The Blessings and the Woes

Margie Quinn

I was in seminary when my parents got divorced. Soon after, my sister got divorced, too. And as it happens, it was around this time that I got in a bike accident and suffered a bad concussion. Sometimes, when it rains, it pours. It was just one of those “seasons of suck,” as I call it. 

At that same time, my best friend's life felt like it was receiving blessing after blessing. She got engaged to her high school sweetheart, trained for and ran a marathon, and got a promotion at work. 

When she called me, it felt like she kept sharing blessings with me. When I called her, it was mostly tearful woes. 

To borrow a metaphor from Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor, it felt like I was at the bottom of the ferris wheel, with the candy wrappers and the sawdust, and she was at the top, swaying with the wind in her hair and all the world’s light at her feet, feeling close enough to touch the stars. 

As the hits kept coming in my own life, I grew increasingly more resentful and jealous of her. Why did she receive so many blessings while I was experiencing the woes and lows of life? How could she possibly show up for me and understand what I was going through when she had never experienced a season of profound suffering? I would never intentionally want her to experience pain, but it felt unfair that she never had. 

I was reminded of this as I read about Jesus giving the “Sermon on the Plain.” That’s what this passage is called. Jesus has just done some miraculous healing, climbed up a mountain to pray, chosen his twelve disciples and in our passage this morning, he comes down the mountain to a plain or, as scriptures puts it, to “a level place” to do some teaching. Most of the people who gathered there wanted to be healed of their diseases, or cured of their mental illness. They were there to touch him and receive relief. They didn’t really come to hear him talk. 

But, Jesus has something to say. He stands on this “level place” with the disciples and the multitude, not on a mountain above them, and speaks plainly. His words are directed at the disciples, but we can imagine that everyone was eavesdropping. 

“Blessed are you who are poor,” he begins, “for yours is the kingdom of God.” “Blessed are you who are hungry, who weep, who are hated and excluded–you will be filled, you will laugh, you will leap for joy.” 

It’s difficult to convey just how radical these words were for the disciples and the crowd. This would leave people stunned, most of whom had never received a divine blessing or any attention at all. 

This is the first chat Jesus gives his crew after he picks them. He introduces them to what life looks like in the kingdom of God. They may have grown up in a world where the hungry and the hated never feel blessed. But Jesus isn’t of that world. He’s a part of a new way of life that flips the world upside down; a way of life where those on the bottom of the ferris wheel don’t stay there, but will experience the wind in their hair at some point. 

The chat doesn’t end there, though. Jesus is a truth-teller and doesn’t shy away from the hard hitting stuff, too. In the same breath that he comforts those on the bottom, he climbs in the seat next to those of us on the top and levels with us:

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, for you will be hungry. If you’re laughing now, you will weep. Woe to you when people speak well of you, for that’s what they said about false prophets, too.

Again, I can’t overstate how shocking his words would have been for these people. They would have expected him to offer a blessing to the rich, the well-fed, the higher ups, and woes to the poor, the hated, the hungry. But this is who our God is. Someone unafraid to offer hard truths to those in power. 

One theologian interprets these woes as more of a “yikes” or “be careful!” For those of you at the top of the ride, be careful, a life following me means you don’t stay up there. 

A life with me means you get both: the blessings and the woes. 

In God’s kingdom, there is equity of blessedness and hardship, abundance and suffering; which is honestly freeing to me. It means that in the midst of hurt, when all we can do is weep, Jesus assures us that there will come that day when, perhaps unexpectedly, something will make us laugh. And for those of us who feel an abundance of joy, he promises that we will know pain, too, pain that allows us to embody compassion for others, pain that invites us to experience the full range of human emotion. Maybe that’s why Jesus picked an even number for his disciples: for every man who felt hated one day, there was a man to speak kind words to him. 

There are those of us who hear this passage and don’t trust it. We look around and see more and more people living in poverty, who don’t seem to be getting full. We see more and more of the rich, who don’t take heed of the woes and hoard their wealth. But, “if we take these beatitudes seriously,” Howard Gregory writes, “we go against the grain of the world, and ride against the tide.” When we do our best to trust Jesus’ words, there is a life of gospel freedom waiting for us in which we take care of each other and share what blessings we have. We don’t give into total despair, and we don’t leave our siblings behind who desperately want to be fed. 

Knowing that we will receive both the blessing and the woe doesn’t mean that we get to develop a complacency in our respective seats on the ferris wheel. It means that we do our best to remember that in God’s kingdom, the call to discipleship means taking care of each other. We reach out from our seats and yell from the top, “I have wept, too. I have hungered, too. I have been excluded, too. Let me climb down there and sit with you in the sawdust.” And for those near ground level with our feet stuck in gum, we can look up, remembering that the kingdom promises seasons in our life and the life to come where we will leap for joy. 

My best friend was let go from her job last year. Then, she suffered a miscarriage. She is still dealing with infertility complications and she probably will not carry a baby again. She is at the bottom of the ferris wheel. Someone hit the button on the ferris wheel and we’ve switched places. While she grieves what her life could have been, I celebrate what my life has become. 

So, it can be tempting when I see her in so much pain to reframe her situation, offer empty advice or ignore a phone call because I don’t want to hear her hurt. Then I remember: I worship a God who doesn’t leave anyone behind, but takes the time to meet us in a level place and speak plainly. God rides the ferris wheel with us, in all of our blessings and woes, sawdust and stars. May we do the same for each other. 

Amen. 

Mercy and release

Thomas Kleinert

Could the good bishop have said anything at all even remotely related to the gospel of Jesus Christ without offending the great leader? Clearly, at the solemnities in the magnificent cathedral, her plea for mercy was considered out of place by the perpetually aggrieved man. Will he wait for his third term to assert by executive order his right to install America’s bishops?

“It is astonishing,” James Baldwin wrote, “it is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.”[1] Truthful mirror is an apt description of the living word of God, and we’re here to remember that no shouts on Truth Social will dim, let alone break, that mirror.

Cole Riley got my attention this past week when she shared her wise observations — on Instagram, of all places.

If you’re feeling a kind of bone-deep, soul-body exhaustion today, please remember that is by design. However futile resistance and goodness and beauty feel today, do not surrender your appetite for them.

She urges me to understand that the overwhelming exhaustion I feel, this deep hunger for goodness and beauty, is at least in part an intentional deprivation, and she insists that I don’t surrender this hunger by numbing it with the endless offerings of the distraction economy. “Do what you need in order to retain possession over your own imagination,” she writes.[2] What I hear her say, is, Be careful whose clips you watch. Be careful whose language you borrow for your thinking and speaking. Be careful whose words and attitudes you allow to enter your inner space — they will shape your world.

Waves of ugliness and lies can be overwhelming, and you may feel like you’re drowning. But remember: beauty and truth can overwhelm you as well, too much to fully take in — so big the waves can be, they bear you up and carry you in the power of the Spirit.

“The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork,” the psalmist declares.

Day to day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth

and their words to the end of the world.

The psalmist knows what it is like when we behold more than we can say, when we run out of words to give voice to wonder and awe.  And so we’re invited to watch the sun rise like a groom coming out of the honeymoon suite and taking a run around the world.

Kathleen Norris used to teach poetry in elementary schools for a few years.

Whenever I gave the kids an assignment — such as, “Write something and compare it to this or that” — they would pour out their heart and soul. I got back some incredible revelations of who these kids were and what their lives were like. Sometimes it was painful. And sometimes it was just glorious. My favorite paper was by one little girl. I have no idea what the assignment was. … It may have been to write about color or nature, I don’t know — I tended to give very open-ended assignments. Well, she wrote down, “The sky is full of blue and full of the mind of God.”

Norris thinks the girl was in fourth grade, and her family was stationed at Minot Air Force Base, “transferred fairly recently from a base in someplace like Louisiana.”[3] A little girl in awe of the North Dakota sky; a young psalmist, practicing the art of praise. Soon, I hope, she discovered, like the psalmists of old, the beauty and truth of God’s torah, divine words that revive the soul, make wise, and gladden the heart, Spirit-breathing words that are enlightening, enduring, true and righteous altogether. Words that tune our hearts to sing God’s praise and be fearless. More desirable than gold they are, sweeter than honey, and in keeping them there is great reward.

