If evil could speak

Thomas Kleinert

“Does the world ever speak?” Julian Bell, a painter and writer, recently recalled how his grandson—an impossibly inquisitive four-year-old—once stopped him in his tracks with that question. “Years later, I still wonder how best to have replied.”[1]

It’s a terrific question, regardless of whether initially you’re leaning toward responding, “Well, yes, of course, the world speaks all the time” or toward, “No, it is certainly filled with speech, but the world itself is silent.”

I imagine I would reply to the youngster, “That’s one of the best questions ever. I have heard the world sing, but I don’t recall hearing it speak. What do you think?”

The Gospel of Mark poses a different question, implicitly. We’re still in the first chapter, and we’ve heard the voice of Isaiah, announcing the “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” We have heard the voice of John the baptizer, proclaiming, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” eWe have heard a voice from heaven, declaring at Jesus’ baptism, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased;” and we have heard the voice of Jesus, saying to Simon and Andrew, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

We’re still in the first chapter, yet we’ve already skipped a scene, because the church has long saved that reading for the beginning of Lent, and that’s the two-verse notice about Jesus being in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan.

In the Gospel according to Mark, the devil has a part, but in contrast to Matthew and Luke, it’s not a speaking part. In Matthew and Luke, the devil sounds concerned, friendly even, reasonable and tempting, but there’s not a single line for the devil in Mark.[2] So the question Mark implicitly poses, is, “If evil could speak, what would it say?”

Let’s leave that sitting for a moment. Listen to this: “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”[3] Jesus said that, sounding like a master thief. “Tying up the strong man and plundering his property” is a rather curious way of illustrating the mission of Jesus, and yet, this is how he himself sees it. He has entered the strong man’s house. Following his baptism, Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan, and now he’s back among people, proclaiming the good news of God. He has tied up the strong one, so his house can be plundered.

It sounds like burglary, but the mission is to free the residents of the house from foreign occupation. Forces of evil have taken up residence in the house, keeping in thrall the people who live there, manipulating them, abusing them, oppressing them. But now Jesus has returned from the wilderness. Now Jesus is in the house. He declares that the time if fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.

On the sabbath, when he teaches in the synagogue at Capernaum, people are astounded. They perceive an authority their scribes — we would call them teachers, preachers, or scholars — don’t possess. I imagine they are beginning to note the difference between those who, steeped in tradition, teach about God, and the one in whose presence and voice the presence and voice of God become manifest.

Jesus is in the house, and while the people are astounded, the anxiety level among the unclean spirits and demons is high: they know who he is and they know the purpose of this intrusion. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” they shriek, and in my mind, because I’ve been catching up on a couple of seasons of Dr. Who during snow week, they sound like the Dalek. “Why are you picking this fight? We know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus is in the house, their time is up, and they know it. This is Mark’s answer to the question, “If evil could speak, what would it say?” The unclean spirits cry, they whimper, they taunt, but they cannot resist the authority of Jesus. “Shut up and come out,” he rebukes them, and the man is free. This is the ministry of Jesus, according to Mark, to spread this freedom, throughout all of creation. Jesus is a Holy-Spirit-empowered invader who reclaims the house of creation that has become a playground for demons.

“What is this?” people ask, amazed. “A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” A new teaching—well, you can get that scrolling on your phone and googling around the web: new, exciting, hip, astounding, and forgotten tomorrow.

This is a different kind of new. This is a teaching that brings about newness like the voice that spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai. Jesus is not just a terrific new teacher who surprises and inspires us, and satisfies our hungry hearts and minds—he does all that. What’s new is that he speaks with the voice of the Holy One who brings light and life into being. He speaks, and it comes to be. He speaks, and the oppressed are unburdened, the possessed are unshackled, the wounded are healed, the shunned are forgiven. He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.

“Mark wants us to know, here at the outset of Jesus’ public ministry — that Jesus’ authority will be a contested authority,” writes Matt Skinner.

Jesus’ presence, words, and deeds threaten other forces that claim authority over people’s lives. These other authorities have something to lose.[4]

They have everything to lose, and yet they have already lost, because when the unholy coalition of temple, empire, and mob accused, condemned, tortured and executed Jesus, God vindicated him. These other authorities that have everything to lose can do their worst and crucify the One who embodied the kingdom of God on earth, but they cannot stop God’s reign from coming in fullness. They can’t silence the voices that declare its nearness. They can’t buy off all its witnesses. They can’t deport those who discover day after day, that with one foot they’re already standing in the kingdom, on solid ground: beloved, forgiven, empowered, free.

Jesus comes from a place of blessing, where in baptism he was filled with the Holy Spirit and a voice from heaven declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And Mark contrasts this affirmation and claim with the man in Capernaum, possessed by an unclean spirit, a spirit of lies that will not, indeed cannot ever tell the man who he is — God’s beloved,  a delight in the eyes of God. But now Jesus reclaims the house of creation that has become a playground for demons, and his authority is the authority of his fierce love, liberating, healing, empowering.

The first-century world was full of demons and spirits; they regularly interfered in human life, often capriciously. It was common knowledge that they did control human behavior because they were more powerful than human beings, and evil spirits were widely regarded as principal causes for physical and psychological maladies as well as natural disasters. Most of us don’t think of the world as occupied by demons and other spirit beings, but that’s not the point. The point is that we all continue to experience life in the grip of powers that are stronger than ourselves, ungodly powers that oppress us, individually and collectively, powers that thrive when we believe that this is just the way things are, and that there’s nothing any of us can do about it anyway.

I come from a people who, under self-inflicted authoritarian rule and in the grip of idolatries and supremacist worldviews, unleashed war across Europe and beyond and systematically murdered six million Jews. Human beings, not demons, did this to other human beings. Human beings, not unclean spirits, did this and are responsible for doing what they did and what they didn’t do.

There are historical circumstances to take into consideration, yes. There are economic factors, political and theological failures, cultural trends, yes, but such attempts at explaining the unfathomable can capture the big picture only from a high altitude, and to me, such distance easily feels like betrayal.

There is no room for demons in the house, but they are here because we are here. In the face of evil, explanations will not do. In the face of evil, only fierce love will do. And yes, I will spell it out for you, in the face of white supremacy and proto-fascist aspirations, only steadfast resistance will do, in the name of Jesus and all that is holy.

I need Jesus who has tied up the strong man, to tell the demons to shut up and get out. I need Jesus—living, breathing, loving Jesus, because in his presence the demons become anxious, and when he speaks, the unclean spirits within us and among us are driven from power.

His words and his fierce love loose the bonds of injustice, and he calls us to join him in his life’s work. His words and his fierce love let the oppressed go free, and he empowers us to join him in his work for life’s sake. His words and his fierce love break every yoke, and he unburdens us so we can serve the flourishing of life in his company.

You are not too young, nor are you ever too old, to help others see their true identity and full dignity as God’s beloved. Humbly and courageously, listening to Jesus and following him, we must do our part in casting out the demons that feed on our fear.

Does the world ever speak? I don’t know, but I do know with my whole heart that it’s supposed to sing, all of it, to the glory of God. And it will.

[1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/12/21/the-emptied-cosmos-gabriel-pihas/

[2] Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13; Mark 1:13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him. See also Mark 3:23, 26; 4:15; 8:33

[3] Mark 3:27

[4] Matt Skinner https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-mark-121-28-3

Your Own Ministry

Margie Quinn

I heard a story once of a poet who visited his son’s classroom for “Bring your parent to school day.” The man was asked to talk about what he did for a living. He began by asking the children, who were around 9 or 10 years old, what they wanted to be when they grew up. “A fireman!” one said. “An actress!” said another. “A basketball player!” replied a third. Then, he went to the board and wrote down several words: barista, athlete, nurse, artist, writer, construction worker, actor, poet. Guess what? He said. I have been all of these things, and I will continue to be more. I am a poet, yes, but I am a lot more than that. You can be so many things when you grow up! 

You can be so many things. 

The gospel of Mark begins like an alarm clock, as theologian Ted Smith puts it. John the baptist has just been arrested and Jesus is on the move, perhaps feeling a sense of urgency to proclaim the good news, to share that the kingdom of God has come near, to get people to turn away from their greed and individualism, away from their judgment and exploitation, and to believe that another world is possible: a kingdom where all are kin, where oppressive powers are overthrown, where everyone has a seat at the table. He passes along the Sea of Galilee, sees Simon and his brother Andrew fishing in the sea and says to them–Follow me, and I will make you fish for people. Immediately, they throw those nets off to the side, and follow him. Then he keeps going, with the brothers in tow–and finds James and John, another set of fishermen who are in the boat mending their nets. Immediately, Jesus calls them, and they follow him.

