Lent 1A-23
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

After his baptism, there was no celebration, no cake, no candles. Instead, ‘Jesus, was led by the Spirit into a place of isolation and death (Matthew 4:1). He goes into the wilderness alone, without fanfare, or survival gear. He goes without a map or an extra pair of sandals. After forty days Jesus is vulnerable. When you are famished, everything looks like food. Starving people will eat dirt and rocks. Weak and starving, Jesus entered a lethal hall of mirrors where he is tormented by an articulate Torah-toting, scripture quoting Devil. Satan tried to make Jesus misuse his power. Jesus passed the test.

Later, Jesus will turn a couple fish and five barley loaves into a feast for 5000 but now, he refuses to use that same power to feed himself. Later, Jesus will walk on water, calm the Sea, and pass through the violent mob in Nazareth. But now, he refuses to jump from the top of the temple. Later, a taunting mob will repeat the same challenge from the foot of the cross. ‘If you are the Son of God, save yourself and come down from that cross, so that we may believe in you’ (Matthew 27:40). But Jesus won’t jump from the top of the temple, neither will he come down from the cross. Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited (Philippians 2:6). In his battle with the Devil, Jesus stands with the hungry, the suffering, and the powerless. Jesus shows us power perfected in weakness. What’s more, Jesus shows us how to wield that power like a lamb, to defeat the Devil and his empty promises.

This Lent, we have challenged ourselves to question common Christian assumptions. We re-examen the things we thought we knew already about our faith that may keep us from encounter with the full promise of the gospel. We began our Lenten pilgrimage today while prayerfully walking around the sanctuary. I ask you to walk with me now and consider together—what in the world is scripture talking about when it talks about the Devil?
We progressive church folk don’t spend much time on this topic. We are monotheists. Satan cannot, therefore, cannot be some type of demi-god. We believe in science and a naturalistic approach to understanding the wonder of God’s world. Satan, therefore, cannot be a supernatural power that afflicts us in defiance of the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. So, what are we missing?

Scripture calls Satan the accuser, the adversary, and the anti-Jesus (or anti-Christ). Rather than a scary, pitchfork wielding man with horns, the Devil in scripture is the name given to whatever is working in us and among us against the kingdom of God. Satan is that unseen, impersonal force operating in the world perpetually pulling us into shadow. Moreover, scripture warns, Satan is seductive. The Devil appears to us as an Angel of Light. That’s what Lucifer means, after all. Lucifer means Angel of Light.

Some non-spooky metaphors are helpful here. Author Richard Beck suggests, “Think of an ant colony. No single ant has the blueprint of the ant colony in its head… If you were to ask the ants, ‘Who’s in charge here?’ They’d be stumped. No single ant is the Wizard of Oz running the show behind a curtain… Instead, the Wizard is everywhere, an unseen organizing force at work in every microscopic interaction between the ants, organizing and directing their behavior. The ants die. But the Wizard lives on…
Or think of a cloud. A cloud is a structure that emerges from a collection of individual water molecules. Clouds can’t be reduced to those water molecules, but clouds, once they exist, can begin to drive those water molecules into becoming thunderstorms and hurricanes…

Similar things happen in human societies, forces sweep through human history on large and small scales. Like water molecules, people are sucked into shadowy vortexes, a moral tempest, a thunderstorm. Consider the rise of Nazism leading up to WWII. Once Nazism gained traction, it became a moral thunderstorm in human affairs, sucking more and more air molecules into the vortex. Nazism became the Wizard. Nazism took on a life of its own. In fact, Hitler has been dead for over seventy years and Nazism still plagues the world.” (Richard Beck, Reviving Old Scratch, Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted, 2016, Fortress Press, pp 63-64.)

“Critics of spiritual warfare have got it backwards when they say that talking about demons will cause you to demonize other human beings. The truth is that it’s the exact opposite: it’s our refusal to talk about demons that causes us to demonize other human beings” (Beck, p. 59). When living our faith is reduced to a political struggle for justice it’s tempted toward violence between the good guys and bad guys which only makes the cycle of violence spin faster.