Jesus clung to that promise, and with his whole being he lived it for us and our salvation. Luke tells us Jesus was back in Nazareth where they’d known him all his life. They’d heard stories, bits and pieces about his teachings and the wondrous things he’d been doing down in Capernaum and other places by the lake. It was the  Sabbath, and he was in the synagogue as was his custom. He was invited to do one of the readings and teach, and they handed him the scroll of Isaiah. And now all of the Spirit-driven movement of the opening chapters — the back and forth from Nazareth to Bethlehem, back to Nazareth and down to Jerusalem, over to the Jordan and into the wilderness and back to Galilee — all the movement slows down to this moment.

He opens the scroll.

He finds the passage he wants to read.

He begins:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He sits down.

The eyes of all in the synagogue are fixed on him, Luke tells us. Everybody wants to know what he has to say. They are eager to hear his teaching. They long for a word to assure them that the ancient promise is still firm, still theirs. They hunger for a word encouraging them not to surrender their hope: that the day of release would come; that captivity and oppression would come to an end one blessed day, and God’s people would live in freedom.

And when Jesus speaks, the first word out of his mouth is “today” — not some day soon, not one fine day, but today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus, it turns out, wasn’t merely reading, he was giving his inaugural address. This is who I am. This is what I’m about. This is my mission: Good news for the poor. Release for the captives. Sight for the blind. Freedom for the oppressed. His Sabbath talk was short because his whole life was the teaching and the fulfillment.

Jesus read his kingdom manifesto from Isaiah, but he skipped a line. What’s written in Isaiah is, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God” — but Jesus didn’t read that part, and I don’t think he dropped that half-verse by accident, do you? I believe he dropped it because the good news he lives and proclaims is not about vengeance; the good news of Jesus and his church is about mercy and release, it is about our liberation from all that has kept humans from living in the fullness of God’s love.

Sometimes we say the good news of Jesus is about the forgiveness of sins, and it is — as long as we grasp the full scale of our release from our entanglement in sin’s dominion. When Jesus proclaims good news for the poor, he means the poor, and not just “poor sinners.” He looks at his disciples and says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” He says to those with the means to host big dinners, “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” He tells the story of a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. And Jesus calls Zacchaeus down from his tree, and soon the chief tax collector tells him, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”[4] It’s good news for the poor, because the compassion and mercy of Christ ripple out into all our sin-distorted relationships and bring about justice until we’re all fully disentangled from sin’s dominion.

Yes, compassion and mercy and justice rule — not vengeance. So be careful whose clips you watch. Be careful whose language you borrow for your thinking and speaking. And be very careful whose words and attitudes you allow to enter your inner space — they will shape not only your world, but the one we all share.

“Do what you need in order to retain possession over your own imagination,” writes Cole Riley, and I would love to talk with her about that. I don’t want my imagination colonized by liars and peddlers of fear — I want an imagination fully formed by the beauty and truth of God, an imagination schooled in the company of Jesus and continually shaped by the same Spirit that anointed him.

God’s words instruct us to perceive the beauty and wisdom in which all parts of creation are knit together in mutual belonging. Wendell Berry writes,

We are holy creatures living among other holy creatures in a world that is holy. Some people know this, and some do not. Nobody, of course, knows it all the time.[5]

No, nobody knows it all the time, but the Spirit of God who’s made her home among us knows. The Spirit that anointed Jesus will not cease to inspire and invite us to entrust ourselves to her movement.

When Jesus said, “Today” he meant that very day; and when we hear him say, “Today” he still means today. He’s addressing our hunger, our captivity, our impaired vision, our entanglement in imperial oppression, and he’s come to break our chains, open our eyes, and lead us out.

In the meantime, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our redeemer.

[1] James Baldwin https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/09/this-morning-this-evening-so-soon/658022/

[2] https://www.instagram.com/blackliturgies/p/DFDZn5qOFyo/?img_index=2

[3] https://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr07/norris1.html

[4] See Luke 6:20; 14:13; 16:19-31; 19:8

[5] Wendell Berry, “Christianity and The Survival of Creation,” Cross Currents, Summer 1993, Vol. 43, Issue 2.

Keep the Party Going

Margie Quinn
My parents taught me from an early age the importance of dress up. I can remember walking around the backyard during my Dad’s 50th birthday, seeing adults I knew dressed as Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski, Hooters waitresses and some hillbillies. I can’t remember the theme of that particular party…

His 60th was a Casino night, with the women adorned in feather boas and flapper dresses. My Dad and brothers wore spiffy suits with fedoras and drawn-on mustaches. My Dad has dressed up as a wild cast of characters for Halloween: The Queen of Hearts, Gene Simmons from Kiss, the Tin Man and this past year, a bag of “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.” 

I miss our old “costume closet” (maybe you had one as well), where my friends and I would dig around, putting on old Halloween costumes: a hodgepodge of plastic knight armor and hula skirts and cowboy hats. 

One last example of how much they loved dress up: When I was fifteen, my mom picked me up at school wearing a dalmatian costume. We were going to meet my niece, Gabrielle, at the airport. Gabrielle was about three years old and was obsessed with the movie, “101 Dalmatians.” Naturally, my mom rented a costume to surprise her at the airport, complete with a giant dog head. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I walked my mom around the airport as people, assuming she had been hired by the airport as some kind of “Welcome Dog,” took pictures with her. When Gabrielle saw my mom, she was not as excited as others, but it’s a story we return to often; the joyful laughter and wild absurdity of the day. 

You could call Jesus’s first act of public ministry wild, too. We find Jesus, his mother, his brothers and disciples at a wedding in a seemingly insignificant place, Cana of Galilee. At some point during the celebration, the wine runs out; which may seem like a simple party faux-pas, but was more likely a family crisis. There was a lot of stigma around families who couldn’t provide enough for their guests. 

Who notices this first but Mary, the mother of Jesus? (Women are always so attentive to party needs, like when Melissa Freeman noticed that we were short on cups at Trunk or Treat this year, and immediately ran out to get more). Anyway, Mary finds Jesus, who seems to be hovering in the background, happy to keep his distance, and lets him know that “They have no wine.” 

In a moment not of rudeness, as one theologian points out, but more of disengagement, Jesus responds, “Woman, what concern is that to you and me?” In other words, “So?” Jesus then tells her that his hour has not yet come. Perhaps he isn’t ready to reveal himself and perform a miracle, knowing that once he does, everything will change. I like to think that Mary’s prompting after noticing a need is the very act that gets Jesus’s ministry going. 

So, for his first miracle, he doesn’t perform an exorcism or offer healing, he simply keeps a party going. In the midst of the crisis, Jesus tells the servants to fill the stone jars with water and in doing so, he provides the equivalent of about 1,000 bottles of wine; and not the boxed wine from the sale section at the grocery store, good wine. Jesus, once again reminds us that his ministry is not just about the quantity of his miracles, like thousands of loaves and fishes or a thousand bottles of wine. It’s also about the quality of them: fresh bread, tasty fish, good wine. 

This, we learn, is what grace upon grace looks like and tastes like: the best wine when you least expect it; abundant joy, when you are afraid there isn’t enough, a reminder of God’s wild, extravagant displays of plenitude and celebration. 

The chief wine steward, (let’s not forget him in this story), doesn’t even know where this wine came from. But Jesus doesn’t need the recognition. The steward tastes it and delights in how good it is. And of course, in true Jesus fashion, this goodness is not just for some of the wedding guests, it is served to everyone. 

I’ll be honest when I say that lately, I have forgotten that Jesus is the source of abundance, sustenance and grace. I have forgotten that Jesus wants to keep the party going. 

Reverend Robert Brearley writes, “Sometimes the church has forgotten that our Lord once attended a wedding feast and said YES to gladness and joy. Our God loves to hear the laughter of people celebrating.” In times such as these, we can forget to live the joy of such a revelation. This sign at Cana tells us that Jesus served a God who infuses life with joy, who thinks it’s worth a miracle to keep the party going as we celebrate each other. 

Brearley continues, “God does not want our religion to be too holy to be happy in.”

