What can we say November 10? 25th after Pentecost

   The reading from Ruth would require a retelling of the whole story – which is one of high drama, romance and wheeling and dealing. Naomi persuades Ruth to get dolled up and seek out her rich kinsman Boaz, and lie down with him in the dark – but not until he’s had a few drinks… The scheme works, they marry and conceive an ancestor of David. Naomi’s bitterness (“Call me Mara”) is turned to joy restored (Naomi meaning “pleasant”). The “point” of so many Bible stories is not “Go thou and do likewise,” but rather noting the pluck, and courage, the resourcefulness of people in our heritage – and ours is to say Wow, great story. Redemption, the desolate enfranchised, hope restored.

     Hebrews 9:24-28 continues what Hebrews has been reiterating. Christ the priest offers the sacrifice of himself once and for all. Two fresh twists (if you’re preaching the Epistle). Christ enters a sanctuary “not made with hands,” reminding us of Paul in 2 Cor. 5:1 – where the body, your “earthly tent,” has a destiny of becoming a “house” in the heavens. In Heb. 9, heaven is now the sanctuary not made with hands. The temple we know isn’t, as it turns out, the real sanctuary at all, but merely a “copy” of the true heavenly sanctuary. The preacher could explore this, or just name it: we are sitting in a room that is a replica, an imitation, a xerox if you will of heaven, where worship goes on now and will forever. This is a paradise on earth. So we treat the room, and those in the room with us, very differently, finding ourselves together in this copy of heaven.

     The Greek word translated “copy” is antitupa, which means literally to strike against something hard and thus form an image. I think of Karl Barth’s powerful thought (in his Epistle to the Romans) – that the activity of the Church’s relationship to the Gospel “is no more than a crater formed by the explosion of a shell and seeks to be no more than a void in which the Gospel reveals itself…” And then Oliver O’Donovan (in Desire of the Nations) suggested ways the society, while not converted, bears the crater marks of the Gospel’s being lived among Christians.

     What do we do together in this copy of heaven? We worship, yes – and we “eagerly wait for him” (v. 28). Are we living, surviving, clinging to life as we know it, anxious for the future, or even hopeful? Hebrews suggests a disposition of waiting – not to die, or for the next titillating experience, or for any thing, but for him, for the coming of Christ. Maybe before Advent arrives we might sing “I’m looking for the coming of Christ; I want to be with Jesus” (“I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light”).

     I’m preaching on Mark 12:38-44. I preached on this last go-round, pointing (obviously) to myself as one of the guys “in long robes” Jesus warned about. I get and like favored seating. And I worry about my prayers being showy. I worry so much that I’m an anxious pray-er in public, and usually try to get others to pray. Often, visiting in the hospital, when the time comes for our closing prayer, I’ll ask the patient to pray. No show with them; and they pray wonderful, simple, from the gut prayers.

     Once there was a boy, born with an acute case of cerebral palsy, who was treated terribly as a young child, and then went to another home where his mother noticed how he watched Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. She believed Mister Rogers was keeping her son alive. Some foundation worked it out for Mister Rogers to visit this boy, and when he did, Mister Rogers asked, “Would you pray for me?” The boy was thunderstruck because nobody had ever asked him for anything. He was the object of prayer, not the one to pray for anybody. But now he prays for Mister Rogers and he doesn’t want to die anymore. A journalist, Tom Junod, witnessed this and privately congratulated Mister Rogers for being so smart. But Mister Rogers didn’t know what he meant. He really wanted the boy’s prayers, saying, “I think that anyone who’s gone through challenges like that must be very close to God.”

     Of course, the focal point of the text, and the poignant preaching opportunity is this: “Jesus sat down where they made their offerings and watched.” Without being too manipulative, I will ask people to imagine Jesus watching us and our offerings – which isn’t a fantasy, as it turns out.

   The temple was outfitted with trumpet-shaped offering boxes so that when people “threw” in their coins, the clanging announced loudly the generosity of the giver. It’s hard not to think of Luther’s annoyance at Tetzel and the sale of indulgences: the indulgence hawkers toted around large brass chests and sang their ditty, “When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”

     Jesus contrasts the poor widow who would satisfy the old saying that “God notices not how much but from how much.” Of course, in church we have anonymous giving. This worried Martin Luther King Sr. (“Mike”) when he began his ministry at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1931. He believed “anonymous giving” provided a grand excuse for what he called “anonymous non-giving.” So he opened up the registers, and listed what each person gave for all to see. Donations soared in just a week.

     What we see in Jesus’ story is the poor giving to support the poor. It’s a Christian obligation for all… incumbent upon even the poor. The preacher can find some story about the poor being in powerful ministry. Here’s one I’ll tell – excerpted from my book Struck From Behind: My Memories of God – about a woman I know in Lithuania.