Consider all the little things that add up to create systemic racism or damage to the environment, or promote gun violence, or drug abuse, or you fill in the blank. Little ants doing little things, ants trying to do the right thing or ants just obliviously going about their business. We’d like to grab an ant and yell, “Hey, who’s in charge here!” But the ant can’t say. It’s folly to gather up good ants to gang up on the bad ants. Ant on ant violence only brings a smile to the face of the Wizard, who is working, all the while, behind the scene.

“Spiritual warfare is resistance to empire, to the political and economic manifestations of Babylon in our own time and place” (Beck, p. 24). Because we are called to love, our goal is liberating human beings from slavery to malevolent powers and principalities at work in the world. To rescue them from the Wizard. Our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of wickedness.

That’s why church, Beck says, must be ground zero for spiritual warfare. This is what Word and Sacrament, and our Lenten disciplines are essential help us achieve. When we are alone, loving the world through Facebook and Twitter, it’s easy to convince ourselves that we love everyone. In community, however, our inability to love is exposed, along with our inability to get along with some people. Our hearts and minds must first be freed by encounter with the life and mind of the risen Christ to become the beloved community and to create conditions for the justice we seek.

For the first thousand years, people of the church proclaimed the good news, not as an answer to the problem of original sin, but rather as Christ’s victory over the Devil. This understanding stands in sharp contrast with the view we all grew up with about a punishing God who would punish us all for our sins except for Jesus’ gracious intervention on the cross. Beloved, it is time to let go of that thinking forever. One way to do that is by learning once again how to take seriously the bible’s teaching about the Devil. In Jesus Christ, we have salvation not because he changed the mind of a punishing God, but because Christ has defeated the power of an angry Devil. We can know that God loves each of us infinitely and unconditionally. (Those of you familiar with C.S. Lewis’ famous fable, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” can think about how Aslan defeated the White Witch.)

Here, at the Table, and the Font, in hearing the Word, and through song, prayer and mutual service, we are being equipped to love God and to love neighbor. Loving our neighbor is the complete full expression of what it means to love God and drive out the Devil. Jesus breaks the power of the Devil that holds us in bondage. With Christ, in Christ, we are being clothed with the armor of Christ. In this way, Jesus frees us to live and love powerfully, fearlessly, and fully incarnating the kingdom of heaven in our own frail flesh and blood. In the wilderness, on the cross, and the empty tomb, Christ, our victor, flings wide the prison doors where Satan held us captive. Now we are called and equipped to join Jesus in the spiritual fight against the Devil that haunts and plagues this world.

Transfiguration A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

500 years before Christ, Rabbis called Mount Tabor “the navel of the world.”  The peak rises abruptly, yet gently, from the plain like the belly of a pregnant woman. It is modest, covered in pine, about 11 miles west of the Sea of Galilee. It rises almost 2,000 feet above sea level. Today, a modest hiking trail winds three miles to the top—about an hour’s walk. It would have been an obvious and inviting choice for Jesus’ early-morning climb.

 Jesus and the disciples had been walking for six days, nearly a week. They are moving south from Galilee, through soft, shallow hills that mark the beginning of the slow, steady climb to Jerusalem and the cross. Jesus left before breakfast. He took with him Peter, James, and John. On top of Mt. Tabor, Jesus’ face shone like the sun!

From Christ’s holy mountain, heaven and earth are laid out at our feet. The barrier between the visible and invisible is broken. Now we see the two are woven of the same fabric. The light God pours into all things shines out from Jesus.

We modern people, I think, can be too quick to turn away from this gospel. Many cultures, like that of Native American peoples, by contrast, are more welcoming of the nourishing everyday reality of mystery and awe. In our scientific worldview this story does not compute. Mystical experiences, like that recorded in today’s gospel, must be set aside to get at the facts. Yet a new science of human emotion is beginning to come around. The human experience of awe, they proclaim, is powerfully good for you.

