Rooted in joy

“Before Advent is a word, it is a sigh,” wrote Richard Lischer, “and never more deeply felt than in these troubled months.” Advent is a yearning, a longing, a preparing and a making room. It is the expectant opening of our exhausted hearts to the coming of God.

“We are waiting—dreading—“ as Lischer wrote, “what one health expert promised would be ‘our darkest winter,’ as COVID-19 spikes and spreads in regions that thought themselves isolated from the worst of it. We are … waiting for Christmas, of course, but this year with no grandparents, siblings, cousins, or other relatives gathered around the tree, with no safe way to sing … carols in the nursing home (or to be sung to by fresh young voices).”[1] We are waiting with our souls stretched thin, craving a true word amid the lies, a reliable word amid the constant noise of careless speech, a word worthy of becoming a song. And during these days of Advent, like the gentlest rain of grace, the words of Isaiah fall on our parched hearts:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

We hear the ancient words and the oppressed raise their heads, the brokenhearted find the courage to hope, and the captives imagine the doors of their prisons flung wide open. Joy blossoms, because we remember how again and again the Lord anointed messengers to bring good news to those walking down life’s weary road. “They shall build up the ancient ruins,” the prophet declares. “They shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.”

“About whom does the prophet say this?” we ask, hoping that the promise was not just for the exiled families of Jerusalem and Judah returning to the promised land a long time ago, but that this promise, this commissioning is also for us amid the devastations we are facing. Joy blossoms tenderly because we are not alone in facing these devastations: God is the architect and builder of the city of peace, where righteousness is at home. Joy blossoms because Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry, went to his hometown synagogue, and when he stood up to read, the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled it and read,

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.

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down to teach. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he said to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”[2]

The words of the prophet are for us, for all of us — and not because we have claimed and appropriated them for ourselves, but because Jesus has made us his own. Because of Jesus we have come to see ourselves and each other no longer as strangers and aliens, but rather as citizens of the city of God.

Our own cities have had a hard year. We have continued to struggle to really face the devastations of many generations caused by the sin of slavery. We have struggled to respond in solidarity to a deadly pandemic. We have learned on the edge of the abyss — and are still learning — how vulnerable our institutions of government are to wreckless destruction. We have watched somewhat helplessly how our trust in each other and in our words and motives has thinned and frayed. And all of us have some ideas how it has come to this, but we no longer seem to know how to convey them to each other.

Pope Francis said, “We have so much to do, and we must do it together. But how can we do that with all the evil we breathe every day?” And then he added, “Thank God, no system can nullify our desire to open up to the good, to compassion and to our capacity to react against evil, all of which stem from deep within our heart.” Thank God, no system can nullify our desire to open up to the good. Thank God, no exile can nullify our desire to open up to the promise of God. Thank God, no injustice can nullify our desire to open up to the Lord who loves justice. With all the evil we breathe every day, what can we do to nurture this righteous desire in us? Pope Francis said,

To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a heart that doesn’t lock itself into darkness, that doesn’t dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow. Hope is the door that opens onto the future. Hope is a humble, hidden seed of life that, with time, will develop into a large tree. … [And] a tiny flicker of light that feeds on hope is enough to shatter the shield of darkness.[3]

God made heaven and earth. God brought Israel out of Egypt. God raised Jesus from the dead. God poured out the Spirit on all flesh, thus anointing all flesh to proclaim the good news of God’s faithfulness.

As the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

Righteousness and praise – against the evil we breathe every day, against the fears that threaten to paralyze us and the idols that hold us in thrall, we entrust ourselves to God and to the promise that oaks of righteousness will spring up and thrive on earth. And so in hope and humility we give ourselves to the work of proclaiming good news to the poor, the work of raising up the former devastations and of seeking to heal our deep divisions in the Spirit of Christ.

“Rejoice always,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.” Paul had found something to sing about and even the darkest prison cell couldn’t silence him. He was beaten for the gospel he proclaimed, he was imprisoned, he was shipwrecked three times, in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, cold and naked — but he had found something to sing about.[4] He was happy when things were  going well in the fledgling communities of believers that sprang up in response to his proclamation, but his joy wasn’t determined by circumstances. His joy was a happiness that didn’t depend on what happened. His joy was rooted in the faithfulness of God. And with his words to the Thessalonians he urges us, his listeners and readers, to let the deep joy over God’s unshakable faithfulness fill and transform our whole being.

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. In all circumstances. We know that Paul wasn’t coming up with bite-sized servings of self-help advice by the pool of his posh Malibu mansion.

How might one cultivate such gratefulness? John Kralik wrote a book about writing a thank-you note every day for an entire year. He called it 365 Thank Yous. He didn’t resolve to write all of those thank-you notes at a time when he was feeling particularly grateful. In fact, it was at a particularly low time in his life. His small law firm was losing money and losing its lease. He was going through a difficult divorce. He lived in a small, stuffy apartment where he often slept on the floor under an ancient air conditioner. He was middle-aged, overweight, and at the end of his rope. Then, one day, he got lost on a mountain hike and didn’t know how to get home. And by the time he found his way down the mountain he had a plan. He would write a thank-you note each day for a year.

He writes, “My only problem: Did I have anything to be grateful for? The way my life was going, I hardly thought so.” But he got started, by writing notes to the people close to him, his family and friends. Then it got harder. “One day,” he writes, “I just couldn’t think of anybody to thank.” He stopped at his regular Starbucks, where the barista greeted him with a big smile — “John, your usual venti?”

That’s when it clicked. “I thought, this is really kind of a great gift in this day and age of impersonal relationships,” Kralik writes, “that someone had cared enough to learn my name and what I drank in the morning.” So he wrote the barista a thank-you note. And so it went through an entire year.[5]

It was a simple practice, but it was a discipline that opened him to notice the gifts of others. It was a discipline that made him more attentive to all the ways in which his life was woven into a fabric of mutuality. He became aware that life is altogether gift. And he found joy there.

[1] Richard Lischer https://www.christiancentury.org/article/reflection/advent-season-sighs-especially-year

[2] see Luke 4:16-21

[3] https://www.ted.com/talks/pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript

[4] 2 Corinthians 11:24-27

[5] Martin Copenhaver https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2015-10/learning-give-thanks

A mighty good question

There are no shepherds keeping watch by night in the Gospel of Mark. There are no angels announcing the child’s birth, no star-gazing visitors bearing gifts from distant lands, no ox and ass, no baby in the manger. Mark hits the ground running and jumps right into the Jordan with John the baptizer.

After opening with something like a headline — “The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” — the story begins with a voice crying out in the wilderness: John preparing the way of Jesus with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Many have wondered why the headline says, “The Beginning” rather than simply, “The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Some hear echoes of the opening of Genesis, the beginning of creation, and to them it sounds like Mark wants to emphasize that the good news of Jesus Christ is as good and grand as the story of life itself; that this is the beginning of life’s redemption from the powers that deform and disfigure it; that this is the beginning of God’s promised future for this beautiful, broken world. Others have suggested that Mark calls the story ‘the beginning of the good news’ because this story is meant to continue and unfold in the lives of all who hear it, in lives of faith and hope. Mark’s story is just the beginning, because it continues with us and for us and for all, in all the ways that we hear and live and tell the good tidings of God’s faithfulness.

So here we are, at the Jordan with John. At the very river where Israel gathered in the plains of Moab, after forty long years of wilderness wanderings, after their escape from slavery in Egypt — the river where they crossed over into the promised land. The river marks the border between promise and fulfillment, between exodus and arrival. At the Jordan Elijah was taken up into heaven, the great prophet who was expected to return before the day of the Lord to prepare God’s people — and Mark’s quick portrait of John suggests more than a resemblance between the two. Clothed with camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, John looks like the ancient prophet, and speaking of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, he sounds like him.[1] His diet of locusts and wild honey is untamed — he only eats what God provides and the earth produces on its own. And John’s message and practice are as undomesticated as his clothing and his food. Forgiveness of sins was priestly business, but this truthtelling wild man offers a cleansing ritual far from Jerusalem and the temple, and he announces the coming of another one, more powerful than he, who would baptize people with the Holy Spirit.