     My daughter Grace and I discovered Regina Židoniené to be gregarious, hospitable but not fussy, more eager to talk about God than the weather. You and I might think of Regina as poor. Our small, cramped quarters did not feature running water – although it took us two days to realize the toilet didn’t actually flush.  Regina’s husband, who’d lost a leg due to inadequate healthcare years before, hobbled down to the creek while we slept to fill buckets with water to pour into the tank so we soft Americans wouldn’t feel inconvenienced.

     Regina was obviously a woman of immense faith. Like so many people in eastern Europe, she had grown up as an atheist. After she’d raised her children, she got to know the handful of women that were the heart of the fledgling Methodist congregation in Birzai, began to study the Bible, and then became a sledgehammer of belief and action. She had bragged to me about a little ministry she and the women ran: these women we’d rank as poor spent three days each week giving what little they had to the women they regarded as poor, those who lived in the “villages,” remote, outlying areas of extreme poverty. “Would you like to see our work?” she asked. It doesn’t take much for me to abandon manual labor, even if it is mission-related, so I said yes.

     We stopped by the grocery store, and I gleefully filled basket after basket with essentials, and paid for it all with somebody else’s money, plunking down the church credit card. I had no authorization or budget, so I made an on-the-spot, Robin Hood-like decision to steal from the rich to give to the poor. Then we drove out of the city.

     That’s correct: we drove. At first, Regina drove – like a banshee. She mashed the gas pedal as hard as she could, bounding over curbs and then skimming the edges of ditches, crushing bushes that frankly weren’t on the road, backed into a tree, jostling the food in the back out of the bags – as if she wanted to get to her destination right now, not in an hour; she pressed that ramshackle old rusty car to keep pace with her missionary zeal. After we got out and pushed the car out of some mud she’d driven into, she asked me in exasperation, “Will you drive?” Good Lord, yes I’ll drive.

     The first woman we visited lived in a tiny clapboard house – “house” being used loosely for this cold, breezy, varmint-infested awful excuse for shelter where she was raising her four children. As we approached, Regina told me she was gravely concerned about this woman’s romantic situation:  seems she had fallen in with a man Regina suspected of drinking, and being lazy. Regina banged her fist on what passed as a door, and we made our way in. The mom, I thought, would have been some sort of beauty where I lived, married to a doctor or lawyer and putting her kids in private school. But here she was poor, and embarrassingly so even by Lithuanian standards. She blushed, smiled and said Thank you (and jabbed her children with her elbows to remind them to say the same) as we placed what were thankfully non-perishables on a wobbly table as a few roaches scattered. 

     Then Regina got close to the woman, looming over her, wagging a finger in her face, and spoke sternly for quite a long time – a lecture about the ne’er-do-well boyfriend, no doubt. The woman cowered, but bore it as best she could. Rising to a crescendo of vehemence, Regina wound up her tirade, then paused, held out her arms to us and the children, and sweetly said, “Now let us pray.” And she prayed – at length, in Lithuanian, then in English, displaying a shimmering intimacy and strong urgency with God who most certainly hears such prayers. She thanked God for us, prayed about various health or learning challenges the children were facing, and then called down a curse on the soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. That poor guy was in some trouble.

     In all my days, I have never seen such stellar mission work. Regina, with virtually no resources except the little bit she and her handicapped husband could muster (but also with her extraordinary determination), banded together with other women like her, and went out to their poor. They didn’t simply drop off the goods; they got involved in their lives. Fearlessly she castigated her poor friend about a relationship she knew would harm her; and she prayed, offering blunt pleas to God on her behalf. And then we went to more such homes, until the food ran out.

     Grace filmed an interview I conducted with Regina in which she spoke of coming to faith in Christ, her love for her little church, and her ministry in the villages. I asked her, “Why do you do this?” – and she frowned, puzzled I would ask such a silly thing. “This is just what Christians do, isn’t it?” When we left for the airport the next day, I simply asked her to pray for us, and I am sure she has, and does and will, and I take comfort in being prayed for by someone who knows how to do what I could never in a million years figure out how to do:  deliver food, a lecture, and a prayer.

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 Looking toward Advent: My book, Why This Jubilee? Advent Reflections, has much of what I've used as preaching material over the years, and also serves as a good group study for your people.

What can we say November 17? 26th after Pentecost

    I love the story and song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1:4-20, 2:1-10. After commenting on the Epistle (briefly) and the Gospel (a bit more) I’ll return to this text, which I'll be preaching on - with a great quote from another Hannah, Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter).

