What can we say December 9? Advent 2

       {Last year I published a generalized “Preaching Advent” blog on the nature of homiletics during this season, with lots of illustrative material that could work any Sunday; and also a general “Preaching Christmas” blog}

   How odd for us who are Protestant to see Baruch 5:1-9 as the Old Testament lection for Advent 2. 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?).

    The Protestant canonical Old Testament reading, Malachi 3:1-14, is itself rich in possibility. The name Malachi isn’t really a name; it simply means “my messenger” or “my angel.” God sends messengers, angels, and they are God’s (“my”). We’ve trivialized angels, at Christmas more than any other season – and yet “angel” means “messenger,” and God sends them. 

Who could forget and not use in a sermon Elie Wiesel’s famous remark, “If an angel ever says ‘Be not afraid,’ you’d better watch out: a big assignment is on the way.” I think I heard Will Willimon say that if you’re “touched by an angel,” you might wind up pregnant… 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” 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.”

   They go through the motions of prayer and worship, but do not really expect anything from God (sound familiar?). Malachi thus speaks of “the God whom you seek, in whom you delight” – but they don’t really, and so Elizabeth Achtemeier spoke of these words as “ironical.” 

For them, talk about God’s covenant, chatter about God’s promises of old, is mere talk, empty words.

    God’s response isn’t scolding or smiting. And God doesn’t float down a new covenant of words on stones, or scrolls with more promises. What God gives is quite simply… God. God gives God’s own self. This is the heart of Advent. 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 pricks the imagination by declaring that “the Lord will come to his temple.” He’s thinking the sanctuary in Jerusalem. As 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.

    Mind you, the consequences of this coming are misconstrued. We think of comfort, or maybe forgiveness, or our dreams coming true. Malachi speaks of the “refiner’s fire” and “fuller’s soap.” We want forgiveness, maybe a healed relationship with God. 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.’”

    What do 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!

     Advent is a season of purification, of asking for cleansing. “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. The phrases are dramatic, and involve all of creation. 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 illustrates what we might do for others for Christmas. Paul bursts forth with immense, personal gratitude – a virtue downright counter-cultural in our culture of entitlement. Jesus came to create grateful people. Gratitude banishes resentment, selfishness, and a bevy of other ugly personality quirks.

   Paul prays for his friends (this is what friends do!) – and his prayer is stunning. Not for their health 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.

     The disciples came to Jesus and asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). Did Paul’s listeners ever ask him to do the same? Pray! – but how? and for what? 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. Note the details about the feared, power people of the day, and the timelines: 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. They are “holy” men – but they 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.”

    We could adduce St. Augustine’ complicated, profound reflections on the two cities, running in parallel… but more simply: 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 to the 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.

**********

  My little book of Advent reflections, ruminating on various theologically poignant phrases in carols and secular Christmas music, Why This Jubilee?, has lots of preaching stuff.

What can we say December 2? Advent 1

   Last year, I wrote an all-purpose blog “Preaching Advent,” looking at how preaching in December is so different: you get less time, the quiet calm in worship, music dominating the season, stories figuring in more than ever, the critical need to account for grief and loneliness in a season of froth and jollity, with thoughts on St. Francis at Greccio, Wangerin’s “Manger is Empty,” Silas Marner, Harry Potter, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and even The Life of Brian, stuff that might fit any Sunday during Advent. I’d commend it to you again.

   This year, I do want to go week by week looking at specific texts. So, Advent 1: 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, a 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, and unforgettable. Judah will be saved, and with poetic genius, Jerusalem (zeroing in on the city dominating Judah) 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!

    In Feasting on the Word, Gary Charles cites Heidi Neumark who professes to love 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.” Bingo. This is where we live, all of us, all of us longers.

    And then we turn to 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, a similarly brief, laconic expression of intense faith. Acts 17 narrates how a riot was touched off there when Paul came! – and now Paul is grateful for them. He should be… And 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.

     Most interestingly, 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 (relationships are everything – and imagine such a prayer in a world without iPhones, Facetime or even a decent postal service!).

    And then Paul tells them he is praying 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?

     Pretty clearly, Paul is obsessed with 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! 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 Advent reading, the 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 uses typical language, signs in the sky, 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.”

    I love Luke’s capture of 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.”

    How do we live in the meantime? We should “be on guard,” “not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness, and worries…” – reminding me of the interpretation of Jesus’ parable of the sower (Mark 4). 

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.