This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ — the remembering of the mighty acts of God, the resonance of the words of the prophets, and the call to repent, to reorient our lives in light of the nearness of God’s reign. The wilderness prophet urges us to look at ourselves and be honest, to name what we see and to name what is missing, to lament what is missing, and repent: to turn away from our complicity with the old order of things and reorient ourselves toward the kingdom of God, when all creation flourishes in the peace of God. John calls us to prepare the way of the Lord by becoming an Advent community, a community of the repentant and expectant who eagerly await the fulfilment of God’s promises. The old order is marred by sin, by idolatry, by injustice and violence. But in Jesus, in faithfulness and mercy, the God of Israel has embraced all people with the promise of salvation.

We meet John at the Jordan, in the borderlands between what is and what shall be, between the promise and the coming true. In the wilderness of these days, when the arrogant trample without shame on decency and dignity, we hear a voice calling us to live in bold hope, to let ourselves be immersed in the untamed flow of God’s grace, and to stand up and raise our heads, because our redemption is drawing near.[2]

Heidi Neumark wrote almost twenty years ago, “For as long as I can remember, Advent has been my favorite time. Before going to bed, I read again the text for tomorrow: Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain (Isa. 40:4).”

And she asks, “When will this be?”

The prophet’s words were recorded around 2,500 years ago and I haven’t noticed much movement in the right direction. The gap between the rich and the poor—Longwood Avenue in the South Bronx and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan—remains as wide as ever. We turn people away from the food pantry because we’ve run out of canned stew, canned beans, canned tuna, cereal and powdered milk. Yet this is the busy season at Dean and Deluca down in Soho where my husband, Gregorio, works on his feet 12 hours a day trying to meet the insatiable demand for imported foie gras, truffles and caviar. Sometimes he wraps up single sales totaling over $1,000.[3]

I don’t know what’s happened to Dean and Deluca since then, but there are more people waiting in line at food banks today, and more people placing fancy food orders online totaling over $1,000 and having them delivered by workers who themselves may well wait in line at the food bank after work to get groceries for their families.

A good number of mountains and hills have indeed been exalted, and some valleys have indeed been made lower. The uneven ground has become even more uneven, and the voices of the prophets speak the word of God with the same urgency today as in the past.

My colleague Bill Goettler shared a fine story:

Danny appeared on our porch on a cold December afternoon a couple of years ago, hat in hand. He’d been sleeping here and there since getting back into town, he said, mostly on the porch of the Red Cross headquarters across from the church. The people there didn’t seem to mind, and he always cleared out before anyone arrived for work in the morning. He didn’t want anyone to be frightened.

He needed some food, maybe some money for the bus. We’d just hung the Moravian star on our front porch and placed Advent candles in our windows. It was a pretty tough moment to refuse someone aid, so I dug into my wallet and found a few dollars. As he was leaving, Danny turned and looked me in the eye. “Is this the way it’s supposed to be?” he asked. He was off before I could reply or even register what he’d said.

He came back with one need or another throughout the winter and over the years that followed. Sometimes I’d give him some money or make a call to find him a place to live, but nothing seemed to work out for very long. I’d see him working downtown, selling newspapers in front of Bruegger’s Bagels or washing windows on Chapel Street. “Good morning, Reverend,” he’d call out, and just about every time he’d ask, “Reverend, is this the way it’s supposed to be?”[4]

That’s a mighty good question.

We meet John at the Jordan, in the borderlands between what is and what shall be, between the promise and the coming true. We hear the words of Isaiah, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God,” and we know it has nothing to do with, “Make my people a little more comfortable in their exile.” What the prophet proclaims is the faithfulness of God: there’s no mountain high enough to keep God’s people in exile, no valley deep enough to keep them away from the promised land, or to keep God from coming to us to take us there.

We’re facing enormous mountains, mountains of injustice, mountains of suspicion and distrust, mountains of guilt and shame. And between them run valleys of despair, valleys of resignation, valleys of loss and grief where the shadows are deep — but God is coming.

“Comfort, comfort, my people,” God declares in the heavenly assembly, “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her penalty is paid.” Then the prophet reports what appears to be a debate among members of the heavenly court.

“The people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.” It sounds like an objection or a lament. The people are short-lived, unreliable, hardly worth the effort, here today, gone tomorrow, they wither, they fade, they don’t have what it takes to reflect the divine glory.

But another voice replies, “Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” The faithfulness of God’s people and their leaders may wither and fade, but God’s faithfulness to God’s people is firm. God’s commitment to creation is unshakable. That, and that alone, is our hope. That is why we look at ourselves and at the world, and we don’t say, “That’s just the way it is.” We say, “That may well be the way it is, but it’s not how it’s supposed to be; and it’s not how it shall be.”

And because God moves mountains to get through to us, we too take our shovels and go to work on God’s highway project, lowering the hills of distrust and suspicion with kindness, and filling the vales of fragmentation with acts of solidarity and friendship. We follow the way Jesus came to prepare for us; we live and tell the good news of God’s faithfulness until all things shine with the glory of God.

[1] See 2 Kings 1:8

[2] Luke 21:28

[3] Heidi Neumark https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2001-12/advent

[4] Bill Goettler https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-11/sunday-december-4-2011

Yet you

“I once caused consternation in a drugstore in Louisville,” Thomas Merton wrote a long time ago.

I was going to the hospital and I wanted to get some toothpaste, so I went in and said, “I’d like some toothpaste.” The clerk says, “What kind” and I said, “I don’t care.” He almost dropped dead. I was supposed to feel strongly about Colgate or Pepsodent or Crest or something with five colors. And they all have a secret ingredient. But I didn’t care about the secret ingredient. The worst thing you can do now is not care about these things.[1]

Kathleen Norris called him a prophet for saying “I don’t care” in one of the temples for the brand-conscious consumer.[2] These days, of course, it’s a lot harder not to care about these things since they tend to invade your every waking moment. TV ads, pop-up ads, radio ads, billboards, busses, and thumbstoppers. Haven’t heard about thumbstoppers yet? It’s what they call social media ads like tik-tok’s dogs in panda suits – you glance, you do a double take, and before you know it, your thumb has stopped scrolling.

And in that movie you streamed the other night? A whole team of people worked hard to make sure you notice without noticing that the young, handsome hero drives a Dodge, and the villain, an import.

Did you go bargain hunting on Friday? You know that as a brand conscious consumer you are expected to spend much of your Thanksgiving week tracking special offers and what they used to call door busters before 2020 happened — track those offers so you’re ready to pounce when price and delivery estimates meet in the sweet spot.

Or you could work on becoming a junior prophet, take a sip of coffee, and declare, “I don’t care.”

Retail marketing and faith are both about the cultivation of desire and the formation of habits. But where marketing is all about annual sales, brand loyalty, and the promise of purchased fulfillment, faith is about our relationship with God and aligning our lives with God’s purposes. Many voices invite us to enter the holiday season of santas, angels, elves and lights, all mixed with warm childhood memories and bathed in a nostalgic glow. In the church, today is the first day of a new year, and the voices we hear during Advent urge us to watch and wait for the God who comes to us in the child in the manger, in visiting strangers, and like a thief in the night. The latter, of course, doesn’t lend itself to sentimentality, which is why the Black Friday marketers won’t touch it.

The contrast may never be clearer than today: Advent begins with the prayers and tears of an old man.

Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and glorious habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The yearning of your heart and your compassion? They are withheld from me.[3]

The voice of Isaiah has been with the people of Jerusalem and Judah for many years. His was a voice of warning, a voice of truth telling and judgment, a voice of challenge and comfort. Isaiah spoke when Jerusalem was proud and when the city fell to the Babylonian army. Isaiah spoke in exile, reflecting on the devastations of loss, and declaring that they were God’s righteous judgment on a people who had made a mockery of justice and faithfulness in their communities. Eventually Isaiah began to speak of an end to their exile. They would return to Jerusalem and the hills of Judah. The Lord would lead them on a highway through the wilderness, in an exodus even more glorious than their liberation from Egypt, and they would return to the land of their ancestors and the city of David.

And when king Cyrus of Persia toppled the Babylonian regime, they began to return. But amid the burnt ruins of the city and the temple, their shouts of joy and songs of freedom soon died down. Journeying home under banners of hope was inspiring and catching — doing the work of hope in rebuilding was hard, much harder than any of them had imagined. The old prophet, in moving poetry, gives voice to the people’s longing:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence … to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

These are the first words of scripture we hear on the first day of Advent. “Advent begins not on a note of joy,” says Walter Brueggemann, “but of despair.” We are urged to recognize ourselves in that situation of utter need.

Humankind has reached the end of its rope. All our schemes for self-improvement, for extracting ourselves from the traps we have set for ourselves, have come to nothing. We have now realized at the deepest level of our being that we cannot save ourselves, and that, apart from the intervention of God, we are totally and irretrievably lost.[4]

Advent begins with a profound sense of stuckness and absence. It feels like you’re kneeling under a blanket of silence, pleading, and all you can sense is your own yearning for something better. It feels like letting go entirely of anything like respectful restraint before God and crying out, “Rip open the heavens and come! Come like wildfire! Do something nobody can ignore!”

We don’t pray for long when the fire we want isn’t coming, but the prophet keeps praying.

You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways, but there is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you.

Isaiah offers words of confession and reproach, suggesting that we think honestly about our part of the relationship, but he also sees responsibility on God’s part:

You have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

Not that we don’t deserve it, but don’t leave us like this. The prophet keeps praying, wrestling really, refusing to let go of the relationship that has shaped his entire life. He’s come to the point where God’s face is hidden and all we can see is our iniquity — true enough, but not the whole truth. At the point where the chasm between God and God’s people appears too wide and too deep to be crossed, the prophet on behalf of the people makes a bold and confident turn:

Yet you, Lord, the prophet says, and I imagine he whispers here when before he may well have thundered — yet you, Lord, are our father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. You made us. You own us. All of us. You are responsible for us. We belong to you. We are your responsibility, your burden, your problem, your treasured possession. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people. We have long been like those whom you do not rule, like those not called by your name.[5] We are stumbling in the darkness, not walking in your light. Yet you, Lord, are our father. Everything hangs on that briefest and boldest of prayers. When we’ve taken an honest look at ourselves and what we’ve made of the world, when all is said and done, when we’re at the end of our rope, when we’re exhausted by recognition and confession and despair — yet you. You made us. You own us. All of us. Will you hide your face forever or turn to us with mercy? Will you keep silent or speak the word of peace? Will you remember that you have made us your own?

Most of us have wished on occasion that God would tear the veil between heaven and earth and do something big, something to make the mountains quake and the nations tremble, something that would undeniably manifest the divine presence among us, so that all of us, from the first to the last, would confess that the Lord is God and no other. It may well be that, because we live in a world of constant noise, we expect a voice loud enough to drown out all the others. And because we live in a world of constant distractions, that we expect a vision bright enough to outshine all the others. And because we’re constantly bombarded by advertising, that we expect thumb-stopping kingdom marketing.

But God doesn’t shout or flashbang people into belief or manipulate them into trust. God calls us and waits for us. God comes to us, and God is continually at work among us until creation is complete. Isaiah’s psalm moves from the image of God as the divine warrior who comes bursting out of the heavens in the most powerful of military interventions, to God envisioned as an artisan: a potter who molds and fashions us from dust of the earth, continually forming us as a people, until all that we are and all that we do shows forth our Maker’s purpose. This is where our hope is rooted, in God’s loving and faithful attention. This is where we become who we are as God’s own: people of loving and faithful attention.

[1] Thomas Merton, The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, ed. by Jane Marie Richardson (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), 155.

[2] Kathleen Norris, “Apocalypse Now,” The Christian Century, November, 15, 2005, 19.

[3] Isaiah 63:15

[4] Walter Brueggemann in Texts for Preaching, Walter Brueggemann e.a., eds., Year B, 1993, 1.

[5] Isaiah 63:19

Mercy song

Mary Gauthier came to Nashville from Baton Rouge, by way of Boston. Her song, Mercy Now, was released in 2005. I loved it when it first came out, and I’ve loved it ever since.

My brother could use a little mercy now. He’s a stranger to freedom, he’s shackled to his fear and his doubt. The pain that he lives in, it’s almost more than living will allow — I love my bother, he could use some mercy now.

Her song just resonates, her words, her voice, as she sings about her father, her brother, her church and her country, and every living thing. People in power, they’ll do anything to keep their crown, she sings, a line that’s perhaps never rung more true than in these past couple of weeks. We love our little crowns.

I love life and life itself could use some mercy now, … and every single one of us could use some mercy now.

Let life simmer, let it boil down to its essence, and name what you taste — Mary sings, mercy, now. Your story and all the ways it’s connected to all the other stories on this little planet — let it sit like a jar of muddy water, let it sit for a few good, deep breaths, and let the mud settle, and name the clarity that emerges before your eyes — Mary sings, mercy, now.

The universe is an expanding vastness of 13.8 billion years. If the history of the universe, all 13.8 billion years of it, were compressed into one calendar year, just for the sake of comparison, our sun was formed at the end of August, and just about all of known human history happened in the last few seconds before midnight on December 31. My head starts spinning whenever I try to think about it — creation is so immense, unfathomable, awesome, and we are so small. What was the line in Psalm 90? The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong.

There’s a place in Washington, D.C. that’s built to human scale. Perched on a hill above the town, it is like something out of a dream, a place of grandeur and great beauty. The National Cathedral is only stone and light, yet entering the cathedral is like stepping into the mystery of life itself. Above the front entrance, carved in bright lime stone, is a dramatic depiction of the creation of humankind, human bodies emerging from whirling, swirling textures fluid as water. Stepping across the threshold you find yourself immersed in light filtering through magnificent stained glass windows, in a place filled only with hushed whispers. The tall pillars envelop sacred silence, interrupted only by the proclamation of God’s word and the prayers of God’s people. As you make your way to the altar on the opposite end of the sanctuary, you journey through human history, past the monuments of faith and of the saints, memorials to achievements in science and art, and testimonials to what we honor as good and true and beautiful.

At the end of your walk down the nave, your passage from humanity’s beginnings to the end of time, you arrive before the finely carved high altar: Here Jesus sits on the throne of his glory, surrounded by the whole company of heaven, balancing the earth like a ball in the palm of his left hand, his right hand raised in blessing. Christ crucified, risen from the dead, reigns the universe and he speaks the final word on all things come into being from the foundation of the world.

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

Our journey through the grand cathedral of time does come to an end, and we are invited to picture ourselves standing before the throne of glory, naked and empty-handed, and Jesus speaks.

Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.

In the end, the last word about our life is not spoken by ourselves, or by those who remember us, or by those who may wish to delete our memory — the final word is spoken by Jesus, the crucified Son of God, risen in glory.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established — what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?[1]

In the vastness of spacetime and among billions of human beings, a single lifetime seems small, but in the eyes of the one seated on the throne, the one who has been crowned Lord of life, in the eyes of the judge, every life is seen, every story is known, every name is spoken. And the judge is none other than Jesus of Nazareth whom human beings judged, sentenced, and executed. The judge is the Son of God who walks barefoot with the poor and declares them blessed, who sleeps among those who have no place to lay their head, and who knows betrayal and torture and death row without parole.