   Hebrews 10:11-25, for me, continues the circling of Hebrews – so not sure I’ll preach the Epistle. I am intrigued by the idea of, because of all Christ has done, “Let us approach with a true heart… Let us hold fast to the confession without wavering.” In her way cool book, The Beatitudes Through the Ages, Rebekah Eklund explores what guardrails there might be on the multifarious interpretations of Scripture – and points to Perpetua and Felicity, two canonized martyrs who stood their ground, refusing to knuckle under and abandon their belief. How are they different from today’s church people who want to split up over doctrine? They didn’t harm others, whereas today’s peace-breakers do! “Let us hold fast,” indeed, but who’s harmed when I hold fast?

    “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.” Dangerous, as it can slip into nagging judgmentalism: Hey, you should love and do good deeds! And yet, so very hopeful. What if we took as our mission statement that we might not only love and do good deeds, but actually provoke others to do the same – not as in needle or cajole, but inspire, doing good with them? The verb paroxmuson implies inspiring more than provoking.

   “Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.” Indeed, perhaps especially post-pandemic, people are happy to neglect meeting together. There’s this story from John MacArthur that preachers love to tell. A man who had once been active in a church stopped coming, and after a few weeks the pastor decided to visit him in his home. When the pastor arrived, he found the man sitting in a chair in front of his fireplace where a fire was roaring. Without saying anything, the pastor took a seat beside the man and sat in the silence, watching the flames.

   After a few minutes, the pastor reached for a pair of tongs and pulled a single, burning ember out of the fire, setting it off to the side on the hearth. Before long, the ember’s flame had reduced to a glow, and then it went out completely, eventually growing cold. The pastor and the man sat in silence a bit longer, and then the pastor again took the tongs, picked up the dead ember, and put it back in the middle of the fire, where it sparked back to life. As the pastor got up to leave, the man spoke for the first time, saying, “Thank you for your visit, and especially for the fiery sermon. I’ll see you on Sunday.”

   Mark 13:1-8. I just adore the way the disciples’ jaws gape open at the sight of Herod’s temple – which still has that impact on pilgrims today. “What large stones!” indeed. We can inspect many astonishingly large stones from that temple – one of which is 40 feet long, 11 feet tall, weighing in at 300 tons! Herod’s recently completed platform, 900 by 1500 feet, of gleaming, flawlessly cut ashlars. A wonder of the world – Herod’s clear intent, both from ego and his desperate need to impress his former foe, the emperor Augustus.

   Jesus throws cold water on these country boys, slack-jawed in amazement, with his prophecy that not one stone will be left upon another. A few actually did remain after the catastrophe of the Roman crushing of the Jewish revolt in 70: the Western Wall, today’s “wailing wall,” still there. Did Jesus have a crystal ball type prediction? Or was it more rational, wise, insightful? Pompey had invaded the holy precincts, Herod erected a Roman eagle on the entrance, Caligula crafted a statue of his divine self to be placed in the Holy of Holies. Trouble was indeed coming.

   Jesus goes apocalyptic – which is a feature in preaching and theology we might avoid, given all the abuses of Gnostic end-of-time predictions. Yet at some point, the only shred of hope we have left is for God’s ultimate intervention beyond history itself. Jesus, unlike other apocalyptic writers, so productive in those days, reports no visions, but speaks only of his own authority.

   I recall as a boy watching Billy Graham preaching on “Nation will rise against nation,” and he explained this was precisely what was unfolding in the 1960s. Fact is, if you study history, it’s always this way. Peace is our dream that in our gut we know is a fantasy. So much pain. Jesus opens a window of hope, explaining that our intense sorrow over the world now can be compared to labor pains. Wow. Although it tiptoes into being silly, there’s a way to reflect on those birthpangs:

   With a playful imagination, Henri Nouwen (in Our Greatest Gift) pondered these pains that ferry us into life. In Our Greatest Gift, his thoughtful book about dying, he tells a story about fraternal twins talking with one another in the womb: The sister said to the brother, ‘I believe there is life after birth.’ Her brother protested vehemently, ‘No, no, this is all there is. This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing to do but cling to cord that feeds us.’ The little girl insisted, ‘There must be something more than this dark place. There must be something else, a place with light, where there is freedom to move.’ Still she could not convince her twin brother. After some silence, the sister said hesitantly, ‘I have something else to say, and I’m afraid you won’t like that either, but I think there is a Mother.’ Her brother became furious. ‘A Mother!?’ he shouted. ‘What are you talking about? I have never seen a mother, and neither have you. Who put that idea in your head? As I told you, this place is all we have. Why do you always want more? This is not such a bad place, after all. We have all we need, so let’s be content.’ The sister was quite overwhelmed by her brother’s response, and for a while didn’t dare say anything more. But she couldn’t let go of her thoughts, and since she had only her twin brother to speak to, she finally said, ‘Don’t you feel those squeezes once in a while? They’re quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful.’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘What’s so special about that?’ ‘Well,’ the sister said, ‘I think that these squeezes are there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our Mother face to face. Don’t you think that’s exciting?’ The brother didn’t answer. He was fed up with the foolish talk of his sister and felt that the best thing would be simply to ignore her and hope that she would leave him alone.