Growing up, I bristled at this text because it felt pushy. Drop everything and follow Jesus! Hurry up and chase after him; convince other people to do the same! Now I read it differently. Did you catch it? In this text, Jesus speaks the language of the people he’s talking to at the current moment. In front of him are fishermen, so he invites them to now fish for people. He doesn’t tell them to “bake for people” or “to sing for people:” he uses their own vocation to propel them into ministry. 

Imagine if all of us felt the need to become a pastor. That we assumed there is only one way to do ministry and it is through getting ordained and serving a church. We’d drop everything, even our individual gifts and talents, to preach, teach, and pray. 

What if, instead, we dropped everything to use our specific gifts in our ministry. 

Did you catch it? Later in the gospel of Mark, Jesus multiplies loaves and fishes to feed a crowd, bringing abundance to a people who have been fed the lie of scarcity and not-enough-ness for so long. I wonder who caught those fish for him to share, though. Jesus, the carpenter? There’s no way he knew how to mend nets and cast them out into the sea. He needed fishermen who used their gifts to bring people in in order to fulfill the kingdom of God. 

I have been reflecting on our own congregation and the specific gifts you all bring as ministers to us. Abi uses her voice to bring the Spirit into this place. Ellen draws art for our Advent devotional, bringing us powerful images from scripture. Martha knits hats for our guests at Room in the Inn. One man was so excited about the hat he picked on Thursday. This looks professional like I got it in a store. I love the colors. Larry uses that radio host voice to move us when he reads scripture to us. Thomas bakes bread and then breaks bread with us, remember that delicious loaf from Christmas? I play frisbee with the youth, bringing us together to play and laugh. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? I don’t know how to bake or draw! I can hardly sew a button on my shirt let alone knit a hat! But God doesn’t ask me to. Jesus calls us to live out our particular vocations and passions for the fulfillment of the gospel. Proclaiming good news looks different for each and every one of us. 

Sometimes I get so lost in the weeds with how wide we cast our nets in the church, distracted by numbers and growth and strategies of bait. Have I forgotten to look around and focus on who is already here, doing the very things that Jesus does in the gospel? Being compassionate, sharing our gifts, being satisfied with the quality of our ministries as opposed to the quantity. Jesus’ first act is not to call hundreds of people but to call four. FOUR! Who are not asked to leave behind their life’s work but to bring their calling with them to add richness and uniqueness to the ministry of the gospel.

And did you catch it? They don’t hesitate to do this, they jump up immediately. 

Immediately! The word is used 41 times in the gospel of Mark and only ten other time in the New Testament. Clearly, Mark is trying to tell us something about the urgency with which Jesus lives. As Dr. King puts it, “We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.” Positive action–like when Jesus heals and touches people that no one else wants to touch and IMMEDIATELY the leper is cleansed, IMMEDIATELY the bleeding woman is healed when she touches his robe, IMMEDIATELY the blind man regains his sight and follows Jesus, IMMEDIATELY, Jesus consoles the Disciples when they are scared as heck seeing him walk on water, IMMEDIATELY the paralyzed man stands up and walks once Jesus heals him…not gonna do all 41 immediatelys but are you catching my drift? 

What are you being called into? Where could you begin using your particular calling immediately to fulfill the kingdom of God here on earth as it is in heaven? As Elton Brown puts it, becoming a faithful Christian disciple takes both a moment and a lifetime. It may have only taken you a moment to realize your love of teaching, nursing, gardening, coding. But now, urgently, we bring those gifts into a lifetime of discipleship, together. the specificity of what we do and what they did will matter, how that will continue into their following of Jesus, translate new possibilities into fulfilling the kingdom of God 

My friend Grace approached me on Thursday night. She has been helping out at Room in the Inn. Grace finished culinary school recently and is a baker at Dozen. On Thursday she made a cherry chocolate cake for the guests. “Hey, I’d love to keep baking on Thursdays for the guests. Will you keep letting me know when I can?” We would love, that I said. “Follow me” Jesus tells us, and I will make you knit, bake, sing, paint–for people.” You don’t have to be a minister when you grow up. Be you, all of you, because I’ll need that in my kingdom.” 

May it be so.

Being Fully Known

Thomas Kleinert

Some of you may have seen Freaky Friday, a 1976 Disney movie featuring Barbara Harris as Mrs. Andrews and 13-year-old Jodie Foster as her teenage daughter Annabel. They each think the other has an easy life, and one Friday morning, when each wishes she could have the other’s life for just one day, their wishes come true. I didn’t see it; I saw the 2003 remake with Jamie Lee Curtis playing mom and Lindsay Lohan as daughter Anna. Again, their perspectives on life are vastly different, and after a big Thursday night argument and some fortune cookie magic, they wake up in switched bodies the next morning. Lots of screaming and terrific acting ensue, as each gets to know the other’s life from the inside for a day. I read that another remake of Freaky Friday is in the works, delayed only by last year’s screenwriters’ strike. Clearly, the dramatic and comedic potential of mother/daughter relationships is perennial, as the daughters of mothers become the mothers of daughters, generation to generation. The remake plans also tell me that we enjoy imagining the playful possibilities of switching bodies with another person—why walk a mile in their shoes if you can live a whole day fully immersed in their world?

We like playing with the idea of switching bodies or trading social locations for a day, because we understand the difficulty of knowing another person, of really knowing them, and not just lots of things about them; the difficulty of really knowing them, and not just a composite of the snapshots, projections, and conclusions we have created of them in our minds. We are also all familiar with the mirror scenario: we want to be seen and accepted for who we are, rather than who others think we ought to be or need us to be. We know the deep desire to be fully known and understood by another person, and we know the struggle between that desire and the fear of being judged, the fear of being ridiculed for how we talk, or dress, or look, or feel. We want to be known—and we don’t, because we can’t bear the thought of appearing smaller, weaker, less together than the role we have learned to play on the small stage of our world. And some go to great lengths not to be known for who they are for fear of getting hurt.

Psalm 139, the psalm for this Sunday, is a moving meditation on the desire for, and the reality of, being known.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.

When you step into this psalm, and try on these words as your own, what do you notice? Do you enjoy saying them? Does the thought of God discerning even your thoughts give you peace? Or does it feel creepy and intrusive?

You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.

Again, does this feel like finally no longer needing to hide who you are, and what you say, or think, or do, or does it feel like living under constant surveillance? The writer of the psalm leaves plenty of room for this ambiguity.

You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.

“You hem me in” carries connotations of feeling protected, but also of being under siege or confined. And “your hand upon me” can be a blessing or a shield, or a burden. This is where the psalm moves from reflecting on divine knowledge to the theme of divine presence, and ambiguity continues to color every line:

Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.

The divine presence is inescapable: it fills the earth from east to west, and every layer of reality from the highest heavens to the depths of the realm of the dead.

Even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night as bright as the day.

“There is nowhere far enough away to escape from God, no darkness thick enough to hide,” writes Jason Byassee.[1] In this all-encompassing reality of divine presence and knowledge, do you feel safe and sheltered or uncomfortably transparent? The third movement of the psalm is filled with awe and wonder as the psalm writer’s entire lifetime comes into view:

It was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
… intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.

This psalm if full of declarations about God, but none of them are conceptual or abstract; none of them are general statements about God’s knowledge and presence. All of them are deeply personal and relational. The entire psalm is an intricately woven fabric stretching between the writer’s “I” and a divine “you” that is known, named, and praised. To me, it is an ode to the joy of being fully known by this eternal You.

Yes, to be fully known is to be completely vulnerable. It is a reality we desire with our whole being and at the same time fear, because we bear the scars of violation, and abuse, and shame, and abandonment. The testimony of Psalm 139 is an invitation to risk this vulnerability in our relationship with the God we have come to know in Jesus, the God who became completely vulnerable for our sake, the God who desires to be known by us, even as we are each fully known.

Toward the end—you all heard it and swallowed hard—toward the end, the psalm suddenly takes a disturbing turn with talk of killing and hatred. To some, these vehement sentiments seem so inconsistent that they can only be explained as a crude addition, writes Jim Mays, and “so unacceptable to religious sensibility that they are customarily omitted in liturgical… use.”[2]

O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those who speak of you maliciously
and lift themselves up against you for evil!

