Dear children, listen to children

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:22-40

There was an image going around Facebook this week of a grown-up letter to Santa. In it, Santa asked the person what they wanted for Christmas, to which the reply was ‘a unicorn.’ Santa replied that was unrealistic, so what did the person really want? This time the reply was ‘five minutes of quiet time all to myself.’ And Santa asked, ‘what color unicorn?’

Now that Jesus is born among us, we’ve got all of these demands on our time. Babies cry when they’re hungry, when they’re tired, when they need a diaper changed, when they want to be held, and don’t even get started on when more than one baby is in the room, or they grow up a little bit and start to fight with each other. I love that tradition of singing ‘Silent Night’ on Christmas Eve, but whoever gave birth to a newborn without making any noise? Noise is the sign that the baby is breathing and alive and healthy!

And it hurts everyone involved to go through those birthing and growing pains. The baby is suddenly cold and out in the open and has to breathe differently in all of this extra space, the mother has just gone through labor, the father has had his fingers crushed by his wife in her pains, or had his heart break by hearing the cries and not being able to fix the pain. Then the rush of new emotions when that little life is suddenly right there to behold, and the sleepless nights, the diapers to change, the spit-up to clean up, baby-proofing everything. Well, except Mary and Joseph didn’t live in a time of baby-proofing. Or medical care. Mothers and babies died in the process of being born far more often than we see today. And even after all of that labor, the mother still had to stay away from the worship space for a time before going through a ritual purifying process to be able to access the temple again. Being created in the Image of a creative God, having just given birth, a woman still wasn’t allowed to re-join corporate worship until she had been cleansed. Which could be either seen as sexism or special care for the new mother, like a day at the spa. What a time of ups and downs this first month of new life can be!

So image having gone through all of that mess and mystery and then a random man in the temple approaches and sings about your baby! Just picks up the kid and worships God, declares that finally he can die in peace because he has met this child. Of course, he says, Mary’s heart will also break a thousand times for all of the trouble this child will have stirred up around him, but it doesn’t take a prophet to know that. This little baby will be all that the people of Israel are called to be - a light to the nations. And by living honestly and with integrity and love, Jesus will bring out our true colors, shine light on our dark places, reveal every insecurity and fear we have ever carried. For if the Truth will set us free, first it needs to be out in the open.

We know this well, we see and hear this when children remind us of the things we have said and done. When my home parish was in the call process for a pastor who admitted his past struggles with a pornography addiction, suddenly the adults in the room got very uncomfortable, and my kid sister, only 18 at the time, stood up in the midst of that church, and spoke directly to them all. She said, “you were my Sunday School teachers, and you taught me about forgiveness. Were you lying?” Because everything we do and say can be seen and imitated by the children around us, we learn from them the way our hearts are revealed in our words and actions. Even the littlest things, that we pay no attention to. Kids see and hear and learn. If you’ve not seen the new film “Into the Woods,” which is also a stage musical, that’s the point and theme repeated there, also. 

We have a responsibility with these kids, with all kids, to live as we dream they might live. To love and accept them as we hope the rest of the big wide world will, too. And it can be exhausting to always watch what we say and do, to always pay attention to everyone’s behavior… which is why we have the reading here today from Galatians. Because we are, all of us, still children. We practice forgiveness every Sunday morning, because we don’t always get it right. We practice community together in worship by passing the peace, because we need to know how to make peace in the rest of our lives. We practice, following the example of Jesus, just like kids follow the example of adults, because we are still becoming who we might be at our best. And Jesus feeds us to give us love and energy for this practice, by welcoming us all to the Table of the Eucharist, where God’s love and forgiveness and welcome are tangible and where we take those gifts into our own bodies, just as Jesus took on a hungry human body, so that no matter how well or how badly our practice goes we can be made whole again and again to keep at it.

But just like children, we fall, we scrape our knees, we stay under the covers when it’s time to get out of bed, we are told to work when we’d rather play, then we get graded, then we take our grades home to God… Because we are God’s children, that makes God our parent. Of course I mean that the other way around - because God is our source and our life, our healer and our care-giver, that makes us God’s children. And what does a loving parent do with a weepy child who gets banged up at school or on the playground? What does a loving parent do with a kid who makes a mess of glue and macaroni to offer a piece of artwork? God scoops that child up in loving arms, God gleefully hangs the macaroni mess on the ‘fridge, God encourages the children and stands up to the bullies and loves them all. God sits down in the sandbox with us, climbs the jungle gym next to us, waits for the school bus beside us, even works on those algebra problems and gets shoved into a locker. God is a child among us, and we are also God’s own children, deeply loved and cared for while we learn how to walk and run and forgive and love.

Thanks be to God.

(In which the Christmas Story gets told via the Book of Judges)

Isaiah 9:2-7

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian [story of Gideon, Judges 6-8]. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Psalm 96

Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless the name of the Lord; proclaim God’s salvation from day to day. Declare God’s glory among the nations and God’s wonders among all peoples. For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, more to be feared than all gods. As for all the gods of the nations, they are but idols; but you, O Lord, have made the heavens. Majesty and magnificence are in your presence; power and splendor are in your sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, you families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord honor and power. Ascribe to the Lord the honor due the holy name; bring offerings and enter the courts of the Lord. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; tremble before the Lord, all the earth. Tell it out among the nations: “The Lord is king! The one who made the world so firm that it cannot be moved will judge the peoples with equity.” Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea thunder and all that is in it; let the field be joyful and all that is therein. Then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy at your coming, O Lord, for you come to judge the earth. You will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with your truth.

Titus 2:11-14

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” 

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

***

In the people who are most hopeless comes the hope for the entire world.

***

Isaiah the prophet calls to mind a story we haven’t heard today, nor do we hear it nearly as often as we need it. The day of Midian, the prophet says. “The rod of their oppressor you have broken as on the day of Midian.” And who really knows the story of Midian? That great and amazing day when God delivered God’s own people yet again from the hands of all who would conquer and obliterate their culture and identity. It is yet another story of God doing what God does, no matter how many times we reject God. It is recorded in the book of Judges, back before we had kings to rule over us, and each of the twelve tribes of Jacob - of Israel - was heavily oppressed by outside nations with lesser gods. Granted, they brought it upon themselves, but God wasn't going to let the people’s wandering infidelity be the last word in our history. So one day, while a man named Gideon was thrashing grain in secret in his family winepress, hiding so that the oppressor wouldn’t know that here was grain they could steal, an angel appeared to him. A messenger of God, come to tell Gideon that God was with him. And Gideon’s response? It may sound familiar: “Yeah, right! If God is with us, why are we suffering? If God is with us, why is life so hard? If God is with us, why do our enemies laugh at us?”