   And now, to return to 1 Samuel 1:4-20, 2:1-10, and how Saul was Israel’s first big, tall, impressive leader – and how we not only preach on 1 Samuel 1-2 but actually lead based on it:

   If we turn back a few pages, we discover the real dawn of a new day for Israel was not when Saul was crowned, but when a woman, a nobody, unable to conceive, surprisingly gave birth to a son – as if the script for what would unfold for Mary and Jesus fluttered down to earth centuries earlier. Hannah was barren, which was the ultimate weakness for women in the Bronze Age. She had nothing going for her except the tender love of her husband, Elkanah. She was taunted by her rival, Peninnah, whose cruel words twisted like a knife in her gut. How much of our suffering is comparative in nature? I see others having, laughing... but I was left out, unchosen, sad.

     There is a theological quandary in the writer’s assertion that “the Lord had closed her womb.” The preacher may or may not engage the question – but it’s well worth pondering even in the background. Ask an infertility doctor why a woman hasn’t conceived, and she can explain to you facts about sperm counts, fallopian tubes and more. Did God so arrange such things to frustrate couples? Or do we see, again, the lovely faith of Bible people whose lives and realities were so hinged to God that they could not imagine anything apart from God? – and yet it is not that God blocks the pregnancy (which God should do a bunch of other times when God seemingly doesn’t…), but that she just hadn’t gotten pregnant?

    Hannah did what the helpless do: “Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord… She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly” (1 Sam 1:9-10). Anguished prayer is weakness splayed all over the floor. And notice it's "year by year." No quick allaying of her suffering. It's a marathon.

   Eli the priest observed her, and assumed she was drunk. Then he took pity on her. Or perhaps he realized he was witnessing what every priest longs to see: a soul entirely abandoned to God. He blessed her. And then this woman, with no natural strength in her womb, conceived and bore a son, Samuel.

     The mind-boggling wrinkle in Hannah’s story, though, isn’t the seemingly miraculous birth. What staggers us is that she kept an outlandish promise she had made in her desperation. Trying to coax God into giving her a child, she pledged to give that child right back to God. She could easily have reneged on the deal once she cradled her precious son in her arms, nursing him, giggling with glee over his arrival. He was all she’d ever wanted. And in those days, a son was your social security, the one a woman needed to care for her in old age.

     But she took the boy to Shiloh, and left him there to serve in the temple as an apprentice to Eli. What more poignant words are there in all of Scripture than these? “She left him there for the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:28). The world says Grab the gifts you can, hang on to them, accumulate strength and resources. But Hannah, instead of clinging tightly, opened her hands, and let go of the best gift ever. She chose to return to her weak, vulnerable state. “She left him there for the Lord.”

     There is a kind of holy leading the world will never understand. After his election, Pope Francis handed back the powers of the papacy he’d just won, riding in a Ford Focus instead of the papal limousine, moving into a guesthouse instead of the Apostolic Palace, wearing a simple cassock instead of regal finery. Henri Nouwen left a faculty position at Harvard to live in a L’Arche community in Canada, where his job was to care for a single, severely handicapped young man named Adam. Maybe the most effective pastor I’ve ever known declined multiple promotions, quietly mentored dozens of young clergy, and in her parishes she happily beamed offstage as her laity excelled as they never had before.

   Imagine all those obscure people who have led so marvelously that we have never heard of them. Leadership is letting go, a refusal of possession, control or manipulation, an offering to God. Letting go must be the secret to leadership, since it is the secret of all of life; the results are those immeasurables, like contentment, gratitude, and the flourishing of others.

    I love Wendell Berry’s novel about a Kentucky farm mother, Hannah Coulter, who muses, “The chance you had in life is the life you’ve got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be someone else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.’ I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.” Leaders let go of fantasies and selfish wishes, resentments and any sense of entitlement or deserving. How counter-cultural! Leaders can be content; we already have enough, and so we are freed for joy. Who wouldn’t follow a leader to a place of joy?

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   My little book of theological reflections on lines and characters in Christmas carols might bless your people and your preaching! Why This Jubilee?: Advent Reflections on Songs of the Season.

