In the Twinkling of an Eye

Epiphany 5C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Paul wrote, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52). Paul should know. The Spirit of Jesus literally knocked him from his horse and launched him in a new direction (Acts 9:1-19). We have two such stories in our lectionary today. Isaiah and Peter both experience something like the shocking fullness of the presence of God. It is what German Lutheran theologian, Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), called mysterium tremendum et fascinans. God’s presence is fearful and fascinating and entirely different from anything we experience in ordinary life. This mysterious, terrifying, and utterly extraordinary God hides in plain sight in, with, and under our frail and ordinary body and in the faces and voices of our neighbors and our enemies.

The direction of our life takes can change quickly and unavoidably. The death of loved one; the birth of a child; an argument, an accident; falling in love, finding a friend; getting a job, losing one –these become hinge-points upon which the story of our life is hung.

The details of our lives differ, but one element is always the same. The gentle, imperishable, persistent pull of the Divine lure draws us always toward the larger life of our best self so that our days may be filled with tails of compassion, justice, humility, courage, mercy, forgiveness, and love. This is what is called the call to discipleship. This is what we call the Way of the Cross. It is a fork in the road we encounter again and again. It is the choice between death and life. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

God’s call to be a disciple and an apostle of Jesus was about to descend upon Peter with startling force. In the twinkling of an eye, the hard-won pieces of Peter’s life lay scattered on the seashore. He became like a fish living out of water. Peter and his partners, James and John, had lived moving from ship to shore following the feeding rhythms of fish. Yet within a few short hours, they left everything and to follow Jesus.

There had been some inkling of this. Luke’s gospel is careful to tell us Peter was indebted to Jesus for healing his mother-in-law. Peter was intrigued by Jesus and his teachings. He was impressed enough after hearing Jesus speak to the large crowd that flocked to the lakeshore that he had addressed Jesus with the respectful title: “Master” (Luke 5:5).

‘Master, we fished all night and have caught nothing’. Peter was moving from the security of his predictable life into the deep waters of a new and uncontained reality defined according to the rhythms –not of fish—but of the divine life of the living God.

Perhaps you know fishing was a miserable job in the first-century Roman Empire.
Fishing was controlled by the Roman state. The lake and all the creatures in it were owned by Caesar. The best and biggest fish belonged to him. Peter, James, and John were not businessmen. They were peasants on the bottom rungs of an extractive and abusive system. In the ancient Roman Empire, you didn’t work for yourself. You didn’t choose a job or a career. You and your entire family worked for Caesar. They were often in conflict with the politicians and tax collectors who stole from them. They swam in a sea of injustice. No fish. No freedom. No hope. This is what they walked away from. They left it all sitting on the shore. The left the Roman Imperial economy behind and embraced the new economy in the house of God. (Diana Butler Bass)

From Peter we learn that “When we set out into the deep water with Jesus in response to his Word, we will not come back to land the same” (Brian Stoffregen). In boats nearly swamped with an enormous haul of fish Peter senses the gap between his world and the new creation open to him in Jesus. Peter moves from calling Jesus even so exalted a title as master (5:5) to the even more exalted ‘O Lord!’ And it’s then that things get unmanageable and scary. It’s then that Peter comes to see that the story of his life up to that moment swung upon his lack of faith, not his lack of fish. It’s then that he blurts out, “Go away, Jesus”, literally in the Greek, “Get out of my neighborhood!” (William Willimon, Pulpit Resource). In the twinkling of an eye Peter’s life was changed.

Peter became the first member of Christ’s church. The people of Nazareth violently escorted Jesus out of their neighborhood because he was unwilling to grant them special favors. But Peter orders Jesus away because he believes he is not special enough. He feels unworthy to be in Jesus’ presence. Like Isaiah before him, he felt himself to be in the fullness of the presence of God. He is filled with equal measures of shame, awe, and fascination. He became deeply aware of his own sinfulness. Yet notice, Jesus isn’t really interested in Peter’s personal moral failings. The mission is much bigger than that. Jesus issues no command to follow, requires no oath of loyalty, insists on no guarantee of compliance. Instead, he says only “Do not be afraid.” Jesus calmed Peter, saying: “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be captivating people.”

Here Jesus uses a word used only once in Christian scripture. It’s a word that means to “capture alive.” Like Peter, James and John, we are gathered in this place because we have been captured alive. We have seen and heard and have been captivated by the presence of Christ. Jesus, the Divine lure, draws us out this life to live another, out of this economy into the economy of the peaceable kingdom, out of the dog-eat-dog life and into the beloved community. We become like fish out of water, living our best life, being the best version of ourselves, which no self-help book or personal striving could enable us to achieve, but in all things, God works together with us for good (Romans 8:28).

In the twinkling of an eye, this gospel of grace has suddenly become controversial. Love and service to the poor has become political. Lutheran Social Services, Bread for the World, USAID, Refugee Resettlement, and welcome of the immigrant is the work of criminal money launderers.

The good news of Jesus Christ is being replaced with another more selfish and cynical creed all in the name of religious liberty. Vice President JD Vance said in a recent interview, “There’s this… very Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.” “Theology done in service of giving oneself permission to preside over the creation of a concentration camp is a theology done out of a disordered love” (Dawson Vosburg, Sojouners Magazine, February 2025).

The devastating truth of Christianity is that Christ rescues us to imitate his love — a love shown by his dying on behalf of those who hated him and by rising to break the yoke of oppression. The mysterious, tremendous, and fascinating presence of God calls from the deep, from within us, among us, and without us: come and follow. Come and die. Come live like fish out of water. Come… ‘Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same? We will the prisoners free. We will care for cruel and kind. We will risk the hostile stare. We will kiss the lepers clean. In the company of Jesus we will go—for God to move and live and grow in us and all of us together in God.’ (“Will you Come and Follow Me,” ELW #798)

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A More Excellent Way

Epiphany 4C-25

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

They were filled with rage and drove him out of town so that they might hurl him off the cliff (Luke 4:28-29.

What made the hometown hero a hated villain? What made old friends and family switch from adulation to hate in the span of a few minutes or hours?  Within the space of seven verses, their curiosity turned to contempt. Delight gave way to violence.  How did Jesus go from being the admired insider to the ultimate outsider?

Everything goes wrong when Jesus says, “I am not yours. I don’t belong to you. I am not yours to claim or contain. I don’t play for your team.

Jesus recounts God’s long history of prioritizing the outsider, the foreigner, the stranger, even our enemies. The Spirit of God plays among edge-people called to bear witness in edge-places, and occasionally, in the temple. Elijah was sent to care for the widow at Zarephath, Jesus reminds them. He wasn’t sent to the widows of Israel. Elisha was instructed to heal Naaman the Syrian, not the numerous lepers in Israel. In other words, God has always been in the business of working on the margins. Of crossing borders. Of doing new and exciting things in remote and unlikely places. Far from home. Far from the familiar and the comfortable. Far from the centers of power and piety. (Debie Thomas)

Old- time Lutherans ask, ‘Vas ist das?’, or ‘what does this mean? One lesson might be that if the Jesus we worship never offends us, is it really Jesus whom we worship?  When was the last time Jesus made you that angry? Let alone filled you with rage?