How often have we asked that question? If God is with us, why do people get cancer? If God is with us, why do policemen get shot just for wearing the uniform, and unarmed black and brown men and boys get killed just because other people are nervous around them? If God is with us, why haven’t we fed all the hungry and housed all the homeless yet? If God is with us, why do we get addicted to heroin, or to food, or to shopping? If God is with us, where is our peace?

But the story doesn’t end there. The angel of the Lord tells Gideon that there will be a great battle for freedom, and Gideon himself will lead it. Gideon who is the youngest child in an insignificant clan in an oppressed nation. Gideon who didn’t go looking to be a hero. Gideon isn’t just any hero, though. He doesn’t thrash the Midianites with might and brute force and a greater army or even attack drones. In fact, the first army Gideon gathers is considered too big for God to deliver God’s people with it, so they let go of the soldiers whose hearts just aren’t in it, and still God says there are too many soldiers. From rank upon rank of fighters, God selects a handful, three hundred men who are thirsty enough to lap up the water from a stream rather than take the time to cup it in their hands. It is a small, a laughably small, army, but God liberates the captives by means which we consider foolish. They surround the enemy camp with lights and trumpets, and their shouting and shining causes such confusion in the camp that the enemy basically takes care of destroying itself.

Because in the face of the living God, no enemy can last for long. No plight will remain forever. No sickness or struggle will have the last word. The day of Midian is a day remembered for the way God has set God’s people free neither by might nor a show of extreme power, but by a tiny little group of rabble-rousers and a small little nobody leading them. So that there may be no confusion about who really sets the people free, that it is God, and not our strength, who liberates us.

Which is the whole point of this night. A night where God sets us free from the power of death by putting on mortality, taking on flesh, spending nine months in utero, being born in blood and afterbirth, and growing up on breast milk. Susceptible to skinned knees and a broken heart, able to trip and fall and to lean on others to get up again, knowing hunger and thirst and want. 

Because the biggest problem of sin is that it makes us feel as though we are alone. That we deserve to be alone. That we are the only ones who have ever hurt this way, or sinned this badly, or lost this much, and that we individuals have to protect ourselves first and only because nobody else cares. This is the problem of sin, the weight of loneliness and isolation and division which crushes the life out of us before we have a chance to live. And it doesn’t take self-help books to get out. It doesn’t take the latest technology to get us out. It doesn’t take a bigger paycheck or better vacations to get us out. The way out is to go through, and God goes through it all with us and for us. From day one, when God is born in a stable to an old man and an unwed immigrant mother, God is with us for the long haul. It is the shepherds, themselves outcast and powerless, who are first to be told by the angels to be on the lookout for this new Lord. 

For the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined… For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts has done this. For you. For us all.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The message of the angels

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Luke 1:46b-55
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

"Greetings! Favored one! The Lord is with you!" If not for the Scripture's familiarity with angel appearances, one might expect to also hear "take me to your leader!"
Angels are scary! The next thing this angel says to Mary is "do not be afraid," and for good reason, too. Usually this word of peace is the first thing spoken, but I wonder if the angel wasn't a bit star-struck herself at being able to meet the one God had chosen to carry God's own Self into a fully flesh-and-blood existence. Perhaps a twist on those first words could be something along the lines of "oh, wow, hello you wonderful woman! God is right here inside you, isn't it exciting!" Then Mary gets a bit confused, a little self-conscious, perhaps, and the angel has to return to the usual script: "Do not be afraid!" I mean, seriously, what else can be said?
It's a bit wonderful, though, to consider all the times angels tell people not to be afraid, we come to assume that angels are terrifying. However, it could also be their reputations that stir up so much emotion. Who has ever had their life *not* turned upside down after an encounter with an angel? The three angels that visited Abraham and Sarah brought news both that Sarah was to be a post-menopausal mother and that the neighboring Sodom and Gomorrah were to be destroyed (Genesis 18). The angel that appeared to Gideon greeted him incognito at first, addressing him with the same "the Lord is with you" and turning his entire world upside down (Judges 6). Jacob wrestled all night with an angel and ended up with a limp and a new name (Genesis 32). Those are just the three that come most quickly to my memory, but angels don't just appear and that's it. They appear and our livelihoods and expectations and entire futures are altered. It's not just "don't be afraid even though I'm full of light and just showed up out of nowhere." It's also "don't be afraid, God is about to do a new thing that you hadn't even thought to expect, and it's going to feel like the end of the world for awhile."
Anyone who has experienced pregnancy, or the loss of a pregnancy, knows this experience of an entire world coming into existence. Anyone who has been drafted into military service knows this experience. Anyone who has experienced sudden homelessness or severe illness knows this feeling. Marriages are a new world. Promotions are a new world. Layoffs. Major storms. Winning the lottery. New relationships. As stable as we would like to have our lives, as under control as we would like to seem, something is always changing. We sometimes try to make sense of it, good or tragic, by saying that God is in control and has a plan and brings about all things for a bigger purpose... but God does not cause tragedy. God does not inflict suffering. God does not kill to punish. We have invented a world of suffering and isolation in many and various ways by our own fears and selfish ambitions, and sin hurts and haunts us all. I'm not talking about who's at fault for our individual pains, I'm talking about the over-reaching brokenness which shows up in lots of '-isms' like racism and classism, but is bigger and deeper even than those. The things which unsettle us so that we turn inward and spend our energy trying to save and protect ourselves and our own at any price, cut off from the rest of creation because we feel attacked and threatened.
So the angel says "do not be afraid." Like a surgeon about to start the anesthesia before an operation. "This is going to hurt. This is going to hurt everyone involved. This is also going to save and heal everyone involved." Peace *making* is hard work. Reconciliation is not a light switch we can turn on or off. History is a repetition of retaliations, wars to pay back other wars, and the cycle is impossible to break.
Impossible for any one of us, that is. "Do not be afraid." "The Lord is with you." Nine months in utero, God has experienced waiting and growing, bleeding and breathing, stretching and cramping, eating and all that comes after eating, teething and scraped knees, making friends and being bullied, learning and teaching, walking and sleeping, weeping and wrestling, dying and rising. All that we have ever or will ever experience, "the Lord is with you." All that we fear and celebrate, "do not be afraid." All that we struggle with and take for granted, God is here with us in the flesh, not only to comfort and to guide, but to heal and to save, to do for us that healing and saving work we do not have the power, or at times even the desire, to do for ourselves. Every time our lives are up-ended, or our neighbors face instability, every time the Lord is with us. Every time we are reminded to live in freedom, and not in fear. Because for all of the ways the world continues to change, for all of the ways we have to adapt and wish we could just rest instead, for every moment of newness which takes us off-guard and rocks our world, God is with us, and we are not only told not to be afraid, but we don't have to be afraid. We don't have to fear anything any more, not even death. Because God has come. God has come and lived among us, and died among us, and returned to life among us, for us, that we might never fear death again.

