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.