Business as usual?

1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

Samuel was ministering before the LORD, a boy wearing a linen ephod. His mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year, when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, and say, “May the LORD repay you with children by this woman for the gift that she made to the LORD”; and then they would return to their home. Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the LORD and with the people

Psalm 148

Hallelujah! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise God in the heights. Praise the LORD all you angels; sing praise, all you hosts of heaven. Praise the LORD, sun and moon; sing praise, all you shining stars. Praise the LORD, heaven of heavens, and you waters above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the LORD who commanded and they were created, who made them stand fast forever and ever, giving them a law that shall not pass away. Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps; fire and hail, now and fog, tempestuous wind, doing God’s will; mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars; wild beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds; sovereigns of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the world; young men and maidens, old and young together. Let them praise the name of the LORD, whose name only is exalted, whose splendor is over earth and heaven. The LORD has raised up strength for the people and praise for all faithful servants, the children of Israel, a people who are near the LORD. Hallelujah!

Colossians 3:13-17

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the LORD has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Luke 2:41-52

Now every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it.  Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teaches, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

*******

My great aunt told me once about watching my father try to protect me as a child. She said I was like any other child who like to explore the world and put everything in my mouth, stick my fingers into every opening, and nearly electrocuted myself, as you do when you stick a finger into an electrical outlet. Or I would have done, if Dad hadn’t slapped my hand away from the outlet. Great Aunt Audrey was quick to tell him that now I would be more afraid of getting my hand slapped than I would of sticking my finger in an outlet. She said I’d have to learn myself, the hard way, the difference between fear of danger and fear of punishment.

Most kids know the fear of punishment more than they understand the fear of actual danger. Usually if an adult tells you not to do something, it’s because it’s too much fun for kids, right? I mean, those movies rated “R” or those funny smelling drinks in beer cans make all the grownups happy, so why can’t the kids have them? Until we find out for ourselves what our parents are trying to protect us from, we just don’t get it. Or we tend to think we know better and can handle ourselves better than we can. War is hell, or it was for others, but we’ll be heroes for it this time and there won’t need to be any more wars if we are the generation that gets it right. Drunk driving gets other people in trouble, texting while driving is something other kids can’t handle, we’re so much better, so completely above those dangers, we ignore the warnings. If we’re lucky, we survive these stupid decisions we stumble into while growing up, and warn our children against them even though they won’t listen, either.

I wonder how Mary and Joseph worried for Jesus when he went missing. It seemed Jesus was just too naïve to understand what they were afraid of. I mean, he was in the holy city of Jerusalem, for goodness’ sake. This was where the temple was, the closest home to God. The religious leaders would have taken good care of him had they found him wandering alone, that was their job, to take care of the lost. Then again, he might have been snatched up by a Roman guard who just felt like asserting some authority over the Jews during their holy holidays. There are videos and stories of African-American parents giving their kids solid beatings for discipline because they’d rather the kids be beaten by their parents than by the police. The fear of authority is strong when you’ve been on the losing side of it more than once. Of course Mary and Joseph would have been anxious.

On the other hand, the first word the angel said to Mary before she conceived was ‘do not be afraid!’ That’s usually the first word an angel has to declare, or else we’d fall down in terror and never hear anything else they had to say. It wasn’t a word just for that particular encounter, either, but for the rest of her life. “Do not be afraid!” Easier said than done, especially when your child goes missing in a crowd for more than a couple of hours, let alone three days.

But there he was, pre-teen Jesus, sitting with the elders in the temple, asking and answering questions, the first story we have of how human he was. Can you picture it? Mary and Joseph: “Do you have ANY IDEA how WORRIED we were?!” Jesus: (innocently) “But, mother dearest, of course I’m alright, I’m just where I should be.” What a growing up that must have been. God as an adolescent could be all kinds of trouble. Telling Joseph “You’re not my real dad!” must have been a real temptation.