God doesn’t want our religion to be too holy to be happy in. In other words, we need to stop taking ourselves so seriously and look for the moments where we can gather joyfully as a body of Christ and celebrate that fact that in our faith, life triumphs over death and that weeping may come for a night but joy comes in the morning. 

We host such events of joy here. At Trunk or Treat in October, we transform from regular churchgoers to dinosaurs and witches and hippies. We host a Harvest Luncheon in November, where we do our best to answer pop culture trivia as we feast on Cracker Barrel, offering the leftovers to our friends at Room in the Inn. At the Festival of Cakes coming up next month, we turn the Fellowship Hall into a mardi gras celebration as our youth auction off cakes for their summer trip. We always have leftover cake to share with each other because there is always more than enough at Jesus’ parties. At the Pride parade in June,  we walk down a busy street with our fellow Disciples, handing out stickers and dancing around, celebrating love in all of its forms. 

In the midst of so much political turmoil and senseless violence, it will not do our souls well to live in fear for the road ahead. Jesus reminds us of that by inviting us to choose JOY so that we have sprinkles of celebration and abundance to guide our feet for this long haul work. 

So, it is important that we, as a church, remember how Mary gets Jesus’ ministry going. He swings into action, prompted by his mom, to keep the party going in Cana. He determined that it was time after all for the water to be turned into wine, all so a wedding feast could continue. What a way for Jesus to begin his public ministry in John’s gospel! 

In the past few years, I have been Marge Simpson and Wilson, the volleyball from “Castaway.” I have been Dumbledore and Yzma from
“The Emperor’s New Groove.” At the Pride parade, I wear feathers and beads, doing my best to channel our beloved Gayle, who is a weekly reminder of our faithful commitment to celebrate this Joy to the World in Jesus. I have dressed up as a washer machine at Trunk or Treat and provided bubbles for every camper at our Fall Retreat at Bethany Hills Camp. I do this as a reminder to others as much as to myself that I am invited to participate in the playfulness of the Christian life, joining Jesus in the Great Abundant Party, a foretaste of the resurrection. 

When I moved over the holidays, I got rid of a lot of stuff. But, I couldn’t get rid of my costume bin, even though that thing is getting heavy. I will continue to schlep that thing around no matter how many times I move, adding tutus and wigs to it in order to keep the party going. May my faith and yours never be too holy to be happy in. 

Hallelujah! 

But now

Thomas Kleinert

There was a time when you were only known as “the baby.” Your parents, your siblings, really anyone who dreamed or knew about you — they only spoke of you as “the baby.” They spoke with joy, certainly, and with anticipation and hope, but you were still just “the baby,” a tiny mystery of a person. Depending on the year of your birth or how much confidence your parents had in blurry ultrasound images, they may not even have known if you were a boy or a girl, or if there were more than one of you.

At some point during the pregnancy, your family started making lists of possible names for “the baby;” girls’ names, boys’ names, names that aren’t gender specific. They may have listed grandparents, aunts and uncles, best friends and favorite characters, names that would go well with the family name or start with the same letter as your siblings’ first names, or names that capture courage, kindness, or whatever other trait they hoped you would embody. And as the due date drew closer, the list got shorter. Eventually the moment came when they looked at you and they just knew what your name was going to be, and they spoke it. For the very first time, you were called by your name. You were no longer just “the baby,” you were somebody.

Mary and Joseph didn’t start with a list. The angel told Mary, according to Luke, “You will name him Jesus,” and according to Matthew, it was Joseph who was told by an angel, “You are to name him Jesus.”[1] So that was settled months before Mary even started to show.

The two readings we heard today are powerful, beautiful affirmations of identity, and in each, God is speaking in the first person singular, addressing somebody directly, through the voice of the prophet or a voice from heaven.

“I have called you by name,” says the creator-of-you, Jacob, the shaper-of-you, Israel, “You are mine.”

“You are my beloved son, I delight in you,” says the voice from heaven to Jesus, who’s just been baptized and anointed with the Holy Spirit for his mission.

I love that we get to hear these words of affirmation at the beginning of the year, this year in particular, when we mustn’t forget who and whose we are, and who it is we follow on the way to God’s reign.

Isaiah gives us exuberant poetry, addressed to a people stuck in desolation. In Isaiah’s message, the Babylonian exile is described as a punishment, or at least a consequence, of the people’s failure to honor God’s commandments, God’s torah, God’s instruction for faithful living. God, says Isaiah, turned away from them. God gave up Jacob to the spoiler, and poured upon him the heat of this anger and the fury of war; but [Jacob] did not take it to heart. Isaiah vividly describes the exiles as a people robbed and plundered, all of them trapped in holes and hidden in prisons. They are sinking in hopelessness, and there’s no one to rescue. There’s no one, says Isaiah, to say, “Restore!”[2] No one.

And in that desolate landscape of devastating silence, Isaiah stands and proclaims the new word, the word of the One who makes all things new. “But now,” shouts Isaiah — now there is someone to say, “Restore!” Now God speaks the new word declaring an end to judgment and captivity, and the promise of homecoming rises like a song in the morning.

Oh, we’ve heard the prophet tell us of the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it,[3] but now he speaks of us, he speaks of God’s people and who we are:

Thus says the Lord, the One who created you, O Jacob, who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.

Rise up, stand up, remember who you are. Remember, you have been created, shaped, called, claimed and redeemed for a purpose: you are the children of Abraham and Sarah, countless as the stars — I have called you by name; you are mine, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.[4]

In Isaiah’s proclamation, the Creator of heaven and earth speaks to God’s people “like a lover,” as Anathea Portier-Young put it, “whose heart is bursting, who has waited an eternity just to say their name.”[5] And the Holy One of Israel will do all that is necessary to secure their release and homecoming. Why?

Because you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you.

These words are spoken first and foremost and irrevocably to the Jewish people who have lived as people of the promise since the days of Abraham and Sarah. And we are invited to hear them addressed also to us, to all whom Jesus Christ has embraced as his siblings, all who pray with him for the coming of God’s reign, all who follow him on the way and enact with him at his table “the great ingathering of God’s beloved from all of God’s creation.”[6] For the end will be what God has spoken from the beginning: the feast of life when all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. In the company of Jesus, we dare to hope that when God says “everyone” it means everyone: everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. Home from our exiles, all of us scattered ones who forget so easily.

Today we celebrate that Jesus gets in the water with us. It may seem counterintuitive to step into the river of repentance when the oceans are rising and powerful storms are flooding the land. But when fires rage bigger, faster, and hotter than anytime on record, stepping into the river of repentance feels like the saving proposition it is. Today we celebrate the gift of this river, and that Jesus steps into it with us, not because he needs to, but because he wants to. He wants to be where we are, so we can be where he is. We step into the river of repentance with our sins and regrets, our guilt and shame and fear, and we pray that like water, grace is washing it all away, until we are who we were made to be, until we know who we are.

And Jesus steps into that very river in deep solidarity with us — and he drowns in it, drowns in our sin, in our helpless brokenness, in our fear and ready violence, in all the heavy lovelessness we carry. All of it. Drowns in it.

And you’ve heard the story, you know he rises, and you know the heaven is opened and the Holy Spirit descends, but now the voice from heaven speaks, and he hears it, he knows it, and he only hopes that we hear it too:“You are my Son, the Beloved, in whom I delight.” He knows this; this is the song in his heart. He hopes we hear the words as addressed not only to him, but to all of us.

In Luke’s narration of the gospel, the scene by the river is followed by a lengthy genealogy: name after name, generation after generation, the whole long line that makes Jesus who he is, going back all the way to Adam and Eve — but the voice from heaven has already declared who he is, has already spoken his true name.

We are all deeply shaped by our ancestors and what they have done and left undone, by the legacy of their dreams and the pain of their trauma, but Jesus reveals who we are: God’s beloved in whom God delights. This relationship is the one that shapes and heals and fulfills all the others that make us who we are.

God’s love for us is the one relationship in life we can’t screw up. We can deny it, sure; we can ignore it, neglect it, forget it, and run away from it, but we cannot end it. Nothing we do or refuse to do will change who we are: God’s own, God’s beloved, God’s delight.