The judge himself is the Least of These: rejected and ridiculed, spat upon, sneered at and yelled at, beaten, abandoned, killed and forgotten. The judge is the Least of These, raised by the power of God. And this judge shows little interest in the sincerity of our confession, or the orthodoxy of our doctrine, or our knowledge, our wisdom, or our list of accomplishments. What he’s looking for is mercy. We would not know, had he not told us, that when we look into the eyes of another human being who needs us to be and act as their neighbor, we are looking into the eyes of the Lord of life.

Hungry and thirsty, ailing, lonely, unsheltered, unwelcome, weighed down, excluded, abandoned — every one of these words speaks of a situation of need, and each presents the need as a question awaiting an answer. And the answer is mercy. The need for mercy calls forth deeds of mercy, and the Lord of life is present in both the need and in the kindness that meets it. That is all that matters in the end, says Jesus: Ordinary, everyday people and all the ways in which we give shape to mercy in ordinary, everyday actions; it’s lovely in its simplicity.

There are, of course, those of us who will ask, “How much mercy is enough? And isn’t there a limit? How much mercy is too much? And what about those whose need for mercy outweighs our capacity to offer it?” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote,

On the one hand it is true that it makes a difference whether [humans] are good or evil, loving or selfish, honest or dishonest. It makes a real difference, that is, an ultimate difference in the sight of God. On the other hand it makes no difference. No life can justify itself ultimately in the sight of God. The evil and the good, and even the more and the less good are equally in need of the mercy of God. … Love is both the fulfilment and the negation of law. Forgiveness is the highest justice and the end of justice.[2]

We are all equally in need of the mercy of God. Every single one of us could use some mercy now. The more fully we know and remember this, the more fully we will live and give mercy. The one who comes to judge us is no stranger, but the one who has come to redeem us, to free us from sin and fear and every shackle that keeps us from living in freedom as the children of God that we are. The one who comes looking for mercy among us is the one who was and is and forever will be the very mercy of God. Worry and fear will not free us. Worry and fear will not set us free for a life of loving service to others, but faith will — trust in God whose love drew us into life and continues to draw us toward life’s fulfillment.

Every human life is a marvelous journey in time and a unique verse in the song of creation. But every human life participates in the one life of God, and therefore we are not solitary, disconnected travelers, here today and gone tomorrow. We are made for communion, in time and beyond the vast expanse of time. We are made for the one life given shape by God’s loving attention to us and our needs and our loving response to the needs of others. We are made in the image of God whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting.

[1] Psalm 8:3-4

[2] Beyond Tragedy, 1937; quote from http://www.lectionarycentral.com/septuag/Neibuhr.html

To live gladly

In the northern hemisphere, as the days grow shorter, the lectionary readings also grow a little darker. We’re invited to reflect on endings – the end of the world, our own mortality, the final judgment. I don’t know how preachers in South Africa, Argentina, or New Zealand are dealing with this – talk about endings when your world is bathed in spring, in colors and light and beginnings. November is just right. Light is dimming. Colors are fading. Leaves are falling. Everybody’s feeling a little melancholy anyway.

The psalm for this Sunday, Psalm 90, opens with the grand vision of God who has been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. The words breathe eternity and awe. And then the psalmist quickly turns to the impermanence and brevity of human life, speaking of years passing like a dream, and lives briefly flourishing before withering like grass. There’s no room here for celebrating our being fearfully and wonderfully made, no room for marveling at the wondrous beauty of creation, no room for rejoicing in life’s gifts. The psalmist is looking at life in a crisis moment when apparently none of that matters, a moment when loss is threatening to overwhelm hope.

The book of Psalms is divided into five smaller books, and the individual compositions aren’t randomly thrown together, but carefully arranged. In Psalms 73-89, Book III of the collection, prayers lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem are given voice, and Psalm 89 concludes that section with a powerful plea in the face of profound loss, God’s rejection of the covenant with David and of Jerusalem as the center of that covenant: How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? Lord, where is your steadfast love of old? Remember, O Lord, how your servant is taunted![1]

Psalm 90 opens a new section, and it moves from lament to confession, inviting those who say it, to follow its movement: We are consumed by your anger. We are overwhelmed by your wrath. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.

There’s a recognition, or at least an invitation to recognize, that the overwhelming experience of losing the city, the temple, and the throne of David was not caused by an arbitrary withdrawal of divine favor, but was an act of judgment, a justified act of judgment.

“Who considers the power of your anger?” the Psalmist asks. Who considers the power of your anger over our loveless, self-serving ways, our convenient idolatries, our endless justifications of injustice, our apathy, our numbness, our daily rebellion against the demands of your love? “Your wrath is as great as the fear due to you” we hear the Psalmist say, and like generations before us we struggle to make these words our own, to acknowledge, in the presence of God, “Your wrath is not some random explosion of divine fury triggered by who knows what. Your wrath fully corresponds to our lack of reverence for you and for each other! It is not you who, out of the blue, broke your covenant; we did it, with our countless, daily failures to love you with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might.”

“The days of our life are seventy years,” the Psalmist muses in this moment of loss and recognition, “or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” “Only toil and trouble” may sound a little over the top for some of us, but we know that these words continue to ring true for many who never get a taste of life’s fullness and can only imagine it in their dreams. And so we hear these words with them and we say them prayerfully in solidarity with them, affirming that life is not full for any of us until all people and all living things share in its fullness.

But we also say these words remembering that the wrath of God is neither the only nor the final response to our failure to live faithfully in communion with God and with each other. As Paul assures us in today’s passage from 1 Thessalonians, “God has destined us not for wrath but for attaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”[2] God has destined us for fullness of life through Jesus Christ.

Verses 13 and 14 of Psalm 90 are not included in today’s reading, but they should be. “Have compassion on your servants!” we are encouraged to pray, trusting that God’s compassion is greater than God’s wrath. “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days!” We believe and affirm that in the life of Jesus — his whole life, including his death and resurrection — God has answered our prayers and revealed to us the depth of God’s compassion and the boundless range of God’s mercy. We believe and affirm that on the cross, in the radical vulnerability of love, our sin is judged and sentenced, and we are set free to live fully in this love, now and forever. “The greatest honor we can give Almighty God,” wrote the English mystic, Julian of Norwich (1343-1416), “is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.”

When we hear the words, “Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart,” we may think of making the most of each day, of living each days to the fullest. When Warren Zevon, who was dying of cancer, was asked by David Letterman what his illness had taught him about living, he said, “How much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.”[3] So true. Every sandwich. Every sip of coffee. Every glorious small thing we habitually take for granted. To taste and see the fullness of life in each moment.

But the wise heart is not merely mindful. The wise heart is joyful and hopeful. In Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, Kentucky poet-farmer Wendell Berry recommends,

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.[4]

It’s November. Light is dimming. Colors are fading. Leaves are falling. Everybody’s feeling a little melancholy. We’re open to thoughts about life’s brief span. We’re open to consider our mortality and the impermanence of all things, and the poet-farmer tells us to “expect the end of the world.” What do you expect the words after that to be? “Stay awake“? “Get ready”? “Accept the inevitable”?

He says, “Laugh … Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.” I don’t know what he means, and I have wondered if that’s the farmer’s madness talking. But perhaps it’s not mad laughter at all. Perhaps it’s the laughter of one who is living gladly because of the knowledge of God’s love. Perhaps it’s the laughter of one who has heard the apostle Paul say that “when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.”[5] Perhaps he says, “Laugh” because he knows that the One who “formed the earth and the world” will not let creation fall into oblivion but bring an end to its incompleteness. Perhaps he says, “Laugh” because “when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”[6]

But who can laugh when they’re worried? Ann Lamott, back in 2003, wrote,

Some mornings I wake up and I instantly feel discouraged by the world and my government and by my own worried mind. It’s like my brain has already been up for awhile, sitting on the bed waiting for me to wake up. It’s already had coffee, and has some serious concerns about how far behind we are already. So I always pray, first thing upon awakening, very simple prayers like the one [my son] Sam prayed years ago when his head got caught in the slats of a chair: “I need help with me,” he whispered.[7]

We need help with us because we’re experts at getting ourselves caught in all kinds of situations that looked so promising before we got into them. We need the courage to let the One who has been our dwelling place in all generations be our dwelling place. The courage to be at home in the steadfast love of God.