Raising children, your own biological kids or those in our own community, can be intense, and joyful, and heartbreaking. We fear for what sort of world we’ve made for them, we expect great things of them and for them, we worry about them and try our best to teach them well, but they are their own people. Some say that adults are just larger, older, children. We all need love and compassion and patience and gratitude and safety… all those things written on behalf of Paul to the Colossians, those gifts which are vital to raising healthy kids, are vital to healthy community. Why should adults stop being gentle with one another just because we’re not in grade school any more?

But we’ve become so afraid. We’ve grown anxious. We’ve gotten caught up in the crowds and lost sight of Jesus. We thought he was on our side, with us every step of the way, right there next to us, until the rush and the chaos and the exhaustion catches up and we notice we’ve lost sight of him. Could he be with our neighbors? Didn’t we think the church down the street was taking care of him for us? Maybe he wandered off to care for somebody else because we took him for granted. Did we leave him behind again? Or maybe… maybe this time he left us behind on his way to Jerusalem.

We don’t want to face Jerusalem just yet, though. We’ve gown afraid even of God and the punishment the world justly deserves. So we bury ourselves in more stuff and more noise and more activities, lest we stop in silence and look around at where we are and find the old discomfort still there. We stick our fingers in the socket, almost daring that great hand from heaven to slap us.

Anxious that we’ve misplaced Jesus, we forget who it is we are dealing with. Even if we’ve gotten too busy to think about him, he’s not the sort to yell at us when we turn back to him. He hasn’t left us, he’s just doing what he always does, living life and going about his Father’s business of reconciliation. Just as kids do, he’s testing the boundaries we’ve set up between us, knocking down the barriers of fear we’ve built. 

It's only Christmas, but Easter is everywhere. Mary and Joseph search in Jerusalem for Jesus, and they search for three days before they find him. Remind you of anything? Three days he goes missing, just like when he will die and three days later rise from the dead. We have this detail as a foreshadowing of what is yet to come, when the thing we fear as worst case scenario actually does happen, when it is the end of the world, and yet we will continue on, to resurrection, to a new kingdom. As happens with any trip through adolescence, this new reality might be a bit awkward, a bit stumbling at first, reestablishing God’s reign of peace and forgiveness. It takes some growing into, and Jesus is already bringing healing even while we are anxiously searching for any sign that he hasn’t left us.

The child Jesus was about his Father’s business from the start, and continues it in us still to this day. Asking questions, building relationship with us, calming our anxieties and removing our fears, Jesus has a lot of hard work ahead of him, but he’s committed to it because he’s got skin in the game, he’s committed to us, he’s faithful even when we are faithless. Faithfulness, forgiveness, after all, these are our Father’s business.

Umbilical God

Christmas Eve

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. 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

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 himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day int he city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of 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 heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

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

Christ Mass. Feast of the Incarnation. The first time I preached for this holiday, I was living on the west coast for my internship, and winter was rough. Actually, the weather was pretty similar to what we’re having, except the rain started in late summer and didn’t stop until spring. Instead of snow for winter, it just rains in the Pacific Northwest. I figured it would be nice, after growing up in the midwest, with freezing water mains breaking on campus in college, lake effect snow in Chicago, to do away with snow for a season… but it was miserable. There was something about the grey, the sameness, the not quite winter cold, the damp, that made it really hard to get out of bed. And on top of the seasonal affective melancholy, I was two thousand miles away from Ohio, where my only remaining grandparent had just died, and I couldn’t afford the last minute tickets to fly back for her funeral over the holiday season. So there I was, on the holiday that is all about family gathering together, pretty well cut off from family and wondering what the point of Christmas really was for people like me, for people who were alone.

Then again, I’ve had a good track record for being alone in a crowd, too. Maybe you know that feeling. When everyone else seems to be doing just fine, and you’re full of questions and just can’t get comfortable, but you can’t be “Debbie Downer” by bringing up your own melancholy. For example, has anybody here seen the film “Inside Out”? It’s a great trip through a kid’s emotions, who are all personified and running around inside her head, trying to help her make good memories and function well in the world, and Joy, all bubbly and voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, keeps trying to keep Sadness, blue and lethargic, out of the way. The stress of life leads both Joy and Sadness on an adventure, but in the meantime all of the emotions shut down and the poor kid just gets overwhelmed and stops feeling.