From on top the navel of the world Jesus’ transfiguration is a vision pregnant with opportunity for our own transformation. What science took away, now, science has begun to return. ‘Experiences we call spiritual — are now being taken seriously by science as intelligence — as elements of human wholeness.  Most surprising, they say, such moments of awe and wonder which stretch imagination beyond our understanding are common in human life. Everywhere around the globe awe is measurably health-giving, immunity-boosting, creativity enhancing, and community building. Feelings of wonder bring our nervous system and heartbeat and breath into sync. Shared experiences of awe bring our bodies into sync with other bodies around us.’ (Krista Tippet, “The Thrilling New Science of Awe,” On Being, 2/03/23)

Yes. This gospel is about discipleship. Yes. It is about the journey downward from the mountaintop to the valleys, from the glow of a spiritual high to the places where people are suffering, from union with Christ to the cross. Yet, as we journey from Epiphany into Lent, we must not leave the mountaintop empty handed but learn the lesson Jesus taught us there. Find awe as your ancestors in the desert went out and found their daily bread, manna, to sustain them. Learn to find awe so your heart and mind may be continually refreshed as you walk through the valley of life’s many struggles and sorrows.

Awe is powerfully protective and overflows with meaning. Growing up, Jennifer Baily—Reverend Baily, as she is known today—first felt the effects of racism when she was five.  As she was jumping off a slide in a park, a classmate asked: “Why is your face dirty?”  She ran into Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and felt embraced in the quiet of that space. Years later, in the same church, listening to the organ wraps her in sound like a warm blanket. There, slowly, she awakened to a big idea: “I am beloved in the eyes of God.” (Dacher Keltner Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It can Transform Your Life, Penguin Press, 2023 p. 193-195)

When asked where she finds mystical awe, her answer comes easily. She draws inspiration from the strength and courage of African American women.  Her grandmothers fled the terrorism, lynchings, and segregated spaces of the Jim Crow South of the 1950’s.  Her mother, raised in Chicago, was a student in the first integrated high school class of the 1960s. She expresses reverence for how African American women from the past and present overcome. They do so, she says, in spirit. Spirit they find in the kitchen. In telling stories, laughing, singing, and dancing.  And in church. As Reverend Jen makes her way through the story of her life, she says something surprising, “I guess I am composting religion.” (p. 194-195)

Could finding awe be how we metabolize faith like food? Composting is thousands of years old. When we compost, we gather raw materials—food scraps, grasses, leaves, manure—and let them decay together. Over time, microorganisms, bacteria, fungi, and worms break down the raw materials, consuming what is toxic and distilling a humus, an amorphous, sweet-smelling, jellylike black mixture of plant, animal, and microbial origin.  The nitrogen of humus is absorbed by the roots of plants, nourishing life. Through mystical awe Pastor Jen breaks down the sexist and colonialist, and patriarchal strains of Christianity, distilling a spirit found in the faith of African American women along with others as fuel for ministry.

Most miraculous, far from being rare, scientists say people can find awe almost anywhere. You’ve heard about the eight wonders of the world—amazing buildings, erected mostly, or entirely, as monuments to the coercive power of empires. Dacher Keltner, scientist of human emotion at Berkely, suggests what’s more amazing are the eight wonders of life where people find awe. Awe comes from 1) witnessing the strength, courage, and kindness of others; and 2) from activities like dance or sports; and 3) from nature; and 4) music; and 5) art or visual design; and 6) religion; and 7) from encounter with life and death; and 8) with sudden big ideas or epiphanies. Awe makes the hair on our neck rise, our bodies tingle, our eyes widen and shed tears of joy.

The wisdom and gift of Christian worship wraps many of these sources of awe together. To be a Christian, by definition, is to encounter the living God in the face, life, and character of Jesus and his cross. Our personal revelation need not be so dramatic as what Peter, James, and John experienced on Mt. Tabor. Yet faith in Christ Jesus begins with our own personal brand of epiphany breaking within us little by little and sometimes all at once. God’s still, small, and majestic voice declares to us as to the disciples, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” In Christian community we must assist one another to find awe.

St. Paul writes God dwells in “unapproachable light” (1 timothy 6:16). It is this light which illuminates the darkness of human minds. To the Romans Paul wrote: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God –what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).  To siblings in Corinth he explained, “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Here is food for the journey. Here is manna, our daily bread. ‘Oh, wonderous image. Oh, vision fair, by grace we see Christ’s glory face to face’ (ELW #316).