Bible interpreters sometimes ask which character in this story we most identify with? One possibility seems rather obvious and uncomfortable. We, the established Church, are the modern-day equivalent of Jesus’s ancient townspeople. After all, we’re the ones who think we know Jesus best. We’re the ones most in danger of domesticating him. We’re the ones most likely to miss him when he shows up in faces we don’t recognize or revere. What will it take to follow him into new and awkward territory? To see him where we least desire to look? How can we be sure our religion gives life—that our worship actually makes disciples?

The answer? You all know the answer. The answer, of course, is love.  Our second reading today from, 1 Corinthians 13, is Paul’s great anthem to love. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (vs. 1). Love is the yard stick we use to measure the true depth of our faith.  Love is the plum bob that instantly reveals when our religion is out of whack.  Love is the color swatch from the paint store. Whatever has the tinge of love bears truth and the gospel. If your religion doesn’t match the color of love, it’s time to ask God to change your heart and renew your mind.  Following the path of love teaches us a more excellent way. Love must be our message and our mission.

With love in our hearts joy is our fuel for renewal and resistance. Take a lesson from faithful people of color who have endured and overcome centuries of arbitrary violence and senseless hatred. Remember first to give praise to God who is our rock-solid and loving ally. Gratitude is not just good manners it is a source of wisdom. Giving thanks daily is a well-spring of living water from which to drink. Gratitude begets joy. Joy creates unity.

The Pentagon and the U.S. State Department announced this week that neither will recognize Black History Month this year as part of the government-wide purge of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or DEI programs. In a related post, Ahren Martinez, DEI Coordinator at Fuller Youth Institute writes about the importance of one of her favorite concerts, the Long Beach Jazz Festival, as an example of how the power of celebration goes beyond the energy they create. Martinez writes, “No matter what recent violence or display of anti-Blackness was all around us, we knew that we would make our way to this festival for the weekend with other Black and Brown people to sing, dance, eat good food, and spread love through fellowship together.” What if the church could be a place where joy could live?”  What if the church could be a place where Black, and Brown, and White, and Mixed people could be renewed and fueled with joy? (Ahren Martinez, Black Joy as Resistance, Fuller Institute, 4/21/22).

“A wise man built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock,” said Jesus. “A foolish man built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell — and great was its fall!” (Matthew 7:24-27).

This house, founded upon God’s love and fueled by joy, was built for this for such a time as this.  Through song, through dancing, through fellowship, through art, through prose, through poetry, we do prevail, and God’s kingdom shall come on earth as it is in heaven. This is the way.  This is the path of resistance. It is the way of the cross.

We have two examples of the more excellent way that is against the grain. Both Jeremiah and Jesus are grossly unwelcome, and their lives are at risk. “The more excellent way of the gospel is a way of generous forgiveness that hopes all things and forgives all things. It is a way that is against the grain of the world, so that the church is called to a daring, subversive life in the world. The performance of that way in the world is demanding and costly.” (Walter Brueggemann, “The Song of the Ex-Leper,” in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 331, 332, 333.)

“This faith of … Jesus and the church is not a moral code or an ideology or a quarrel. It is rather a performance of transformation, of old made new, of lost found, of dead made alive. And the whole cosmos is filled with the singing of ex-lepers, the saints of God who attest that gifts from the holy God are given that make for life (Brueggemann).

Jesus’ enraging message in Nazareth invites us to consider that God loves enemies because God has loved us. We friends of Jesus come to realize that we have behaved as enemies and are need the same grace as those we demonize. Love is the light that illumines this path of self-discovery, repentance, and renewal.

Love must be our message and our mission. The love of God must be in our hearts and minds.  The joy of fellowship and creativity must be our fuel.  In a time when our leaders are hell-bent on breaking the values of pluralistic community and smashing rules-based constitutional norms, the house of Jesus withstands the storm. The church was built for this. The church stands ready to fashion servant-leaders who will know how to pick up the pieces and help create the way forward again after the smashers are done smashing.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now, we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (I Corinthians 13:11-13)

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An Impossible Possibility

Epiphany 3C-25

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Today. It’s an extraordinary claim, isn’t it? But surely, Jesus doesn’t mean right now? Is today an occasion to feast, to celebrate and rejoice? Is this, the year of Project 2025, the year of the Lord’s favor? Right now?

I know some say—yes! They say the current political moment of unchecked grift and unsanctioned political violence is God ordained. Some have declared their scorched earth policies to undo our rights and freedoms and to drown the government in a bathtub are holy days, favored of God. How can we know the truth?

Indeed, our lectionary has laid out for us two stories of worship, two stories about people gathering to read, hear, and inwardly digest the word of God, and in both stories, we hear a call to attend to now. The presence of God which infuses all things is always only in the now. Both stories end with an invitation to recognize the sacredness of the present moment.  Both stories insist that when we seek the divine — in worship, in the reading of scripture, in the intentional gathering of the beloved community—then today begins to shimmer with the presence, the blessing, and the favor of God. (Debi Thomas, “Today,” Journey with Jesus, 1/16/2022.)  Right now. Today.

How do we find and follow Jesus now when the prophets of cruelty and brutality seem to have won the day?  Our gospel affirms that—yes—God is present in all things and in all people, but not in all missions, or messages, or proclamations. Our baptism into Christ includes renunciations and affirmations—things we say yes to, and things we say no to. In today’s gospel Jesus is fresh from saying no to the devil in the desert when he chooses to head home to Nazareth to deliver the inaugural address and to launch his mission.

Already the rumors about Jesus had spread throughout “the whole countryside” (Luke 4:14). The people of Nazareth were eager to see him. To them, he was simply “Joseph’s son.” In a village of less than 500 people, or about 20-30 families, everyone knew everyone. Many were related. The synagogue was packed. ‘All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.’ (v. 22a).  Just as the shepherds, had been “amazed” at the things being said about the baby in the manger, and as Mary and Joseph had been “astonished” at the boy Jesus in the temple.

On the sabbath day, he went to the synagogue “as was his custom.” He took the scroll of Isaiah 61, read it out loud, and said “…that he himself — this ordinary hometown carpenter, was the embodiment of Isaiah’s messianic promise to bring God’s good news to the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed.” He came to “proclaim God’s favor” to everyone. (Thomas).

Perhaps you remember what happened next. We’ll hear the rest of the story next Sunday.  Suffice it to say their admiration quickly turned to rejection and rage. His mission, Jesus declared, was not for them but for the pagan outsider Gentiles. “I have come to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of jubilee” (Luke 4:18-19).  Jubilee came once every 50 years.  It was a tradition when debts were forgiven, and land reverted to its original owner.  Jesus reminded the gathered congregation that God loves the outcast — those in fear for their lives — the poor, the prisoners, the disabled, and the oppressed. In response of his friends and kinsfolk rose up to throw Jesus over a cliff.