I am not the Messiah

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

John 1:6-8, 19-28

I am not the Messiah!  After nearly a year here, I think that’s been made pretty obvious. And it’s not just because I pick hymns nobody knows, tell terrible jokes, and sometimes oversleep my alarm clock. It’s because… well, it’s because I am NOT the Messiah. I’m just not. Nothing I do will change that. No amount of training, no online certification course, no great acts of charity, even. If somehow everything we wanted out of my call process were to happen overnight, and we’d suddenly have a hundred people in the pews on a regular basis, with more money for mission than we knew what to do with, and new front steps, and an answer to the Heroin problem in New York, and a surefire way to cure alcoholism, and more outreach ministries than Willow Creek or the Crystal Cathedral, if everyone understood tithing as a joyful faith practice and knew all of the Bible backwards and forwards and spoke in tongues of angels… not a one of us here or in that imagined future would be the Messiah.

But it would be nice if we could just fix the world and make it all whole and healthy and safe for everyone in every place on the planet. It would be wonderful if we actually banded together as a common humanity and ended world hunger (because we could, if we all participated). What would be even more amazing would be if we could end the wars and never worry about being afraid of other people just because we don’t know them yet. If we could make a world where there wasn’t any lasting sorrow, where depression and anxiety and schizophrenia and cancer and AIDS just didn’t exist any more. Where we didn’t have to choose when to tell our children about violence and history and strangers and how to show themselves to be non-threatening, or even consider the possibility of bullies of any age.

It would be nice, and we sure have a lot of work to do if we’re going to move in that direction, but it’s not our work that gets us to a place like that. The Messiah is the one who loves us with that perfect love that casts out fear. The Messiah is the one who saves us from ourselves. The Messiah is the one we are waiting for.

And I am NOT the Messiah. And neither are you. And I find tremendous hope in that. A ridiculous amount of relief that, believe it or not, it is not my job to save the world. Or even the church, for that matter. It is not the youth or the historians or the traditions or the innovations that will save us. Not new pastors or ancient practices. Not books or ministries or money or medicine. We put far too much trust, far too much pressure, on this world to heal itself of its own devices and willpower. It’s like telling an addict to quit cold turkey without any support. Or telling a kid to feel better after they’ve been bullied and leaving it at that.  It’s relying on a house of cards to think that we or anything we do will save us.

Today’s word from the reading of the Gospel of John is a word of hope for a weary world. We’ve got compassion fatigue from all of the need around and within ourselves. There are so many people to care for, to reach out to, to stand up for. Who’s got the energy for that? Jesus does. Here we are in Advent, waiting for the coming Messiah, and even the best of preachers - John the Baptizer - has to step back and remind the religious leaders that he’s not the one they’re looking for. Like a Jedi doing that mind trick: “These are not the droids you’re looking for. I am not the Messiah you are looking for.”

In fact, the one we are looking for, John says, is already among us, and we don’t recognize him. The Son of God, Eternal Savior, is already here, living and loving among us, walking with us in our everyday ups and downs, carrying us through the exceptional ups and downs, and we’ve gotten so accustomed to the world as it is we’ve missed the world as it was made to be. But every time a kid shares a sandwich with somebody who’s hungry, or a neighbor takes care of another neighbor, or somebody says to the visitor “here’s how we do what we do,” or a police officer dances with people at the local block party, or somebody in the coffee line pays it forward to give the person behind them a drink, it’s still here in our midst. And every time we mess up on those little gifts of grace and need forgiveness, Jesus is in our midst to make us more whole.

Because for everything I am NOT, Jesus says “I AM.” It’s that old Biblical name God told to Moses from the burning bush as God was leading the people out of slavery into freedom. The Gospel of John is full of moments where Jesus tells us who he is. I AM the Bread of Life. I AM the living water. I AM the way, and the truth and the life. I AM the light of the world. And we need that light now in these days as they grow ever darker. We need that light to shine on us and guide our feet into the way of peace. We need that light, and that light which is the life of all people is already among us. We need that bread, and that water, and they are already here, Table and Font. We need a way, a lasting Truth, a life to live fully, and Jesus has walked the way of the cross, forgiven our every sin, and given us his life eternal by the power of the resurrection. 

To say that I am not the Messiah is very freeing, indeed, because it is an admission that I am powerless to save myself, let alone anyone else. And in that admission, I am free to rest in the arms of a loving God. The very same God who carries us all, who saves us all, who loves this blessed and weary world into wholeness by walking in it.

Waiting on the Immediate

Isaiah 40:1-11

2 Peter 3:8-15a

Mark 1:1-8

Announcing the Good News

Welcome to week two of Advent. Where we are waiting. Again. I mean, still. We are still waiting. Sometimes it feels like all we ever do is wait. A bunch of us waited for the bus last night to get us home from the city. It was raining. It had been raining all day for our trip to the city. Ann and Garrett waited in line for an hour to get into the sneaker convention. While it was raining. Two weeks ago we had to wait for the plows - thank you, Gary - to get us unstuck after Wednesday’s snow storm. Everyone’s waiting in line for groceries and presents and decorations for Christmas. Or waiting for planes and trains and busses to get families together over the holidays. Waiting for Christmas vacation from school. Waiting for news from the hospital. Waiting for that one family member to sober up this year, waiting for a job application to go through, waiting for some good news about the police force and relations with the black community. 

Israel, that nation named for wrestling with God, is familiar with waiting. After exile to Babylon, they may have gotten somewhat comfortable in their new location, marrying with the locals and starting up new lives in that place to which they had been stolen in war. But even before that, they were used to waiting while they traveled from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. They had waited for freedom while they lived under oppression, until the plagues of God had descended - fire, and hail, and blood, and locusts - and they could begin the journey to that promised land flowing with milk and honey. 

When the prophet Isaiah speaks tenderly to Jerusalem, that her penalty is paid, she has received from the Lord double for her sins, and the Presence of the Lord will once again be revealed among them, the people of Israel have been scattered for a long time. In their absence, life limped on in that sort of mess you’d expect after being conquered by an outside power. Yet now the exiled and the remnant were to be reunited, and that terrible foe would fade like the grass, leaving only the Word of the Lord. Only that good word of new life and freedom, a fresh start.