[1] Psalm 89:46, 49, 50

[2] 1 Thessalonians 5:9

[3] Ann Lamott https://www.salon.com/2003/02/14/sandwich/

[4] https://cals.arizona.edu/~steidl/Liberation.html

[5] 1 Corinthians 13:10

[6] Psalm 126:1-2

[7] Ann Lamott https://www.salon.com/2003/02/14/sandwich/

Open doors

We know a thing or two about waiting.

This hasn’t been the longest wait for election results, but Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday made for a pretty long Tuesday. We know a thing or two about waiting.

Our lives have been on hold in so many ways for months; workers have been without pay or without jobs for months; numbers of people infected with COVID hit new records daily; vaccine development and testing have been accelerated in astonishing ways, but we’re not there yet. We know a thing or two about waiting.

Jesus teaches in his Sermon on the Mount, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”[1] He has taught us to pray and to persevere in prayer. For generations we have prayed, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

We know that it is God’s will and God’s gift that we live as one humanity on this earth, and for generations we have searched for ways to live into that unity, that wholeness as members of the one household God has made life to be. “For everyone who knocks, the door will be opened,” Jesus has taught us, and we have been asking, searching, and knocking. We know a thing or two about waiting.

When I was little, my brother and I shared a bedroom for many years—two beds, two desks, a dresser with two sets of drawers, and a wardrobe with two doors. We shared a room, but it often felt more like the Berlin Wall ran right through the middle of it. There was a seam in the carpet, just between our beds, and at times that line was as heavily monitored as the Korean border. And at times we both acted like little tyrants, jealously guarding our territory and threatening heavy sanctions for border violations.

One day, I don’t remember what exactly had led to the confrontation, my brother was in our room and I was not, and he had locked the door. I asked him to let me in, but he didn’t. I knocked, gently first, then harder, but his response didn’t change. I pleaded with him, and he laughed — he thought the situation was hilarious, or perhaps he simply enjoyed his moment of complete control, and found my pitiful pleas laughable.

I remember well how I went down the hall to the kitchen and came back carrying a sturdy stool, solid beech wood. “Let me in; this is my room, too.” He just laughed. I was furious.

I grabbed that stool by the seat with both hands, swung it over my right shoulder, and – wham! – hit that door as hard as I could. Made me feel pretty good for a moment, but then my brother and I looked at the hole I had put in that door, and suddenly we agreed, “Man, that was stupid.” His ugly pleasure in shutting me out was gone, and so was my angry frustration. We finally found common purpose in mending the damage we had caused, and we learned to live together in a shared room.

The story of the ten bridesmaids doesn’t end with a vision of togetherness. Five of them have been introduced as foolish, the other five as wise, and that separation sticks. At the end of the story, the foolish five stand outside the banquet hall. They knock and they plead, “Lord, lord, open to us.” And the voice from behind the closed door declares, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”

Is Jesus pretending? Is he playing some cruel game? Is he suggesting that parts of his sermon on the mount need to be rewritten?

“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you”—unless of course you ran out of oil and show up late for the banquet, in which case you might as well forget about the party.

Do we need to rewrite his earlier teachings?

“Do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’”[2] But do worry about your oil and how big a bottle you will have to fill to let your light shine when the bridegroom arrives. Do worry about your oil and let others worry about theirs, so you don’t end up standing outside in the darkness. We’re used to oil determining the economic and foreign policy of nations, and now we’re supposed to think about the kingdom in terms of oil and who has it and who doesn’t?

“Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” the story ends—well, nothing keeps you awake like worries do; so is sleeplessness suddenly a Christian virtue? Are we to stay awake, worried about our personal oil supply while anxiously scanning the horizon for the Son of Man coming with power and great glory?[3] I don’t think so.

When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.[4]

It is the Lord who neither slumbers nor sleeps so that God’s people can lie down and sleep in peace.[5] The reign of God is like a baby, sound asleep in her crib, safe and secure from all alarms, and not like a bunch of frantic bridesmaids running through the night in search of fuel for their lamps.

To live in anticipation of God’s reign to be fulfilled in all things is like waiting for the wedding celebration to begin. The bride and her attendants are at her parents’ home waiting for the arrival of the groom and his party. The bridesmaids are ready, their dresses are beautiful, their eyes and cheeks are aglow with expectation, their lamps are trimmed. As soon as the children outside announce with happy shouts the bridegroom’s arrival, the bridesmaids will meet him at the end of the street and escort him with song and dance to the house of his beloved. Then they will all parade to the groom’s home, and, once there, the wedding banquet will begin – with music and dance, and food and wine in abundance!

But in Jesus’ story, the groom is delayed. The ten become drowsy and go to sleep, taking a little nap before the big party, lamps in their laps, and no one can tell which ones are wise or foolish. Then they wake up, and suddenly there’s a line running right down the middle, wise ones on the right, foolish ones on the left, separated like sheep from goats. All of them waited with their lamps burning, but only the wise ones considered that the wait in the darkness might be longer than anticipated. The foolish ones didn’t plan for the long time of waiting.

What does it mean for us to live wisely? In the sermon on the mount, Jesus teaches us about the life of discipleship, and he says,

You are the light of the world. … No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.[6]

Let your light shine. Give light to all in the house. Let the world see your good works. The oil in our lamps is not some scarce commodity for which we must compete; it is the faith, the love, the hope that keeps us humming, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…” Waiting for the fullness of God’s reign to be revealed, on earth as it is in heaven, is about living with anticipation, and to feed that little flame with the word of God, with the witness of God’s people, and with the assurance of things hoped for. This lamp oil cannot be bottled or hoarded, bought or borrowed. It comes to us like breath comes to the living. I can look at Rosa Parks and the courage of her witness, but I can’t ask her, “Would you give me some of that?” I can look at John Lewis and his prophetic passion for justice, but I can’t ask him, “Will you let me borrow some of that?”

What you and I and anyone who hears the words of Jesus can do, though, is act on them — on faith, with a little courage and hope. What we can do is stop asking, “When will he come?” and more fully lean into the promise that he will come, and that his coming will bring the great banquet of joy without end, of justice and peace, of all things reflecting the glory of God. What we can do is serve the one who has taught us to recognize his face in the faces of the hungry and the thirsty, the stranger and the homeless and those locked behind prison doors.[7] What we can do is open doors we have the power to open, and step through doors that have been opened for us.

I don’t like the story of the story of the bridesmaids, and I’ve told the Lord, and I heard him say that I don’t have to like it; that it’s enough if it makes me think and question, and question my discomfort with it. I’m not free to rewrite it, but I neither want to nor do I have to live as though its outcome, the fifty-fifty split, is inevitable.

We know how it feels to stand in the dark outside the house of laughter and light. And we have all known moments, fractions of moments at least, I hope, when we were floating in its joy. So for as long as I have the power to open doors, I will, in the name of the bridegroom, and I encourage all of you to do the same. Our division must not be the last word.

[1] Matthew 7:7-8

[2] Matthew 6:31

[3] Matthew 24:30

[4] Proverbs 3:24 KJV, a translation that renders the words as both promise and command.