The Jewish Jesus embraced unclean Gentiles. He was dismissive about religious orthodoxies and litmus tests. Ritual purity? Jesus “declared all foods clean.” Keeping the sabbath?  “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” And the sanctity of the synagogue? Jesus called it a “house of prayer for all nations.” The religious gatekeepers complained that his disciples ate with “unwashed hands,” and derided him as a glutton and drunkard who befriended “dirty” people.

This Jesus can be found among the weak, the lost, and the suffering, the immigrant and the outsider. Is it any wonder then that this gospel is opposed in us as we begin to find ourselves among the insiders and the powerful? Two thousand years since Jesus delivered his first sermon in Nazareth, many things remain the same.

On Tuesday Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral prayer service in which she addressed the new president directly. She reminded him that mercy is a quality of leadership — and asked him to be merciful on the fearful, the poor, and the marginalized. On Friday, twenty-one members of Congress filed a bill to condemn the bishop publicly and denounce her “distorted message.” It’s not the first or the last time an outraged mob has tried to kill the preacher. (Diana Butler Bass, Sunday Musings, 1/25/25)

This disillusionment is the beginning of faith. An epiphany is an ‘aha moment’ of realization. It is a sacred flash of imagination. It is recognition of a better way in stark tension with the way we live now. Something powerful happens among us when we open our whole hearts to the Spirit of Christ with vulnerability, humility, and longing.  Like the ancient Israelites sitting among the ruins of their homeland in worship reading the Torah, we are transformed. What happens is not magic. Neither is it manipulation. Yet everything changes.

The struggle for a new world is a long and bitter but beautiful road. As Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, when we do the work of justice, we work with a “cosmic companion.” We are not alone. We are joined together in the kingdom of God. We dance on the safe side of the sea. This is because Jesus’ mission is not a to-do list; rather it is an invitation to a transformed life. Starting now. Today. Don’t ask what the world needs—ask instead what makes you come alive. The world needs your passion, your creativity, your defiant joy.

“Regardless of our circumstances. Regardless of the trials we face, the sorrows we carry, and the pain we bear. Not because God’s exultant “today” is dismissive of our hardships, but because God’s presence infuses all things. God’s joy — the joy which is our strength — has within it the capacity to hold and honor our tears.” (Thomas) God’s joy makes wisdom of our sorrow and a song of our pain.

Here, now, we encounter Jesus in Word and Sacrament, in worship, song, and prayer, and anywhere two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, they are a living sanctuary of hope and grace. We will not be misled by false prophets and self-serving leaders. But see, we have become good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and proclaim the year of jubilee.  We… “Praise the One who breaks the darkness with a liberating light; praise the One who frees the prisoners, turning blindness into sight.”

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The Song of Water and Fire

Baptism of our Lord -C24

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

When Lindsey Crittenden was a little girl, she was practicing that magic trick that is the stuff of childhood — floating on your back in the swimming pool. When you kick and flail, explained her coach Mrs. Ursula, you will sink, but if you just relax, “the water will hold you.” Mrs. Ursula’s calm and confident encouragement stuck. It became the title for Crittenden’s memoir: The Water Will Hold You; A Skeptic Learns to Pray (2007).

“The water will hold you. That could be a powerful summary of our readings this week about the baptism of Jesus, and, by extension, our own baptisms. In the waters of baptism, we hear the promises of God from Isaiah 43: “You are my beloved. Do not fear. I have called you by name. You are mine. You are precious in my sight, and I love you. I am with you.”  (Daniel Clendenin, You Belong to God, Journey with Jesus, 1/5/25)

Water is a mixed metaphor of grace. Water gives life and water drowns. Water flows. Water freezes. Water evaporates into cloud. Water is heavy. Water gently cleanses. Water cuts through rock. Water shapes the landscape. Water always finds a way.  Water resonates through our bodies which are comprised of 60% water.  The old Adam and Eve in us is drowned baptism to rise again to new life. We are born in God to live a life we could not otherwise imagine, like fish out of water, we become children of a new humanity.  The water will hold you.

Three of the four passages we read today also point to another double image for grace—fire.  We are seeing how threatening fire can be to our life and well-being this week in Los Angeles. Fire destroys. Fire purifies. Fire breathes oxygen and moves like a living thing. Perhaps that is why we are drawn to gathering around the fire and why we instinctively flee from it when we lose control.

We speak of “baptism by fire,” meaning an ordeal that serves as rite of passage or an experience that proves our mettle. That common phrase most likely originated from today’s gospel and the story of Jesus’ own baptism. Grace operating in baptism is like a refiner’s fire.  Fire burns off the chaff of delusion, falsity, and self-hatred. With this fiery baptism three things are revealed: our true self, the central meaning of existence, and a holy welcome. Identity, love, and acceptance (Diana Butler Bass, Baptism by Fire, The Cottage, 1/11/25).

Metals melted and mixed by fire become an alloy that is stronger and better together. We become more fully human. We become our best selves. We are the people God created us to be joined together in community with one another and with God. In times of emergency and natural disasters like the one unfolding in Los Angeles today, we find out what we and our neighbors are made of, and what we are made for. “In the blaze, we may find ourselves as we truly are — loving friends, self-sacrificing neighbors, courageous human beings. We are worthy of saving, even as we are willing to save others. We are beloved, cherished. And with us, God is pleased.” (Bass).  Let the fire reveal you. Let the water will hold you.

When Jesus, the One who would baptize with fire, got baptized, fire didn’t show up in any expected way. The heavens opened (as they would later open in Pentecost with tongues of flame) and the Holy Spirit descended. Yet that Spirit didn’t descend as a phoenix, a flaming bird, but as a dove. The heavens were ripped open, and the holy appearance did not thunder judgment. Rather, a Voice uttered: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” “There’s no threshing floor. There’s no burning chaff. There’s no vision of hell or eternal punishment. There is only God’s announcement of Jesus’ identity — the Beloved. There is love. And assurance. “With you I am well pleased.”” (Bass)

In baptism, Jesus received a new name — he was beloved by God. In baptism the church declares what has always been true, that each of us belongs to God and only to God. Many malignant forces try to name and claim us for themselves. Baptism reminds us that first and foremost, above and beyond all other claims, we belong to God. God knows and calls us by name.

“We don’t belong to our boss or the bank. We don’t belong to an abusive spouse or our addictive impulses. We’re not defined by sickness, success or failure. We don’t belong to the political propagandists or the advertising industry. We’re not the sum total of our poor choices, painful memories, or bad dreams” (Clendenin).

This baptism is more radical than we realized.  Baptism is a ‘red pill’ like the one that the character, Thomas Anderson took in the 1999 movie, The Matrix. Souls alloyed with the Spirit live by a new covenant. They become, as Martin Luther King Jr. once described, “creatively and chronically maladjusted to racial discrimination and segregation.  They become maladjusted to religious bigotry and economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. They become maladjusted to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence” (Martin Luther King Jr., 1967 speech to the American Psychological Association, Psychology Today, posted online 1/17/17).