But - you might be saying - it’s Christmas! We’re supposed to be happy! We’ve gotta be joyful, the angels said so! And you’d be right, though being happy isn’t the same as being joyful. But, by a show of hands, how many of us have been present to see or experience someone giving birth, going through labor, pushing out a living little human? It’s joyful, to be sure, but painful, too. Every year on my birthday I call my mother to wish her a happy “labor day” and she reminds me how long that labor was, just so I know how much I owe her. Yet somehow every time we have a Christmas manger scene, those swaddling cloths wrapped around the baby Jesus are clean, the mess of animals is swept away, and Mary just looks lovely and put together. Birth is not clean. Nor are animals. And Mary might have been bathed in the relief of having just survived giving birth, but Jesus was 100% human, and Mary’s body had just been broken open to bring his body into the world, squalling and sacred as it is.

Because Jesus doesn’t come to earth to replace us with some ‘better,’ ‘perfect’ version of ourselves, he comes to resurrect us, the real flesh and blood us, the us who fail and need forgiveness. Which means he comes to us in our very own blood and tears, even while he is bringing joy. No amount of isolation, no distance between family members, no emotional burnout, can keep God from being Incarnate among us. He comes to us in darkness, first from Mary’s womb, then in the oppression of Roman occupation, to the hard hearts of those who make scapegoats of each other, all the way through the darkness of death and the tomb. That’s an important word, “through.” He doesn’t avoid any part of the pain of living, nor the joy. He lives as fully human as humanity was made to live. He is born in flesh like ours, in particular, Palestinian flesh, in first century flesh, in mortal flesh.

There are many stories of the ancient gods taking on the appearance of human or animal form in order to seduce human women just for kicks. But this humanity which our God takes on in Jesus is more than simply a disguise, it’s the real deal, not a power play of seduction the way Zeus just wanted to have his way with women whenever and however he chose. It’s AGAPE love, completely self-giving, in vulnerable human flesh. Our God has been known as a God of vengeance for so long, we call on God to rain down fire on our enemies, but tonight God calls on Mary for breast milk. Our God has been known as a God of harsh judgment for so long, but tonight we see God laid in the manger and can’t blame a baby for natural disasters. Our God has been called distant and aloof for so long, but tonight we hear a baby cry and the angels turn their heavenly chorus toward earth, where God has not only seen and heard all of our needs, but if the infant lives past the first week of his life he can now catch the flu and be betrayed by childhood friends.

Christmas is risky. It is dangerous. If God were not already intimately connected to us by virtue of speaking us into existence, God now has an umbilical cord and shares a placenta with a human woman called Mary. This is the stuff of life and death, tied irrevocably to the One who is the source of life, and God does this to set us free from all that isolates us. In becoming incarnate, Jesus is God who can not only feel our pain, but who can bleed and die. And he will, all too soon. It won’t be under the slaughter of innocents, which Herod will soon commit in an attempt to hold onto to his power, but it will be very public, and it will be as commonplace as mass shootings in America. Jesus will die a death that ties up all of our deaths in the promise, the faithful promise, of new life and resurrection. But first, he will live the ordinary life of an oppressed people. He will learn of politics and religion at their best and worst. He will learn of his faith at the family table and in the synagogue. He will weep at the death of his friend Lazarus, he will tell stories, he will play and grow as every other Palestinian child of his age, he will heal and feed and dance and ask questions. He will live his life for others, and he will give his life for the world.

Christmas is risky business for God, which means it’s also dangerous for us. If God can be found in human flesh, can call on human Mary to carry salvation in her stretch marks and sorrows, God can be found even here among us. God Incarnate even in the jail cell of Sandra Bland, Jesus alive in the gatherings of Christians and Muslims protecting one another as they worship, salvation come even in the homes of folks who only come to church on Christmas and Easter, or even not at all. If God can become flesh, vulnerable and dirty, mortal and deemed expendable by his own government and fans, than everyone who has ever been expendable carries holiness, every dirty child is sacred, every vulnerable and fleshy person precious to God as Jesus was precious to Mary. So look on him, and see how he loves you.