[5] Psalms 4:8; 121:4-5

[6] Matthew 5:14-16

[7] Matthew 25:31-46

Saintly lives

Some five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther was on the university faculty, the church was the university chapel, and its door was commonly used as a bulletin board. Posting the theses was a public invitation to debate, but this wasn’t merely an academic exercise. Luther challenged the power of the papacy, and he may have chosen October 31 to post his theses because it was the day before All Saints Day, and the meaning and role of saints was at the heart of Luther’s argument with Rome. The church taught that certain believers were saints, and the saints were so good, so perfect in belief and obedience, that they accumulated more righteousness than they needed to enter the gates of heaven. So there was excess righteousness sitting around in heavenly storage, as it were, and somebody in Rome came up with the clever idea to make that surplus available to common sinners. The church issued documents called indulgences, the purchase of which allowed sinners to make deposits to their heavenly accounts, reducing the time they would have to spend in purgatory and expediting their journey to the great assembly of the saints in glory. As an added bonus, people could purchase indulgences not only for themselves but for family members and friends who had died.

Fear of damnation is a terrible fear, and any fear gives great power to those who know how to manipulate it. The leadership of the church certainly knew how to turn the gift of forgiveness into a lucrative business. In the early sixteenth century, the pope sent out a sales force all across the Holy Roman Empire to peddle indulgences—and the campaign was very successful: St. Peter’s basilica in Rome was completed with the lush revenue created by the sale of get-out-of-purgatory cards.

Luther wanted to debate that practice. He understood Scripture to teach that salvation is God’s gracious gift to humanity in Jesus Christ, a gift we do not deserve and cannot earn, let alone purchase, but only need to gratefully embrace in faith. To us it may sound obvious, but at the time it was a revolutionary idea: The Christian faith is not about accumulating points in one’s heavenly savings account, but about living in gratitude to God for the gift of God’s grace.

The corrupt practice of the church leadership meant that any talk of saints and the whole concept of sainthood became suspicious and eventually disappeared almost completely from Protestant life. But only almost, because many of the New Testament writings not only mentioned the saints, but were literally addressed to them. The apostle Paul addressed his letter to the Philippians, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi; and his letter to the Romans, to all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints. And Paul wasn’t writing to the few, the proud, the shining stars among God’s people, to the winners in the great playoff of life, awaiting their introduction into the Discipleship Hall of Fame, no, he was writing to all who had found new life through faith in Jesus Christ.[1]

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,[2] that we are not alone on the journey of faith. Those who have gone before us, surround us; and to me it’s a beautiful thing to imagine them watching us and cheering us on as we continue the journey to the fullness of God’s reign. Saints, Frederick Buechner wrote, are not “plaster statues, men and women of such paralyzing virtue that they never thought a nasty thought or did an evil thing their whole life long. Saints are essentially life givers. To be with them is to become more alive.”[3] They are the men and women who told us the good news of God’s love for the world; who reminded us of our freedom in Christ as sons and daughters of God; who modeled for us what faithful living can look like; who inspired and encouraged us. Most of them weren’t faith celebrities but ordinary people whose lives showed extraordinary courage and integrity in response to God’s grace, particularly in trying times. They moved forward in hope, trusting the promise and presence of God.

I know I wouldn’t be standing here talking about keeping the faith through these tumultuous days without the example of my grandfather or the women and men who told me the stories of Jesus when I was a kid, or the people who modeled discipleship for me as I got older; people of life-giving generosity, kindness, and faithfulness. None of them were people of ostentatious piety.

Jesus says, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” We know, of course, what he’s talking about, and we know that the challenges of walking the walk, and not merely talking the talk, are not limited to just one or two groups of people. Preachers preach forgiveness, and struggle with living it. Teachers teach being kind to others, and start yelling when they’re frustrated. Parents get to the end of their rope and tell their kids, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

But that’s not all. His opponents, Jesus says, “do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” Phylacteries are small leather boxes with passages of scripture in them. To this day, many Jewish men strap them around the arm and on the forehead during morning prayer. The practice is inspired by a passage in the book of Deuteronomy:

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.[4]

The boxes and straps remind those who wear them of the sacred obligation to keep God’s commandments: the one on the arm, a reminder to act justly; and the one on the forehead, a reminder to let God’s commandments guide the wearer’s thinking. Jesus accused his opponents of wearing their phylacteries to display their piety, that they had turned a small object — meant to remind them to keep God’s words in their heart — into yet another status symbol for garnering the admiration of others.

Faithfulness has nothing to do with ostentatious piety, and everything with keeping the words of God at the center of our knowing, thinking, and doing. We remember the saints not for the size of the crosses they wore around the neck, but for how they bore the cross of Christ on their shoulders, how their lives embodied the servant love of God.

Many of us get very uncomfortable listening to Jesus paint his opponents in such broad strokes as uniformly reprehensible hypocrites. I worry that his stereotyping language contributed to normalizing such rhetoric among his followers, with terrible consequences for the relationship between Christians and Jews. The scholars say Jesus only did what was to be expected of a leader in the Hellenistic world of that time, that it was common practice. Maybe it was, but I find little comfort in that statement; to me that sounds like saying, “Jesus was just giving a campaign speech,” when throughout his ministry he has refused to play the campaign game.

His primary concern, though, in this passage, is not the characterization of his opponents, but the description of the community he came to gather around himself. Call no one rabbi or teacher, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. Call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Call no one instructor, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. Title by title, Jesus removes layers of hierarchy and authority until all that is left are the Father in heaven, the Messiah, and the people of God. The greatest among you will be your servant, he says.

In such a community, the race to the top, the jealous competition for the best seats, is turned into the equally demanding work of creating relationships of mutual care where the needs of others are at least as important to us as our own. And that, my friends, goes against just about everything we have been taught in school and at work and in the marketplace — meaning that some of us will simply dismiss it as unrealistic.

But not all of us. A good number of us will hear it as a necessary challenge to the standard narrative of who we are and who we are meant to be. A good number of us will hear it as an urgent word of encouragement to push back against that standard narrative and to seek ways to embody the servant love of God. And not because it gets us points in heaven, but because a life in tune with the Giver of life is the true life of all.

[1] Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Philippians 1:1

[2] Hebrews 12:1

[3] Wishful Thinking, 102.

[4] Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Promised Land

Forty years they had spent in the wilderness. Forty years of wandering. Forty years of struggle and revelation. Forty years of longing for the promised land.

The story of the long Exodus from Egypt — a story of liberation and of being formed by God as a people of God — is unthinkable without Moses, the child of Hebrew slaves, raised in Pharaoh’s household; the runaway who hears the call of God at the burning bush. “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt,” the Lord said to him; “I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”[1]

The arc of Moses’ life bends from his birth and call in the opening chapters of Exodus, across Leviticus and Numbers, to Deuteronomy, the fifth and final volume of the Torah, consisting entirely of the teachings, poetry and blessings Moses utters on the plains of Moab, on the east bank of the Jordan river. Across the river, the promised land. But Moses wouldn’t be among those who enter it.

He used to plead with God, saying, “O Lord God, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your might; what god in heaven or on earth can perform deeds and mighty acts like yours! Let me cross over to see the good land beyond the Jordan ...” He was an old man, and yet he had only begun to see the mighty acts of God. He longed to see the good land and walk on it, rest on it, touch its soil with his fingers and taste its milk and honey. But God refused, and finally put an end to Moses’ entreaties, saying, “Enough from you! Never speak to me of this matter again!”[2]

And so Moses climbed the mountain one last time, and the Lord showed him the promised land, farther than the eye can see. One of the ancient rabbis suggested that Moses must have been in heaven, or at least pretty close, in order to see all of this. Other commentators thought Moses’ view was such that he was able to see through time as well as space, and that God showed him the entire history of the world, from the first day of creation to the day of resurrection.[3] “This is the land,” the Lord said to him, “of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” As the author of Hebrews said of the patriarchs, many generations after Deuteronomy, Moses “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance [he] saw and greeted them.”[4] From a distance he saw them, not with regret, but with joy and expectation for the next generation who with faith and courage would draw even closer to receiving the fullness of God’s promises. Moses knew that he wouldn’t taste the milk and honey, but the children born during the wilderness years and their children, they would eat and drink the fruit of the land in freedom.