Often we forget. We may forget because we’re busy making a name for ourselves. We may forget because others have convinced us that we are not worthy of love, too insignificant for any kind of attention. We may forget because pain and shame have buried our sense of self as God’s own.

What are we to do about our forgetfulness? We follow Jesus, he’ll remind us. We pray, and at least occasionally we let God do all the talking. And again and again we gather at the homecoming table for the feast of life, the great ingathering of God’s beloved from all of God’s creation.

There was a time when you were only known as “the baby.” Yet long before anyone would think of what to call you, God named you: God’s own, God’s beloved, God’s delight.

Do not fear, for I am with you, says the Lord. I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, Give them up, and to the south, Do not withhold. Bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth — everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

[1] Luke 1:32; Matthew 1:21

[2] See Isaiah 42:22-25

[3] Isaiah 42:5

[4] Isaiah 43:21

[5] Anathea Portier-Young https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/baptism-of-our-lord-3/commentary-on-isaiah-431-7

[6] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66 (WBC), 54.

What is Your Word?

Margie Quinn

A few weeks ago, I told a story at the communion table that I’d like to share again. It’s one that Anne Lamott claims she tells her Sunday school kids every year, and of which they never tire, though she thinks that has something to do with her weekly distribution of snacks. 

“A young girl is having a hard time falling asleep one night,” Anne recounts, “and calls out for her mother. Her mother comes in and gently tucks her in again and assures her that Jesus is there in the room with her, so she needn’t be afraid. This goes on and on, each time the increasingly annoyed mother saying basically the same thing until finally, in the dark, the little girl says plaintively, “I need someone with skin on.” 

“This,” Anne writes, “ is the main instruction I would leave my family in my swag bag of spiritual truth: be goodness with skin on. 

Be goodness with skin on. 

All four gospels begin very differently. Matthew, our resident historian, starts with an account of the birth story that begins with a breakdown of Jesus’ family tree. Mark, our energizer bunny, jumps right into describing our locust and honey-eating friend, John the Baptist, who is already running around in the wilderness and baptizing people. Luke, Mr. Justttt Right, tells us that he has decided, after investigating everything carefully, to write an orderly account of what happened regarding the birth of Jesus (which he does very comprehensively). And John, our final gospel author and resident artist, (you know the type– one walking around in the woods and pointing at beautiful lichen or intricate flower pattern, waxing poetic on life’s beauty), begins his gospel like this: 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” 

Such a poet. 

“All things came into being through him and, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” 

Isn’t he a beautiful writer? Isn’t it all just a little hard to follow? Which is why we should lean in a little closer and bask in his telling. John goes on to describe Jesus as the true light, who enlightens everyone, who is in the world even though the world doesn’t always know him, who has the glory of someone full of grace and truth. 

Light. Glory. Grace. Truth.  

Those are nice words, words we have heard a lot in the church. But I find myself, like the young girl calling out for her mother, needing words with skin on. Luckily, John tells me that this is exactly what happened with the Word: It became flesh and lived among us. 

The word went from being this intangible light, glory, grace and truth to embodying them in the three or so decades he had with us. The Word became goodness with skin on. 

Jesus embodied Light by going into dark caves to heal people that everyone else had given up on. He embodied Glory through his resurrection, triumphing over sin and evil. He embodied Grace, washing the feet of friends who would deny him, abandon him, and betray him. And he embodied Truth, fighting the systems of power that spread lies of scarcity while he showed us a more honest way to live. 

That’s all well and good, Jesus being these big words with flesh on, but what does this have to do with us? Is Jesus the only one who gets to embody these lofty words? 

Episcopal Priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor says this: 

“Almost everyone has a word that he or she has a gift for bringing to life. For one person the word is ‘compassion.’ For another it is ‘justice.’ For someone else the word is ‘generosity.’ For another it is ‘patience.’ 

Until someone acts upon these words, they remain abstract concepts–very good ideas that few people have ever seen. The moment someone acts on them, the words become flesh. They live among us, so we can see their glory.”

I love this. Everyone has a word that we have a gift for bringing to life. When we act on these words, they go from being swirly concepts to being goodness, or patience, or justice…with skin on. 

Last night, I asked my boyfriend, Collin, what my word was.. He said “open-hearted.” That was very nice of him. My friend Mariah says that I am a “Walking-Exclamation-Point.” That’s three words but I’m hyphenating. I’d like to think I have a few other words, maybe “authenticity” or “humor,” or as my nephew called me once when I chopped all of my hair while living in Seattle, “Cool Uncle.” I think, I hope, I bring these words to life. 

At my sister-in-law, Tallu’s, funeral, her dear friend, Priest Scott Owings, shared what he viewed as Tallu’s “God-Word.” “Her God-Word was Bread,” he said. She was good at baking it, breaking it and sharing it. She nourished people with it and fed them, which became her life’s calling, starting the “Nashville Food Project” to grow, cook and share delicious food with our community. “Bread” is a word that Tallu made come to life. 

After Eva’s funeral yesterday, I wondered if her word might be “Flower,” not only because she loved them, or because she smelled good, but because she made everything more colorful and more beautiful. She bloomed when she saw you. What a good word to embody. 

Open-hearted. Bread. Flower. These are nice words. Sometimes though, we don’t love the words we embody. As we enter the New Year, I can already feel myself starting to put skin on words like “Busy” or “Weary” or “Hopeless.” In those moments, I wonder if it’s most helpful to ask the people who love us what our word is. 

What’s your word? What abstract concept do you bring to life simply by being who you are? 

Perhaps Vine Street also has a word it embodies. Perhaps we are “Music” with skin on. Or “Service.” Or “Welcome.” What do you hope our word could be this year? What are the words you hope visitors from our church leave with? It is never too late for us as a church to bring one of God’s life-giving words to life. 

In the final verses of this passage, John claims that no one has ever seen God, but in Jesus, we have. We have seen God with skin on. We have seen a man who took these abstract words like grace, truth, glory and light and embodied them so that we may have a better idea of how to be those things ourselves. And at a time when many people feel like the young girl who has a hard time falling asleep, who needs someone with skin on, we get to be witnesses,  as John the Baptist said, “to testify to the Light made known in Jesus.” We testify to his light not  just by talking about or reading about him, but by living like him. Out loud. Embodied. With skin on. 

This New Year, I’m not making a list of resolutions or goals. I’m just going to try to be goodness with skin on. And, like St. Francis of Assisi encouraged, I’m going to try to “preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, to use words.” 

After the service, ask someone who loves you what your word is. Tell me, or Thomas, or write it on a notecard and stick it on your mirror. Let’s live life out loud, embodying these abstract words by making them real, fleshy, and present. 

May it be so. 

Now what?

Thomas Kleinert

We have heard the story and told it, the story of God and the baby. We have sung the old carols and hummed along with the holiday playlists. We have lit the candles, lots of candles held high as a witness to the light that shines in the darkness, defiantly hopeful that the darkness will not overcome it.

We have celebrated the birth of Jesus, and in many homes the days revolved around a big dining table, surrounded by people of all ages, in a sea of torn wrapping paper — gifts, smiles, thank-yous, and an abundance of good food and holiday cheer. Some of us even missed the half-time show with Beyoncé. All because of the wondrous story of God and this baby. Now what?

“Well, so that is that,” says the narrator in W. H. Auden’s Christmas Oratorio,

Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes—

Some have got broken—and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school. There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week—

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted—quite unsuccessfully—

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,

Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,

The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.[1]

How very grown-up this voice sounds. How little room it leaves for wide-eyed wonder. “Once again,” the voice declares with a regretful tone, “once again, as in previous years, we have seen the actual Vision – and failed to do more than entertain it as an agreeable possibility; once again we have sent Him away.”