O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

Pageant time!

Sometimes a well-thought-out (I hope) sermon translates decently enough into the printed word. A sermon is really a lived experience, quite different in the hearing than in the reading. This fourth Sunday of Advent illustrates that pretty well in that the sermon is not translatable into text. Or, rather, the story comes into its fuller telling by the annual Christmas pageant. The Gospel of John describes Jesus as the "Word become flesh," where the Torah, the covenant God has with God's people and with the world at large, takes on skin and bone and DNA and spittle and dirty diapers and coughing fits and sweat and... you get the picture.

This is the Sunday where we read sing together the song of Hannah, whose husband's other wife was bearing him many children, even though Hannah was his favorite wife, and she prayed so fervently to conceive a child that Eli the priest thought she was drunk and told her to sober up and be ashamed of herself for her unseemly public behavior. Little did Eli know he himself would end up raising Hannah's son when she gave him to the temple in gratitude for God's answer of 'yes' to her prayer.

This song, this story, was passed down generation to generation. Hope of God's promises come to fruition, of God's faithfulness to God's people throughout the ages. Hannah's son, Samuel, was called by God in a very spiritually dry time, when the word of God was not common among the people. It was so rare to hear from God, in fact, that at first Samuel, sleeping in the sanctuary, thought the voice calling him was that of his old teacher, Eli.

The Women of the ELCA mark one particular Sunday every year as "Bold Women's Day," and this fourth Sunday of Advent is another celebration of bold women of faith who have shaped the faith of generations of people. Hannah's song became the song shared between Mary and Elizabeth, generations later, when again it seemed the voice of God had gone silent. Rome had colonized the Jewish people and held it over them that they had more 'power' than Israel's God (they were wrong, of course, Empires have nothing on God's power), but Elizabeth had just become pregnant well past menopause, and Mary, who in her position may have been impregnated by a forceful Roman soldier, was sought out by God to carry God's own Self in her womb. Or would it make the story sound more solid to say God planted a seed in Mary's uterus? She bore God in the flesh in her own very flesh, knit God's baby body together with her own blood and fluids, broke open nine months later to push a wriggling, slimy, screaming little body into a great big screaming world.

And when Mary was just beginning to show, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was entering her third trimester, and together the two women, very young and very old, sang the song of Hannah who had made such a scene praying for God's work to bear fruit in her body. It has been sung in so many languages, tempos, rhythms, styles, for further generations down through history, from chant to popular liturgy to any excuse for a concert. When one considers the lyrics, which I recall below from a liturgy I grew up singing for evening prayer, it's amazing we've been allowed to sing this music as long as we have been:

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord! My spirit rejoices in God my savior, for He has looked with favor on His lowly servant. From this day, all generations shall call me blessed. The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is God's name. He has mercy on those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown the strength of His arm, He has scattered the proud in their conceit, He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich are sent away empty. He has come to the help of His servant, Israel, for He has remembered His promise of mercy - the promise He made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever." (emphasis mine, of course)

We are celebrating that God in the flesh has come to dwell with us and turn everything topsy-turvy! Nobody will be allowed to remain idle, nobody will remain unaffected, nobody will remain comfortable - or suffering - as they have gotten used to. The world is about to turn, yet again. God's mercies are new every morning. God's spirit is among us, active in the world. God comes to us as a demanding infant, an unruly child, an honest-to-goodness adolescent, a moderate Rabbi who re-frames the Torah and does something unexpected to the covenant by making a new covenant for the rest of us, by his own blood. So on through the generations we tell the story of a woman who sang a song begun long before she had been conceived, and on into the generations to come, God's promises are sure.

God becomes flesh. Happy fourth Sunday of Advent!