In any time and place, those who seek to live in righteousness face wickedness, bloodthirst, malice and evil, but notice that the writer of the psalm does not ask God for the authority to commit bloodshed in return, but for God to deal with the reality of evil. On the weekend when the people of the United States honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and in this moment when hate and violence are once again on the rise around the globe, it is crucial that we who wish to serve the kingdom of God on earth, serve in the name and Spirit of Jesus, and do not serve the urges of our own violent fantasies.

Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

I sure do, sometimes, and perhaps you do, too. And that’s why I do all I can to remember that the Lord does not hate those who hate the Lord, but does indeed love them. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it, but I entrust myself completely to it, in the name of Jesus, the Crucified One, risen from the dead.

In the end, the writer of the psalm asks God for one thing: to continue to do what God has done. “Search me, O God, and know my heart,” he or she prays, in what is almost an echo of the opening line, “test me and know my thoughts.” Search me as you have searched me. Test me as you have tested me. See me as you have seen me.

See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

The last word is not the cry for God’s violent anger to be unleashed against the wicked, but for God to see, and to let me see, if there is any wicked in me, and to lead me in the way everlasting (for the way of the wicked will perish[3]). Psalm 130 invites us to try on these words and practice saying them as our own, and to receive an identity rooted not in the things we say about ourselves or the labels others assign us, but in the One who made us and redeemed us, the One who knows us more deeply and more graciously than we could ever know ourselves.

During the years of terror when the Nazis ruled in Germany and waged war in the name of empire, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was active in the resistance and was eventually imprisoned, sentenced to death, and, just a few weeks before the war ended, executed. In prison, he wrote this poem, titled, Who am I?

Who am I? They often tell me
I step out from my cell
calm and cheerful and poised,
like a squire from his manor.

Who am I? They often tell me
I speak with my guards
freely, friendly and clear,
as though I were the one in charge.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bear days of calamity
serenely, smiling and proud,
like one accustomed to victory.

Am I really what others say of me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning, sick, like a caged bird,
struggling for life breath, as if I were being strangled,
starving for colors, for flowers, for birdsong,
thirsting for kind words, human closeness,
shaking with rage at power lust and pettiest insult,
tossed about, waiting for great things to happen,
helplessly fearing for friends so far away,
too tired and empty to pray, to think, to work,
weary and ready to take my leave of it all?

Who am I? This one or the other?
Am I this one today and tomorrow another? …

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, you know me; O God, I am yours! [4]

May we all know the peace of that final line.

[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-psalm-1391-6-13-18-6

[2] James L. Mays, Psalms (Louisville: John Knox, 1994), 428.

[3] Psalm 1:6

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Wer Bin Ich?” Widerstand und Ergebung, 179. English translation based on versions found on the internet.

That Blue Bandana

Margie Quinn

I remember my baptism. I remember the white robes we all wore and the generalized group embarrassment at being eleven years old and getting hit with the dunk tank button in front of a few hundred audience members. I remember the necklace I was gifted after that service. It was a silver necklace with a cross, and I remember thinking to myself, “Oh my gosh, clean slate, I’m back to zero sins and I want to see how long this lasts.” Spoiler alert: it didn’t last long.

Most vividly, I remember the handkerchiefs that the other kids brought. You know, the ones they gave to Reverend Lesleigh before she dunked us under. She would gently place the hanky over our nose, look us in the eyes with her warm gaze, tell us something beautiful which we all certainly forgot immediately, too stunned to remember, and guide us in and out of that warm water. 

Everyone’s hanky was white, pristine, dainty even. Some hankies had been passed down for generations. Some had lace, some an engraved stitching. My hanky was a bright blue bandana that most likely came from one of my brother’s baseball uniforms. You know, the things they put in their back pocket when they’re running around the dirt field? A sweat rag, a spit rag. I’m not trying to put my parents to shame; I was the sixth Quinn to get dunked and I’m sure they were going for practical over pretty at that point in the parenting process. After several doile-looking handkerchiefs entered the scene, here comes little Margie with her blue bandana, bright-eyed and eager to go under and come out…sinless. 

Do you remember your baptism? Were you dunked or sprinkled? Were you too young to recall? Have you vetoed a baptism in your life? Were you turned away from the ritual because of who you are or who you love? 

I’ve witnessed a lot of baptisms–mostly baby baptisms at my old church, where the Minister makes the sign of the cross in water on the baby’s forehead before someone walks the baby down in front of the congregation, the oohs and ahhs audible, the misty eyes inevitable. I’ve seen baptisms in our tradition from the font, the down and up as if in solidarity with Jesus, who went down and up too. 

The most unforgettable baptism I’ve ever seen happened at a river in Northern Washington. I was living at a Lutheran Retreat Center at the time called Holden Village. A guy in his early twenties asked the Pastor if he could take part in this sacred ritual. We gathered around a small riverbed and watched as Caleb was submerged in the freezing waters, among rocks and mud, minnows and moss. 

I reckon Jesus’ baptism was more like Caleb’s than like mine, his feet squishing in the mud as he walked out to the Jordan River, his cousin smelling like camel and leather, bugs and honey. I reckon his long hair was plastered to his face when he rose out of that water. 

And I reckon all of that because at this point in the Christian story, we’ve moved away from the delicacy of Christmas, away from the romanticism of a baby in a manger and away from a mother’s tender, loving touch. And now it’s time to get to work. We’ve been waiting long enough–in the gospel of Mark we don’t even get the birth story, we start with wild John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness, taking his cousin Jesus down to the river.  

Nadia Bolz-Weber talks about how the story itself is amazing. We are told that basically everybody was flocking to the Jordan River to get baptized by John the Baptist. He’d been preaching about repentance and preparing the way of the Lord. Repentance: the Greek here being metanoeite, which means to change a mental attitude, or turn around. And so people were coming in droves to get that fresh start and turn around back to Goodness and Love. A mass of unwashed sinners all crowding around, as Nadia writes, waiting their turn. Sun beating down, mosquitoes buzzing, children screaming. I imagine it was a crowd carrying all of their shame and wrongdoings, all of their sins and betrayals and misdemeanors, all of the things they had been caught wrapped up in and all of the things they had gotten away with, down to the River. We begin here with this critical moment in which Jesus’ public ministry begins. God finally starts answering our long-awaited questions, “How, God, will you unseat the powers of this world? Who has the authority here to teach us, guide us, lead us? If John isn’t the Messiah, who is and where is he?” 

It’s almost like we need to be reacquainted with Jesus, that after thirty years some may have forgotten this wondrous, mysterious birth of the Christ child, of a long-expected Savior of the world. And we get that answer here, at the Jordan River. This scene is a big teaching moment for us. We finally start to see glimpses of who Jesus is, and what he’s about to do. 

First, he’s down to earth. Quite literally, he’s grounded in the real, sensual, fleshy world with river water, clothing from camels, a diet from bugs…and an interesting weather phenomena. 

In a different sense, he is down to earth in that he shows his authority through humility. He doesn’t exclude himself from the religious practice of baptism (I mean he’s God, does he really need repentance and forgiveness of sins?) but he meets his people right where they are, down at the riverside. John, who claims that he is not even worthy to stoop down and untie Jesus’ sandals, who proclaims that Jesus is the one more powerful than him, becomes the one Jesus trusts to guide him lovingly into the choppy waters and bring him out. We are already getting hints at the kind of ministry Jesus embarks on. Not one of power over, but one of solidarity with; one of washing others’ feet, not letting anyone stoop down low to touch his. 

Second, he is not only baptized with water but with the Holy Spirit. You know the Holy Spirit? That wild, divine force that sweeps through our lives and emboldens us to sing, give, connect with those who are different, pray with our feet, pray loudly and unabashedly, be a part of the kingdom here on earth. A Spirit that, in this story, dive-bombs like a Dove, which birds usually do when they are protecting their young; a Spirit that comes out of the ripped-apart heavens, perhaps signaling to us that the world can’t go back to the way it was; a Spirit that is tied to the material–real water, real bread, inexpensive wine, soaking robes. And Jesus doesn’t receive the Spirit in private, no, he receives it publicly, not to hoard its glory secretly but to pass it on to all. 