This transformation is more radical than the one Mr. Anderson undergoes in the Matrix movie.  When Mr. Anderson discovered is true identity, he took on a different name like we do in baptism.  His name became, Neo. He was born again.  He became fully human. As the credits roll, he is fully and finally Awake, as the song of that same name roars in the background by the rock band, Rage against the Machine.

As Christians, we too are called and empowered to cast off the machine.  We are not human resources. Our value is not in how many bricks we can produce for Pharoah.   And yet, the water and fire of baptism carry us beyond even this seemingly radical image of nonconformity from The Matrix movie.  Remember the famous line when the character named Tank askes Neo, “So, what do you need, besides a miracle.” Neo says— “Guns. Lots of guns.”   Neo defeats the machine with an absurd burst of bullets and violence. This is not the way of Christ Jesus.

This may be the type of hero many of us wish for.  We would prefer that new life in Christ would make us invulnerable to malignant forces and that we could win the day and establish the beloved community with force, but that’s not how love works.  This ultimately, is not how the world created and sustained by God works either.  Yes. in baptism we discover that we are not made for the machine, and that in fact, the world, the cosmos, and all creation is not a machine but something more like a song.  Music brings diverse elements together—melody, harmony, rhythm—into a coherent, beautiful whole. Music deeply engages the body, whether through dance, movement, or physiological responses. Music is relational. Music creates a shared emotional space. Music has power to heal.  Music flows, like water, like fire, like grace.

This is the tune we dance to.  It is the song of love. This is the water that holds us.  This is the fire that burns inside us now.  I have called you by name God says.  You are marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit, born as children of a new humanity, forever.

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In Abba’s House

Christmas 1C-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

‘Chosen ones, holy and beloved… clothe yourselves in love” (Colossians 3:12 & 14). A thousand years before the birth of Jesus Hanna brought Samuel to live with Eli at the shrine at Shiloh. This was part of the bargain she had struck with God in prayer. If God would give her a son, she would give him back to God. The child would become a priest in the service of God. (1 Samuel 9:1-28). We read today that Samuel wore a linen ephod even as a small boy. He wore a liturgical garment which looked like a sort of sleeveless apron as a sign his sacred identity as one chosen by God.

It must have seemed odd, or maybe, did Samuel just look so super-cute as a very young child toddling around the temple wearing the sign of a grown-up priest? It’s absurd right? Yet, we must admit we are doing something like this whenever we baptize infants. In fact, we baptize, and therefore, set aside for God’s service, not just a few special children, like Samuel, but every child. The result is that not just some of us—but all of us are clothed in the new life of Christ in baptism.

As Paul pointed out to the Christians in Colossae, the clothing we receive in baptism has some striking features that are intended to set us apart and to reflect our identity in the loving character of God. God’s chosen ones “clothe [themselves] with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12). “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). “Clothe yourselves,” therefore, “with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Colossians 3:14).

Unfortunately, in my experience, religious people often take their specialness to heart but not their intended mission. They strike a harsh and judgmental pose and hold themselves above and apart from secular people and people of other faiths. This supposed superiority quickly becomes hypocritical and tragically, is used to hide a world of pain and abuse.

The fact is, despite our best intentions, we people of faith get our specialness wrong in at least three ways. First, as Martin Luther reminded us again and again, we tend to take credit for our acts of love and not the love that made it possible in the first place. The grace of God comes first. It comes freely, abundantly, and underserved for all and then, second, this gift of love sometimes inspires works and deeds of faith. Religious people, no matter how well intentioned and devoted must guard against putting the cart of works before the horse of grace. It takes a great deal of humility and self-criticism, and openness to being held accountable to one other to keep God’s grace and love front and center.

If there is such a thing as religious ambition (that is, if it’s not an oxymoron), then make it yours to be a warm and loving presence in the world as Jesus was. To put on the garment of Christ is to be joyfully in the world in deep solidarity with our neighbors, loving them as equals rather than considering ourselves holier than thou and therefore better than them.

The second way I want to highlight many religious people get their specialness wrong is that they still imagine God to be elsewhere. Jesus came and went. He was born a child of God here on earth and ascended into heaven. Someday, he will come back again. Somehow, we have turned the incarnation, which is one of the most distinctive gifts of the Christian witness among world religions, into singular event that involved Jesus but not us. Yet, the whole idea of putting on the life of Christ means that we have already become part of this divine life. Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and love flow from participation in the life of God. To tap into this abundant and everlasting life we must quiet our hearts and minds to the here and now that is the holy ground upon which we encounter God in Christ.

The last way religious people have tended to get their specialness wrong is by presuming that their identity as children of God entitles them to compel others to conform to their own narrow standards of behavior. The sacred freedom of conscience is sacrificed on the altar of self-righteousness. In the name of love, religious people in authority wield the threat of violence both in this life and the next. People of faith must be ready examine and unpack Christianity’s unholy captivity to the history of colonization, subjugation and empire. We must interrogate and speak out against the religious claims of Christian nationalism (an oxymoron) and Christian Zionism (a tragic lie).

We must help one another to return Jesus’ way of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience and love. Jesus taught us in the Sermon the Mount that, as part of a new movement, we are “…to bless the very people who are usually excluded… we [are to] bless the poor and the poor in spirit. We bless those who mourn, we bless the meek or gentle, we bless those who hunger and thirst for justice. We bless the merciful and the pure in heart. We bless the peacemakers and those who are persecuted for standing up for justice. And then Jesus continues: We see the world differently because we bless people who are usually forgotten, despised, or excluded. That different way of seeing the world leads to a different way of being in the world” (Richard Rohr, Being Salt and Light, Daily Meditations, 12/29/24)

Jesus was 12 years old when his family made the trip to Jerusalem from Nazareth for the Passover. He was of that age when a young boy becomes a full participant in the congregation at their bar-mitzvah. When his parents realize after three days journey that they had lost him they return to Jerusalem to search frantically for him. Just imagine how they must have felt. I once lost track of Sam at the Taste of Chicago. The memory is burned into my brain despite it being only a few minutes before we found him. The young Jesus told Mary and Joseph to search for him and they would always find him in his father’s house. (vs. 49).

Today’s gospel was a rehearsal for the Easter story. Sadly, the world no more understands the church’s subversive mission than Mary and Joseph understood that of their son when they went searching. The gospel of Luke prepares us for the three days that Jesus will again go missing in Jerusalem in the days stretching from the cross to the open tomb. The disciples will grieve and feel hopeless just as Mary and Joseph did.

But their great discovery and our great good news is that now, the Father’s house exists not only in Jerusalem, not only in heaven, but encompasses the whole earth. What’s more, the spirit of Christ is indwelling in all that is, everywhere and always within the entire sweep of the cosmos. For 13.8 billion years, the spirit of God’s love has been at play and at work among us. Jesus called God Abba, or daddy. Our mission in Christ is to live in such a way that all people come to know and love Abba as Jesus did. It’s that simple. It’s that amazing.