**********

  My little book of Advent reflections, ruminating on various theologically poignant phrases in carols and secular Christmas music, Why This Jubilee?, has lots of preaching stuff.

What can we say November 25? 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.

     Jesus’ kingship was the one he declined to describe to Pilate, the one that refused power “over,” the royalty whose palace was a manger, whose regiments were missionaries, whose attendants were the unwanted, whose throne was a cross, whose crown was made of thorns, whose treaties were with the needy. On the road to Jerusalem he’d spoken of those who lord it over others: “but it shall not be so among you” (Mark 10:43).

 

    Revelation 1:4b-8 is a stunning passage, inviting us to marvel more than to explain or preach. In the days when there were as yet no Christian scriptures besides to Old Testament, there were Christian prophets, who would be inspired by the Spirit to stand up and reveal God’s powerful and ultimate intervention to beleaguered, persecuted believers. Jesus, just a few years after his crucifixion, was extolled as “the one who was, who is, and is to come, the faithful witness” (the Greek here is martus, martyr!), “firstborn of the dead, the ruler of all the other kings.” Investigators poking around to expose Christians who refused to bow down to the emperor must have laughed their heads off at such chatter. Again, the earliest Christians followed what we now call George Lindbeck’s “rules” – to say as expansively as possible how great Christ really was, is, will be.

     How subversive was their worship of Jesus? It could cost you your life. It did cost them ridicule, and business suffered. Yet for those who attached themselves to this alternate king, “they loved not their lives even unto death” (Rev. 12:12). Hard to envision in our world where being a Christian, or going to church, elicits a yawn. And yet aren’t people looking for something costly? Something worth dying for? Something painful? Is this why so many get tattoos? – to be marked, to endure pain? Jesus was, after all, pierced.

     Jesus’ tattoos (thinking imaginatively here!) might be conceived as the Greek letters Alpha and Omega. God in Christ overflows all language, he exceeds creation itself, even as he embraces all of creation. He even embraced all those powerful images of the emperor the Christians saw daily – in architecture, iconography, statues and public festivals. Into such a world, Christ spoke and then the Christians spoke simple words, “Grace and peace,” not as a polite greeting, but as the very irruption of God’s way into the world.

     Fixated in awe and wonder as we should be on Jesus, he came, and now rules, so we might be his Body, or as Revelation 1 puts it, “a kingdom of priests.” I am a priest. My job is to help my people live into their own priesthood. The Latin pontifex, “priest,” means “bridge-builder.” We build a bridge to God, not merely for ourselves, but for others. Can I be a bridge to God? I might get walked all over – which is the goal, right? And anybody can be such royalty and priesthood. The Roman emperors claimed the title pontifex; we rules with Christ legitimately in this way. I love the moments in John Irving’s Cider House Rules when Dr. Larch would read Dickens to the orphans at night, and then leave the room just after saying “Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”

     John 18:33-37. How fitting then that we also read the pathetic yet glorious moment from Jesus' trial before Pilate. Was Pilate a sniveling miscreant, as he is cast so often – as in the 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar? 

I vastly prefer the portrayal in the 2000 video production in which Fred Johanson masterfully and movingly portrays Pilate as physically imposing, muscular, powerful – and yet with deep emotion, a huge, troubled heart: watch his “dream” and also the absolutely stunning “trial” scene. 

    Jesus’ comment, “My kingdom is not of this world,” has given much solace to overly-spiritual people who prefer a Christianity that is unpolitical, nonphysical, an unhinged from the realities of a world needing change almost as much as the spiritual people do. But his kingdom is so very relevant precisely because it has a different, holy, eternal origin, and paradoxical, inverted strategies of implementation. 

Listen to Raymond Brown: “Jesus does not deny that his kingdom or kingship affects this world… but he denies that his kingdom belongs to this world” – and “Jesus does not deny that he is a king, but it is not a title that he would spontaneously choose to describe his role.”

     Jesus’ vocation is truth – which is always sacrificed in the world’s securing and application of power. 

I love Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel image of Jesus before Pilate – whose face is at once etched in frozen rage and yet a puzzled intrigue. We too should be fascinated, not having Jesus figured out at all, waiting longingly to see what this rule will be like. Advent and Christmas will be the answer to Pilate’s query – and ours.