Wouldn’t we like that word? Some fresh start, some great reunion, some clarity of vision and purpose in the middle of all of these holiday commercials and the noise of everything? We’ve been waiting, hoping, dreaming, for something better, something fulfilling, something restful and holy and healing.

With all of the clutter around us, all of the busy-ness, it seems there just isn’t time. Everything keeps getting in the way, good and wasteful alike. It would be nice to just clear the table, empty the schedule, silence the noise.

Which is where John the Baptizer meets us this morning. Last week we were in the end times, but today we gather at the start of things. “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Out in the wilderness, John preaches a baptism of repentance, and with all that God has done with us in wilderness places, with so many stories of God’s faithfulness in feeding us with manna and directing our journeying, it seems the wilderness is the best place to start again… again. Wilderness places can be confusing, confounding, ridiculous lost times and spaces where nothing seems certain. They are places of waiting. As we are waiting in this season of Advent. But our waiting is different now than it was then. We live on the other side of these stories even while we live inside of them.

Because John is out in the wilderness with us, leading us to repentance, to clearing up the clutter and making way for our God to be among us… and immediately, God is already here. Immediately. Everything in Mark happens ‘immediately,’ and this is the first thing. The first beginning of the Good News. It happens in the wilderness. And the voice cries out in the wilderness: “clear a path! Make God’s road direct!” Which, actually, is Mark’s favorite word. Not ‘direct,’ but a closer translation from the Greek is: “Make God’s road immediate!” It’s nearer than we imagined, closer than we thought possible. The path between God and God’s people is immediate. It’s not a path we forge. It’s not a naughty and nice list we keep score on to see how close God might get this time.

The Epistle reading just about sums it up. In this second letter to Peter, we hear that God is patient, that a thousand years are like a day, that God is waiting with us. In line at the grocery store. In those last few minutes before the school bell rings. At that bedside and in that doctor’s office. On that street where Eric Garner was strangled, and in that police station and with that jury. In the rain and outside the preschool. Everywhere you wait, God waits with you. Every time you call on God to be present, to protect, to comfort, to guide, God is immediately there already. Each time you turn around, repent, notice that life needs to be better, or at least different, God is already there with you. Immediately.

The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is just the beginning. Throughout the telling of this first chapter, we find that after his baptism, Jesus is immediately driven into the wilderness, he immediately calls and names disciples, immediately feeds and heals and teaches, immediately is arrested and crucified and risen. It doesn’t seem that God has much patience when it comes to closing that gap between us, to leveling the playing field so that all may be fed and nourished, welcoming and embracing and sending us back into the world from this Table.

So whether you find yourself in the wilderness today or at an oasis, God has already cleared a way to you, through all of your clutter, to be immediately with you, within you, beside you. Because that’s just what God does, regardless of what we put in the way. That’s just who God is, crucified and risen among us. Prepare ye the way of the Lord.

Beginning of the end of the world

Isaiah 64:1-9

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Mark 13:24-37

***

Wake up! Advent is a season of waiting, but sometimes it feels like we’ve forgotten what we’re waiting for. Or that we’ve settled for what we’ve got because what we’re waiting for is taking too long to get here. I wonder how many people have hollered at God to wake up?

This past Monday I felt like yelling at God to wake up. I know God doesn’t actually sleep, but I couldn’t either, after the news from Ferguson. The same day I saw that news, there was a twelve year old kid shot and killed on a playground in Cleveland, because somebody called 911 on him for playing with a toy gun in public. Kids see guns everywhere, turn sticks and even Barbie dolls into guns, they play cops and robbers all the time. But tensions are higher in some communities than others, and we stop seeing each other as people when we see only the weapons and threats we might be.

In Chatham this might not seem to be news we need to consider. One story is from Missouri. Another from Ohio. But the church of God is bigger than place, and in the Body of Christ, when one part of the body suffering, all suffer together, just like we celebrate together when new parishes open, and we send food and money to world hunger as much as we do to local pantries. It is because God has connected us all together. Because God has cared for us so much, we are drawn to care for each other, even when all we can do is pray.

But it is precisely the problem of being divided - and I don’t mean by opinions or politics, I mean set against one another, or over and beneath each other - which the prophets bemoan. We can look at national and global news as a way to see ourselves more clearly, to think about those stories like the parables we have, where we put ourselves in the shoes of a few of the character types and consider what we would do, what we would wish we could do, what we would like others to do concerning us. We are part of this history just by being alive now. My kid sister was born the year the Berlin Wall came down. I was a freshman in college when the World Trade Center fell. The world we live in is different after those events, in ways we are still coming to terms with. And if our faith, and our hope, don’t say something about how to live in the here and now, then what good is it?

Yet the world isn’t all that different. History keeps repeating itself. It’s like the Old Testament prophets have the best job security, because we are always getting stuck in these cycles of fear and broken behaviors, so the prophets’ words of hope and peace are always relevant. As people beg God to wake up, God also begs us to wake up. To recognize our interconnectedness and our mutual dependence on someone and something greater than ourselves. The Body of Christ is riddled with cancers and gangrene for all of the ways we cut one another off and only share with those with whom we agree. We need a good and capable surgeon, strong medicine, and the desire to live, in order to recover. We need resurrection.

Advent is a time of waiting, but it is not passive. Waiting, and working, like Gandhi has said, to be the change we wish to see in the world, is expectant and hopeful. I’m not talking about the waiting in line for Black Friday deals, hoping to get the best price on a new television. I’m talking about waking up to the presence of our loving, creative God, here among us and between us. I’m talking about the waiting to see how God will bring about reconciliation and new life, as God has a history of doing even when we turn the other way. I’m talking about the end of the world as we know it. The end of the fighting and the fear. The end that must come so that we can be reborn into newness of life.

This is what we are waiting for. What we are hoping for. O that You would tear open the heavens and come down! That your children would stop fighting! That the nations would stop warring. That the hungry would be fed, and the naked sheltered. That our hearts would know true peace and every man, woman, and child would be welcomed and embraced and safe, here, and in Ohio, and in Ferguson, and around the world! That every pain we know, and have known, and might yet know, would not be our ultimate end.

That is the promise of Advent, brothers and sisters. Even at the end of the world, God will be there with us. Even at the end of everything - at the end of our rope, at the end of our patience, at the end of our strength and our joy and our life - there will be the promised Messiah. For every beginning must follow an ending. And we are beginning a new year, looking for the beginning of new life. Keep awake, therefore. Resurrection has already begun.