I think it’s a little early for Auden’s reflective earnestness, though, and you and I wouldn’t be here on the first Sunday after, if the light of that night had not started a little fire in our hearts. So here are, just for contrast, the words of Sharon, as told by John Shea:

She was five, sure of the facts, and recited them with slow solemnity, convinced every word was revelation. She said, “They were so poor they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat and they went a long way from home without getting lost. The lady rode a donkey, the man walked, and the baby was inside the lady. They had to stay in a stable with an ox and an ass … , but the Three Rich Men found them because a star lighted the roof. Shepherds came and you could pet the sheep but not feed them. Then the baby was borned. And do you know who he was?” Her quarter eyes inflated to silver dollars. “The baby was God.” And she jumped in the air, whirled around, dove into the sofa and buried her head under the cushion, which is the only proper response to the Good News of the Incarnation.[2]

The good news of the incarnation is a lot to take in. For five-year-old Sharon it takes careful retelling, and she can’t tell it without jumping and whirling around, and then some sofa-diving. She knows what an awesome thing it is to say, “The baby was God.” It changes profoundly how we think about God, heaven and earth, sun and moon and stars, and every baby born into this world where rich men rarely come bearing gifts without an agenda and wise men and women are worried. The Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory, and he has changed everything. The baby was God, and all the possibilities we see in the eyes of the infant unfolded into the particular life of Jesus.

Jesus is our childhood’s pattern, 

Day by day like us he grew.

He was little, weak and helpless, 

Tears and smiles like us he knew.

Thus he feels for all our sadness, 

And he shares in all our gladness.[3]

Luke’s story of the 12-year-old Jesus in the temple is the only incident in the biblical gospels about the life of Jesus between infancy and the beginning of his ministry as an adult. “Jesus is twelve years old, a signal to the original audience,” writes Wesley Allen, “that he is on the cusp of adulthood as defined in the ancient world … His actions on this occasion, then, foreshadow his ministry and especially his relationship with God.”[4] Just as the adult Jesus will make one trip to Jerusalem on Passover, where he will encounter the teachers in the temple and finally give his life in obedience to God’s will, so the boy Jesus, near the end of his childhood, makes one trip to the temple, on Passover, where he encounters the teachers. To his family, he appears to be lost, but he knows he is exactly where he needs to be. It’s not hard to imagine him sounding just like any sassy pre-teen in this scene. "Why were you searching for me?” he says to his parents. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?" Day by day like us he grew, and he grew into his own. But isn’t it a little early to think about 12-year old Jesus just four days after Christmas Day? Doesn’t it feel a little rushed?

I don’t own a Christmas sweater. Several years ago, though, I picked up a pair of Christmas socks at Target. Black, with little green Christmas trees and a fat, jolly Santa. Every year, I wear them once, maybe twice, and then they go in the laundry basket and eventually back in the far back of the sock drawer until next year.

Why am I talking about Christmas socks? Because they fit the category of seasonal accessory, and because the wonderful passage from Colossians talks about getting dressed. The baby was God. The Word became flesh. We have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus. Now what?

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

The baby was God, and with the Magi from the East and Sharon’s Three Rich Men we come to adore him and to offer our gifts—only to discover that Christmas is a reverse baby shower: new threads for us.

Three-year-old Liam got Batman sheets for Christmas, and he may still wear his Spiderman pyjamas, but he’s outgrowing his Paw Patrol undies. He’s a big boy now.

We’re invited to let ourselves be clothed in layer upon layer of all that Jesus embodies—his compassion and kindness, his humility and patience, his forgiveness, his peace, and above all, the fullness of God’s love he enfleshed.

Your Christmas sweater may already be back in the closet until next year, together with the left-over wrapping paper and all the decorations in the attic. But the birth of Jesus isn’t just about decorations, it truly is about God’s incarnation: the complete enfleshment of God’s fullness in a human being. We know Jesus didn’t come so we could have a day or two or three of merriment and memories—beautiful and life-giving as such days are. He came to reclaim and fulfill all our days. He came to free us from sin, from our self-absorption and greed, and from the ugliness of thought and speech that holds us captive. He came to bind us together for good in the love of God. And you know how much this land and every land needs communities of compassion and people who seek to make room in their hearts and their neighborhoods for the peace of Christ to rule. It begins with you and me and our willingness to wear these new clothes year-round. It begins with our willingness to let the word of Christ not just come and visit, but dwell within and among us.

The baby was God, and I am thankful for Sharon who gives voice to an exuberance that can’t contain itself and calls on heaven and earth, sun and moon and all living things to praise the One who loves all things into being.

The baby was God, and I am thankful also for Auden whose narrator gives voice to the shadow experience of this exuberance:

Once again we have attempted—quite unsuccessfully—to love all of our relatives, and in general grossly overestimated our powers.

But even this very grown-up and somber voice of after-Christmas pensiveness points to our child-like dependence on the One who comes to us in the baby.

Once again, as in previous years, … we have sent Him away, begging though to remain His disobedient servant, the promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

We know Jesus came to reclaim and redeem our every day. We have sent him away, again and again, because the love that found us demands so much of us, and we are slow to change. But “begging … to remain His disobedient servant” we wrap ourselves in Christ’s compassion, kindness, and patience, and we get a little closer to wearing them year-round.

May the fire God has kindled in our hearts burn brightly, bright enough for us to trust that even though we “cannot keep His word for long,” the word enfleshed in Jesus keeps us for good.

[1] For the Time Being, in: W. H. Auden, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 399.

[2] John Shea, The Hour of the Unexpected (Allan, TX: Argus Communications, 1977), 68.

[3] Cecil F. Alexander, “Once in David’s Royal City,” Chalice Hymnal No. 165.

[4] O. Wesley Allen Jr. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-christmas-3/commentary-on-luke-241-52-5

Change

Thomas Kleinert

There’s a reason they don’t pay prophets to design inspirational cards for the Advent season. You just can’t make embossed, heavy cardstock, color print and extra glitter work with a line like “The ax is lying at the root of the trees!” or the classic holiday greeting, “Merry Christmas, you brood of vipers!” But on the road to Christmas, there’s no good way to avoid John the Baptizer down by the Jordan, no matter how much we might prefer staying at the month-long Christmas party that started the day after Thanksgiving, just dipping gingerbread cookies into our egg nog. There’s no good way to avoid John, and he’s on fire.

“Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” he yells, sounding like one of the prophets of old: furious, single-minded, borderline obsessive. The people have come to receive his baptism in the river. It’s a powerful ritual of making a fresh start, of going back to the beginning: God’s people crossing the river to enter the promised land anew. But John won’t let them get away with thinking that a water ritual would make them presentable on the day of the Lord, or that some other symbolic action like putting on sackcloth and ashes would do, or that they could always fall back on being children of Abraham with whom God had made the covenant that included all his descendants. John slams all those exit doors shut until it is just the crowd and this ancient and urgent demand: “Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”

And amazingly, most of them don’t leave to find a more accommodating prophet. They get it. “What then are we to do?” they ask.

Repentance is one of those churchy words we may get tired of hearing. Some think it’s something like reallyfeeling really sorry, with thick layers of religious overtones and tears of contrition. Not really. What it means is both very simple and very hard: to stop doing what I’m doing and to start doing what I was made to do. The term in Hebrew literally means turning around, as in returning to the ways of God. And the Greek term literally means change of mind, indicating a complete turn-around in one’s thinking that effects a change of direction in one’s life. It doesn’t matter if you typically think your way into a new way of acting or act your way into a new way of thinking. Repentance is a fundamental reorientation of your life, a reorientation that becomes visible, tangible, and, hopefully, durable. All this is to say is that repentance may well be a churchy-sounding word, but it’s one we just can’t do without.

“What then are we to do?” folks ask. “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none,” says John; “and whoever has food must do likewise.” It doesn’t get any more everyday than the clothes on your back and the food on your plate. Bearing good fruit, it turns out, is neither spectacular nor heroic; it’s rather ordinary. John reminds me that in the divine economy, if I have more than what I need to sustain my life, the neighbor who does not have such abundance has a claim on it. And I can’t even tell him how many pairs of pants are hanging in my closet.

The last time I spoke with Father Strobel before he joined the saints in heaven, I was driving the van to pick up a group of guests from the Room in the Inn campus. The line was short that night. I pulled right up and got out of the van. I saw a man who looked familiar, despite the surgical mask covering much of his face. “Charlie, is it you? I haven’t seen you in what feels like ages! It’s Thomas from Vine Street. It’s so good to see you! How are you?” Even in the dark, I could see Charlie’s eyes light up with a smile. He told me he was doing OK, mentioned his health problems, but that wasn’t what he wanted to chat about. He couldn’t stand staying at home, he told me. He needed to be where he was, at the campus, with the folks who didn’t have housing, people he knew to be his siblings and his friends.