************

 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 18? 26th after Pentecost

     An interesting Sunday, with Thanksgiving in four days, and Christ the King falling afterwards this year. Hard not to select 1 Samuel 1:4-20, which explicates what giving thanks to God is all about. Hebrews 10:11-25, which I’ll touch on briefly, does remind us again of why we give thanks, not for things or “blessings” but for the infinitely precious work of Christ – and then how we love each other. Mark 13:1-8 is more of a segue into the kingship of Christ sequence we are approaching – not to mention how Jesus speaks of what his mother underwent: the pangs of childbirth.

     So Hannah. You feel for Elkanah, doubling his sacrifices for her, and pleading romantically with her: “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” No answer is provided. Sometimes we don’t get the anguish of the other person, even a spouse.

     And there’s more psychological insight here. Peninnah’s taunting: isn’t it the case that our agony, our lack, is inevitably made so much worse because we compare ourselves to others, or are even unflatteringly compared, or even pitied. The worst plague of social media is you see everyone else seemingly having a blast while you’re hurting… and then we have to ask how we (by posting on social media, or by bland talk about being blessed) inflict this comparative pain on others.

   How sermon preparation happens for me: three months after writing this blog, I found myself at a Memorial Service at my rabbi friend's synagogue: Kristallnacht, that night of horrors 80 years ago that ignited the Holocaust. Survivors, who live near me, entered the room to the playing of the "Schindler's List" theme.  So moving.  I cried - and I don't generally cry at such things.

This got me to thinking about how we treasure gifts perhaps only in light of intense loss; we love only against the foil of so much hate; we are tender in the web of so much harshness.  Hannah treasures her gift - because she has been without the gift for so very long.

    And then Peninnah's taunting: again, months after the blog was written, I witnessed 2018 election results - and noted evangelical Christians giving Jesus a bad name by judging others. Peninnah has hers - and then taunts, judges, and shuts out Hannah, who doesn't have anything at all.  A Facebook friend, someone I don't really know, posted a harsh item about Muslim women being elected to Congress, and she titled her repost "Disgusting." She then posted a pro-Trump diatribe about immigrants no deserving the goods America has to offer - but then her previous post was a cutesy one about Grace being getting what we don't deserve from God.  It occurred to me she wants what she doesn't deserve from God, although I bet she believes she's very much deserving - but then others shouldn't get theirs.  I will preach on this thought.

     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?

     The text reminds us that Hannah’s hollow exasperation went on “year by year.” She wept – a lot. Finally Eli saw her praying, thought her to be drunk (anticipating the Day of Pentecost, Acts 2:15). This is true prayer: total weakness, vulnerability, inability, desperation, nowhere else to turn. We need not wait for dire straits to get there either. Isaac Bashevis Singer once said “I only pray when I am in trouble. The problem is, I am in trouble all the time.”

     Realizing her deep prayerfulness, he blessed her – and (the plot smoothing itself out quickly) she becomes pregnant. In my book, Weak Enough to Lead, I wrote this about what happens next: “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 and 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 Sam 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.”

     After his election, Pope Francis handed back the powers of the papacy he’d just won by riding in a Ford Focus instead of the papal limousine, by moving into a guesthouse instead of the Apostolic Palace, and by 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, happily beamed offstage as her laity excelled as they never had before.

     Maybe you know such an obscure person you can describe in your sermon. There’s a little textual confusion in 1 Samuel 1, I think. Were her child named Saul, her pun would be perfect: she asked (sha’al) for a child, and got what she asked for (sha’ul). Hmm. Also, if you studied lament Psalms in seminary, you’ll recall this is the parade example of what happens when the Psalm shifts from lament to confidence: the idea that a priest hears your prayer, blesses you – and then the shift to hope. And then be sure to notice that the week’s Psalter isn’t a Psalm but Hannah’s song (anticipating Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1:49-56!) in 1 Sam. 1:1-10!

     In keeping with all this, as it’s thanksgiving, I will use this lovely quote from Wendell Berry’s novel about a Kentucky farm mother (named Hannah too!), 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.’”

     Hebrews 10:11-25 reiterates (again!) themes of Christ’s once-for-all work, and our freedom to enter the sanctuary. The opened curtain here is Jesus’ pierced flesh… and most interestingly in verse 24 we read (in the RSV) “Let us consider how to provoke (Greek =  κατανοῶμεν ) one another to love and good deeds. With so much provoking to anger out there… what if we used or provoking skills to prod others to love and good deeds?