Epiphany 6A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Sometimes announcing, “the gospel of the Lord” feels like it should be followed by a question mark. I know Christians have hurled these words of Jesus like rocks to bruise, shame, and torment one another.  I know Christians quote verses like these to paint a picture of God as a rule-obsessed tyrant, waiting to zap us if we make a mistake. Will you protect me, Lord, if I am pious? Will you comfort me if I am good? Will you reward me with a long-lived life if I say extra-long prayers?

We know, intellectually, something’s not right about this. It’s wrong to use religion as a weapon to afflict others or our self. We know God is not a tyrant.  We know in our head God does not withhold special favors as a reward for personal piety.  “But most of us have a God-related misconception or two lurking in our hearts, and even if we try to get rid of them, they cling” (Debi Thomas, But I Say To You, Journey with Jesus, 2/09/20).

So, where’s the good news in today’s gospel?  Jesus said, ‘You have heard it said of old, do not murder…but I say to you if you are angry will be liable for judgment…and liable to the hell of fire’ (vs. 21-22).  “You have heard it said, do not commit adultery, but I say to you anyone who has looked at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (vs. 27, 28).

For help we step back and remember where today’s reading comes from. It’s an excerpt from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5-7 which includes the beatitudes we read two weeks ago (blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers), instructs us to love our enemies as ourselves, and to pray the Lord’s prayer. Those who first heard Jesus preach would have rightly understood.  Jesus was not threatening them with God’s wrath but calling forth a new community.  A blessed community.  A beloved community.  A community to incarnate divine love in a world hungry for hope and healing.

Another thing we must remember, or learn if we don’t already know, is what Jesus is saying about hell, and what he is not. Our bible (NRSV) uses the word ‘hell’ 13 times in the entire New Testament, and 12 of them translate the Greek word “Gehenna,” a valley south of Jerusalem some say was a smoldering landfill at the time of Jesus, a place of human-made fires of burning refuse. Jesus was not talking about a place of eternal punishment God sends people after they die. But rather, he is pointing to the place, mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah, also known as the Valley of Slaughter because it was once the site of child sacrifice. People listening to Jesus would have known he was talking about a place associated with the highest form of idolatry against Yahweh. (Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary). The idea of hell which we have today confronts us with a type of violence wrapped in religious clothing which Jesus came to unveil as human violence, and not God’s violence. “It must be forgiven, let go of, if Christianity is to be faithful to Jesus.”

Now we begin to see the good news. We hear Jesus’ invitation to become part of a new humanity, to break the pernicious cycle of violence, and to step out from the hell of our own making. The path to renewal lays behind the door to deeper reflection, radical honesty, and self-examination.  Jesus commands raise the bar. “I tell you,” Jesus says, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).

To become children of a new humanity we must be willing to open the door to what is hidden inside our hearts and minds. We must be honest with ourselves and others about the swelter of internal dynamics going on there: anger, derision, slander, false generosity, litigiousness, arrogance, lust, temptation, alienation, sexual immorality, and weaponized religious speech. This is the terrain Jesus and the Holy Spirit work within us to transform our hearts and minds little by little, and sometimes, all at once. Do not be afraid and be of good courage. “Everyone has done something wrong; everyone has broken the law; everyone has chosen poorly. You are still the light of the world. You are still blessed” (Diana Butler Bass, Sunday Musings, 2/12/23).

A pastor wrote about a young mother she knew who was severely abused as a child. She and her children lived in daily chaos. She was getting help but a pattern kept appearing. Just when her life began to “stabilize,” she created a situation that caused her to be thrown into chaos again.  It was almost as if chaos was her place of comfort, control, power, and security. It was where she found her identity.  (Rev. Jolene Bergstrom Carlson, Executive Director/President Ministry Mentors, 2/07/17)

“A trauma therapist would say: ‘What is not repaired is repeated.’ What revival means biblically is not simply that there is a burst of success after a fallow period that comes from people doing the same things they were doing before. Revival shakes everything that we thought before was solid. And God does something completely new. These moments come when there is a kind of desperation to seek it. And a willingness to shift in whatever way God seems best.” (Dr. Russell Moore, Editor-In-Chief of Christianity Today.)