So put on Christ. Let’s help one another to put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and love. Let’s act out, embody, and exhibit practices of human care, healing, and reconciliation, now as in the time of Jesus. The church community that practices genuine forgiveness becomes part of a peaceable kin-dom after the manner of Jesus. Be a church empowered in its daring vocation by a grounding in gratitude for the goodness of God.

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Make Room

Christmas Eve-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“She laid him in a cattle trough, because there was no place for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:7). I wonder, how often does ‘finding space’ for Jesus sound like adding another thing on our to-do list? Along with shopping, and baking, and holiday cards, and decorating, and navigating family dynamics—not to mention working for social justice and peace on earth(!)—things quickly get complicated. Trying to make Christmas happen, whether for ourselves or loved ones, becomes overwhelming—especially when added to other crises—like job pressures, money worries, illnesses, addiction, grief and loss.

So, Christmas comes, if it comes at all, when we are minding our own business like that bunch of hard-working shepherds in fields near Bethlehem keeping watch over their sheep. What could have been more unexpected or out of place than a multitude of Angels, shining with heavenly glory announcing, “Do not be afraid. Don’t be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy for all the people.”

Has that ever happened to you? I have no trouble believing, as scripture says, that this announcement, once they managed to calm down, brought the shepherds great joy. I can even understand how the incarnation of God in Christ could bring joy big enough to include not just them, but all people.

An event like what happened to those shepherds is worth celebrating even today, two thousand years later. But that’s not what we’re doing today. Incredibly, the church has always insisted that the Christ event is not something that happened in history for a particular time, but it is something that happens over and over. Joy isn’t something we accomplish. It isn’t something the powerful bring into being. It is something that God, out of deep, deep love for us, shows up and gives us: namely the divine life in our very midst.

Could this joy be waiting for you this Christmas—not just today, but every day and not just for you in the singular you as in y’all? God’s love, and therefore, joy is God’s gift for all. God is the one who comes in the flesh for all flesh.

So, what’s wrong? How do we keep missing out on this? Or at least, how do I keep missing it? Well, let me tell you how Christmas joy happened once in front of me, and, like the innkeeper in Bethlehem, the door to my heart was closed.

It was a Christmas many years ago with extended family. Victoria, (not her real name), was the youngest of four sisters. Her older siblings were in high school and college when she was born. Vicky grew impatient at being smaller and excluded all the time. She worked at being grown up almost from the time she could walk. So, it wasn’t completely surprising when she announced one September, at age 5, that she was going to pick out and pay for Christmas presents all by herself.

She saved her allowance. She quietly observed what each person wanted; what they needed; and what they liked. She made her purchases only after she was confident, she had just the right gift. She wrapped them and placed them under the tree. She beamed anytime anyone tried to peek or poke at the gifts she had bought.
Looking back, I think she considered it a kind of coming of age. She was finally as much a part of Christmas as everyone else. Except, in many ways, she had done a much better job. There was something for everyone: a deodorant (just the right brand); a pair of socks to match a favorite outfit; a small picture of John Lennon (a favorite), bobby pins (because I forget why); a shampoo gentle on hair dye; toe-nail clippers, and for me—a new tooth brush just in time to replace my worn out and frayed one.

In response to her thoughtfulness, I did the worst thing possible—I laughed. We made fun of her gifts. We joked about how bad we must smell and about the condition each other’s toes nails. There were a lot of five-year-old tears shed that night. We made her cry. She felt rejected.

After the paper was rounded up and thrown away we realized that we had left another gift unclaimed that year. We were closed off and blind to the true gift of Christmas kindness and generosity which was so well expressed by Vicky’s simple thoughtful gifts. The true gift—God’s gift of the Christ child went unopened. That night, there was more than one gift-giver who was rejected.

Kindness, vulnerability, and love are easy to brush aside. Yet doing so comes at a cost. We close ourselves off to joy. God’s gift of new life in Christ is easily overlooked and rejected. Often the gift is returned without even being opened. There was no room for Jesus in Bethlehem. There is still no room for him today. The little town of Bethlehem today must be accessed by passing through barbed wire and a 30-foot-tall security wall. The nativity scene being displayed is strewn with the rubble of bombed buildings Minds are closed, our hearts fail to yield—they will not accept or even consider the gifts the Christ-child brings.

The gift of incarnation goes ‘all the way down.’ Incarnation means that God is in, with, under, and among all flesh, including our enemies. Incarnation extends beyond human life to include the wide expanse of the cosmos. Theologian Thomas Jay Ord has said, “Whenever I see something in nature, good, true, beautiful, lovely, or loving I think God is the source of that activity.” God is present there and active.

Mary said yes to Gabriel. Mary made room for the spirit at the expense of all those things we clutch onto—safety, reputation, success, property. Did she see her flesh for what it was—weak, powerful, human, and holy?

Let us pray. “God of the womb, it is not lost on us that you submitted to the body of a woman, trusting in it to protect and grow you. As we remember the nine months you dwelt in the womb, the body of God being nurtured and carried, remind us that our own bodies are worthy of such care and tenderness. May this be a season of sacred pause, as we allow time to be near to our own bodies, to protect and strengthen them. In a world that demands so much of us, remind us that Christ did not come to us in physical independence, allowing the world to take and use him without limitation. Show us the face of the Christ who was gravely dependent, who needed to be held, fed, washed. Who needed to be soothed and rocked to sleep. If we are to honor the divine in us, may it be this divinity—fully embodied, fully dignified in the body. Amen.” (Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human (New York: Convergent, 2024), 231.)

Make way, make room and Merry Christmas.

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Finding God in Darkness

Advent 4C-24

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Cast down the mighty!  Send the rich away! Fill the hungry! Lift the lowly! (Luke 1:52-53).  Mary’s song, the Magnificat, is the oldest Advent hymn. It is sung everywhere the church gathers for Evening Prayer. It is read every year on the fourth Sunday of Advent.

Mary’s song, inspired by 1 Samuel 2:1-10, was the song of another young women named Hannah. Hannah’s song was already centuries old when Mary took it up and made it her own. When her kinswoman welcomed her, Mary burst into song. That moment could be called the very first Christian worship service. Mary and Elizabeth — representing the young and the old, the unmarried and the married, the socially established and the socially vulnerable — found common ground in their love for Jesus—just like us. Mary received the gifts of community, blessing, and hope from Elizabeth. Together, they formed a church, the living Body of Christ.

Looking at the lyrics is it surprising Mary’s name means ‘troublemaker?’  A colleague pointed out this week that Mary’s name is derived from ‘Miriam.’  Miriam, you recall, was the sister of Moses and Aaron who led the women in singing and dancing after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea and were delivered from the Egyptians. The etymological root words of Miriam’s name mean “beloved,” and “bitter,” and “rebellious, and ‘troublemaker.’  ‘Troublemaker’ is an especially fitting moniker for Mary. Mary has been making good trouble inside and outside the church, for centuries.