Christ the Shepherd-King

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 95:1-7a
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25: 31-46

This may not seem like a very good story to us, in fact the Swedish church calls today the Sunday of Doom for all of its Day of Judgment language, but to those who first heard it, I wonder if it was not the best news. Matthew was written primarily to a Jewish audience, that’s why there are so many references to the prophets being fulfilled, it’s why the publishers put it first after the Old Testament. That word for ‘the nations,’ those people who are separated into sheep and goats, are the Gentiles, are those who are not part of the original tribes, are the neighbors who are not Israelites but who still interact with Jews day in and day out, and if you’re a Jew, this is a great story! The ones who heard it first were not the sheep or the goats, they were ‘the least of these my brothers.’ Think of it! The people who have bullied you for ages, ignored your needs, refused to offer shelter, will be punished for it, and those who showed you some kindness when you most needed it will not only not be punished, but will be able to spend eternal life with you! What a great way to offer reward to those who take care of God’s own chosen people!

And then we have the good news in the first reading from the prophet Ezekiel. God’s gonna get those fat sheep bullies who have pushed us around and pushed us out and made us suffer for so long. And God will finally feed the world with justice. Justice! I want to shout that like I’m in Bravehart. “FREEDOM! JUSTICE!” 

Because today is Christ the King Sunday. Which is a huge political statement. It’s only been the name of the last Sunday of Pentecost, the last Sunday of the church year, for a few decades, since 1969. With all of the terrible world leaders we have survived, all of the dictators and tyrants, all of the schoolyard bullies and workplace harassers, it’s a statement of faith that the ultimate authority rests not in those who misuse their power to serve only themselves, but that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to a God who has come to dwell with us in our pain and raise us up.

See, this Gospel is told among a people who have been shunned and shamed and cast out of their childhood churches, expelled from the family synagogue. It is told to those who are more than familiar with hunger, cold, prison, and the like. It is a Gospel of a God who lives among the poor and outcast. And if we cannot recognize God among the hungry, naked, thirsty stranger, then only a few days after Jesus tells this story he becomes all of these things on the cross. Betrayed by his friends, beaten, imprisoned, given a ‘trial’ that’s a joke, stripped of his clothing and hung out to dry, Jesus has experienced every kind of injustice and pain named in this story, and then some. 

And this hungry, thirsting, naked God is the one in whose hands are the caverns of the earth and the heights of the hills. The one who is the rock of our salvation, who made the sea and molded the dry land, is the one who has called us to a hope beyond the stretches of our imagination. He has endured the worst of our world and promised to remain in it with us, hidden in plain sight among the ones who are so often ignored. That kid without a friend at the high school lunch table? That kid bears the Image of Christ. Al, who collects cans and rides his bike around the village, drunk or sober? He bears the Image of Christ. The heroin addict, the jobless, the one who has never been able to make ends meet and works their fingers to the bone? They all bear the Image of Christ. In all of our brokenness, our hunger, our thirst, our need and our want, we, too, bear the Image of Christ, who was broken for us that we might be made whole.

And this One who remains hidden among us, this is the One who will always come to us, who has promised us salvation, who sees and feels and knows all of our hidden secrets? Indeed He lives there still. His death and resurrection are the hope and new life of all of us, the entire flock, every one of us both sheep and goat. For Christ is King. And the King is a Shepherd. And the Good Shepherd lays down his life for us all.

Amen.

The Door Isn't Shut, The Door Has Been Smashed

Amos 5:18-24
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13

This is such a hard parable. All week long there was weeping and gnashing of teeth on the clergy Facebook group. Where is the good news that is actually good? Where is the Gospel? Where is Jesus in this parable?

Because at first, it seems straightforward, simple, clear and easy to untangle. End times are coming, the bridegroom is taking awhile longer than we expected, the girls who had been trained in scouting came prepared, and those foolish ones who expected the groom to be on time ran out of oil. Now, whoever has been to a wedding and expected the wedding party to make it to the reception in good time has probably never lived through the hours of professional photography after the ceremony, which inevitably delay bride and groom and party from showing up to the party in less than two hours’ time. But nevertheless, there was some unpreparedness on the part of those foolish bridesmaids which serves as a warning to the rest of us who are also waiting for the end of the age, the second coming, the final fulfillment of all things.

We can look to the Prophet Amos for a hint as to what oil those bridesmaids carried. The righteousness and justice God desires, the works of faith, hope, and charity, opening a community to the socially undesirable, these are the oils which keep those lamps burning through the night. Why hide under a bushel the hope that is in us? Why not burn brightly with works of love?

But that’s not what we’re getting at here. I mean, it is. But it also isn’t, because it’s more than that. Amos delivers a firey message from a jealous, angry, vengeful God, to a people who would rather make certain their worship is beautiful than take care of their neighbors. A people who have forgotten that worship is rehearsal for the rest of the week, that the passing of the peace is meant to extend outside of the walls of the sanctuary, and the Table at which we are fed means we go and feed others who are hungering for community. The people Amos speaks God’s words to have closed themselves off from their neighbors, have decided they will remain unsullied by the outside world, and have separated God’s community into those they themselves deem worthy or otherwise. A bit like those bridesmaids the Gospel calls ‘wise,’ who refuse to share their oil with the ones who did not bring enough. Now, yes, they had a point that they probably would not have had enough for their own lamps to be full - but what sort of bridegroom does not have light at his own party?

If Amos had met those characters in the Gospel story today, he would have had those same words for the ones called ‘wise’ that he had for the people of his day. Unless, of course, we read that the oil is works of charity, faith, and hope. In which case, the lesson to be had is that you can’t expect everyone else to do all of the loving so that you don’t have to. If the ‘foolish’ bridesmaids expected what Bonhoeffer calls ‘cheap grace,’ they would have been foolish to take their welcome for granted, to feel entitled to the party even though they had contributed nothing to the bridegroom. He did, after all, tell them he did not even know them. And crashing the wedding party of a stranger just isn’t kosher.

So there are a couple of ways this parable can be read. So far the possibilities have all pointed to the question of ‘what must I do to be saved?’ To make sure we’re not the ones left outside in the cold and the dark, on the other side of a door that’s never going to open to us, how do we make sure we’ve got enough oil?

Amos is clear that God cares about the whole community and gets angry when we leave people out. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians is meant to comfort those who are afraid their loved ones who have died will miss out on the second coming, because God cares about everyone who has ever lived, not just those who are alive, awake, alert, and enthusiastic right now. Matthew’s parable in light of these other readings is, to put it lightly, problematic. Even without the other readings, it can raise one’s anxiety to unhealthy levels. Looking forward to the end of this present age is mostly hopeful for those whose current situation is one of powerlessness, despair, and dread, but this parable seems to just increase despair, rather than to relieve it.