Often this means we must not be afraid, run away from, or too quickly try to fix and wipe away, conflict.  We must draw upon Jesus to give us the courage and patience to learn. We take comfort knowing Jesus walks with us as we take the necessary time and energy to be reconciled to one another and at peace within ourselves. “…conflict in and of itself is not a problem. The electricity of tension, and of naturally-occurring difference, make conflict essential and generative in our closest relationships. Conflict is a force in learning, growth, and advance of every kind” (Krista Tippet, The Pause, The On Being Project, 2/11/23). What might happen if, rather than rushing to solve every conflict we instead chose to hone our skills at being present to conflict in a way that is life-giving? (Tippet)

Jesus takes us beneath the surface of things to give birth to a new humanity, to establish true harmony among us in the Beloved Community, and to restore integrity that redeems our faith. Continuing the observance of Black History Month, we end today with Howard Thurman, distinguished theologian, pastor, social activist, and mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King.  Thurman wrote, “By some amazing but vastly creative spiritual insight the slave undertook the redemption of a religion that the master had profaned in his midst” (Howard Thurman, Deep River).

“It was clear to Howard Thurman, as he helped to lead the Civil Rights Movement, that a fundamental element to achieving their goals was to work for the redemption of the Christian religion. In books like Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman sought an interpretation of Jesus and his message that makes central the healing of human divisions, and so also the salvation of a Christian religion that has been profaned by an intertwining with white supremacist racism” (Nuechterlein).  Fifty years later this task of redeeming the Christian religion from racism has become nothing but more clear and focused and urgent. To get there we will need to draw upon Jesus for the courage and patience for radical honesty and self-examination.

Our own Richard Anderson prepares a weekly email of prayers and reflections intended for silent prayer before worship. It now goes out to 60 or 70 people.  This week Richard shared a prayer, written by Howard Thurman.

O Lord,

Open unto me, light for my darkness

Open unto me, courage for my fear

Open unto me, hope for my despair

Open unto me, peace for my turmoil

Open unto me, joy for my sorrow

Open unto me, strength for my weakness

Open unto me, wisdom for my confusion

Open unto me, forgiveness for my sins

Open unto me, tenderness for my toughness

Open unto me, love for my hates

Open unto me, Thy Self for myself

Lord, Lord, open unto me!

Amen.

Epiphany 5A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?  You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid” (Matthew 5:13-14). Salt and light are your superpower. They are reflections within you of God’s ever-present grace.

Living in times of plenty, we take salt and light for granted. In the ancient world, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history. Roman soldiers got paid in salt—hence our English word, salary. Around ten thousand years ago, dogs were first domesticated using salt; people would leave salt outside their homes to entice the animals. (Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus, Salty, 02/02/20)  And, of course, less than 150 years ago, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb, made light nearly ubiquitous.

The first lesson to draw from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is a benediction upon the whole world. There is no border, no boundary, no line separating nations, no longitude, nor latitude that divides all living things from the blessings bestowed by God. As in highest heaven so it is also on earth. We are siblings in Christ—children of salt and light.

Imagine how Jesus’s first followers might have understood being called salt and light. “You,” he told them all. “You are the salt of the earth.”” You are the light of the world. You, the poor, the mournful, the meek, the persecuted. The hungry, the sick, the crippled, the frightened.  The outcast, the misfit, the disreputable, and the demon possessed. (Debie Thomas) We are salt and light. The salt and light in you can never be stolen from you, beaten out of you, or spoiled even by your own misdeeds. You are imbued with the distinctive capacity to elicit goodness, to grow in generosity and wisdom which leads to personal and global transformation. (Debie Thomas)

The first lesson we draw out today is a benediction.  The second is an answer to the question, who are my siblings in Christ?  How will I know them if not by outward identifiers such as religion, ethnicity, culture, gender, or color? The answer? Taste and see. You are salty when you share your bread with the hungry. You are light when you bring the homeless poor into your house. You become salt which makes life delicious when you see the naked and cover them. Your light shines in the world when you do not hide yourself from your own kin. “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly…” says the prophet, Isaiah (Isaiah 58:8a). Taste and see.  Your siblings are salt and light.