     I love the opening of Mark 13:1-8. If you’ve seen the tumbled over (and some still in place) massive stones from Herod’s temple in Jerusalem, you can imagine the awed, gawking disciples exclaiming, “What large stones and what large buildings!!!” I like to describe the details (like that one ashlar you can inspect on the Western Wall Tunnel tour that is 40 feet long and weighs 600 tons!) of the massive, beautiful stones – which is crucial, as Jesus forecasts they will not remain standing one upon another. The crowd must have laughed their heads off… and yet, 40 years later, the temple was rubble.

     Preachers have to be careful not to sound anti-Semitic or supersessionist. Three centuries later, when Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they intentionally left the temple mount in ruins so they could point and boast that Judaism was toast. We grieve its destruction – and yet hear the point Jesus makes that the high and mighty wind up devastated

 (you could quote Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” here…). Jesus, more pointedly in John’s Gospel and Hebrews, theologizes that he, not any building, is the true temple, the connection between God and life down here. For Mark 13, Jesus moodily ponders a harsh, daunting future. When I hear any prognosticator of the end times pointing to current history and saying “Wars and rumors of wars” are upon us, I have to ask How many times in history have there been “wars and rumors of wars”?

     Were I preaching on Mark 13, I’d focus on the image of “birthpangs.” Birth, as Dr. Mark Sloan points out (in his wonderful Birth Day), is the only time pain is regarded as good, and we debate whether it should be alleviated or not. Pain is the necessary prelude to new life. On our end, yes. On God’s side, surely – I mean, the pangs of bearing with the constant insanity of human history strikes agony into God’s heart.

     I also think of the lovely narrative Henri Nouwen shared with us (in Our Greatest Gift) about fraternal twins in their mother’s womb. One day the girl said to her 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 else to do but to cling to the 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 believe 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 these squeezes every once in a while? They're quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful." "Yes," he answered. "What's 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.

************

 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 come October 21? 22nd after Pentecost

   If you’re continuing a series on Job (we’re to the whirlwind now!), go to the bottom of this blog -- or watch my 15 minute sermon on Job, "Everything Happens for a Reason." We’ll start this blog with the Gospel, then explore Hebrews (not just for preaching it, but what it reveals about ministry).

    Mark 10:35-45. Jesus has clearly altered the plot of his story from striding about amazing people to this beleaguered journey toward Jerusalem to suffer and die. Along the road, he’s explaining this way of sorrows, and how following him similarly puts you in harm’s way, a road of downward mobility, a route toward suffering and death. 

    How dense are the disciples? The sons of Zebedee, acting this time without their pal Peter, sound like those Christians you’ve known who “claim promises” and feel sure God will do their bidding: “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Did Jesus chuckle? Grimace? Instead of chiding or correcting, Jesus quite typically followed up by asking them to continue. They seek the glory of sitting next to him in his glory. Posturing, jockeying – and don’t think clergy are immune from the allure of dreams of glory, sitting on the right hand of the bishop, sitting just to the left at one of the grand pulpits. Clergy: are you moving on up? Or resentful of those who are?

     Did Zebedee raise his boys with quite proper American-style ambition to succeed? Matthew 20:20 interestingly casts Mrs. Zebedee as the one seeking position for her boys.

    Jesus, continuing themes they’d missed, points out that his glory will involve “drinking the cup I drink,” that is, being arrested, beaten, and crucified. Even on hearing this, and perhaps they even understood a little, they cockily declare “Lord, we are able!” My theology professor at Duke, Bob Cushman, once told me his least favorite hymn was “Are Ye Able” – which similarly boasts “Yeah, the sturdy dreamers answered, to the death we follow thee. Lord, we are able!” But they are not able, and neither are we. God wants availability, not ability. And God’s realm is an upside down kind of glory. There is no hierarchy in God’s kingdom: “Gentiles lord it over others; but it shall not be so among you.” Or rather, there is a hierarchy, and it’s a flattened pancake on the ground of humility. Whoever can go lowest is closest to Jesus.

    James, as fate would have it, was martyred a decade later (Acts 12:2). John apparently lived to old age. Their naïve confusion on the road in Mark 10 was surely replaced by a mature, humble realization that Jesus’ way was the way, and that the world’s path to glory isn’t merely dangerous but a deceptive lie. Frodo understood that the ring had to be destroyed at Mordor, or the power of the ring would destroy him and the shire. When I preach on such themes, I am not optimistic people will be able to hear. Sometimes I settle for incremental gains: maybe somebody is a tad humbler, maybe somebody engages in some hard service for God. But the revolution Jesus envisaged: we have to look to the St. Francises of the world, the Dorothy Days, the Teresas and Thérèses of the world (Avila, Lisieux, Calcutta), maybe an Albert Schweitzer or maybe somebody you know who bought into the Jesus revolution with abandon.