“The real problem,” he said, and I’m paraphrasing, “the real problem is private property. There’s nothing wrong with owning things, but the way I understand Jesus, he tells us, ‘This is yours, enjoy it. It’s yours until someone else needs it.’”

I laughed and said, “That’ll preach, Charlie!” On the way back to the church, I kept thinking, who but this man would skip the chit-chat about the weather or some sports team and go right to the heart of the matter? A lifetime of prayer and loving service condensed into a simple, incredibly challenging statement, offered with humility and the warmest smile:

The way I understand Jesus, he tells us, “This is yours, enjoy it. It’s yours until someone else needs it.”

“Love your neighbor” is not a religious way to spell charity; it’s the most challenging way to spell justice. It is the challenge to take my neighbor’s need as seriously as I take my own. Moses and the prophets teach it. John declared it. Jesus lived it. And in the fourth century, Bishop Basil of Caesarea said in a homily, “When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who couldclothe the naked and does not?” And the bishop continued,

The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help, but fail to help.

Or as James put it, If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.[1] And in the First Letter of John we read, How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?[2] Or as Charlie paraphrased Jesus’ teaching, “This is yours, enjoy it. It’s yours until someone else needs it.” Love of neighbor is a golden thread woven into the texts of our tradition, and we need to weave it into our lives with continual repentance, continual conversion to the vision and purposes of God.

Little we do in this weekly worship gathering ever strikes us as revolutionary. Our liturgy is not designed with radical, global change in mind, but we do what we do, all that we do, in the light of God’s coming reign. We practice confession and forgiveness, we practice gratitude and praise, we practice saying our small yes to God’s great and eternal Yes, we practice saying, “Jesus Christ is Lord!”, and we trust that by letting those practices become habitual we are changed into subversive change-makers.

The tax-collectors in the crowd ask John, “What are we to do?” and John doesn’t tell them to walk away from their jobs, because the system of taxation is corrupt and unjust. He does tell them, though, not to take more than they are authorized to take.

And John doesn’t tell the soldiers in the crowd to quit service in the Roman military, because they are collaborating with an unjust and corrupt system — we all are. He does tell them, though, not to extort money from anyone through threats or false accusations. Again, nothing heroic, nothing spectacular, just a commitment to act with justice within the social structure, a commitment to let love of neighbor become visible and tangible in everyday situations.

John tells the people of the coming one who is more powerful than he, who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with 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.” Just moments before, John talked about trees getting cut down and thrown into the fire, so it’s quite understandable when some folks wonder if wheat and chaff represent two groups of people—perhaps those who bear the fruit God expects to find and those who don’t?

No. The point is rather that until harvest time, every grain of wheat is wrapped in a husk. After threshing, all those precious wheat berries are mixed in with a dusty mess of husk parts called chaff. And to this day, farmers around the world make use of the wind to separate the chaff from the grain—a small portion of the messy mix is tossed up into the air, the chaff is blown away some distance, and the wheat kernels fall back to the ground. And the point, of course, is to save every last grain, not merely some.

The image suggests a view of judgment that is liberating rather than punishing: We experience life as a mix of good and evil impulses and actions; they are often frustratingly intermingled; combinations of good intentions and bad outcomes; poor judgments we can’t forget and compromises that haunt us; too many choices where we had to pick the lesser of two evils — and the judgment John announces as the work of the coming one is a judgment. But it’s not a judgment of division and elimination. It’s a judgment of cleansing and gathering. It’s the judgment of fiery love that burns away all the bits that keep us from being who we were made to be, all the bits that trap us in self-absorption and apathy, all the bits our practice of repentance didn’t help us shed, all that gets in the way of our life as God’s people.

So, yes, it’s good to meet John on the road to Christmas. And it’s good to make it a habit to repent and rejoice. The Lord is near! And that you can write on your Christmas card, can’t you?

[1] James 2:15-17

[2] 1 John 3:17

The Middle of the Wilderness

Margie Quinn

It has been four hundred years since God has spoken to God’s people; four centuries of silence in which no one has heard from God. Right after Malachi gives us a proclamation that there will be a prophet to come, we hear nothing from our Creator. 

A lot happens in those four hundred years. There is destruction, war, devastation, exile, and deep suffering. When the Israelites hope to hear from an angel, a prophet, heck we will even take a burning bush again, they don’t hear from anyone. 

And then in this passage, for the first time in four hundred years, we hear from God. Here’s how it goes down: In the fifteenth year of the reign of a really important Emperor, when this really important guy was a Governor and a really important guy was a Ruler (and his brother was also a Ruler and his friend was a Ruler, and there were a couple of high priests who had a lot of power)... in that time, the word of God came to…John. Did you catch that? We begin our passage with a political roll call of the ruling class, the people who hold the highest seats of power. And we quickly discover that the word of God came to…not him or him or him or him, but him. The him in this story is John the Baptist. Y’all remember John the Baptist? He’s this strangely dressed guy who feasts on a diet of locusts and honey, who would have definitely would have been bullied growing up for the way that he looked. We learn that, after this successive string of men, the word of God is coming to…him? 

Yep. After four hundred years of silence, God decides to turn  the world right-side-up again, and finds John. God doesn’t just find him anywhere. He’s not at the urban city center in this story. He’s not sitting in some office at his desk or in an executive chamber. He’s in the wilderness. He could not be further away from noise of Caesar’s world. We don’t know why he’s out there. Maybe he is running from something or running to something. All we know is that this is where God finds him that day: smack dab in the middle of a wasteland, perhaps prepared, perhaps not, to receive a word from a God that has been pretty dang quiet for four hundred years.

The first thing we learn about this word that God sends to John is that it so animates John, it so empowers and encourages him that the first thing he does once he receives the word is to go all around the region of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Think about it:  God’s word could have animated John to do a lot of different things in that moment. We could have learned that, “The word of God came to John, who ran straight into the city and ran for office, and had a position of power for the rest of his life.” But no, we learn here in Luke 3 that the word of God inspired John to preach repentance and forgiveness.

I want to break those words down. Repentance, metanoia, just means the changing of one’s mind, the reorienting of one’s heart, the transformation of one’s own agenda from that of Caesar to that of God. Repentance means to turn away from selfishness and shame, resentment and hatred, and to turn toward love, again and again. That is what the word of God did to John that day. It made him get up and start walking around and teaching people about metanoia, about reorienting our hearts.

When the word of God came to John, it made him want to talk about forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness: the Greek translation of “forgiveness” just means, “to let go.” Isn’t that beautiful? That the word of God when animated in John encouraged him to tell people that you can let go. You can let go of all of that hatred you feel toward that person that you don’t even know. You can let go of all of the shame you feel about yourself when you look in the mirror. You can let go of all of that pain and tension within your family and trust it to someone else. You can let go. 

That is what this strangely-dressed, locust-eating guy is doing in the wilderness that day. 

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” he continues. “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Prepare the way of the Lord.  John could have done a lot of things to prepare for Jesus’ coming that, to me, would have made a lot more sense. In my own life, my preparation for this Advent season has looked like picking out the perfect tree, stringing lights in my house and sweeping for the first time in a while. It looks like anxiously and frantically making sure that my house looks welcoming and spirited to reflect the season. Those are the ways that I’ve prepared for the coming of Christ.

 And this guy, who I’m sure if I saw him on the street today I’d look the other way, is preparing by walking around a region that is known as a place of great pain and great freedom and simply saying to people, “Someone is coming. I’m not him. I’m pointing to him. Someone is coming that is going to set you free and help you experience a kind of love you can’t imagine. That’s what’s coming, and I’m here to prepare you and myself for it.” All of this coming from a man in the middle of the wilderness. 

If the word of God can meet John in the wilderness, maybe it can come to me, not when I feel like I’m on top of my life but when I feel the most vulnerable to it. And perhaps in being a vulnerable recipient, in throwing my hands up and laying myself bare, perhaps that’s when I could most clearly hear what a loving voice might have to say. 