Mary’s song is so subversive, governments twenty centuries later would ban its public recitation. During the British rule in India the Magnificat was prohibited from being sung in church. That’s why, years later, Mahatma Gandhi requested that Mary’s song be read everywhere the British flag was being lowered on the final day of imperial rule in India. The junta in Argentina forbade the singing of Mary’s song after the ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ displayed its words on placards in the capital plaza. And during the 1980s, the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador prohibited any public recitation of the song.

Mary, Elizabeth, Miriam and Hannah show us that one of the best ways to be the church is by making a living sanctuary of hope and grace for each other. They are open, welcoming, and ready to hold one another’s story—whether that story is of pain or of joy. They also show us something else that is particularly timely. They teach us that one of ways for the church to resist tyranny is to make art.

Irish poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama amplified this point for me this week while reflecting on the word ‘poem’ which comes from the Greek poiēma (ποίημα) meaning “a made thing.”  Ó Tuama said, “In the face of all pressures, and especially in the face of destructive threat I take joy in the deepest vocation of humankind which is ‘to make.’ All art is a form of making so therefore all art is a form of resistance to that which is destructive… destructive violence only has one plot line which is to win and to kill.  And that makes for a very very boring book” he said. “To make something is to lead us into the unknown to the surprise, the collaborations, communications and connections that really open us up to ourselves, the complicated beautiful selves that we are and the   complicated beautiful selves that others are and the ways we can collaborate with each other… What brings me joy,” Ó Tuama said, “is the making that is behind poem.” (Pádraig Ó Tuama, Advent Calendar, The Cottage, 12/18/24).

Mary’s song engenders hope. Singing makes those who sing into a community, however briefly. Mary’s words of grace are sewn with song like mustard seed that find the good soil hidden in every human heart.

Mary, Elizabeth, Miriam and Hannah teach us how to wait in longing when the world offers little reason to hope. Of course, this is what the season of Advent is all about. Here, in the Northern Hemisphere, on this day after the Winter solstice, we celebrate Jesus our light, who brings new life like the coming summer sun. This is the obvious metaphorical meaning of the early church’s choice of the solstice for the date of Christ’s birth (which no one really knows).

The less obvious metaphor is more profound. At this darkest time of year, in the bleak winter landscape, when the soil is frozen, we find hope, knowing the movement of God is not dependent on our ability to perceive it. God’s wait “in the womb of Mary was not time wasted but an intimate beginning in mystery, growth, and dependency.”   (Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human, 2024, pp 228 – 233)

Here’s where Mary’s song stirs up some good trouble in us, because to make a home in Advent darkness we will have to clear away the debris, open windows, and bust through some locked doors we have inherited that prevent us from receiving the wisdom of hope and the gifts of blackness. The blessings of Advent have been a source of strength and comfort to our ancestors in times of uncertainty and chaos. They could be useful for us now.

On the day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King said, “Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything black ugly and evil.  Look in your dictionary and see the synonyms of the word black.  It’s always something degrading and low and sinister.  Look at the word white, it’s always something pure, high, and clean.” This deception has made us blind to the breadth of meaning found in Advent and Mary’s song.

The idea that God ordained the Americas as a “promised land” for European Christians has had devastating effects for more than 500 years. One careful study reveals that anti-black racism increases (increases!) with church attendance, even among white mainline congregations like ours. I ask myself, what can explain this?  Could it be that for most of American history, we have worshiped a light-skinned Jesus?

It’s amusing but also tragic that white Christians in America are startled when they are confronted with an obvious fact: Jesus was not a white man. Mary was a very young woman of color. “This Advent, may we reclaim the sacred Black…may we remember that Christ was formed in the holy darkness of the womb—that our origin is not the garden but the dark…May the darkness guide us into deeper rest, resisting exhaustion and overexposure.  May it be a darkness that opens us to the unknown, that we would make peace with uncertainty and marvel at mystery. And may it be a darkness that forms us into people capable of holding the lament of others, that we would never be too quick to turn on the light while someone else is grieving.  Hold us in the dark womb of Advent [O Lord].  Let us remember what glory grows in the dark.” (Riley)

“Our image of God creates us—or defeats us. There is an absolute connection between how we see God and how we see ourselves and the universe. The word “God” is a stand-in word for everything—for Reality, truth, and the very shape of our universe…. A mature God creates mature people. A big God creates big people. A punitive God creates punitive people” (Richard Rohr, “Letting our Images Mature,” Daily Meditations, 12/8/24).  A white-only Jesus makes us blind to systematic racism.

We proclaim the gospel of Jesus with art and song and hospitality for all like Mary, Elizabeth, Hannah, and Miriam so that God will again have a gracious, merciful and loving human face that we see in people of all colors and ethnicities. Living inside God’s embrace transforms our lives with love. “Unexpected and mysterious is the gentle word of grace” (ELW #258). In darkness and longing, perfect love casts out fear, kindles joy and renews our strength.  As Mary’s song proclaims, God in Christ Jesus exults over us. What is left for us to do but sing?

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A Nightmare on Elmdale Streeet

Advent 3C-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

In the eye of a hurricane witnesses say there is a dead calm. There are no birds chirping or dogs barking. Everything is bracing for what comes next. I’ve never been in a hurricane, but I feel what we’re living through now must be something like it. The frenzy of the election season has receded. The time between November 5th and January 20th is like the eye of a storm. There’s nothing to do now but wait to confront whatever is coming next.

The political crisis in the US feels like a hurricane, and yet, it’s not the only approaching storm we face. The horizon looks ominous on multiple fronts. There is a climate emergency. There is a technological revolution driven by artificial intelligence and quantum computing. There is a culture war and a fundamental dispute about who has the right to say what we do with our bodies. There is a religious battle between fundamentalisms and pluralisms across the world. Christians cannot name and proclaim the same gospel against the rising tide of Christian nationalism (an oxymoron) and Christian Zionism (a tragic lie).

This Third Sunday of Advent is called “Gaudete” or “Rejoice” Sunday. Yet, how are we to rejoice? John the Baptist proclaims good news to all the people. Zephaniah exhorts us to “sing aloud, rejoice, and exult” because God is in our midst, and rejoices over us with gladness (Zeph. 3:14, 17). Isaiah claims with confidence his people will “draw water from the wells of salvation” with joy (Is. 12:3). And Paul encouraged the Philippians to “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4). Are we just supposed to act like everything is okay when it’s not? Too often I think this is exactly what ‘Christmas cheer’ amounts to.