Not only do we see glimpses of who Jesus is in this story, but we learn something about God here, too. As Karl Barth writes, here we see the “astonishing claim that God does not will to remain hidden in the heights of heaven, but descends to the depths of earthly life in order to be seen and heard by us finite creatures.” A God of the Trinity–Parent, Son and Holy Spirit–who reminds us that even God doesn’t redeem us alone, but does so in a Divine Dance with Christ and the Spirit. God, who says in what I think of as a loving voice, in a personal proclamation, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well-pleased.” Imagine hearing that every time we experience shame, fear, regret, loneliness. You are my child, you are beloved, I am so pleased with you. Or as that word is translated in Greek, “I delight in you.” And our God says this before Jesus has really done anything. God doesn’t say “You are my Son and I’m well-pleased because you’ve done so much to deserve this; you have always read your Torah and have done some miraculous healing.” Nope, as far as we know, Jesus hasn’t even done anything and is still called Beloved. That feels like the kind of pure Gospel love the heavens could not contain and it just kind of has to spill out all over everything. God meeting John and Jesus and the crowd in the wilderness of their lives, soaring to them with hurried, unconditional love. 

So we see our first glimpses here, in the gospel of Mark, of who Jesus is and will be, of who God is and will be, of how the Spirit works and operates, and of how the ritual of baptism really began. 

I keep wondering if our baptism rituals are so nice and clean that we neglect to talk about the uncomfortable implications of inviting God’s spirit to invade our lives? If our laced handkerchiefs have white-washed the muddy gospel away? If we forget that this work is tiring, just like John’s arms must have been after baptizing so many people? That this work happens in community, with people gathered all around us? That this work is transformative, heavens being ripped apart to remind us that there’s no going back to the status quo, only going forward in solidarity with each other and with our Savior? And finally, that this work is grace-filled. That we don’t have to work to “deserve” God’s love: it’s already given, freely and relentlessly.

I don’t know where my beloved blue bandana got off to. I have a notorious reputation for losing things. But I’m glad for that moment during my baptism, to remind me what my baptism means. It means that this gospel-work is dirty, sweaty and grimy; that it isn’t fancy or pristine, but colorful and communal and down to earth. It reminds me that ministry for Jesus began with the people, in the wild, hearing God’s voice calling him beloved. Beloved. 

May it be so, 

My Eyes Have Seen

Thomas Kleinert

The days are getting longer now, they say. Just before Christmas Eve was the longest night, but now the days are getting longer, they say. I haven’t noticed it yet. Friday night, Nancy and I had a dinner reservation at Café Nonna, but we could only get a table at 5:30 pm, which is kinda early. Walking from the car to the restaurant, though, it was dark enough to be at least 7 pm, so it felt like just the right time for dinner.

The days are getting longer now, they say; in incremental shifts, turn after turn, the earth is tilting and circling toward spring, they say. When there aren’t at least a couple of hills nearby with snow on them, I’m ready for spring as soon as the Christmas tree is gone, and in our house that’s before the magi from the east had a chance to make it to Bethlehem for a visit. For the next few weeks, I’ll be reminding myself, “The days are getting longer; hang in there!”

I don’t know how they celebrate Christmas in places like New Zealand or Zimbabwe where it’s the beginning of summer now – to me, it seems so appropriate to celebrate the birth of Jesus when the nights are long and cold. The season gives us such great images to speak of our deepest longing… for the sun of righteousness to rise, for God’s mercy to melt our frozen hearts, for the Spirit of life to light up our hope and joy.

Tomorrow is New Years Day, and astronomically speaking, it’s a completely random day, without any connection to an equinox or solstice; it’s just another day, whether you live on the northern or the southern hemisphere. Historically, though, it has come to mark a great moment in this country. When President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all the slaves in the Confederate States, it was to become law on January 1, 1863.  And on December 31, 1862, African Americans, enslaved and free, all over the United States, gathered together in churches and homes, watching and waiting for freedom to come at midnight. It was Watch Night. They and their ancestors had been kidnapped, bound, chained, sold, whipped, raped, beaten and locked into a lifetime of forced labor. But this was Watch Night. Many must have spoken of tomorrow only with hushed voices, whispering their prayers, holding their breath while their entire bodies yearned to burst into dancing and singing. Oh, yes, President Lincoln’s had finally declared their freedom and affirmed their dignity as human beings, but that didn’t make it so in the eyes of their masters. And the Civil War would drag on for another three years. But this was Watch Night; this was Freedom’s Eve, the darkness before dawn. This was the night of Passover, the night when the house of slavery would collapse, and tomorrow the new day would dawn on the journey to the promised land. December 31, 1862: the prayers of generations finally answered, the long darkness finally illumined by first light. Freedom’s Eve, a week after Christmas Eve.

Last Sunday, the children told the story of Jesus’ birth with the joyful testimony of angels, shepherds, and magi bearing gifts. It was glorious! Today, Luke takes us to Jerusalem, to the temple, where Mary and Joseph have brought their child to present him to the Lord. And here we meet Simeon and Anna whose entire life has been Watch Night. Simeon has lived his years looking forward to the consolation of Israel, the redemption of God’s people from oppression, exile, and occupation. And Anna, also of great age, has devoted most of her life to fasting and prayer—fasting in mourning over the city, the people, and the land, and praying to center herself in the presence and promise of God.

They are old people—I know we’re not supposed to say that, but they are, which is why they didn’t make it to Bethlehem and why they’re never included in our Christmas pageants. They are bent by the years, I imagine. Their swollen joints hurt. Climbing stairs demands all their focus and strength. On their way across the temple courtyard they stop several times to catch their breath. Their backs hurt. Yes, they are bent by the years, but that doesn’t mean they can’t live on tiptoe. They do. They are Advent people, open to God’s promise, open with anticipation, open to the guidance of God’s Spirit. Their eyes may be dimmed by cataracts, but their vision is keen, and their hearts are tuned to detect even the faintest whisper of hope. Their whole being is open to the movements of God, and when Mary and Joseph bring their infant son, old Simeon and Anna are there, and they carry with them the history and the longing of their people.

I’ve been wondering these past few days what would be on Mary’s Instagram, and this picture was easy to imagine: the old man, his hand, gnarled with arthritis, cradling the infant’s head, and no, he’s not looking at Mary’s phone: all his attention belongs to this little one, and across his wrinkly face a smile beams with gentle, quiet delight, hovering between laughter and tears.

Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.

And Anna, also approaching the end of her days, adds her own praise and joy to the moment—she’ll be telling all who are watching and waiting for the redemption of life about this child.

But what have they seen, really? He’s just a baby. Whatever salvation he might bring is still only a promise and a hope. Nothing has happened yet. The world looks no different than yesterday. The poor still go hungry. The poor still get bombed. The poor still have their dignity and freedom denied. And it’s business as usual in the houses of the mighty. What is it Simeon and Anna have seen?

They have seen the dark night illumined by dawn’s first light. By the time the grown-up Jesus begins his ministry, Simeon and Anna will be long dead. So will most of those shepherds who went with haste to see the child in the manger. Some thirty years will pass before the story resumes with the baptism of Jesus. In the meantime, the ones who saw or held the baby, who knelt at his bed of hay, and who made known what had been told them about this child, did not know what became of him. They only knew the beginnings that tasted of fulfillment.

We too are people who have heard what has been told us about this child, we too have seen something but not yet its full unfolding. We have the scriptures that school us in hope and attentiveness. We have the stories and testimonies of our elders and ancestors. We have the memory of moments, when the tender compassion of our God has come close enough for us to see and feel. We have something like the shepherds would have had, recalling all their lives a night of mysterious glory. And we have been given the rest of the gospel story. We know what happened to the man the baby grew up to be. We know his astonishing compassion. We know his teachings. We have sat at his table. We have seen the promised future, we have entered and tasted it. Like Simeon and Anna, we may not get all the way to his future ourselves, not in this life—but we have seen it, and because we have seen it, we can go in peace.[1]And we can go with courage and hope, even into 2024.

David Steele wrote a poem about Simeon that begins with something a preacher said.

This preacher
Claimed scholarly research had documented
That Simeon,
Of Simeon and Anna,
Had pronounced the very same blessing
(The one in Luke 2:27-35)
Over all the babies presented to him in the Temple
Those final years of his life
…

He was pulling my leg, of course.

But when I read the blessing
And thought about it,

I began to wish he was right
About Simeon… and those babies.
And I began thinking about our babies.

And I wished someone,
Some Simeon, [some Anna,]
Might hold my grandbabies high… and yours…
Proclaiming to them with great conviction,
“You are the [salvation] of the world!”