That loving voice could meet us when our hearts are broken. When we are in between jobs. When we can’t seem to heal that persistent injury. When we are timidly trying out a new medication. When we have lost someone we dearly love. When we feel out of place at school. When we  can’t shake the depressive fog. When we are scared of what’s next. When we wish we were a lot skinnier, or a lot stronger. When we are waiting to hear back from that college. When we don’t feel close to God. When we go through the motions of our lives but don’t feel passion anymore. When we find ourselves in the middle of the wilderness.

The promise in this story is not necessarily the word itself, but who the word comes to and where the word comes. The word finds itself in a wasteland and picks a wild prophet who is stripped down and open to what is coming. God picks a man who is open to preparing a way, with a different kind of preparation than what the world at that time (or this time) is used to. 

So, I don’t know how to prepare for Jesus this season. But if I look to John, if I look to the way that God came to speak to God’s people, it points me somewhere in the direction of openness, of throwing up my arms and saying, “Help.” In the places in my life that feel most wild, perhaps that’s where God wants to meet me most. So, I don’t want to run away from the wilderness. I don’t want to look at it as exile or devastation or that I’m missing some part of this greater faith thing. I think, like John, it could be exactly where we are supposed to be this Advent season. John invites us to prepare for Jesus in a different kind of way, a way where we are invited to change our hearts, our minds, and to let go.

May it be so. 

Beware

Thomas Kleinert

Those who saw the temple in Jerusalem say it was a magnificent structure. Newly rebuilt under Herod the Great, and still under construction during Jesus’ lifetime, it occupied a platform twice as large as the Roman Forum with its many temples and four times the size of the Acropolis in Athens with the famous Parthenon. The massive retaining walls that supported the complex, including the famous Western wall that remains today, were built with enormous blocks of stone, some of them 40 feet long. The front of the temple itself was a square of sculpted rock, 150 feet by 150 feet, much of it decorated with silver and gold. First-century historian Josephus wrote that the gold “effected so fierce a blaze of fire that those who tried to look at it were forced to turn away. Jerusalem and the temple seemed in the distance like a mountain covered in snow, for any part not covered in gold was dazzling white.” The combination of the temple mount, the platform of huge retaining stones, and the large building of the temple itself raised the temple complex to a height that could be seen from miles away, and in bright sunlight, it shone like a luminous city come down from heaven. This was the House of God – this was, in the minds of many, the center of the world. This was the very presence of God with God’s people, the ancient promise rendered in stone. It was holy ground, a sanctuary where rituals of atonement and purification along with festivals of liberation and thanksgiving sustained a people seeking to live faithfully with their God. The temple was an essential institution of Jewish life.

Jesus had come to the temple every day since he came to Jerusalem, and tensions between him and the temple leadership had been growing. Now he and the disciples are leaving, and one of them says, perhaps with his fingers tracing the seam between two of the colossal blocks, “Look, teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” He is dazzled, but he doesn’t see what Jesus sees. I wonder if he actually saw what Jesus wanted us to see just moments ago when he drew our attention to the poor widow putting her last little coin in the temple treasury – if this disciple saw her, she didn’t leave a lasting impression; not like the massive walls. “Not one stone will be left here upon another,” Jesus tells the stunned disciple. “All will be thrown down.” Nothing suggests he meant it as a threat; just a simple announcement. The words sound very matter-of-fact, spoken in passing. The beauty would fade, the majesty fall, the power crumble and collapse.

In the next scene, Jesus and four of the disciples are sitting on the Mount of Olives with its spectacular view of the Temple Mount, and they ask him some follow-up questions about all will be thrown down. They’re not curious as to why or how, only when this would be — as though the why were a given and the how irrelevant, and everything now was just a matter of time. In the apocalyptic imagination, the announcement that “not one stone will be left here upon another” is a given — the burning question is, when will the present age crumble under the weight of evil and give way to the kingdom of God? When will this be and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?

The Gospel of Mark was composed and first heard in a time of great uncertainty. In the 60’s of the first century, the weight of Roman occupation of Judea became too much to bear. Mob violence was disrupting life in Jerusalem. Assassins attacked and murdered people, including one high priest, in broad daylight, and kidnapped officials who collaborated with Rome. Gangs of roaming robbers burned and looted villages.[1] Prophets delivered oracles of doom, and daily the news seemed to confirm their words. Jerusalem was a tinderbox in those tumultuous years, with revolutionary sentiments mounting and finally catapulting Judea into open rebellion against Rome. “Deceivers and impostors, under the pretense of divine inspiration, fostering revolutionary changes,” wrote the historian Josephus, “they persuaded the masses to act like madmen and led them out into the desert in the belief that God would give them signs of deliverance.”[2] Insurgents took control of the city, but not for long. Roman troops under the command of Titus laid siege to Jerusalem, and in the summer of the year 70, the city fell and the temple was destroyed — only seven years after construction had finally been completed.

The Gospel of Mark was composed and first heard in a time of wars and rumors of wars. There were Christian prophets whose words were honored by the assemblies of believers as the words of the risen Lord, and some of those prophets were certain that the catastrophic events unfolding in Jerusalem could only mean that the return of Jesus in power and glory was imminent.

In Mark’s community, however, the words of the living Lord were words of caution and encouragement. “Beware that no one leads you astray.” To the prophets, teachers, and preachers of Mark’s community, the bewilderment, the desolation, and the chaos so many of us are experiencing — Simon Dein calls it the “paralyzing anxiety that the world is dissolving”[3] — was familiar territory. It’s from those depths that they proclaim to us a message of resilient hope. Beware that no one leads you astray, says the Lord. Beware that no one leads you astray, when truth is shaken, when nations make war and people flee in terror, when the silent tsunami of famine inundates the devastated land, when impostors preach alluring sermons of fear, resentment, and weaponized grievance. Don’t despair. Beware. Resist the pull of cynicism. Cultivate hope. Cultivate wonder. Cultivate gratitude. Practice faithful commitment. Be alert. Stay awake. Laugh. Live the love that is the way of Jesus.

Adrienne Maree Brown wrote in 2016, under the Black Lives Matter hashtag, “Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.”[4] A few years later, in the summer of 2022, she wrote,

I have to revise that. Things are getting worse for most of us, between mass shootings, climate catastrophe, regressive sociopolitical battles and an ongoing global pandemic. It’s an overwhelming, terrifying and grief-stricken time.

After naming several of the losses we haven’t had the time or the emotional capacity to fully process, she adds,

This palpable, active, ongoing grief is a non-negotiable part of this period of immense change. Grief is one of the most beautiful and difficult ways we love. As we grieve we feel our humanity and connection to each other.[5]

We are people called to live the love that is the way of Jesus, and this grief settling into our bones is part of it. We are called to lean forward into the promise of a world redeemed by the love of God.

“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars,” Jesus says, “do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.” And then he speaks of birth pangs. For many of us it does feel like the end of the world when every day just seems to add layer upon layer of loss. Some of it is disillusionment, which is painful, but it frees us to see with greater clarity and live more honestly and truthfully — and certainly disillusionment is the kind of loss most of us would welcome as we hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.

But Jesus speaks to the whole messy experience of losses piling up and weighing us down — the tears, the worries, the bad dreams and the sleepless nights, the knot in the stomach, the shoulders that feel like they’ll never relax again. He sees our reality and he knows it; knows it and bears it. And he speaks of labor pains. He tells us that the world is in labor, and the suffering of creation will be healed and fulfilled in the joy of birth.

How long is this labor, we ask, of course we ask, how long must we wait? When will we laugh with tears in our eyes and cry no more?

He doesn’t know when. What he does know is that something is struggling to be born, and he calls us to lean into the promise, and breathe through the pain, and follow him on the way.

The English historian Eric Hobsbawm, born in 1917, grew up in Vienna and, after the death of his parents, with an aunt in Berlin. Berlin was not a good place to live for a Jewish teenager in those years. He was fifteen years old when one day in January 1933, as he was walking his little sister home from school, he saw the headline at a newsstand, “Adolph Hitler Appointed Chancellor of Germany.” Reflecting on those years Hobsbawm later wrote,

We were on the Titanic, and everyone knew it was hitting the iceberg. … It is difficult for those who have not experienced the ‘Age of Catastrophe’ of the twentieth century in central Europe to see what it meant to live in a world that was simply not expected to last, in something that could not really even be described as a world, but merely as a provisional waystation between a dead past and a future not yet born.[6]

Now it’s our turn to live in something that cannot really even be described as a world; it’s our turn to live in this in-between time, so hard to describe, so difficult to understand, so exhausting to navigate. Yet amid all the endings pointing to a non-world ruled by autocrats, something is struggling to be born, Jesus assures us: a world where God and creation are at home.