     Our Epistle, Hebrews 5:1-10, is typically Hebrews: dense, profound, mystifying, moving. And obsessed with Melchizedek. I want to grow up to savor Melchizedek – but for now, the yawning gap between me and the early Christians is the way they got totally jazzed about the mention of the obscure king, and I just skate on by.

    The author compares and contrasts earthly priests with Christ as our priest – affording us a hopeful glimpse into both. I think it’s wise, on occasion, to talk about what it is to be a priest, like you, the preacher – not to elicit sympathy or to assert your authority. Every few months, as the context provides an opening, I tell my people that I love them, I think of them when they aren’t around, I worry about them, I pray for them. It’s my job; it’s my calling. 

    Hebrews speaks of the weakness of the priest. Apply for an open pulpit, or ask for a move from your bishop, and tell him/her you’re weak. No, we profess our strengths, our savvy, our work ethic, our robust theology. But I wound up writing a book entitled Weak Enough to Lead after teaching a doctoral class on biblical leadership – and noticing how the Bible simply doesn’t supply snappy formulas for how to be a strong leader. A weak bunch – as they are, and should be, these Bible leaders. Hebrews doesn’t speak of weak priests and then demand they get strong. Their weakness is their strength. 

    And why? They are able to sympathize, and be gentle. When I get hard on my people (in the privacy of my mind, of course), I am forgetting my own foibles and flaws. We are all broken. Rainer Maria Rilke (in his letter to a young poet friend) was right:  “Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled. His life has much difficulty and sadness. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find these words.” Knowing this, and even daring to speak of it, might remind the critics and fault-finders that they are a bit off track, and refocus church life on compassion, not fixing people or even the world, but being with one another, not judging but overflowing with mercy.

     Jesus himself wasn’t superman come to earth, he wasn’t a man of steel. He himself was meek, lowly, woundable, wounded. Verse 7 poignantly reminds us of Jesus’ “loud cries and tears.” Gethsemane, yes (and I’d commend watching this scene from Jesus ChristSuperstar, and even better from the at-times weird but provocative film, The Last Temptation of Christ) – and weeping over Jerusalem from the Mt. of Olives, yes. But the text implies more, something regular. Jesus loved deeply. Jesus was one with the heart of God. Whatever broke God’s heart broke Jesus’ heart (in the words of Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision). Those who travelled with Jesus, and asked him to teach them to pray, witnessed his sorrows, his crying out to God in prayer.

    This blog labors toward good preaching. Maybe we should, instead, strive to be clergy who pray, who have tears and cries for our people, for the troubles of the world, for ourselves. I too often am annoyed, angry, frustrated with my people, and the world, and myself – and I am positive that even if I smile and talk sweetness and love, my inner mood bleeds out through my pores, and they feel it. 

    You may be a stalwart in prayer for your people. I for one am humbled when I consider someone like my wife’s grandfather, Charles Stevens – who was known for his all-night prayer vigils and intensity and length of supplications for people, challenges, big decisions. And it’s not that such prayers “work.” We just pray. Jesus, after all, prayed for the cup to pass from him – and the result only superficially contradicts the words of Hebrews 5: “He was heard for his godly fear.” Ah, but he was. God never adored his son more than in Gethsemane, and throughout Good Friday. 

    The diciest moment in Hebrews 5 is this notion that Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered.” He suffered because he was obedient… and people have heard lots of pablum about God teaching people lessons through smiting them or inflicting harm on them (the whole premise being overturned in Job!). God is in the suffering. God suffers what we suffer. Knowing God is growing into that awareness – not sticking with the calculus of I am suffering, so what is it God is trying to teach me by sending this my way?