Meaning it so absolutely
Those young’uns would live it,
And love it,
And make it happen! [2]

Now before you go on wrinkling your brow and making faces, suspecting blasphemous levity and poetic license gone too far, think about it. Don’t you wish every child dedicated in our sanctuary would live as a light to the world and to the glory of God’s people? Didn’t Jesus say as much when he said to the disciples, “You are the light of the world! Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”[3] Don’t you wish some Simeon or Anna would hold up every child on earth and recognize the promise of God and declare it with praise? Don’t you wish every old man and woman would recognize God in every child? I do, and I’m working on it.

Simeon and Anna were shaped by the promises of God, and over a lifetime of holy habits, their trust deepened into a way of being in the world that made them receptive to small beginnings. Living on the other side of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we see the beginnings they witnessed, the story yet to be completed, in the light of Easter; and why wouldn’t our wonder at the faithfulness of God be even greater than what Simeon and Anna were able to imagine? So let us praise God on this Freedom’s Eve. Let us praise God who will not cease to guide our feet into the way of peace, even in 2024.

[1] My thanks to John K. Stendahl, “Holding promise,” The Christian Century 119, no. 25 (December 4, 2002), 17.

[2] David Steele, The Next Voice You Hear: Sermons We Preach Together (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1999), 46.

[3] Matthew 5:14-15

Mary: The Musical

Margie Quinn

You may or may not know this, but we’ve got some musical theatre kids in the building. Jack will star in “Bye Bye Birdie” in the spring, Gia in “The Little Mermaid” and Quentin played in the orchestra for “Wicked” the musical not too long ago. I happen to be a musical theatre kid myself. Growing up, it was my passion. The first show I performed in was “Evita” at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center . My brother and I sang in the Nashville Children’s Choir in middle school and the traveling cast of Evita needed a few kids to play some children in the show. This was Patrick and I’s moment—we slathered Burt’s Bee’s ChapStick under our eyes during one scene, looking forlorn and crying a little, assuming that everyone in the audience was focused on the budding talent of two lanky middle schoolers in the ensemble.

I have always loved musicals—performed in every show at school and consider them my church outside of church. As I’ve grown older, I have begun to notice that there are two kinds of people: those that love musicals that those that don’t. My best friend is in the “Don’t” category. Her issue is the unrealistic fashion in which characters have a normal conversation and then all the sudden…they break out into song. I get it, I really do. It’s cheesy at times, a bit jarring and not exactly how daily life works. Still though, still. There’s magic to it.

In our passage this morning, Mary does the unrealistic and breaks out into song. Let me back up. Before Mary sings what we call the Magnificat, she travels eighty miles to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Scripture says that she went with haste. I can only assume this is because she was just visited by an angel who told her that she would bear a son named Jesus, who “will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High, Son of God…and of his kingdom there will be no end. Your cousin Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, she who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Mary’s response? “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.” Mary’s, “Here am I” echoes Jacob’s response when God visits him in a dream, Moses’s response when God shows up as burning bush, Samuel’s response when God visits him as a child, and Isaiah’s response when God commissions him to become a great prophet. “Here am I,” Mary replies. Still, though, still, it isn’t surprising that she travels with haste to Judea to confirm her faith by going to see the miracle which the angel had effectively brought to her notice.

And just like Nunsense or Six, 9 to 5 or Legally Blonde: The Musical, this story centers women who don’t resent each other or compete with each other, don’t compare themselves to each other or push the other down in order to get ahead—no in this story, Elizabeth becomes the first human being to witness the good news. How absurd for that time, that the coming of the Messiah who would redeem the brokenness of the world is proclaimed not by high priests or archangels or kings, but by a nobody from nowhere; a young, poor, unwed pregnant woman who would definitely be seen as a disgrace, and an old, barren woman who had lost all hope in conceiving.

The absurd continues—when Mary reaches Elizabeth, the child LEAPS in Elizabeth’s womb. “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” Elizabeth cries. “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Elizabeth has no trouble believing that God could and would come to us in a most unexpected, radical way.

And Mary sings, “MY SOUL MAGNIFIES THE LORDDDDD. And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!” Her song, the power ballad of the show, begins. A woman often depicted in our day and age as a coy, porcelain, mild-mannered girl, usually looking down at baby Jesus just might be looking UP, hands spread wide, a song of justice released from her lips; like Elle Woods in “So Much Better,” or Celie’s “I’m Here” in The Color Purple. Recognizing her own vocation in Elizabeth’s words, Mary is empowered to share a song. Harkening back to the song of Miriam, the song of Deborah, she sings the bold words of the Magnificat, a proclamation of a seemingly absurd world in which the oppressive political and economic structures are turned upside down! In her song, hierarchies are subverted, the mighty are brought down. These are some of the most prophetic words in scripture! They echo Isaiah’s words this morning:

“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 comfort all who mourn; to give them a garland instead of ashes…shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.  For I the LORD love justice…and I will faithfully give them their reward, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.” An everlasting covenant that stretches from Ruth and Tamar and Rahab and Jacob and Isaac and Abraham to…Mary.

Mary’s ballad goes on: God has scattered the proud who only have thoughts for their hearts, has brought down the powerful from their thrones, has lifted up the lowly, has filled the hungry with good things, has sent the rich away empty, has looked with favor on me.

And I believe it, even if you don’t, she might be saying. I believe it, just like Mary Magdalene believed in the resurrected Jesus when he encountered her in the garden, even if the Disciples didn’t believe her. Just like Elizabeth believed that she would bear John the Baptist, even if her husband Zechariah didn’t. Maybe men don’t always believe women, but how powerful in this story that women believe each other. Women know that it is vital to have the Elizabeth’s in our lives to bless us, lift us up and sing the harmonies to our melodies.

Mary believes all these things have already passed, even if we cannot see them yet. Notice that language? God has already redeemed us, has brought comfort to our lonely and fragmented souls, has brought healing to our broken world and has brought justice to the ones kicked to the outskirts by Empire. As Chuck Campbell writes, “Mary proclaims the promised, topsy-turvy future of God as an already accomplished fact—possibly because that future can already be glimpsed in God’s choice of Mary as the bearer of the Messiah.” This song foreshadows an end to the unjust social structures in the fleshy, tired, faithful body of Mary, a pregnant teenager, a nobody from nowhere. God chooses Mary as the bearer of this upside-down world coming to us.

As an aside, there is a Cathedral outside of Paris that contains the dress that Mary supposedly wore when she gave birth to Jesus—it is a length of beige silk without a single bloodstain. The costume designers in this musical got it wrong, because the good news didn’t come in something shiny and unblemished. It came in the cracked feet of a woman who rode 80 miles to see her cousin.

It came to give us this upside-down world. Absurd, really. Like the Feast of Fools—a festive event around Christmastime that depicted the role reversals Mary hinted at. Back in the day, leaders in the church would wear their robes inside out, hold their books upside down, wear glasses made of orange peels and, instead of singing traditional hymns, would chant, and I quote, “confused and inarticulate gibberish.” Think Spamalot. Some churches even had a congregant parading through the aisle on a donkey as a way to honor the holy family’s flight into Egypt to escape King Herod. The choir, the congregation and the priests would bray like donkeys during mass.

If that ain’t the whimsy of a Broadway musical, I don’t know what is. And yet, even as a young woman, I’m guilty of viewing Mary and Elizabeth as two-dimensional figures, frozen in stained glass, timid in manner; the background characters of a bigger show.

The topsy-turvy news of the gospel this morning can be found in the story of two pregnant women, laughing and singing, rejoicing, and believing that God comes to us in a vulnerable baby, who nobody wanted to take in—a baby born from a poor girl from Nazareth, who wondered, “Could the world be about to turn?”

Our hope as Christians today finds its voice in this song and its proclamation of the “already and the not yet.” We wait for the birth of God; we believe that God has already redeemed all the brokenness that we feel and see.

In this song, the mighty are brought down. In this song, the hungry are filled with good things. In this song, we see the glimpse of Empire that crumbles under the weight of the radical love of a baby.

This isn’t the voice of the powerful speaking here, church. It’s the voice of the powerless; it’s the voice of a woman and her cousin and a baby that leaps in a womb and a baby that’s soon to be born, and Mary wonders and asks, just as we do, Could the world be about the to turn? Could the world be about to turn? Can the world be about to turn?

May it be so.

