables, the banquet host, and the friend of sinners. We are waiting for the crucified and risen Lord, in whom we both know the sleep of heavenly peace, and the resurrection waking.

Not only don't we know the day or the hour, we also don't know whether or not God will ask us to stand up or sit down! Until we hear a clearer message from our faithful and loving God, Beware, as we hoe one more row against injustice. Keep alert, as we plant another fruit tree for the springtime of freedom. You see, the end, again, is the beginning, again!