Water and Fire

Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God, and open our ears to the preaching of John, that, rejoicing in your salvation, we may bring forth the fruits of repentance; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all at the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the LORD.

Isaiah 12:2-6

Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD God is my strength and my might, and has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: give thanks to the LORD, call on God’s name; make known the deeds of the LORD among the nations; proclaim that this name is exalted. Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Philippians 4:4-7

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Luke 3:7-18

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor;’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food bust do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats of false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

*******

I’ve been reading a bit about coffee lately. Working at Starbucks will do that, I guess. Mostly, I’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of information, the diversity of plant types, the intensely complicated process of finding a place to plant and then waiting for a tree to come to fruit and then harvesting, milling, processing, shipping, roasting, grinding, brewing, serving… it’s mind-boggling. And there are people out there who are very, very well skilled at tasting the particularities of one crop over another, just like there are folks who can pull out all the flavors or even the year’s soil quality, from a single taste of wine. 

One of my friends in seminary, funnily enough his name is Luke, used to roast his own coffee. Now, what I’ve learned in the last month or so is that the coffee bean as it gets to wholesale is less than half the mass of the original bean from the plant, because of stripping the flesh of the fruit from the seed and washing or drying off the pulp. So much work goes into these trees, and more than half of the bean, from the outset, gets washed off and thrown out. Luke uses a stovetop popcorn popper, with a wooden handle to turn the stirring mechanism, and he heats those raw green coffee beans and stirs them until there’s a cracking sound, like rice crisps or television static, and they go quiet a moment before the second round of cracking sounds, at which point Luke takes the popcorn popper full of roasted coffee beans off the stovetop and grabs his two mesh wire colanders to sift them outside off the back porch, so the smoke won’t set off fire alarms. He tells me the smoke is better than Febreeze at getting odd smells out of a house, but I just take his word for it, because I can not get the smell of coffee out of my Starbucks shirts.

Since I knew Luke in seminary, of course I took careful mental pictures of this process, knowing that it would probably be my only personal encounter with copious amounts of chaff, and I would need that image for a sermon on any text dealing with sifting and sorting chaff. It’s like leftover bits of tissue paper, just floating away on the wind, or the annoying pieces of popcorn that get stuck between your teeth when you make it from scratch on the stovetop. Chaff is not very useful except, I guess, it might serve to sort of protect the seed inside as it grows, but that’s as far as it goes. Not even really digestible except for livestock, and more or less serves as roughage plowed into the soil.

We’re sort of entering the holiday of chaff, aren’t we? In a way, I mean, that image of Christmas morning with the kids when all of the presents have been opened and the wrapping paper is everywhere, and the boxes and instruction manuals we don’t bother to read, the tape and old envelopes and sticky tinsel from the tree that keeps attaching itself to ugly sweaters… like it or not, Christmas has, in a lot of ways, become a holiday surrounded in chaff.

But we like chaff. We cling to so much of it, for looks or comfort or another attempt at belonging and seeming more important than we feel. Whether it’s another handbag we don’t need, or another holiday desert we eat just for the nostalgia, or another gun to make ourselves feel more secure, we constantly grab for more, either to stand on or hide behind, and John the Baptizer has a good word for us this morning: the chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire!

And what a good word that is! John is telling the people about a coming day when the Lord will come with the Holy Spirit, and it will feel like dying, or maybe like those dreams where we can fly, but it will be a doozy. The image is so frightening to the people that even tax collectors and soldiers ask him how they can avoid it. John tells them “The chainsaw is set at the trunk of the tree, and every tree that does not perform some worthwhile function is gonna be eeeeeeeerrrrrrr chopped down, thrown into the fire, burned up, Halleluia!” (from CottonPatch Gospel) So of course they desperately want to avoid being trimmed off or chopped down, wouldn’t we all? Being told we aren’t useful is one of the most shameful things we in America can think of! It’s one of the reasons we hoard so much chaff, as proof that we’ve earned our way and can be worthwhile. You’ve gotta be “useful” to the community, and we sure think we can define what useful means and who it’s gotta be in relation to.