Beginning

Thomas Kleinert

War rages in Gaza. To my ears and my mind, the word ‘war’ is a terrible, shorthand compromise of a word. It may be fit for history books and legal texts, but not for the full reality of violent destruction and slaughter human beings are capable of perpetrating against human beings, not for the full reality of suffering and death, and their consequences. On the periphery of the war unleashed by Hamas in the brutal attacks on October 7 against Israel, other stories beg for our attention; but when the media spotlight, sporadic and flickering as it is, is directed at Gaza, Rafah, and Khan Younis, stories from the Jordan valley don’t make it to the top of your news feed. On the West Bank, the fate of thousands of Palestinian farmers and shepherds looks grim. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has done next to nothing to stop rampaging Israeli settlers who are hell-bent on driving Palestinian families off their lands, and the inaction is intentional. President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have both warned that this settler violence has to be curbed. In response, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated, “There is a tiny handful of people who take the law into their own hands, [and] we are not prepared to tolerate this.”

“So far he seems able to tolerate it quite easily,” writes David Shulman.

The same day he reassured his supporters, including the hundreds of thousands of settlers in the territories: “I told President Biden that the accusations against the settlement movement are baseless.”

Shulman, who is a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an Israeli human rights activist, reports that

Over the last few months, and more so since the war began, we have been seeing entire villages fleeing in panic from the settlers. … [We] are doing what we can to support those who are left… but in many cases the Palestinians can simply no longer stand the threats, violence, and harassment. In Wadi a-Siq in September, before the war, the elders of the village said to me, “We want to stay on our lands, but our children cry all the time; they are terrified.” Wadi a-Siq no longer exists. Neither does the once-beautiful village of Ein a-Rashash.[1]

A few weeks ago, back in September, Shulman wrote that “On the grassroots level, in the villages, most Palestinians want what most Israelis want—a livable life, without war. They also rightly want, and some day will certainly achieve, equality and an end to the current regime of discrimination, oppression, and constant threat.” At the end of his article, Shulman quoted his shepherd friend Jamal:

We were born to live in peace with one another. We think that hell lies somewhere beneath the earth, and heaven lies above us. But in fact people create their own hell on earth, when paradise, right here, could be ours.[2]

I wanted you to hear from David and Jamal today, especially Jamal. He’s a shepherd, and I was about to tell you that there are no shepherds keeping watch at night in the Gospel of Mark, just as there are no angels singing Gloria, no star-gazing visitors bearing gifts from far-away lands, no ox and ass, and no baby Jesus in the manger. Mark hits the ground running and jumps right into the Jordan with John the baptizer, the wild man sent by God to prepare the way of the Lord with his proclamation of repentance and forgiveness, and a baptism to mark the new beginning. There are no shepherds keeping watch at night in the Gospel of Mark, but there are shepherds among us keeping watch—voices in the wilderness reminding us that we were born to live in peace with each other and that repentance is the gate to paradise.

Mark opens with something like a headline—“The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Why “the beginning” instead of simply “the good news of Jesus Christ”? Some hear an echo of the opening of Genesis, the beginning of creation, and they hear Mark tell a story as wondrous and good as the story of life itself; they hear the beginning of life’s liberation from all the powers that deform and disfigure it; the beginning of God’s promised future for this beautiful, broken world.

Others hear “the beginning of the good news” because, with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the good news isn’t complete yet. The beginning of it is complete, but now the good news continues and unfolds in the lives of all who hear it and live it. Mark can only tell the beginning, because the good news continues with us, in all the ways that we hear the story and follow Jesus on the way, shepherds keeping watch at night, inn keepers opening doors to weary travelers, peace makers lighting candles in the dark, all of us proclaiming with our very lives the glad tidings of God’s faithfulness.

So here we are, at the Jordan with John; at the very river where Israel gathered after forty long years of wilderness wanderings, after their escape from slavery in Egypt. John meets us at the river of almost there, the river that marks the border between being on the run and coming home.

At the Jordan the prophet Elijah was taken up into heaven, and he was expected to return before the day of the Lord—and Mark’s quick portrait of John suggests more than a resemblance between the two. The baptizer is undomesticated, focused on essentials: he wears only the most basic clothing, eats only what God provides and the earth produces on its own, boils down all covenant demands and commitments to a single one: repent, and announces the coming of one who would bathe the world in Holy Spirit. This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ: to turn from what was, whether we look back with nostalgia, with anger, or regret—to turn from what was to the one who is coming. To reorient our lives in the light of God’s coming reign; to look at ourselves with honesty; to name what we notice and lament what is missing, and repent. That is the beginning of the good news. That is how we begin, again and again, as practitioners of the good news. We turn away from our complicity with the old order of things and become a community of the repentant and expectant, an Advent community. The end of what was is now, and now is the beginning of what shall be—and repenting isn’t a one-time thing nor is it easy, no, it’s hard, but it is possible and it is critical and it is so liberating. We turn from our idolatries to faith. We turn from self-absorption to love. We turn from despair to hope.

John meets us at the Jordan, in the borderlands between what is and what shall be, between the promise and the coming true, and he calls us to repent. It’s easy and tempting to think of others who really need to hear him, but right now, he’s talking to us. War rages in Gaza, and on its periphery, violence creeps and sneaks into human encounters like a pandemic. Here in the U.S., Sherrilyn Ifill writes,

We have become inundated with and inured to violence, held hostage to a uniquely American combination of white supremacy, untreated mental illness, misogyny, money in politics, and a gun culture that has come to take on the attributes of near-religious fervor. We have lived through Uvalde and Buffalo and El Paso and Tree of Life. Gun violence has saturated places like Baltimore, where I live, with young people shot in broad daylight, sometimes outside their schools. We have watched the massacre of our children—little children, high school students, college students, young adults—and have decided that we are powerless to stop it. And in those places where the population and its elected leaders have roused themselves to rein in unlimited gun access, the Supreme Court has frustrated those efforts, delivering interpretations of the Second Amendment that suggest its framers meant it to be a national suicide pact.[3]

Where’s the good news? Where’s the good news in a world where autocratic rule has become sexy again, and where it is far from clear that a year from now the United States will continue to be counted among the peoples and governments who push back against its spread?

When Isaiah declares, Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God, 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: We’re facing mountains, enormous mountains of injustice, mountains of suspicion and distrust, mountains of hurt. And between them run valleys where the shadows are deep, valleys of resignation and despair—but God is coming.

There’s push-back in the heavenly assembly, according to Isaiah: “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 truly reflect the full glory of creatures made in the image of God. But another voice in the heavenly court 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 is firm. God’s commitment to creation is unshakable. That, and that alone, is our hope: our God is faithful, and our God is coming. That is why we look at ourselves and at the world, and we don’t say, “Well, 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.”

One of the ways people in the ancient Mediterranean world used and understood the word ‘gospel’ was ‘good news from the battlefield.’[4] The gospel is good news from the place of struggle. The good news of Jesus Christ is that God has entered the struggle against all that is opposed to God’s reign, and word from the front line has it that Jesus is risen. God moves mountains to get through to us, and so we turn and grab our shovels to prepare the way of the Lord: we lower the steep hills of suspicion and distrust with honesty and kindness; we fill the valleys of resignation and despair with friendship and courage; we follow Jesus on the way.

[1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/12/21/a-bitter-season-in-the-west-bank-david-shulman/

[2] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/10/19/heading-toward-a-second-nakba-a-day-in-the-life-of-abed-salama/

[3] Sherrilyn Ifill https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/12/21/how-america-ends-and-begins-again-sherrilyn-ifill/

[4] Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary (New Testament Library; Louisville: WJKP, 2006), 30.

Leave the Classroom

Margie Quinn

            My niece Gabrielle is a sophomore at a college in town. She is currently taking a class called “Understanding the Bible” as part of her fulfillment for college credits. She struggles with this class—every Tuesday and Thursday around 3pm, I start receiving phone calls and texts (yes, during class) with questions or concerns about what she’s learning. “Jesus seems like an unhealthy helper,” she texted me once, “like doing too much for everyone and then getting really mad and flipping over tables when they don’t do stuff right.”  

Once in a while, she comes over afterward to quiz me on her most recent exam, asking me questions that I :should: know all of the answers to. While some of these questions may seem easy, like, “Who found Jesus after his resurrection?” Gabrielle didn’t grow up going to church. We laugh about the time she asked me a quiz question regarding the twins of Isaac, Jacob and Esau. She pronounced Esau, “Ooh-so.”

This week, after her Thursday class, she came over to my house in frustration once again. She shared the latest questions from her Bible quiz, one of which was this:

True or False: To receive the free gift of salvation, you must place your faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. John 14:6 says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

This one really ticked me off. Other than my own ministry, this is my niece’s first introduction into Christianity. Two months into learning about Noah and Moses, Mary and Jesus, she is asked to have the answer for salvation. And it all comes down to a checkbox.