That’s only if it’s read out of context. Like most end of the world stories, to take it out of context will muddle it nearly beyond recognition. We’ve got to know the audience this story is being told to if we’re going to make sense of it. Can’t read the book of Revelation and expect to make heads or tails of it without knowing what was going on in history. If I quote movies and news stories in my sermons that nobody here has seen or heard about, they’re not going to make sense, either. And please tell me if I start doing that so I can fix my preaching accordingly.

In the context of Matthew’s Gospel, this parable is not the whole story. It’s kind of a starting point for thinking about the world we’re looking forward to. Kind of a test of our expectations. It’s in the context of a longer story that began with ‘the beginning of the Good News’ and ends with Jesus telling the disciples ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’ 

In Matthew’s Gospel, this parable ends with an exhortation to ‘keep awake!’ even though all ten bridesmaids fell asleep while waiting for the bridegroom. Who else fell asleep even though Jesus asked them to keep awake? The disciples in the garden. When all else fails in understanding a passage of Scripture, we Lutherans look to the cross of Jesus. As the scenario plays out, where the bridesmaids had fallen asleep, so did the disciples. They fell asleep, then they ran away, but they were gathered again after the resurrection.

Not only that, but there is an image in the parable of a door being shut, right? A door between God and people, presumably. We’ve got all sorts of places and ways that we put up this door. Either somebody needs to get sober and cleaned up before we welcome them to church, or they need to have complete and unquestioning faith before they are allowed to come to the Table, or something like that. Which is nonsense. But we do it all the time, even to ourselves. Are we faithful enough as a people of God for God to take care of us? How do we know? Where are the signs of success? Serious questions, but they put up a door.

Here, then, is the Good News. There was a sort of door in the temple, a fabric between the holy of holies and the people, a tapestry with the heavens embroidered upon it, and only the high priest could pass beyond that tapestry, once a year, to speak directly to God on behalf of the people, and then vice versa. They even tied a rope around his ankle that trailed out behind him, so that if he died on the other side of that door, they could pull him back out without passing through the door themselves. This door, this curtain, was destroyed at the crucifixion. When Jesus died on the cross, Matthew tells us that the curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom. That door between humanity and God was not just opened to all, it was shattered, rent, destroyed so that nothing could ever again come between us.

So no matter where you feel your oil levels are today - high from a beautiful fall day, low from seasonal sadness, or somewhere in between - no matter how brightly you feel your light is burning, or if it seems to be burning at all, Jesus has broken down the door and come to meet us. He knows each of our hearts and has promised to be with us even to the end of the age, even as we are waiting for him. It’s a weird thing that he can do with time, to be with us while we wait for him, but he has promised it. The Spirit gives us courage, and community, in the waiting time. So keep awake for all of the wonderful things God is doing in and around you in these days. Keep awake to be surprised by the Spirit’s work. Keep awake to find Jesus in the people and situations you will meet in the coming week. Because God is here, and God is there, and God has broken down the door to be with us all, always.

Neither Sin nor Time

Revelation 7:9-17

1 John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

Last night at Mass down the street, we sang one of my favorite hymns, “I am the Bread of Life.” For the last few years, that song has almost been impossible for me to get through. It was one of the keystones of our church drama group in college, which we sang together after our play about the raising of Lazarus. It was the hymn we sang in full-voiced chorus, with clapping and an extra refrain, at the funeral of the theater professor who had created and directed that drama group since the eighties. I still can not quite sing it through in full voice, not if I’m paying attention, because I want so desperately for the words to come true - right now. “And I will raise you up on the last day!” It is a hymn which brings back to me all of the deep love from that funeral, and not only our love and loss when our director died, but the love and passion he gave to us in service of making the Scriptures come alive among us.

I am tempted to make this worship today a tribute to all of those who have died, all who we miss terribly, all who have left their mark on us and are no longer physically among us to interact with. I am tempted to make it that and to leave it at that. We have this activity before us, this chain of saints to put together as a visual reminder of the great cloud of witnesses, an idea offered by the living witnesses of ELCA clergy on Facebook. But even as we celebrate the impact these saints have made on our lives and in the world, remembering how the world has changed since they’ve gone, or since we’ve moved and changed, it is only a small glance into the larger celebration to come.

When we gather around the Table, we pray “with the choirs of angels, with the church on earth and the hosts of heaven.” That means this little table here is connected by some Mystery to every other table where people gather for the Lord’s Supper, and when we gather at it for prayer and eating together, we are eating and praying with everyone who has ever eaten and prayed around this Meal. Which is pure gift. It is not something we can ever earn or understand, it is just given to us. This amazingly global community that God has brought together by his sacrifice for us. The same Body and Blood of Christ shared throughout the ages, where we may not see anymore at the table those who have died, but they are there gathered with us. It still is yet a foretaste of the feast to come, but God knows what and who we bring to this Table when we gather together, both the joy and the struggle.

If we were not moved by those who loved us, it would not ache so deep when they left us. And “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” is a word Jesus speaks for us, today. There is also the beatitude of hungering and thirsting after righteousness, being filled in that hunger. How many of our saints have lived with that sort of thirst, for a more just world? And the meek, the poor in spirit, the merciful, the pure of heart… Jesus holds up these types of people before the disciples as reminders to them of the diversity of people who make up the kingdom of God. The people they will meet in their journeys, whom the world will misunderstand and deride and shame and even throw away or ignore completely or downright persecute, these people, all appearances to the contrary, are blessed.

They are blessed, not because they have earned it, but because Jesus says so. Because Jesus welcomes them, embraces them, walks with them in their grief and their hunger and their mercy. Just as Jesus is the one who makes saints of our beloved dead, and of us even here and now, Jesus is the one who makes blessing root and grow in the most unexpected of places. 

Whomever you have named on your slip of paper, whomever you remember today in our prayers, know that they are with you at this Table, that all of us are united in the love and grace and mercy of a God who has done all that is necessary to bring us together into a single communion. Children of God, you have been claimed by Christ, our beloved dead have been claimed by Christ, we celebrate this day that the love, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, has destroyed this barrier of death which would keep us from God and from each other. Sin can no longer have the final word over us, and neither can time, no matter how it marches on. I wear the color of Easter today as a reminder to that promise of resurrection, which has been secured for us by the blood of his cross. For the saints gone before, for the saints of today, and for all who are yet to come.