We believe that the Spirit of God is at work among us, unresting, unhasting, breathing with us through the pain, building a new temple, one that isn’t modeled on imperial architecture, but a living temple where God is at home in the world. A temple that isn’t overwhelming in its heavy, gold-plated magnitude, but one that shines with the glory of God. A temple made entirely of human beings who are fully alive and are finally one with the love that made us.[7]

[1] See Josephus, Jewish War, 2.254-56; Antiquities 20.185-88; 208-10

[2] Josephus, Jewish War, 2.258

[3] Cited by Amanda Brobst-Renaud https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-33-2/commentary-on-mark-131-8-5

[4] https://www.instagram.com/adriennemareebrown/p/BHqlZ57jbBT/

[5] https://adriennemareebrown.net/2022/06/07/an-emergent-strategy-response-to-mass-shootings/

[6] Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York: Penguin, 2008), 117.

[7] My thanks to Debie Thomas whose writing and voice continue to help me say what I believe needs to be said, especially https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2010-not-one-stone

Two widows

Thomas Kleinert

Two widows. One of them we know as the widow of Zarephath. Jesus talked about her when, early in his ministry, he preached a sermon at the synagogue at home in Nazareth.

“There were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.” And when they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage, and they were ready to kill him.[1]

It’s a kind of jealousy we’re familiar with. We gotta take care of our own first, we say, sometimes quite emphatically. And when we’re filled with rage, we have a hard time remaining receptive to others, or at least curious about them. Most of us today aren’t filled with rage, though. Talking with folks over the past few days, I heard of disappointment and bewilderment, and there’s been considerable numbness and worry, but not much rage. So perhaps we can be receptive to the nameless widow from the other side and her gifts.

Elijah the Tishbite, the man of God, is introduced in the first book of Kings, chapter 17. He steps on the scene during the reign of King Ahab of Samaria, a king infamous for exploring other options than the Lord God as divine guarantors of the land’s fertility and hence the king’s power. Ahab had married a Sidonian princess, Jezebel, and in the book of Kings she is blamed for the fact that Ahab abandoned the worship of the Lord God of Israel and instead erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria. We’re presented with a mighty clash of theopolitical systems: Who gives life to people, Baal or the Lord?

Elijah stepped on the scene and told Ahab, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” And that was the beginning of the long drought. After a while, the Lord told Elijah, “Go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon (you know, Jezebel’s home town) and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” When Elijah came to the gate of the town, he saw her. She and her son were one meal away from starvation, and she was gathering some wood so she could prepare their last supper. She also saw him, the stranger who asked her for a drink and something to eat. She gave him a drink of water and she told him times were hard, recalling for him how little meal was left in the jar, and how little oil in the jug. And the stranger said to her, “Do not be afraid. Make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son.”

Why say, Do not be afraid? Why would she be afraid? Ashamed perhaps for not being able to show proper hospitality to the stranger. Or heart-broken, knowing that there would be no more food the next day for her child, or the stranger, or herself. “Do not be afraid,” said the stranger. “I have a word from the Lord God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.”

“Do not be afraid to trust the promise of the Lord God,” is what he was saying, inviting her — the Sidonian widow who had so little food left, and yet she had more than he did — inviting her to trust and share. And she did. She went and prepared three little cakes — and for as long as the drought continued in Israel, the story goes, the jar of meal in this widow’s household was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail.

We can hear this story as a colorful affirmation of the Lord God of Israel as the true life-giver, a story told with great delight in the villages of Israel while Ahab and Jezebel in the capital were pushing hard to remake the realm with Baal as the source of their power. We can hear this story as the first round in the clash between the prophet and the king, and the prophet didn’t just win, he scored a major victory on the opposing team’s home field in Sidon. What easily gets lost, though, in this triumphant take on the story, is the unnamed foreign widow who showed hospitality to the stranger from Israel, and whose trust in the promise of the Lord God unlocked blessings beyond anything our drought stricken minds can imagine.

I’m not starving for lack of food, there’s plenty for most of us in this country, thank God. I hunger for understanding, I thirst for truth and a renewed sense of community, and what I’m craving more than anything is the spark of courage the widow of Zarephath showed — whether she struck that spark herself or whether it simply came to her in the encounter. She’s the one who unlocked blessing for the stranger and her child and every guest who would come knocking on her door during the drought years. She’s the one who inspires me to trust the promise of God.

Now Jesus draws our attention to the other widow. We don’t know her name either. Had they had an annual temple report listing the names of major donors, hers wouldn’t have been in it.

“Beware of the scribes,” Jesus taught the crowd. He didn’t mean the scribes in general, but the ones who liked to walk around in long robes. The ones who liked to be seen, strutting around like peacocks spreading their tails, craving attention and seats of honor. The ones who never tired of reciting long, elaborate prayers so all would see and hear and recognize them — the ones who, famous for their piety, were nevertheless capable of devouring widows’ homes and livelihoods.

Ostentatious piety was one thing, but exploiting widows was a serious charge. Scribes enjoyed great respect as teachers of the Torah, and caring for widows, orphans, and strangers was known to be a central concern of God’s commandments. The law was clear:

You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge.[2]

The prophets were equally clear, and the Psalms also reflected that sacred commitment to caring for the most vulnerable people by declaring,

The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.[3]

Jesus was teaching in the temple, at the heart of an institution established to the glory of God and for the flourishing of God’s people, but one that was used and abused for the worst of very human ends: vanity, self-promotion, and exploitation.

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. Nobody was paying attention to the poor widow who put in two small copper coins. Compared to the gifts of the rich, is was like nothing, like a penny in the parking lot nobody bothers to even pick up. To her, it was everything.

Nobody was paying attention to her, but Jesus points her out to us. He notices her because his eyes, as Debie Thomas put it, “are ever on the small, the insignificant, the hidden.”[4] Jesus wants us to see what he sees, be attentive to what he notices.

“Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

So much attention for those who gave much, so little for her who gave everything. Everything. Are we supposed to cheer or weep? Jesus doesn’t applaud or commend her, nor does he tell us to go and do likewise. All he does is describe the scene. And there’s no hint in the text to let us know if he speaks with joy in his voice about this woman’s act of complete devotion to God, or if he speaks with anger because he is witnessing how a corrupt institution that is supposed to glorify the God who upholds the orphan and the widow, takes a poor widow’s last coin like some shameless TV preacher.

The day after Jesus and the disciples had come to Jerusalem, he entered the temple and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the stalls of those who sold doves. For a moment, he practically shut down the entire temple operation. “Is it not written,” he shouted, quoting Isaiah and Jeremiah“‘my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”[5]

When the poor widow left the temple, Jesus left it as well. One of the disciples, awed by the magnificent architecture, pointed out some of the details, inviting Jesus to admire them with him. Jesus’ response was quick and short: “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”[6] He had just watched a poor woman give her all to an indefensible institution, one whose leaders refused to honor God by protecting the poor. No edifice steeped in such injustice will stand.[7]

Tossing her last coin into the temple treasury that day may not have been an act of devotion at all, but of judgment. An act of prophetic judgment against leaders who would take her last coin, but not see her, not recognize her dignity as a member of God’s household.

So much is uncertain as we try to imagine the months and years ahead. But trusting the promise of God, and letting ourselves be made into God’s dwelling place on earth together, we can assure each other that numbness will again give way to loving attention and sparks of courage, and no structure steeped in injustice will stand.

[1] Luke 4:25-28

[2] See Exodus 22:22 and Deuteronomy 24:17

[3] Psalm 146:9

[4] Debie Thomas https://www.journeywithjesus.net/theeighthday/446-the-widowed-prophet

[5] Mark 11:15-17

[6] Mark 13:1-2

[7] Debie Thomas, see note 4.