For a long time, I lived my faith in the “True or False” category and it turns out that this flavor of Christianity only isolated me from dear friends of mine; friends of other faith traditions, sexual and gender identities, friends who I thought drank too much or didn’t come to church enough.

While we can talk about the many discrepancies or paradoxes of Jesus’ words in scripture over a cup of coffee, what strikes me about our passage today is this:

In one of the final chapters in Matthew, Jesus doesn’t tell them what to believe, he tells them what to do.

Our passage this morning sits on the cusp of Jesus’ arrest. It almost feels like an act of urgency, like he’s sharing his final parables and remarks in a hushed tone, as if he’s looking over his shoulder trying to impart as much information to his disciples as he can before his imminent crucifixion. It is as if Jesus is saying, “I am about to be arrested and I am entrusting you with this kingdom. And I’m not concerned about what you believe, I am concerned with what you do.”

Jesus begins with a little bit of foreshadowing, “When I come into my glory,” he begins (Jesus already knows that he is going to defeat death), “on which side of me will you stand? Will you be a sheep or a goat?”

Jesus isn’t mincing words in his judgment of the people, he makes it pretty dang clear: be blessed or be damned.

So who does he bless? The ones who get all of the questions right on an exam?

No. The ones who encountered him.

I was hungry, and you gave me food, 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.

These are all tangible acts in which we must go and look someone in the eyes or touch their shoulder or reach out to them. Yet the Disciples are sure they’ve never done anything like e

Um…Jesus…pretty sure we’ve never given you food or water, clothed you…

Jesus replies, Just as you did it to the least of these who are my family, you did it to me.

Way more convicting than a quiz question is this charge by Jesus, not what did you believe but how did you live? Are we encountering Christ in our lives or simply reading about him? Are we seeking out members of Jesus’ family, the least of these, or are we retreating from the very places he claims to be? Are we trying to be perfect students of Christ instead of faithful followers?

Beyond these individual acts of mercy in which you will encounter me, Jesus wonders, does your witness extend to addressing the root causes of hunger, thirst, homelessness and imprisonment? Are you willing to help with immediate needs and also put in work for the long-haul vision of a kingdom of earth in which we all have enough? Are you willing to advocate for the vulnerable, fight to remove medical debt, shatter systems of oppression and exploitation?

Jesus is kind of a scary Bible teacher. Sheep or goats, blessed or damned, right hand or left hand, true or false. But in this class, the righteous are not the ones who check the right box. They are the ones who take the quiz, rip it up and leave the classroom to go encounter him.

I want you to take a look at your bulletin--- at the image on the front. This is a picture of our God-made-flesh who is always flipping the script:

A ruler that opposes the ruling class.

A King that empties himself out to become a servant

The son of God who spends his time with the overlooked and abandoned.

A Lord who sits with the lowly.

A God who is chastised, criminalized, and yes crucified for going against Roman rule.

Christ the King who does the very acts of mercy he’s asking for. Who has experienced deep suffering. Has shivered on cold winter nights and been turned away by strangers. Begging us to go find him not in the kingdoms of Herod or Caesar, but in the Kingdom of God—which is here, among us.

“If we are honest,” Lauren Wright Pittman writes, “it is extremely difficult to reject the tempting power and wealth this world has to offer and allow our life to take the shape of good news for all. The choice isn’t an obvious one. One side looks like an opulent pile of riches, a crown, and endless power, while the other looks like tattered and worn hands with new life blooming out of wounds, work, burdens and relationships. This choice may seem like a distant decision made long ago, but it’s a decision to be made every single day, one moment at a time. In working for and with the downtrodden, poor, orphaned, widowed, ostracized, and oppressed, we will find ourselves.”

This man who is always flipping the script, whose quizzes confuse us, who wears a crown made of thorns, who rides into town on a donkey. This is the God we proclaim to follow. A God who says, Clothe them. Feed them. Give them water. Visit them in prison. Fight for their liberation. March for their freedom. Proclaim love on behalf of them. When you do that for the least of these, you did it for me.

So rip up the quiz, leave the classroom and go encounter him.

Amen.

Perhaps

Thomas Kleinert

Last Sunday, we closed our worship service with a hymn of quiet expectation:

O day of God, draw nigh
in beauty and in power;
come with thy timeless judgment now
to match our present hour.

We sang, O day of God, draw nigh — though earlier in the service, in a reading from the book of Amos, we had heard a warning:

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?[1]

And yet we sang of our desire for that day:

Bring to our troubled minds,
uncertain and afraid,
the quiet of a steadfast faith,
calm of a call obeyed.

Bring to our world of strife
thy sovereign word of peace,
that war may haunt the earth no more,
and desolation cease.

We sang, grateful for the gift of words for our trouble, our fear, and our longing. In Amos’s day, some people in Israel, the northern part of the divided kingdom, particularly among the elite, were fond of invoking the day of the Lord, that great day when the divine warrior would bare his holy arm and defeat Israel’s enemies. Apparently it never occurred to them, that they themselves might be on the receiving end of God’s holy rage against their disobedient and oppressive ways.

“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies,” Amos shouted, giving voice to God’s anger.

Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

In the society of widespread oppression they had created, their festive worship, though religiously presented, was no fragrant offering of praise but only ugliness, noise and stench, the prophet declared. What they called worship wasn’t worship at all, but an expensive celebration of religious fantasies. Folks in Samaria, capital of the northern kingdom, came to the sanctuary bearing gifts, looking sharp, and smelling good, but nothing covered the rot underneath.

“You trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,” Amos cried. “You push the afflicted out of the way, you oppress the poor, and crush the needy. You hate the one who reproves in court and abhor the one who speaks the truth. You trample on the poor, afflict the righteous, and push aside the needy at the gate.”[2] You may think of yourselves as worshipers of the Lord, but you are tramplers, pushers, and crushers.

Liturgy in the absence of justice does not please God; it nauseates God.[3]

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?

In 721 BCE, Samaria and the northern kingdom were defeated and became part of Assyria. Jerusalem and Judah, the tiny southern kingdom, sought ways to thrive in the shadow of Assyria to the north and Egypt to the south, and about a hundred years later, when the two regional superpowers showed signs of decline, King Josiah and a group of reformers saw an opportunity to push for greater political independence and renewed obedience to the God of Israel. That’s when Zephaniah addressed the Jerusalem leadership, and he expanded Amos’s critique of the misplaced confidence and joyful anticipation of ‘the day of the Lord.’ Rather than a day of rejoicing, it would be a day of deep anguish, because the people of Jerusalem and Judah, in their disobedience to the commandments demanding loyalty to God and neighbor, had broken the covenant and shown themselves to be enemies of God. And in Zephaniah’s view, much more is at stake than the wellbeing of a small nation when God’s covenant people confuse their religious fantasies with the worship of God, creator of heaven and earth. The collection of his oracles in the book bearing Zephaniah’s name begins with the undoing of creation:

I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the Lord. I will sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. I will make the wicked stumble. I will cut off humanity from the face of the earth, says the Lord.[4]

Worship of the Lord in justice and righteousness, according to the prophet, is part of the created order itself, and without it, life on earth is not only diminished, but utterly swept away. Compared to our ancestors, we may hesitate to ascribe human emotions like jealousy and wrath to God, but we are in a position to know better than any generation before us, that our idolatries cause suffering across the whole web of life, in all the relationships between land, sea, forests, weather systems, animals, plants, and humans.

Today’s passage from Zephaniah takes us to the temple, and we hear a call to worship: Be silent before the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is at hand!

The call announces a day of sacrifice, only here the inversions, perversions, and confusions of human idolatries repeat and reveal themselves in a complete reversal of roles: God is the priest making sacrifice. The people of Judah are the implied sacrificial victim, and the guests invited to the appalling feast are the designated armies of destruction.

Some see this scene, including the slaughter of people, as a clever role reversal in a temple setting — I cannot bear the obscenity. Zephaniah’s words cannot support the weight of the wrath, distress, anguish, and devastation they are intended to mean, and thick darkness and gloom cover not only the scene but also the heart of the reader. With wars raging and people being slaughtered in Ukraine, in Sudan, and in the land Palestinians and Jews call home, and in the places that barely make the news, the vocabulary of Zephaniah’s ‘day of the Lord’ together with the cries of the dying, the broken, and the orphaned — and note that we do have a name for a child whose parents have died, but not for a father whose child is no more or a mother whose child has been abducted — these words and these cries do not illustrate the prophet’s clever use of ritual conventions in his proclamation of divine judgment. They confront us with reality. They show us the hideous trajectories of our idolatrous habits. Can they shock us into recognition? Can they wake us from slumber?