So you want to avoid being cut down as a useless tree? Give your extra coat, John says, to somebody who doesn’t have one. Be content with your paycheck. Don't cheat your neighbor. Completely contrary to the American dream, for sure, where everybody’s beating each other up for the latest big discount on the greatest new television or more impressive wardrobe or something. John tells the people “stop being a useless collector of stuff you don’t need when other people actually need it!” and that message somehow gets people thinking he might be the next Messiah.

We have a lot of Messiahs, then, if John is the anointed one. Lots of people telling us how to live better Christian lives, telling us how to vote, how to think, how to react, how to give, how to forgive, how to behave, how to fall in love, how to be x, y, or z.

But better than John is coming. Better than all of the self-help books on decluttering our lives. Fire is coming, the fire of the Lord, the fire of the Holy Spirit, the unquenchable fire that will stop at nothing to burn away all that gets between us and the God who rejoices over us with singing. That fire is a love that is a passion unequaled by anything poets or songwriters ever could imagine, stronger and more blood and guts deep than any Hallmark or Precious Moments or Thomas Kinkaid painting of warm window lights in a cottage surrounded by snow.

Better than John is coming, fire is coming, to draw out from us the shame that brings fire to our faces, and to burn it away so it can no longer tell us lies about ourselves. Fire is coming, to melt frozen hearts that have closed up in self-defense after one too many hurts. Fire to give us a fresh start, again and again.

Better than John is coming. The harvest will be gathered, the chaff burned away, and the wheat become bread for the feeding of the nations. Then the useless tree will once again bear fruit, the tree of death will become a tool for bringing life to all the world, and God will bring us home.

Tender Compassion

Advent 2 Prayer of the Day and readings (with some slight notation for sermon fodder):

Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming give to all the people of the world knowledge of your salvation; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Malachi 3:1-4

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight - indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.

-in response to “he shall purify”:

Luke 1:68-79

Blessed are you, Lord, the God of Israel, you have come to your people and set them free. You have raised up for us a mighty Savior, born of the house of your servant David. Through your holy prophets, you promised of old to save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us, to show mercy to our forebears, and to remember your holy covenant. This was the oath you swore to our father Abraham: to set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship you without fear, holy and righteous before you, all the days of our life. And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare the way, to give God’s people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Philippians 1:3-11

I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your community (κοινωνια) in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you sharing community (συγκοινωνος) in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Luke 3:1-6

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abileen, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to… John (!) son of Zechariah (!!) in the wilderness (!!!). He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

*******

If there is anything the world needs now more than ever it is God’s tender compassion. We might look at the world around us and pray instead for God’s fire and wrath to wipe the world clean, but the promise of Zechariah’s song, which we sang today after the first lesson in the place of our Psalm, reads in the Scripture text: “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us.” Or, in the poetic license of Carl P. Daw, Jr., the hymn writer, “Then shall God’s mercy from on high shine forth and never cease to drive away the gloom of death and lead us into peace.” It was the third verse of our Psalm hymn this morning, sung in response to the prophet Malachi’s words calling God a “refiner’s fire” who shall refine us like gold and silver. It’s that fire we are most accustomed to when we think on God’s judgment and the preaching of crazy John the Baptist out in the wilderness dunking every sinner who came too close to him. 

Strange combination of images, that. Fire and water. Judgment and mercy. Bring down the mountains and fill up the valleys. Or in the words of a snarky little bumper sticker: Jesus is coming, look busy.

I wonder sometimes at how preparing the way of the Lord has been co-opted by radicals, and similarly how that radical streak tempts me at times. For example, the protesters outside of Planned Parenthood clinics can be very intimidating. Some folks hand around little cartoon tracts with the question: “If you die today, do you know where you’ll go?” Now we’ve got a resurgence of the “get rid of the Muslims for your own safety,” kind of talk, the same old rhetoric different group. …If there is any way to inspire fear and manipulate people, we can tie it into the second coming and justify just about any behavior. Hey, I wouldn’t mind a little radical preparing the way of the Lord by opening every guest room and vacation home for Syrian Refugees, but I don’t have that kind of power. Nor should I. If I were to paint a picture of Jesus, he would look very much like my ideals in action, which would be way off the mark from reality.