Yet before we dismiss our scripture as being out of touch with the serious situation we are facing, we must pause and remember the Bible we read, and reverence is a wilderness text. It is a text borne of trauma, displacement, and loss, written mostly by the persecuted, the enslaved and the desperate. Our ancestors in faith lived through periods of famine, war, plague, and natural disaster. They suffered starvation, violence, barrenness, captivity, exile, colonization, and genocide. They were brave lonely voices, crying in the desert…of their sorrow…their rage, fear, horror, and pain…and most remarkable: they also cried of their hope. “Their fierce, muscular hope in a God who cares. A God who vindicates. A God who saves. Something about the wilderness experience birthed in them a capacity for profoundly life-changing hope. Salvific hope. Hope beyond hope.” A hope that gives way to joy. Hope and joy became the rocket fuel that propelled the early church. (Debi Thomas, “A Voice Crying,” Journey with Jesus, 11/28/21.) Can it offer an answer for us now?

John the Baptist is some strong gospel medicine. With fire and brimstone, he rained fierce judgements on the heads of religious leaders and political authorities. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the wrath to come?” Throughout our bible we hear the surprising message that joy and judgment are impossible to separate. “In the language of scripture, synonyms for judgment include discernment, acuity, sharpness, and perception. To judge something is to see it clearly — to know it as it truly is.” (Thomas)
So, the terrible voice and visage of John the Baptist is the bible’s pick to announce the coming Christ child because he stands and shouts from within the wilderness of our own broken dreams and disappointments. He invites us to see things clearly.

The Holy Spirit, released into our blood stream at the table and the font, works now to bring to our awareness with brutal honesty, judgement about the sin in ourselves, our household, our church, our economy, our culture, and our nation. These may seem to us more like nightmares than the gospel. Yet, if once we follow John the Baptist into the wilderness of our guilt and shame, we discover it is from there that our true salvation comes. The good news becomes truly good news. Hope and joy become like rocket fuel once we begin to have the right nightmares.

Yes. This means John the Baptist, and not St. Nick, is that dreadful and inviting spirit of Christmas who confronts us today like the ghosts that haunted Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’, A Christmas Carole. Scrooge is blessed with the right nightmares and thus is made new. He is ushered from misery into hope and joy. Could it propel us to confront the storms that we face?

You remember the story? In the beginning, Scrooge dismissed the invitation to generosity and compassion as ‘humbug.’ A mighty fortress protects Scrooge’s heart from recognizing his own sin-sick soul and the suffering he is responsible for. But Scrooge receives grace through the intervention of his dead friend, Marley. He is visited by the three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. Scrooge’s terrifying experience at seeing ghosts is replaced by a still more terrible vision of the waste and pain he has wrought by his own miserly, small-spirited, life. The visions end with Scrooge falling into his own grave just like we do in baptism.

Scrooge’s nightmares turn his heart toward another possibility. When he awakes, he does just that. With shouts of joy in the streets, he becomes a participant in God’s world in a new and more beautiful way. (Tripp Fuller, Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology, Sacra Sage Press, 2020, pp. 117-118)
The priests and political powers of ancient Israel had fashioned a world in their own image. It was an upside-down world compared to the one created in God’s own image, the imago dei. John the Baptist points us to a new mind and heart in his call to ‘repentance.’

The Greek word for “repent” is “metanoia.” It is closely related to the word ‘metamorphosis’ as in to change from a caterpillar to a butterfly. It is a radical change, a transformation of mind, a new source and reason for our lives that follows the call and imitation of God’s love. Perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love lifts our spirits. Perfect love kindles our joy and renews our hope. The grace of God sets our life right side up.

In this metamorphosis the old root wrapped tightly around us like the Mighty Fortress Scrooge had wrapped around his heart, is being cut away so Christ may live in us and through us. See, even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees. With the right nightmares, our dread fear is replaced by hope and joy. This is the fuel we need. This is the right heart and mind and spirit we need. “Wakened by the solemn warning, from earth’s bondage let us rise; Christ our sun, all sloth dispelling, shines upon the morning skies” (“Hark! A Thrilling Voice is Sounding,” ELW # 246).

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Com’in Straight On For You!

Advent 2C-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

John the Baptist, and not St. Nick is the one whom Luke calls “prophet of the Most High” (Luke 1:76). God appointed the wild and wooly John to prepare the way for the infant Jesus.

You might wonder, why on earth would people flock to the desert at considerable expense, effort, and personal risk to see John? I think it’s because John offered them grace without the Temple and its religious strictures. John offered union with God despite their uncleanness which their work life or social status made unavoidable, inevitable, and indelible. John offered them grace freely and abundantly. The price was metanoia –or repentance—a new mind, a complete turnabout. John opened the way to the life that Jesus lived, proclaimed and endured. In other words, John offered hope.

He is the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. He was like the voice of one crying (Luke 3:4). For modern Christians John announces the coming of something more than piles of ripped wrapping paper, ribbons and boxes. John proclaims the advent of God. Grace un-folding and abounding is making its way again to us. Look! A royal highway is under construction. God in Christ Jesus is bringing low the high obstacles. Jesus is straightening out the crooked pathways. Jesus is working a way to into our hearts. Christ will carry us home again amidst shouts of joy from angels on high. The 17th century German priest and poet, Angelus Silesius, famously wrote, “If in your heart you make a manger for his birth then God will once again become a child on earth” (Angelus Silesius, b. 1624 – d. 1677).

John announced the coming of the Messiah from heaven to earth. In the fifteenth year of the emperor, when governor so-and-so ruled with two other people who were Big Deals, and the high priesthood of (blank) and of (blankety-blank) were in charge in Jerusalem, the word of God came—not to any of them—but to John, son of nobody you’ve heard of, in the wilderness. (Luke 3:1-2). Luke’s gospel is a shot across the bow to political and religious windbags and despots everywhere. God’s holy highway breaks through the wilderness, from the margins, among the lowly. The voice in the wilderness cries out for the way of God to be prepared with relentless urgency. John’s voice kindles hope for the lost and bewildered.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the road Jesus opens links us with each other. The pathway to God runs to, not over, our fellow human beings. In fact, we finally arrive at home dwelling in God, not at the end of this road, but just by being on this road. Simply by walking the way of Jesus we are home. Christ is with us, and we are with one another. In the words of Martin Luther, “We are not now what we shall be, but are on the way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on. This is not the goal, but it is the right road. At present, everything does not gleam and sparkle, but everything is being cleansed.”

John gave the people hope with the assurance that God’s home is here with us and in us and everyone. That’s why people matter, justice matters, how we live makes a difference not only for those around us but for us too. The peaceable kingdom is more than a dreamy vision of heaven. It is God’s dream for the world—and once we begin to live there in Christ Jesus, we are always, already home no matter where we travel. This is the gift of the incarnation. This is the source of our hope.

With baptism for the forgiveness of sins John offered the people of ancient Israel a vision of unity with God and each other that re-kindled their hope. Two thousand years later, John’s message about God building a highway to reach us and carry us home has power to restore our lives, light the fire of love to warm our households, give new life to the church, and find the common ground upon which to build a more perfect union.
John’s proclamation of incarnation has this extraordinary life-giving power because this is our founding story. French philosopher, Régis Debray, and historian, Yuval Noah Harari, point out that such Stories are the ground beneath our feet which enable homo sapiens to purposefully cooperate in collective endeavors and to build civilizations. Without a common story, societies can’t hang together and thrive, no less survive. When the story unravels, so then does the society.