What can we say November 24? Christ the King

   Pentecost (or “Ordinary Time”) ends with anything but an ending. The long story of the Christian year “ends” with a crowning – reminding Tolkien fans of the grand climax to The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn is finally the king, although he and the rest bow to the smallish hobbits, who are the true heroes of the story. Tolkien totally got biblical royalty and theology. 

      The shape of Christ's kingship begins next week, in silence, waiting, hope hidden in a womb, then a cry, the vulnerable being held tenderly. Jesus got bigger, but never in a muscular, threatening way, always humble, vulnerable, downright laughable and puzzling, so un-powerful did this powerful one seem. His crown was of thorns, his entourage common criminals and poor fishermen, his throne a cross, his palace a tomb. When explicating this week’s texts, it’s this King, not any other, who is the lens through which we read and preach.

   2 Samuel 23:1-7. Robert Alter speaks of this poem’s “mystifying features” which suggest “great antiquity,” suspecting (unlike most historical critics!) the poet might really have been David himself. If so, it puts a quirky twist on the “sweet singer” image, which pious books and preachers seem fond of applying to David. Did David actually, late in life, say this about himself? Those who knew him, who’d witnessed his tawdry behavior, who’d borne his violence, would shudder, or snicker.

    Walter Brueggemann is right: this poem masks the ambiguity of what a real king behaves like earlier in the story. Yet the ideal persists, the dream lingers. Kings should be life, fruitfulness, light and joy. And it’s God’s faithfulness, not the uprightness of kings, that sustains history. Such a king, unlike David and his progeny, is coming – the one who indeed proved to be “like light of morning, like the sun rising,” the one revealed as king Easter morning.

   Revelation 1:4b-8 is a perfect text for such a Sunday. The feel of this turn of the year is apocalyptic. The year ends, a new one opens before us, and the curtain is pulled back for us to delight in a peek into eternity, which isn’t endless time so much as the constant presence of “the one who is, was and is to come.” Eugene Boring points out that it was said “Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus will be.” But John – not just being but action, presence: “he comes.” Our God loved so much God could not remain aloof in heaven, but had to come down, to be with us.

   Eugene Peterson, in his brilliantly titled book on Revelation, Reversed Thunder, explicates this text by noting how we think of the Bible as something to use, instead of a means to hear God. And if we dared to hear God through it, we realize Scripture isn’t courting our favor or trying to please, but seeks to subject us. But how?

   Barbara Brown Taylor’s great sermon, “God’s Daring Plan” (in Bread of Angels), should be reviewed now! She envisions God in heaven informing the angels of his plan to come down. They plead with him not to do it. “The baby idea was a stroke of genius, it really was, but it lacked adequate safety features.” I wish I could preach like this: “Once the angels saw God was dead set on this daring plan, they broke into applause… While they were still clapping, God turned around the left the chamber, shedding his robes as he went. The angels watched as his midnight blue mantle fell to the floor, so that all the stars collapsed in a heap. Where the robes had fallen, the floor melted and opened up to reveal a scrubby brown pasture speckled with sheep and a bunch of shepherds. It was hard to say who was more startled, the shepherds or the angels…”

   Indeed. Jesus is God’s “witness,” translating the Greek martus, yes, like martyr. God’s coming provokes hostility and ends in suffering – but doesn’t really end at all.

   The empire’s army detail couldn’t keep this one in the grave. Jesus is the “ruler of the kings of the earth.” Really? How much more politically subversive can you get? We’ll see Pilate in our Gospel reading tremble a bit before this vulnerable, weak one. The preacher must play on the irony: it is the bloodied, beaten weak one who is “omnipotent.” The Greek is pantokrator – 

which is the way Christ is dubbed in so much classic art, as in the painting at St. Catherine’s on Mt. Sinai. Jϋrgen Moltmann, in his best pages of The Crucified God, explores how omnipotence is way inferior to love. Omnipotence can only be feared and obeyed; love can be… loved. Even better is the comment on our passage from G.B. Caird: “John has learned from Christ that the omnipotence of God is not the power of unlimited coercion but the power of invincible love.”

   John 18:33-37. My friend, the archaeologist Shimon Gibson, has definitively revealed to us where this trial before Pontius Pilate took place: not in the traditional praetorium along the Via Dolorosa, but along the western exterior wall of the city, where Herod’s impressive palace was located. Pilate would have stepped out onto the platform before the huge crowds pressing in from the countryside, not down narrow urban lanes.