Which is why we need the balance, the leveling of the playing field, the judgment AND mercy. John the Baptist preached repentance as much for me as for the person diametrically opposed to me. As much, say, for Donald Trump as for Bernie Sanders. As Paul writes to the Romans: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But as he writes to the Philippians: “I am confident that God who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

Did you hear that in this morning’s reading of Paul’s letter? We are in a season of preparing for the day of Jesus Christ, and STILL it is God who will bring everything good in us to its fulfillment when that day comes. Not us. Paul doesn’t say to the Philippians “I am confident you will never be a disappointment,” or “I am confident you will never fail.” We fail one another all the time. We fail and we disappoint and we make willfully ignorant choices and we strike out in fear against the demons of our imaginations while feeding the actual evils all around and within our own selves. We need that promised refiner’s fire to make all things new again, to burn away the hate and contempt and distrust, and the cleansing, healing waters of baptism to refresh and revive us again and again as God continues to make us new. 

This isn’t something reserved for those who have proved themselves ‘good enough,’ but it is surprising and wild and uncontainable. Consider John the Baptist himself, for a moment: his mother and father were old and childless, despite their faithfulness, and it took an act of God for Elisabeth to get pregnant past her childbearing years. His Father, Zechariah, was struck mute for the nine months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, and the first words out of his mouth after John was born are the source of the hymn we sang between readings this morning, the “Blessed be the God of Israel who comes to set us free!" Then John grows up and moves into the wilderness, where he wears camel hair and eats bugs dipped in honey. He’s on the outskirts of the outskirts. So our Gospel reading this morning picks up with him in this great big moment of history: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius…” and so on and so forth. Luke’s Gospel names all kinds of big important powerful people, all of whom have the authority and political backing to make big things happen, and the word of God comes to a scraggly little social outcast prophet living in the wild. He’s completely uncivilized, ranting about the coming of the Lord’s anointed (and we’ll hear more about that next week), and the word of God comes to him, of all people. 

Not only is John the farthest thing from an important person, those who come to hear him preach are from all over the place, too. Most of them don’t have any power, either. I mean, there’s Herod, who finds him more a curiosity than anything, but imagine God bringing a word, a promise, good news, to Chatham, by way of a high school dropout who sleeps in a trash heap behind an abandoned train station. Who would listen to her and believe what she had to say? Who would just disregard her entirely because she didn’t have the proper education and hadn’t taken a bath in months?

But this is where the word of God shows up. And it’s going to get a bit fire and brimstone in a week or so, but even that won’t be what we expect. Right now it’s a word of compassion, of grace, of forgiveness, because you can’t preach repentance without promising forgiveness. It’s a word that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”   That promise - that “those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death” will have the light of life shine on them - that’s the promise for “all flesh,” because we are all mortal, we are all broken, we are all so fallen short…. we might even all be John the Baptist, outliers in some way or other that we’re not very honest about, not very proud of. Nevertheless, God comes in this way, to this place, in this darkness and shadow, to reveal salvation for not just Christians, not just Americans, not just the middle class or the rich, not just celebrities, not just those who have a picture-perfect family and the most beautiful home, but for ALL flesh. No matter where we are from, what we are running from, what we are hiding, what we are afraid of, God comes into these depths, walks out in the open wastelands of our wilderness, begins that good work IN US, and will bring it to full completion in the end, winding us together into a community of shared fellowship in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

So prepare the way of the Lord. Compassion is coming. Compassion is here already. Compassion stronger than guns, deeper than fear, more lasting than our darkest days. Compassion that will never abandon us. Now let the final word, the benediction, be a return to Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” This is the promise. Overflowing love, for the glory and praise of God. Amen.