What it means to be a follower of Jesus is changing as his gospel once again emerges out from under the shadow of Empire, colonization, domination, and extraction. What it means to be an American is likewise undergoing profound revision and expansion. God has placed both into the refiner’s fire of truth. We pray God will find a way lead us forward, bring us home, and rekindle our hope in a common future.

In the meantime, we are bewildered, confused, lost, at sea, stranded in a trackless wilderness with no clear path ahead. John tells us the truth is startling. We do not have far to go to find our way home. John stands in the middle of the wilderness like one of those signs you sometimes see on the highway that reads, ‘If you lived here, you would be home by now.’ God’s kingdom is already, always, everywhere, here, and now. In fact, our home in God travels with us. It’s never far away. John is standing at the off ramp signaling to the lost to be found, for those stumbling in deep darkness to find light, for the hungry to find food and for those who thirst to find living water to drink.

Just keep the dotted line of compassion on your left, and the solid line of God’s steadfast love on the right. You don’t need anything more. You don’t need special knowledge or skill. You don’t have to know where you are to find your way home and into the loving arms of God.

This is how the church becomes the gathering place of those once scattered. Diverse and different, we are one in Christ. The is the way the church sends us out knowing that we are secure in the house of the Lord—even as we stay on the move, following the way of life that Jesus did, said, and endured. The one who came and is coming draws us together into the One Life of God. Rich and poor, slaves and free, male and female, young and old, gay and straight, Jew and gentile, Christians and non-Christians. All are welcome. See ‘every mountain and hill is made low.’ We are joined in one great communion by the Advent of our God. Let the people say, Amen!

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Lord Save Us

Advent 1C-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28).

To understand the season of Advent picture a collapsed building in Gaza. People there beneath the rubble are still alive. Friends and neighbors crowd at the surface. They begin to work feverishly to uncover loved ones. Those trapped in the pile can do nothing. An agonizing period of waiting and dying is all that remains.

Then suddenly, voices are heard. They cry out, “Help is on the way!” The disheartened victim feels their heart leap. They shout, “Here I am. Come soon!” A final, desperate hammer blow. Just one more step and they are pulled free. Their desperate joy-filled rescue is what Advent feels like.

Advent needs no explanation to political prisoners jailed without justice, or to immigrants forcibly separated from their families, or to the sick longing for healing. Overwhelming joy rises quickly and naturally in them upon hearing the message, “Today you are delivered.”

‘Think of those who strive to lead a Christian life and yet fail; think of the son who can no longer look his father in the eye, or the husband who can no longer look his wife in the eye. Think of the addict who tells themselves, ‘Tomorrow I will stop,’ while knowing it is a lie. Think of the disruption of these lives and the hopeless mess they are in. And then let us hear again, “Look up, raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Inspired and from an Advent Sermon given by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in London in 1933).

Some of you will remember with me the immortal line by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth!” I confess, there have been times when Jack Nicholson could have been talking about me. But sooner or later, we all need Advent. Sooner or later, Advent comes. The truth is revealed, and our healing can begin.

Advent is the invitation to tell the truth. Advent calls for honesty, even when honesty leads us straight to lamentation. In Advent, we are invited to describe life “on earth as it is,” and not as we wish it to be or as we mistakenly assume our religion requires us to render it…. “Eschewing all forms of denial, polite piety, and cheap cheer, Advent invites us to allow the radical honesty of Scripture to make us honest, too. We’re asked to stop posturing and pretending. To come to the end of ourselves. To get real. Advent reminds us that we are not called to an escapist, denial-based piety. We are called to dwell courageously in the truth.” (Debi Thomas, “When You See These Things,” Journey with Jesus, 11/25/18).

Yes. We are not enough. Yes. We have messed things up. And yes! Despite this, Advent confronts us with another astonishing truth: the fullness of God’s grace is pleased to dwell in you, here, now, just as you are. Such grace is the beginning of our new life in Christ –a life of abundance, transformed to overflowing by the indelible dignity and love God pours out in each of us right here, right now, in this very moment, and in all the moments that follow. Look up, lift your heads for your rescuer draws near.

In his beautiful book of contemplation, In the Shelter, poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama asks, “How do we say hello to here?” That is, how do we live honestly in our own skins? How do we accept what’s in front of us? How do we guard against numbness, denial, and despair? In his opening chapter, Ó Tuama describes the challenge: “Much of our desire to not-name a place is because we fear that in naming it we are giving it power, and by giving it power we are saying we may not escape. …. To name something can be to call it into being, and we do not wish to call certain things into any kind of being.” (Thomas)

In prophetic language that sounds distressingly contemporary, Jesus describes a world reeling in pain. Roaring seas, distress among nations, people fainting in fear. “When you see these things,” Jesus says, don’t turn away. Don’t hide. Why? Because it’s only when we embrace reality — when we acknowledge and welcome the “here” of human suffering — that we experience the nearness of God.” (Thomas)

Black Friday dreams get our hearts pumping. Sparkly colored lights, and Christmas music saturate every store with the whispered promise that our not-enough lives will finally be better if we acquire more stuff. Grown-ups and sleeping children alike begin to dream of becoming a billionaire. Because, maybe then, we could be enough. But, in the light of day, this dream reveals itself to be a nightmare drowning us in debt, a way of filling storage lockers and garbage dumps more than our human hearts; leaving us to live with pollution and death more than the flourishing and abundant life God intends.

The holy season of Advent which begins today is set to a different tune. The Church begins its new year as the days are still getting darker. Our story begins — not with twinkly lights— but with the world as it really is, here and now. Gorgeous, fragile, and falling apart. “Stand up and raise your heads.” Look. Your rescuer draws near! Advent helps us say hello to here and find redemption in the most startling places. (Thomas)

Advent reminds us that next spring’s seeds break open in dark winter soil. God’s Spirit hovers over dark water, preparing to create worlds. The child we wait for grows in the deep darkness of the womb. ‘Our food is expectation,’ writes Nora Gallagher about Advent. In this season, we strive to find ‘not perfection, but possibility.’” (Thomas)

“So. How do we say hello to here? We begin, Pádraig Ó Tuama writes, by admitting that “the rotten fruit of illusion rarely fills for long.” Advent is an antidote to illusion. It cuts to the chase. It insists on the truth. It lays us bare. Advent invites us to dwell richly in the here, precisely because here is where God dwells when the oceans heave, the ground shakes, and our hearts are gripped by fear. ‘When you see these things,’ Jesus says, hope fiercely and live truthfully. Deep in the gathering dark, something tender continues to grow. Yearn for it, wait for it, notice it, imagine it. Something beautiful — something for the world’s saving — waits to be born.” (Thomas)

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