   The conversation about kingship, in so few words, opens up deep wells of emotion, underlying meanings, nuances and shifting tides of power! Raymond Brown notices that “the accused criminal asks questions as if he were the judge, and from the first words of Jesus, it is Pilate who is on trial! Pilate is a man who is facing the light and who must decide whether he will prefer light or darkness.” For my tastes, the feel is captured marvelously in Jesus Christ Superstar, especially the fantastic 2000 Gale Edwards production. Watch this! Fred Johanson is pitch perfect as Pilate, strong, muscular, impressive, yet with an undercurrent of uncertainty, then defensiveness, a grief that can still retaliate.

   I don’t know how to “illustrate” all this in a sermon. I’m not sure the preacher needs to. The story is the story, and it’s plenty sufficient, it works as is, doesn’t need dressing up. It is worth pondering that “king,” on this Christ the King Sunday, was far from Jesus’ preferred way of thinking of himself.

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  Check out my book on hymns - more the theology of certain lines in hymns than their composition: Unrevealed Until Its Season. Couched as a Lenten study, readable any time.

 

 

What can we say December 1? Advent 1

    I grumble every year about the Advent lections, fully understanding it’s not Christmas yet, but puzzled that the RCL concoctors seem virtually allergic to Mary, surely the most Advent-ish of all characters. Year C is the worst of the lot, harsh apocalyptic on Advent 1, with Advent 2, 3 and 4 stuck on John the Baptist. I love his pivotal role in Advent and was gifted by a listener with the world’s first John the Baptist greeting card after mentioning he’s big in the story but absent on the cards! But sheesh. 3 weeks?

   I am struck by Kate Bowler's remarks in her new book Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! "Advent is a season of charity and conscience and hospitality. We are all welcome precisely because our savior wasn't. We tell the story of an immigrant family, no room in the inn, rulers who want him dead..." which is "why Advent is not simply beautiful. It causes our hearts to ache."

   I’ll post each week on the lectionary texts, but my best use to you will be my general blog on preaching Advent called “God Became Small,” full of illustrative stuff from literature, history, film, and art. 

   Also! My little book of theological reflections on lines and characters in Christmas carols might bless your people and your preaching! Why This Jubilee?: Advent Reflections on Songs of the Season.

   So, our Advent 1 texts. Jeremiah 33:14-16. So lovely. God fulfills God’s promises – an idea we individualize way too much, making it all about us. It’s God’s promise for the people of Israel, God’s promise to fulfill God’s large plans for the redemption of all of creation. The Hebrew for “promise,” incidentally, is “the good word,” and I like that a lot. It’s less God committing to some prescribed pattern or timeline, but God being true to God’s own good speaking.

    The pledge is that “a righteous branch will bring justice and righteousness.” The Hebrew is so very rich: righteousness (tzedekah) is way more than good behavior, but enters into the Christian lexicon as dikaiosune, a right, righted relationship with God. And mishpat, justice, isn’t fairness or just desserts, but rather the poor being cared for.

    Jeremiah’s laconic vision is stirring. Jerusalem will “live in safety.” So basic, something we take for granted but most people in the world cannot. Simple safety, not secured by policies and guns, but only by God’s redemptive healing. The city is even given a new name: Adonai zidkenu, “the Lord is our righteousness.” Try city council where you live and see if you can get this name change! How lovely, such a holy, trustful identification of who we are!

   You have to love Heidi Neumark’s notion that she loves Advent because “it is a reflection of how I feel most of the time” – and that is a mood of longing. Indeed. Your people, no matter how cocky or self-assured they may pretend to be, are longing people. And they know despair, which Reinhold Niebuhr described as “a failed attempt to secure security for yourself.” This is where we live, all of us, all of us longers.

   1 Thessalonians 3:9-13. Acts 17 narrates how a riot was touched off there when Paul came! – and now Paul is grateful for them. His gratitude is linked to joy, as it always is and must be. Joy isn’t fun or happiness times seven. It is the grateful life, understanding how in the thick of trauma and sorrow there is light, and goodness.

 

     Fascinating: Paul tells how he is praying for them. We say “I am praying for…” with little to no specificity. Perhaps we are asking God just to help the person, or to further what the person needs or wants. Paul prays that they will see one another – so basic! – and that “what is lacking” in their faith will be restored. I recall in seminary learning the distinction between fides qua and fides quae, between faith as the content of what we believe versus faith as the mood, the posture of faith in the believer. Is his prayer that they will be doctrinally advanced? Or that the intensity of their faith will be augmented?

   Yes. It’s their total response to God. He piles on adjectival terms: “increase and abound.” Is he being redundant? Or trying in words to capture how fabulous, how deep, how extravagant it all can be? What is lacking (hysterema) is the polar opposite of fullness (plerouma). And what is this “fullness” he’s after in his prayer for them? It is love – not a feeling you have or don’t, but that agape love that is grounded in God’s love, a deep and unflappable commitment. And he prays that God will “strengthen their hearts in holiness.” Do we ever pray for holiness in ourselves, or others? What a perfect prayer, so Advent-ish! Instead of asking God for favors in our unaltered lives, we pray for ourselves and for others simply to be holy.