Semper Reformata

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46

Romans 3:19-28

John 8:31-36

When I was visiting seminaries during my senior year of college, I took a train over Reformation Day weekend to visit the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and heard this first reading from Jeremiah read during morning chapel, after having just heard it in daily prayer on my university campus. There was a difference, though - in college, the reading went: “a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.” At the seminary chapel the reader said: “a covenant that they broke, though I was married to them, says the Lord.”

I was stunned. I understood what they were trying to do at the seminary, be all gender-inclusive and such, but the word ‘husband,’ it just has so much more to it. Especially in light of these vineyard stories we’ve heard of late, the word husband brings up images of husbandry, of the arts of raising up a garden or animal to their very best, for show and awards at the fair. Husbandry takes a particular attention to detail, a care for the best of the whole, a devotion.

But all through college, too, we switched up gendered language for God. It honestly drove me crazy for a very long time. I was introduced to this idea in high school, of picturing God as a Father sending his son to war, or as a mother sending her son to war. In college we did this thing where God occasionally had her gender erased so that there weren’t any pronouns at all. “In the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth, God made humankind in God’s own image, male and female God created them…” Neither ‘he’ nor ‘she,’ and it drove me up a wall. 

This isn’t a lecture on gender, though. No, the male or female debate is just one way of many that we put God in a box. That we think we know who we’re dealing with and how the great game works, and who wins, and how, and at what price. Today being Reformation Sunday, I’m going especially to use Martin Luther as an example of where that can get us: Luther in his youth and early career knew that God was vengeful and angry, full of wrath and demanding purity from any who would dare to ask admittance into heaven. Whether that meant God was like the old image of ‘a woman scorned’ or an angry Zeus-like character who threw thunderbolts, it was a vengeful God who frightened Luther into hours spent in confession and cycles of self-abasement and dreadful fear. Everywhere Luther turned he found a God who was angry, disappointed, condemning, and so holy that nowhere could Luther ever have hope to come near for grace and forgiveness.

But then, as the story goes, Luther was studying the Word of God while taking care of some very human needs, and he was grabbed by the sudden reality of Grace in a way that had not spoken to him before. Rather than finding himself never good enough, never righteous enough, never pure enough, which had driven him to such despair, he found in the Scriptures the free gift of Christ, the reality of forgiveness, and his freedom.

Suddenly Luther’s entire experience of God was turned on its head. Where before his religion had been running on fear, working himself raw to be good enough for God’s love and mercy, when in time of plague and poverty it seemed logical to think God was punishing the world for abject sinfulness, in meeting the living Christ, Luther found the heart and soul of his life-giving faith. No more fear of a vengeful God. No more ‘woman scorned’ or ‘firey thunderbolt’, God was suddenly gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love!

Not that God had actually been anything else before, but in Luther’s experience, in his anxious nights awake and the way he thought of humanity compared to God, this was a revelation. 

It was a sort of ‘coming out,’ as someone who might fully expect to be shunned and shamed but instead found a welcome with open arms and an equal place at the Table. It was a liberal community actually fully welcoming a conservative. It was Jacob expecting to fight or flee from Esau when they reunited, but being embraced instead by this brother whom he had cheated so long ago. 

See, Reformation Sunday is the celebration of the way the Holy Spirit continues to surprise us. It is a conversion story that keeps on happening to all of us, a welcome that startles and unsettles us, a truth about a God who sets us free. This is not a historic remembrance of a moment that was once long ago and is done and finished and only part of the history books. It is a celebration of the continuing work of God making God’s Self known to us in whatever way that brings us most alive.

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant… I will be their God and they will be my people… I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”

Two years after I visited LSTC as a college student, I entered school there, and on Reformation Day found myself visiting a local Catholic parish with an amazing liturgy, where we acknowledged our historical divide and shared worship together. After that service of worship I wrote an article for the seminary weekly, where I mentioned ‘those of us who follow in Luther’s footsteps.’ Oh, I was only a first-year student at the time, but was still soundly reminded by one of the wiser, more experienced senior “we don’t follow Luther, we follow Jesus!” Of course she was right. We may call ourselves Lutheran, but Luther didn’t save us. Luther wasn’t God in the flesh among us. He was a vessel, a servant, a saint among saints who struggled with daily life and faith and found a gracious God where for too long he had only experienced grief over his own failings. May we, also, find that gracious God among us, doing a new thing, writing love on our hearts, and freedom. Because God is among us, gracious and merciful, continuing to re-form, to re-shape our lives and the world around us by the powerful grace and truth of our reconciliation in Christ Jesus. 

Thanks be to God.

The Company Store?

Isaiah 45:1-7
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

Some people say a man is made out of mud. A poor man’s made out of muscle and blood. Muscle and blood, and skin and bone. A heart that’s weak and a back that’s strong. You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.

I used to love this song as a kid. Don’t know where I first heard it, mom’s oldies radio station or one of those things that looks like a CD only bigger, with one long scratch in it - a record. But I loved the range and the music, and it probably wasn’t until I read stories like “Of Mice and Men” that I even knew what the singer was going on about. And I am so glad we don’t have those indentured servant villages any more. No more share cropping. Well, at least we don’t have them by that name. Instead we’ve got “Payday advance!” and the like, which might help once or twice in a pinch, but start one of those spirals when you take a loan on money that you haven’t got yet to pay a bill, then the next check buys the last one, and you’re waiting for the next again, living hand to mouth at best. 

I know here in Chatham that might seem like a far away thing. Granted, I’m going to pay twice my seminary bill in the next twenty years thanks to interest rates, but that’s an unseen sort of payday advance. One of many quieter, sneakier, more commonly ignored forms of ‘owing my soul to the company store,’ as it were.

And it’s not just currency, not only dollars and cents, temple tax and tributes to Caesar, that we’re talking about, either. These obvious examples are easy to hide behind when it comes to the real depth of our debt. When Martin Luther died, it is reported that his last words were “we are all beggars, it is true.” And not many, if any, of us really know what it feels like to have to beg, I’ll bet.

Instead, we have social expectations. Unwritten rules to follow. Expectations to live up to. Debt to the bigger picture. Debt to the credit cards, sure, but debt to the things that got us into debt in the first place. The proving of our worth. The setting up a household of which we can be proud when the neighbors drop by. The social status which we have inherited and worked for, which must be maintained or improved upon. I cannot tell you how many people I have met in my lifetime who would come back to church if only they had their own house in order, if only they had their life together, if only they knew they could keep it together and not fall apart at that one hymn or the sight of that one person.  People who feel like impostors if they can’t carry a tune or follow in the bulletin as well as their neighbor in the pew.