Yet even for Zephaniah, who saw the whole creation at stake in the ways a city honored God’s covenant demands or not, even for Zephaniah, the Day of the Lord did not represent the end of the world, but the possibility of a new future of faithfulness. The first chapter ends with the words, “In the fire of [the Lord’s] passion the whole earth shall be consumed, for a full, a terrible end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.” And yet, only three verses into the next chapter, the prophet writes, “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the Lord’s wrath.”

Perhaps opens a window in the thick darkness of wrath, an opening for light to enter and provide shelter. And that hopeful, humble perhaps becomes a bold because in the proclamation of Paul. “You know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night,” he tells believers in Thessalonica. Those who say, “There is peace and security,” will be surprised, he tells them. “Peace and security” was a Roman slogan, stamped on Roman coinage to remind people that imperial power was the true source and guarantee of the world’s peace and security. Roman power presented itself as irresistible, inevitable, and, of course, divinely ordained, but the followers of Jesus lived in the world that Rome had made as citizens of the world to come. No matter how loudly the emperor cult declared Caesar to be Lord, they knew that the true Lord was coming, and Paul reminded them that his coming was inevitable, like labor pains, and unknown, like the arrival of a thief in the night. Only to them, Jesus’ coming wouldn’t be at all like a thief breaking in at night, because they were living in the day. For them, the night had ended and light had penetrated the thick darkness when God raised Jesus from the dead. And they belonged to Jesus.

Followers of Jesus are living in the day, because with Jesus risen from the dead, it’s a whole new world. Followers of Jesus are living as children of the day, because with Jesus risen from the dead, we are new people. The light of Christ is forever part of who we are. We don’t look to the Day of the Lord with fear, because for us it’s the culmination of the life we are already living.[5] Because we belong to Jesus, because he died our death, we live his life of complete obedience to the demands of covenant faithfulness – we practice obedience, we seek righteousness, we seek humility, and we leave the completion to him. We follow Jesus, confident that God has destined all of us not for wrath but for salvation through Christ — and if all of us, then indeed all of creation. And so we sing, O Day of God Draw Nigh, because the light of the world is risen and already shining in a million places. And we sing, All My Hope on God Is Founded.

[1] Amos 5:18,20

[2] See Amos 2:7; 4:1; 5:10,12.

[3] Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Justice as a condition of authentic liturgy,” Theology Today, Vol 48.1, 10.

[4] Zephaniah 1:2-3

[5] See Amy Peeler https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-33/commentary-on-1-thessalonians-51-11-5

Waiting wisely

Thomas Kleinert

When they ask you for a story about the kingdom of heaven, I hope it’s not this one that comes to mind first. I hope you’ll remember the stories about the sower, the gardener, and the workers in the vineyard. There are better stories to be told about God’s reign, stories that don’t involve oil that can’t be shared and locked doors that shut out those who knock. “Is this really how we want to define a wise person, as someone who only takes care of herself?” asks Anna Carter Florence, and we’re glad she does, because the cold, calculating ‘No’ of the five wise young women has long bothered us, too.[1]

There are better stories to be told first, which may be why Jesus told this one toward the end of their journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and why he told it to the disciples in private, responding to their anxious desire for details about the end of days. “When will this be, and what will be the sign?”[2]

“No one knows about that day or hour,” he told them. “The love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved,” he said.[3]

Endure, he said. Disciples need to be ready to be long-distance followers. Move, don’t rush. We need to be persistent. “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.”[4] He has taught us to pray and to persevere in prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

We have prayed. We have asked, we have searched, and we have knocked. And we have waited. How long? “Not long!” the enthusiastic ones among us shout. “Too long,” the tired and exhausted ones whisper, rubbing their knuckles, sore from knocking.

The story about the ten young women and their lamps is about waiting. Five of them are introduced as foolish at the beginning of the story, the other five as wise, and those labels stick. At the end of the story, the foolish five stand outside the banquet hall, knocking and pleading, “Lord, lord, open to us.” And the voice from behind the closed door declares, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”

Chilling. Is Jesus suggesting that parts of his Sermon on the Mount need to be rewritten? “Knock, and the door will be opened for you—unless, of course, you run out of oil and can’t restock quickly enough and show up late for the banquet, in which case you may as well forget about the party. You’re out.”

Do we perhaps need to add footnotes to some of his earlier teachings? “Do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’”[5] But do worry about how much oil you have and how much you will need. Worry about your oil and let others worry about theirs, so you don’t end up standing outside in the darkness.

“Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” the story ends—well, nothing keeps us awake like worries do. Has sleeplessness suddenly become 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?[6]

I don’t think so. According to the Psalms, it is God who neither slumbers nor sleeps so that God’s people can lie down and sleep in peace.[7] According to those witnesses, the kingdom of God is like a child, sound asleep in her mother’s arms, safe and secure from all alarms, and not at all like frantic young women running through the night in search of fuel for their lamps.

Jesus’ story is about waiting wisely. To live in anticipation of God’s reign to be made manifest in fullness for all, 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 young women are ready, their dresses are beautiful, their eyes sparkle with joy and expectation, their lamps are trimmed. As soon as the children outside announce with happy shouts the bridegroom’s arrival, the women will meet him at the end of the street and escort him with dance and ululations to the house of his beloved. From there, the joyful procession continues to the groom’s home, and the banquet begins — with music and dance, and an abundance of food and wine!

In Jesus’ story, the groom is delayed — it happens, everybody knows it. The groom is delayed: the seams of his tux split, he can’t find the rings, he broke a leg, the limo is stuck on West End — it happens all the time. After a while, the ten young women are a little less chatty, they go looking for a couch or a chair, they become drowsy and go to sleep. All ten of them take a nap before the big party, lamps by their sides, and looking at them, no one can tell which five are the foolish ones and which ones the wise.

At midnight, the shout: “He’s here!” Now we can tell. All of them waited with their lamps lighted. The wise ones simply are the ones who had anticipated that the groom might be delayed. The ones who didn’t expect the night of waiting to be long are the foolish ones.

What does it mean for followers of Jesus to live and wait wisely? Jesus has talked about lamps before. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches 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.[8]

Let your light shine. Let it give light to all in the house. Let the world see your good works and glorify God.

The oil in our lamps is not some scarce commodity you can stockpile, steal, or borrow: it is the faith you nourish in community; it is the love you give to friend and stranger; it is the hope that keeps you going. Waiting for the fullness of God’s reign to be made manifest in fullness for all, on earth as it is in heaven — that’s not like waiting for the final season of the world’s favorite show to finally drop; it’s like improvising Jesus-inspired scenes every day, scenes that make fantastic trailers for the finale: kind, funny, deep, wild, quiet, loud, holy scenes. It’s like letting the mercy of God shine through. You can’t bottle it, you can’t borrow it, but you can live it in a million faithful ways. It’ll come to you like breath comes to the living.

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, and we notice the echoes in today’s story,

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.

To be wise, Jesus tells us, is to hear his words and act on them. It’s like building a house on rock. It’s like letting your life be a lamp for his light. To be wise is not to obsess, “When will he come?” but to lean more fully, with our whole being, into the promise that he will come, as he has come before, in the fullness of time, and that his final coming will complete the work of creation in justice and in peace.

In the meantime, and this we do know, because he has told us, he comes to us in every person who is hungry or thirsty, unsheltered or a stranger, or locked behind prison doors.[9] Fullness of time awaits us in each other, every encounter a moment for the light of God’s reign to shine. We know how it feels to stand outside in the dark, and because we know, we can open the doors we have the power to open.

I don’t like the story we have come to call the parable of the ten bridesmaids. And I imagine Jesus sitting across from me, laughing. “Who said you have to like it? You don’t have to like it. It’s enough that it makes you push back, wonder, and think. Just remember, you don’t have to live as though the fifty-fifty split at the end of the story is inevitable. Let your light shine. Move, don’t rush. Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Follow me.”

[1] Anna Carter Florence https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2002671/filling_stations

[2] Matthew 24:3

[3] Matthew 24:12-13, 36

[4] Matthew 7:7-8

[5] Matthew 6:31

[6] Matthew 24:30

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

[8] Matthew 5:14-16

[9] Matthew 25:31-46