   And why? As a bracing for, and an embracing of the Lord’s coming. If the Lord is coming, if we believe such a thing, then do we pray for trifles, success or comfort? or something far larger and more enduring?

   And then we come to the un-Christmasy apocalyptic Luke 21:25-36. Jesus, on the Mt. of Olives, overlooking the holy/unholy city of Jerusalem that will be his doom and glory, Jesus envisions… what? The obliteration of history? N.T. Wright has persuasively argued that Jesus was expecting judgment on Jerusalem, not an end to history.

  Jesus speaks of what Fitzmyer calls “apocalyptic stage props,” signals to the reader that we are into bizarre, symbolic territory far beyond the realm of the doable, the practical, the historical. I wonder if we experience some of these (the confusion and distress, the natural calamities like “the roaring of seas and waves,” with our climate issues and perilous changes! – all reminders that this world is temporary and not to be relied upon all that much).

   Reflecting on the nature, sky imagery, Kathy Beach-Verhey (in Feasting on the Word) spoke of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” He began as a pastor himself. The preacher might ponder the apocalyptic sky, the small town, the church steeple, and Kathy’s words: “The famous painting elicits differing reactions from those who admire it. Some see it as a daunting image of a frightening sky, others as something bold and beautiful, others as a glimpse of God. Like van Gogh’s great painting, Luke’s apocalypse elicits different reactions… and this is what Jesus offers on this First Sunday of Advent.”

   You might love, or tremble at Jesus’ courage, and encouragement: “When these things happen” – so terrifying to the world – “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” We are those who need not cower. We can embrace trauma and hardship and horrifying uncertainty, because we know God’s “got the whole world in his hands.”

   It’s way bigger than me and my salvation. Sharon Ringe suggested picturesquely that “the ‘redemption’ that is promised is not a private lifeboat to save a few privileged folk while everything else is destroyed. Rather, redemption is equated with the coming of God’s reign, which spells transformation, healing, and wholeness for all of life.”

   In the meantime, we should “be on guard,” “not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness, and worries…” My daughter and I visited the Bolton Priory in England – a lovely place, with a ruined gothic sanctuary. As we entered to take photos, a woman handed us a prayer card and invited us to something higher than tourism. The card contained this prayer:
  “Humbly and sorrowfully I crave thy forgiveness ... for every weakening thought to which my mind has roamed ... ” This notion of weakening thoughts bears some examination and pondering – perhaps especially during this season of preparing for the coming of the Lord.

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  My new book, Everywhere is Jerusalem: Experiencing the Holy Then and Now, has lots of preaching fodder, and touches on Adventish and Epiphany themes. Abingdon also created a study guide and video! Good for you, good for groups!

What can we say December 8? Advent 2

    For general Advent preaching, with lots of illustrative material that can fit any week and most of our Advent texts, check out my blog “God Became Small: Preaching Advent.” Here are thoughts on this week’s lections.

   Baruch 5:1-9? Watch Protestant jaws drop! – but what a lovely, profound, hopeful, memorable text! I might read it to my people to let them know what they’re missing, and what their Catholic friends may delight in: elegant clothing images (“Take off the garment of your sorrow, put on forever the beauty of the glory from God; put on the robe of righteousness; put on your head the diadem of glory”), seasonally-appropriate directional stuff (“Look toward the east!”), and that “God will lead Israel with joy” (God’s joy?).

   If you go with the Protestant alternate reading, notice how Malachi 3:1-14 is similarly a rich text. Malachi isn’t really a name; it simply means “my messenger” or “my angel.” Angels are messengers – reminding us of Elie Wiesel’s marvelous remark: “If an angel ever says ‘Be not afraid,’ you’d better watch out: a big assignment is on the way.” Karl Barth pointed out that angels are there at the birth of Jesus, and then at his empty tomb – as witnesses to ultimate truths. Angels praise God in heaven all the time, and our songs of praise, especially during Advent, join their voices as one holy choir.

   God sends “my messenger” Malachi to people who doubt God’s care, who are cynical, hopeless. As such, they invert good and evil. Their most woeful characteristic is they are indifferent to God’s will. In the thick of World War II, to would-be isolationists, Eleanor Roosevelt said “Wishful thinking is one of our besetting sins.”

    God’s response? No smiting or scolding. God gives, quite simply, God. This is the heart of Advent, isn’t it? The gift God gives is the gift we want in our deepest heart of hearts, not anything you could jot on a list, or purchase in a mall, or wrap and place under a tree. We want God. And what we desire is what God gives: God’s own self.