Well, in case we ever lose sight of it, let me point out: we’re all lost here. All in debt. All beggars in one form or another. On the surface of it, none of us can claim to be self-made: somebody before us had to know about the birds and the bees. We owe our existence to at least two people, maybe doctors and lab technicians, too. Then the folks who built our homes, or printed the books we learned from, or sweated over the clothes we wear... not to mention those who print these little green pieces of paper, who mint those small silver and copper coins, and those whose faces are on that paper and those coins.

If we are to ‘give to Caesar what it Caesar’s,’ to return to FDR every dime with his face on it, to Lincoln every dollar. If we return to China everything marked ‘made in China,’ forefit the government’s involvement in Social Security, and the insurance companies’ hold on money for our hospital bills and cars and homes and eventual funerals...

We are indebted to many systems. We have put our trust in many things. Money is only one of those things, though it is more often than not the small god in which we put our trust. That’s why we don’t consider it polite to talk about money, neither giving it nor spending it nor being held accountable with it. Money has power. Money speaks. Put your money where your mouth is, and your budget and your checkbook will show what you really value.

But behind all of those debts, behind all of these loans we take and these other things we trust to take care of us, are the bigger things, the deeper fears and insecurities.

What if someone finds out I don’t always have faith? What if I have the wrong faith? What if I fall when I most need to stand? What if I fail my children or my parents? What if my friends leave me? What if I get sick? What if I am left alone? What if...?

Where does everything else we fall back on disappear to when we most need these sorts of answers? When we can no longer run or hide from the realities of life and mortality? When we grieve? When things change? Will Caesar save us? Will Caesar defend us? Will Caesar live up to the hope we have put in his protecting us?

No, Caesar will also die. Caesar will fall and be replaced by other Caesars, or Kaisers as the German puts it. Neither Caesar nor those pretty coins with his face and inscription will ever really be able to save us.

Give to God the things that are God’s. The hearts that God made. The minds that God formed. The bodies that God breathed life into. The lives that God died to save.

Give to God the things that are God’s. The harvest that grew in the light and the sun and the rain and the ground that God created. The hands and the feet that God strengthened and made skilled for God’s work. The hopes and visions that God planted through prophets and dreams and communities living together. 

Give to God the things that are God’s and watch God do amazing, resurrection work with you. For you are one of those who belong to God. Who came from God and are claimed by God and will rest in God.

Give to God the things that are God’s - all of your insecurities and questions and doubts and dreams and disappointments and griefs and joys. Every last bit of you belongs to God, including the mess, and God not only knows it all but wants it all and will transform it all. Those wrestlings, questions, curiosities, even people’s complicated hypocrisies, are made new in the light of Christ, reformed in the reality of the resurrection. 

God has come to give God’s entire self for our sake. Something that Caesar, try as he might, can never have done. Something that lasts far longer than any Empire the Caesars have tried to build. World without end, remember? 

Some people say a man is made out of mud. Some say a man is made out of stardust. Our Scriptures seem pretty intent that we are all, men and women and children, made in the Image of God, restored with the Image of Christ. That Image will outlast any image or inscription on a coin or even in a window. That God - this God - will neither leave us nor forsake us. As Isaiah the prophets reminds us this morning, God says “I am the Lord, and there is no other.” We owe our souls to nobody - we are free because our ultimate debts have been paid. Our lives belong to the giver of life, the lover of us all, who by the freely given sacrifice of his death has given us life upon life everlasting. Caesar can have what he thinks belongs to him - we belong to Christ.

Imagining our God

Isaiah 25:1-9

Psalm 23

Philippians 4:1-9

Matthew 22:1-14

What a strange mix of readings we have this morning! From Paul’s letter we hear of a God of peace, from Isaiah we hear praises of a God who has made the fortified city a ruin, yet spreads a table of rich abundance, and then here in the Gospel of Matthew we have another parable that ends with weeping and gnashing of teeth! It’s no wonder people get confused about God when we’ve got images like this all over Scripture!

Not that I’ve got it all figured out, either. I may have a degree that’s called a “Master of Divinity,” but I do believe that sort of title is more of an oxymoron. If we could master Divinity, fully understand the Divine, we’d be gods ourselves, and I shudder to think of what would happen if our world had the kinds of gods we’ve seen people try to be throughout history.

So taking a look at the Gospel reading, which is always a good place to start: The kingdom of heaven has been compared to a king. A human king. The best illustrations we have are from our own experience. So in our experience, this king behaves just as any human king would. When he throws a party and the invited guests snub him, he goes all slash-and-burn on them and gathers in as many people from the leftovers as possible to make sure all of that great feast doesn't go to waste. Of course, those who enter his party have to play by his rules, have to wear his brand, and when that one guy shows up at the party - and there’s always one at every party - who just doesn’t agree to the terms… Matthew’s Gospel often uses the phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” To the point that after awhile it’s almost comical. I listened to the Gospel of Matthew on my drive to the 8-mile run yesterday, and by the last time they used that phrase, the voice actor just took this big pause “where there will be weeping and … gnashing of teeth.” Like he was tired of saying it over and over again. 

And I think we’re tired of hearing it over and over again. Tired of the threats of fire and brimstone, threats of punishment, threats of human kings who go on senseless rampages when their feelings get hurt. The kingdom of God has been compared to a king like this for so long, we’ve forgotten what the king of the cross looks like.

So far in Matthew, this series of parables has over and over again made the religious leaders look bad, and the son of the vineyard owner, last week, was killed by the tenants. Today, then, it looks like the one guest who gets thrown out where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth might also be the son. It would fit with the pattern so far. Otherwise we have a story that will leave all of us terribly paranoid that we’ve somehow ended up ourselves as that one unlucky dog who just didn’t get the memo about a black-tie affair when all we own is denim. 

The king of the cross, however, is a king who intentionally goes where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, who travels with us through the valley of the shadow of death, who remains silent before those accusers who put him to death, and knows what it is to feel abandoned. The kingdom of heaven has been compared to an earthly, human, king with a touchy temper, and the way we have seen the church behave throughout history, it’s no wonder. But no more. Now the smaller victories, the quieter reconciliations and healings, the sacrifices made day to day out of love for the neighbor, these are the images we try now to use in sharing what God is like.

Images like shepherds. Quiet, outdoorsy care-givers, willing to fight off the coyote or bear to save the sheep, able to tend and shear as needed so the sheep may safely roam. As Isaiah gives us the image: [God] will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all people, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that say, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.