The good book doesn’t say it, but I’m convinced Moses died with a smile on his face. Sweeter than honey is the word of the Lord, and the knowledge that it can be trusted — the knowledge that God will fulfill God’s promises.

On April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in support of the striking sanitation workers in Memphis. At the end of what would be his last speech, he said,

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.[5]

Earlier in that speech he had talked about turning to the Almighty and saying, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.” And he added, “Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around.”

And here we are, more than fifty years later, and the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. Dr. King said, “Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period … in a way that [people], in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world.” He had begun to see the mighty acts of God, and so he wasn’t just sitting on the top of the mountain gazing longingly across the Jordan, his heart filled with wishful thinking — he saw people responding, he saw people standing up and speaking up, he saw people marching, he saw people lining up at the bank of the river, ready to cross over into freedom — whether in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry was always the same — “We want to be free.” We want to live with the dignity of people made in the image of God.

The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. But God is at work and people are responding with faith and hope and love and courage.

On July 30, the New York Times published an essay the Reverend John Lewis, Congressman from Georgia, had written shortly before his death on July 17 and had asked to be published on the day of his funeral.

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion … set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity. That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. … Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

“Voting and participating in the democratic process are key,” he wrote, and his words carry the authority of one who put his body on the line for the right to vote. “The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.”

In his brief essay, Lewis passes the mantle to a new generation of believers in God’s beloved community:

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.[6]

It says in today’s passage from Deuteronomy, that Joshua was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him. This expression, “the spirit of wisdom”, occurs only three times in the scriptures: here in Deuteronomy, then again in Isaiah 11:2 where the prophet announces the coming of a righteous and faithful ruler on whom the spirit of wisdom would rest, and again in Ephesians 1:17, where the apostle writes, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom … as you come to know him.”

We are blessed to come from a long line of ancestors in the faith who have passed the mantle of prophetic witness from generation to generation, inspiring us with their words and actions. May God give us a spirit of wisdom that we may walk faithfully and do our part in building the Beloved Community which God has established in the world and they have seen from a distance.

[1] Exodus 3:7-8

[2] Deuteronomy 3:24-26

[3] See James Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1997), 541; as well as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%27Zot_HaBerachah#Deuteronomy_chapter_34

[4] Hebrews 11:13

[5] https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html

Love lights a better path

“We know that you are sincere,” they said to Jesus. “We know that you teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.” How nice of them to say that. That’s quite an endorsement. Had Matthew not warned us at the beginning that we were about to witness a plot designed to entrap Jesus, we would have read those sweet words and innocently assumed that the speakers meant what they said.

Pharisees and Herodians make strange bedfellows, but stranger things have happened in politics. Judea was a province of the Roman Empire, and the population was heavily taxed to finance the army and administration of the occupying power. The name Herodians is shorthand for supporters of the political status quo, people who saw nothing wrong with Roman rule and very likely benefited handsomely from it.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, were not openly opposed to Roman rule, but certainly not in favor of it. They were pious men from Main Street Galilee and Judea who aspired to holiness — they sought to follow God’s law in all aspects of daily life. The Roman occupation of Jewish land may not have been their primary concern, but it definitely was not part of their vision for Israel.

What brings the two groups together in this scene is Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God which, for different reasons, makes both of them nervous. For a moment, they put aside their significant differences and set up a clever trap. They use a little flattery to butter him up and then drop a question that seemingly leaves no way out: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

If Jesus says yes, he exposes himself as a collaborator with the occupation, and his poll numbers take a dive. And that takes care of the Pharisees’ nervousness about his public support. If he says no, he will immediately be arrested by the authorities for inciting sedition. And that takes care of the Herodians’ nervousness about his teachings.

It’s a brilliant set-up, only Jesus doesn’t play their game. “Show me the coin used for the tax,” he says, and his opponents have no trouble finding a denarius. Clearly they are much better connected to the imperial economy than Jesus whose pockets are empty. Can you imagine the tweets?

“Guess who brought blasphemous coins into the holy temple?” #shamelessherodians #whathappenedtothepharisees #freeIsrael

“Caesar’s currency isn’t kingdom currency!” #jesusmessiah #blessedarethepoor

Jesus doesn’t tweet. He doesn’t laugh or gloat or self-promote. With a nod of the head toward the coin he asks, “Whose image is this, and whose title?”

“The emperor’s,” they say.

Most likely the coin bore the image of the emperor Tiberius who ruled Rome during those years.  And the title inscribed on it was more than a title. It was a declaration of Roman supremacy embodied in the person of the emperor. To most Jewish eyes and ears the inscription alone was blatant blasphemy: Emperor Tiberius, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest.[1] This brief debate between Jesus and his questioners isn’t about paying taxes, it’s about idolatry.

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” says Jesus. It’s not much of an answer to their question, if a simple yes or no is what you’re looking for. It’s a response that only raises more questions: Is Jesus implying that the faithful thing to do is not pay the tax since all things belong to God? Or is he implying that God has a legitimate claim on some things and Caesar on others? One way to read his statement is, “Since the coin bears Caesar’s image, let him have it; give it back to him, it’s his anyway. But remember that to be human is to be made in the image of God. Remember that all of you bear the image of God. So give to God what is God’s — your life, your breath, yourself.” Marcus Borg wrote,

This text offers little or no guidance for tax season. It neither claims taxation is legitimate nor gives aid to anti-tax activists. It neither counsels universal acceptance of political authority nor its reverse. But it does raise the provocative … question: What belongs to God, and what belongs to Caesar? And what if Caesar is Hitler, or apartheid, or communism, or global capitalism?[2]

How do we live as God’s people when the economic and political systems we have created become invasive and oppressive? How do we live faithfully when the systems we inhabit make us complicit in the abuse of others who, like us and with us, bear the image of God?

We cannot serve two masters. We cannot neatly divide our loyalties between God’s realm and the realms of other lords. And we must not confuse our loyalties to other lords with our loyalty to God.

Much more than a coin is at stake here. We bear the image of God, but when we look at each other, or in the mirror, we also see the inscriptions that our interactions with the world have left on us. You are what you wear, is a common script. You are what you do, what you earn. Or: You are nobody. Your life doesn’t matter. You don’t count. We are made in the image of God, but other scripts and images continually overwrite our identity as God’s own with layers of falsehood.

James Kelly wrote,

We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us. Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves. There is the civic self, the parental self, the financial self, the religious self, the society self, the professional self ... And each of our selves is in turn a rank individualist, not co-operative but shouting out his vote loudly for himself when the voting time comes. … We are not integrated. We are distraught. We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow. … Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.[3]

Give to God the things that are God’s is not an invitation to draw a line through the world and our lives where things on one side belong to God and things on the other to other lords and other claims. Give to God the things that are God’s is not a call to fragmentation. Jesus doesn’t suggest a split between a political self that answers to Caesar and a religious self that answers to God. Jesus didn’t come to carve out separate realms with separate loyalties: he proclaimed and inaugurated the kingdom of God.

Give to God the things that are God’s puts all other demands made on us in proper perspective. “We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us,” wrote James Kelly. The Life that integrates our conflicting selves and frees us to be who we are as creatures made in the image of God, is the life of Christ. “We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence,” wrote James Kelly. That way of life is what Christ embodied, “a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power,” a life fully at home in the love of God.

As part of every baptism, just after the person has emerged from below the surface of the water, we make the sign of the cross on their forehead and say, calling them by name, “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” In baptism, the life of Christ becomes ours, and through him we give to God the things that are God’s — our life, our breath, our days and nights, our whole and broken selves. With him we live, and learn to live, continually learn to live, as citizens of the kingdom, as people who know that we are not our own, nor anyone else’s, but God’s.