   Malachi declares “the Lord will come to his temple.” As later readers and believers, we know Jesus did come there – but actually he became the temple; he became God’s presence, he was in his flesh the way to God, God’s way to us, God with us.

   Is this coming really comfort? Malachi envisions it as “refiner’s fire” and “fuller’s soap.” We forget that God’s ultimate purpose for us is that we will be holy, pure, clean. C.S. Lewis (in Letters to Malcolm) envisioned showing up at the gates of heaven: “Would it not break the heart if God said to us, ‘It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy’? Should we not reply, ‘With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.’ ‘It may hurt, you know’ – ‘Even so, sir.’”

   We sing “Pure and spotless, let us be,” and “And fit us for heaven to live with thee there.” More on this in the Gospel lection… Hard not to think of that corny old Burl Ives song, "Silver and Gold" (in "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer"). Sam the Snowman prefers silver and gold on the tree to the hard stuff... Malachi might suggest that the beauty in the refining is that you surprisingly are silver and gold!

   Can we persuade our people that Advent is a season of purification? “Let every heart prepare him room.” The preparation begins with God’s sending of “my messenger” to “prepare the way of the Lord.” We will probably use that cute but moving grand opening from Godspell. …probably without the splashing in the fountain though. Now is the time to get ready, to wait, to expect, to dream. Like a pregnant woman also, who’s in labor and shown up in the delivery room, we aren’t leaving until the new life has come.

    Philippians 1:3-11. What are you giving for Christmas? Paul prays for his friends – and not for their health, things or jollity. Rather, he’s fixated on the “work God has begun in you.” It’s like you’re an old house, and God is engaged in an extensive renovation project, yanking out old flooring beneath your feet, rewiring you, giving old rooms new functions, beautifying, cleaning. The coming of the Lord? Marianne Williamson suggested that you invite Jesus into your life, expecting him to show up like an interior decorator to spruce the place up a bit. But then you look outside one day, and a wrecking ball is swinging, about to demolish the thing and start over.

   Paul’s prayer is “that your love may overflow with knowledge and insight.” What a prayer for others, and frankly for ourselves! - and all these intertwine in intriguing ways; as Stephen Fowl captures it: “The love, prayer, knowledge and wisdom needed to live faithful lives are not separable components… but a set of interconnected habits that we must cultivate over a lifetime. Growth in one of these habits will lead to growth in the others. Failure in one will manifest itself in a more comprehensive failure.” Would the preacher dare suggest an alternative Christmas, where we offer to one another words of gratitude, and prayers for overflowing flow, knowledge and insight?

   Luke 3:1-6 reminds us that the Gospel is a real thing that really happened in real time in real history. Details are reported: the 15^th year of Tiberius, when Pilate was governor, when Herod ruled Galilee (with Philip and Lysanias thrown in for good measure). Politics isn’t part of the proclamation of the Gospel? The key players in what will be the crucifixion are named at the outset – including the religious leaders, Annas and Caiaphas, portrayed as sinister and conniving in Jesus Christ Superstar. These not-so-holy men are in cahoots with the powers that be, as religious leaders are so often. Witness Nazi Germany, and frankly our own country. Luke 3 names them all, the pretenders, the foes of God’s humble, hidden way.

   But a hidden, truer, alternate plot is unfolding. Albert Schweitzer famously envisioned Jesus’ insertion into history: “There is silence all around. The Baptist appears, and cries: Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign.”

   Jesus comes in the thick of great, seemingly invincible powers, all named in Luke 3. But he is the one. He is the true savior, the real power, the true ruler. His rule is one of humility, love, compassion, sacrifice and holiness. You preach to people whose political ideology is their idolatry; the preacher is to point the way tohe true God, exposing the idols for the paltry, transient fakes they are.

  John the Baptist, who would be a laughingstock, or someone to be dispensed with by the powers, comes on stage, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance.” The phrasing fascinates. It’s not a demand but a gift, right? Without trying, John fulfills the Isaiah quotation about preparing the way of the Lord, about the valleys and hills, all of creation being transformed. When Isaiah spoke of “the Lord,” John himself thought of Yahweh, Israel’s God. But the readers, in the wake of Christ’s resurrection, realize the Lord whose way is prepared is none but Jesus himself.

    Again, in keeping with the Malachi 3 reading, repentance is way more than mere remorse, even with shades of reconciliation. It’s purification, holiness – maybe a re-holying.

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  My new book, Everywhere is Jerusalem: Experiencing the Holy Then and Now, has lots of preaching fodder, and touches on Adventish and Epiphany themes. Abingdon also created a study guide and video! Good for you, good for groups!