    In Weak Enough to Lead, I looked to a fictional priest who sympathizes (in Father Melancholy's Daughter): “The humble, nameless leaders who are office-holders, the steady as you go solid rock at work, those uncreative readers of our holy books may play the steady, reliable role we need when the charismatic leaders are out there doing who knows what. Consider Gail Godwin’s marvelous assessment of Father Gower: ‘He’s not trendy; he doesn’t pose. He’s neither a self-transcendent guru nor one of these fund-raising manager types who have become so sought after lately by our Holy Church. He’s just himself—himself offered daily. He worries about people, he worries about himself. . . . He goes to the hospital carrying the Sacraments in his little black case. He baptizes and marries and buries and listens to people’s fears and confessions and isn’t above sharing some of his own.  He scrubs the corner cross with Ajax. . . . He makes his services beautiful; he reminds you that the whole purpose of the liturgy is to put you in touch with the great rhythms of life. He’s a dedicated man, your father. He’s lonely and bedeviled like the rest of us, but he has time for it all and tries to do it right. He lives by the grace of daily obligation. He’s what the priests in books used to be like, but today he’s a rarity.’ Priests in Old Testament times offered themselves daily, and their services were beautiful. And we can be sure they worried about people. Only an insensitive dolt could have watched the same sorrowful woman bringing her modest sacrifices, weeping in the sanctuary, and not felt her pain. There was a pastoral tenderness in the implementation of ritual as we see in the story of Hannah. Barren and taunted by her husband’s other wife, Hannah prayed repeatedly and with such intensity that Eli surmised she must be drunk. After she explained her plight, he engaged in his regular priestly function by offering her a word of blessing: ‘Go in peace. And may the God of Israel give you what you’ve asked from him’ (1 Sam 1:17).”

     And finally Job. After Job rails against God and his pseudo-friends for so long, while God is entirely silent, the shocker is that God finally speaks in chapter 38. The lectionary only offers us a few verses; the preacher will need to account for God’s entire speech without explicating every detail. The details are stunning, the poetry and imagery eloquent and vivid; Robert Alter's brief comments in The Wisdom Books, and Francis Anderson's Job are both brilliant on these passages.

     God doesn’t supply simple “answers,” or any smooth theological explanations of why bad things happen to good people. God doesn't explain how the moral calculus works or doesn't. God instead takes Job on a tour of creation – and not the pretty places in creation, but the wild, inaccessible, puzzling, explicable places. God doesn’t point to the house cat or the hunting dog who do our bidding, or a caged parrot. God indirectly suggests to Job that God fashioned, not a neat world where everything fits together snugly and all is fair and placid. It’s dangerous out there, it’s amazing out there, and in here too. The speech clearly undercuts a too-small-God theology – or an anthropocentric theology.

     Partly God invites us to hear God’s voice in nature – and not in the pretty sunsets or photogenic hills with grassy meadows nearby. John Muir, after exploring Yosemite, wrote “As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near to the heart of the world as I can.”

It's worth noting that it's not just the wildness God points to. There's a lot of birthing going on - startling new life. Job cursed the day of his birth, and feels everything is over. But God shows him new life bursting forth in the wild haunts of animals - and even the ocean is spoken of as being birthed.

    Martin Buber, weighing the speech of God in light of the progress of the entire story, suggested wisely that the book of Job guides us from the view that God is cruel (chapters 1-2) to a retributive God (the friends’ speeches in 4-11), to a hidden God (the one who simply refuses to respond to Job through chapters 3-37), and finally then to a God of revelation, a God who is present, relational. Job doesn’t get answers. But Job does get God. Preachers need to help our people to see that God doesn’t float down rewards or blessings or things. God’s gift is… God. Jesus gave them his body and blood – and invited them to continue receiving him. His nickname, after all, is Emmanuel.

Or, as Anderson puts it, “That God speaks at all is enough for Job. All he needs to know is that everything is still all right between himself and God…. It does not matter much what they talk about. Any topic will do for a satisfying conversation between friends.”

    Robert Frost, in The Masque of Reason, imagines God finally explaining everything to Job – and his thinking is maybe the most on point assessment of Job ever written:

I've had you on my mind a thousand years
To thank you someday for the way you helped me
Establish once for all the principle
There's no connection human can reason out
Between their just deserts and what they get.
Virtue may fail and wickedness succeed.
Twas a great demonstration we put on.
I should have spoken sooner…

Too long I've owed you this apology

For the apparently unmeaning sorrow
You were afflicted with in those old days.
But it was of the essence of the trial
You shouldn't understand it at the time.
It had to seem unmeaning to have meaning.
And it came out all right. I have no doubt
You realise by now the part you played
To stultify the Deuteronomist
And change the tenor of religious thought.
My thanks are to you for releasing me
From moral bondage to the human race.
At first… I had to prosper good and punish evil.

You changed all that. You set me free to reign.

You are the Emancipator of your God,
And as such I promote you to a saint.
************

 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.