Markus Borg asked, “what if Caesar is Hitler, or apartheid, or communism, or global capitalism?” When Caesar was Hitler, the small Confessing Church in Germany declared,

As Jesus Christ is God’s assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins, so, in the same way and with the same seriousness he is also God’s mighty claim upon our whole life. Through him befalls us a joyful deliverance from the godless fetters of this world for a free, grateful service to his creatures. We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords — areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.[4]

The Confessing Church was persecuted and driven underground, its pastors were arrested and sent to concentration camps, but, though small in numbers, the church that counts Bonhoeffer among its martyrs refused to give the things that are God’s to anyone but God. They were ordinary men and women, no superheroes with special powers. Their gift to us, though, is extraordinary in its simplicity and power. They show us that a life fully at home in the love of God is a life of fearless clarity. Even amid the waves of terror and anxiety which the empires of the world so skillfully create and manipulate, love lights a better path.

[1] TIBERIUS CAESAR DIVI AUGUSTI FILIUS AUGUSTUS PONTIFEX MAXIMUS

[2] “What Belongs to God?” http://www.beliefnet.com/story/20/story_2000_1.html

[3] James Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, 1941, chapter 5.

[4] http://www.ekd.de/english/barmen_theological_declaration.html

Anxiously waiting

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul writes. “Do not worry about anything,” he says, which is a lot easier to hear when you have nothing to worry about. But I do worry, and I know many of you do as well, and for very good reasons. And the only reason I don’t immediately dismiss Paul as Pollyanna is that he too has plenty to worry about and he doesn’t. “Don’t be anxious,” is his advice, written from prison, “but in everything make your requests known to God in prayer and petition with thanksgiving. Then the peace of God, which is beyond all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.”[1]

The peace of God, and the joy it brings, the Apostle tells us, is solely determined by our relationship with God amid all kinds of circumstances, but not by those circumstances. He urges his readers to ground ourselves in prayer so we don’t drown under wave after wave of grief, anger, disbelief, and discouragement. Don’t be anxious. You’re not alone. The Lord is near. Pour out your heart before God. Practice gratitude. Trust the promise of Christ risen from the dead.

The story from Exodus is a powerful reminder what can happen when anxiety does take hold. Moses was gone. Moses who had told the Hebrew slaves that God would bring them out of the misery of Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey.[2] Moses who had been with them all this time, through sea and wilderness, through hunger and thirst, through fear and wonder. Moses who had told them all the words of the Lord, beginning with the first, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”[3] And when Moses had finished reading the book of the covenant in their hearing, they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will obey.”[4]

But then Moses went back up on the mountain and he was gone. They didn’t know when he would be back. They didn’t know Moses was receiving instructions about the tabernacle, and the ark, and the mercy seat, the lampstand, the curtain, the vestments, the altar, the ordination of priests, and the sabbath. They didn’t know Moses was having a worship committee meeting with the Lord on the mountain.

“We will do and we will obey” was the last we heard the people say before Moses left. Then there are pages of detailed worship notes, considering every fiber in the priestly vestments and every measure of spice to be added to the anointing oil; the next time we hear the people speak, after the narrative camera cuts from Moses and the Lord on the top of the mountain to the camp at its foot, we see them gathered around Aaron, saying, “Come, make a god for us who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”[5]

“This Moses,” they said, in tones of distance and disaffection, “we do not know what has become of him.” So make us something we can see. Make us something that will lead us forward, and we will follow it.

And Aaron, without a moment’s hesitation, obliged them. The story leaves it to our imagination whether he was glad, perhaps even eager, to satisfy the people’s religious needs, or if he was coerced. It all happened when Moses was gone, and that absence, in a way, was like a dress rehearsal for what was to come: they would have to learn to live as God’s people without Moses, without their living link to the living God; they would have to learn to live with the written word of God, the liturgies and instructions for worship, and the priests.

Well, the dress rehearsal, or perhaps we should say, the first opportunity to live as God’s people in Moses’ absence, was a complete failure. The very first thing they did after giving their full-throated commitment to doing and obeying the commandments of God was an assault on the first one that is at the heart of all of them, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

Moses, up on the mountain, had no idea what was going on, but God told him, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside form the way that I commanded for them.”

Did you notice how often this line pops up in the story, and how confused things are about who’s the one who brought them out of Egypt? The people point to Moses, “the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt.” Aaron points to the calf, “This is your god.” And even the Lord who at first said, “I brought you out” now points to Moses, telling him, “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt … have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and said, ‘This is your god who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’”

The Lord is furious. “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” This clearly isn’t working. Let’s start over, you and I together, Moses.

But Moses doesn’t step out of the way and into the possibilities of being the new Abraham or the new Israel; he talks back. “Why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power?” It wasn’t my mighty hand that led them out, nor Aaron’s, nor Miriam’s — this is your people, your doing, your promise, this is your reputation at stake. So turn; change your mind; remember.

Terence Fretheim says that in this story, we learn that “God is not the only one who has something important to say.”[6] This covenant between God and God’s people isn’t solely defined by divine declaration and human obedience, but by a relationship that invites human understanding and speech. It is Moses’ prayer, Moses’ voice against God’s wrath that moves this moment from firey peril to new possibilities of fulfilment. The closing line of today’s passage declares, And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

“Human prayer,” writes Fretheim, “is honored by God as a contribution to a conversation that has the capacity to change the future directions for God, people, and world.

God may well adjust modes and directions (though not ultimate goals) in view of such human responsiveness. This means that there is genuine openness to the future on God’s part, fundamentally in order that God’s salvific will for all might be realized as fully as possible. It is this openness to change that reveals what it is about God that is unchangeable: God’s steadfastness has to do with God’s love; God’s faithfulness has to do with God’s promises; God’s will is for the salvation of all. God will always act, even make changes, in order to be true to these unchangeable ways and to accomplish these unchangeable goals.[7]

Making the calf was an act of idolatry because the God who brought Israel out of Egypt cannot be produced by the whim of the people who get anxious in the absence of the prophet. God is sovereign and free, never an object of artful manipulation, whether carved in stone, cast in gold, or rendered in words. This story opens our eyes to the great sin of substituting the manufactured god, the available god, the domesticated god for the One who made heaven and earth, who brought Israel out of the house of slavery, and who raised Jesus from the dead.

Moses was Israel’s living link to the elusive presence of the living God, and Moses’ absence led to anxiety and the manufacture of a god of manageable proportion — visible, tangible, portable. “Calf-making” is more than an episode in Israel’s history, it is a perennial temptation for all who seek to live as people of God, in the wilderness of freedom, on the way to the promised land. “It is easy to mistake our own creations for our God,” writes Anathea Portier-Young.

It is tempting to shape … an image that pleases our senses, mollifies our anxiety, and invites admiration from our neighbors. But that thing we have made from Egypt’s gold is not our god. That thing may symbolize strength and power. It may personify virility, or femininity, or aspects of both or neither; it may embody rebellion or conformity, generosity or greed. But as close as we draw to it, as much as we celebrate it and place it at the center of our lives, it did not lead us to freedom and will not lead us to our promised inheritance. … It will moor us in the impatience of our ignorance and fear. We may dance with it for a day, but soon find that it has led us to our death.[8]

Idolatry has terrible consequences, and our days are filled with the news of them, but these consequences will not include the final rupture of the relationship between God and God’s people, between God and God’s creation, because God is true to God’s promises, even to the point of bearing the full, crushing weight of our sins.

And there is joy in heaven over every human being who, amid the waves of anxiety and fear, clings to the promises of God and draws courage from the Holy One who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.[9]

[1] Philippians 4:6-7 REB

[2] Exodus 3:16-17

[3] Exodus 20:1-3

[4] Exodus 24:7

[5] Exodus 32:1

[6] Terence Fretheim, Exodus (Interpretation; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 285.

[7] Fretheim, Exodus, 287.

[8] Anathea Portier-Young http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3442

[9] Exodus 34:6