Paul’s meditation on the crucified Christ encourages us to learn from Jesus’ death what it is to be truly human. Truly human persons—grafted into the self-giving death of Christ—live differently in the world, according to “the Spirit that is given by God” (verse 12). The new human person in Christ is relocated in a large extended family embracing the whole neighborhood, including even the entire planet.

Yet another lesson we may take to heart is how to distinguish between good, as opposed to bad, religion. The righteousness of the holy exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees, not by hairsplitting moralism or competition in good works, but through guidance of the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).  We begin to approach the same capacity to act and to give, even as Jesus gave himself for the world. By contrast, any attempts to follow the way of Jesus that promotes violence, exclusion, racial, or national supremacy, and does not love neighbor has lost its saltiness and labors in shadow. Any religion which denies the grace of God reflected among outsiders has strayed from the way. Once our religion can no longer meet the test of its own ideals of love or justice –is not good.  It’s failed.  It’s this bad religion that is driving people to leave the church. Tragically, they flee, not to different congregations, or more enlightened denominations, but out of the church entirely.

 Freedom of conscience. Uncoerced faith. Religious pluralism. These are evidence of good religion which tastes of salt and light. Despite the fact, admittedly, it can only ever be lived and embodied by flawed and broken people, good religion results in human flourishing. By this measure, the institutional decline from the 1950’s we all lament when everyone was in church maybe isn’t all bad. We should be less threatened by ongoing de-centering of Christianity, as in for example, the scheduling of children’s soccer games on Sunday—than by those now working to re-establish their own narrow version of religion through the exercise of political power and by rulings of the supreme court.

The War in Ukraine is but the most dramatic and violent example of this rip current of bad religion trying to bring a nation that wants to move toward democratic pluralism and freedom of conscience and say to them, ‘No. You will be Russian, You will be Russian orthodox. You will speak the Russian language—and by the way, you women will return to your proper subordinate position, and you queer people will fly straight or be eliminated. Likewise, the so-called freedom from indoctrination law playing out in Florida today has outed itself for what it really is—indoctrination. (Homebrewed Christianity, Welcome to the Post-Christian Century: Diana Butler Bass & Bill Leonard in conversation, 2/1/23)

The people of God are salt and light. Good religion does not fail Jesus’ test of loving neighbors and enacting mercy. Taste and see. One of the greatest and most inspirational Christian men of the 20th century was not a Christian, but a Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi. This January 30th marked the 75th anniversary of his death. Jesus disciple, Mahatma Gandhi, tasted of salt and suffering love. Britain’s Salt Act of 1882 prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt. Indian citizens were forced to buy it from their British rulers, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, also charged a heavy salt tax. Gandhi identified Britain’s monopoly on salt as a symbolic key to India’s freedom.

Marching 240 miles to the sea, Gandhi inspired tens of thousands of Indians to protest this unjust law with him. Picking up a pinch of salt from beside the sea, Gandhi was arrested. Hundreds more were beaten as they advanced on salt works. 60,000 people were arrested and Britain’s rule over India was in effect ended. On the eve of this freedom campaign, Gandhi said, “Mass civil disobedience will not come if those who have been hitherto the loudest in their cry for liberty have no action in them. If the salt loses its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?”

Taste and see. You are salt and light.  That is our superpower. United in Christ, God fill us with these good gifts again and again to renew us in body and soul in order to love and serve one another as our Lord Jesus enables us to do.

Epiphany 4A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Most mornings, I wake up and start scrolling thru headlines. This week was rough. Police violence. Mass shootings. War in Ukraine. Political strife. What would it be like to wake up to good news? The prophet Micah seems to wonder the same thing. These leaders, he wrote, “tear the skin from my people,” and “break their bones in pieces” (3:2–3). They despise justice, distort the right, take bribes as a matter of course, and are “skilled in doing evil with both hands.” Even worse, the religious leaders, who should have known better, approved and legitimized this unholy status quo, proclaiming that it was God’s will.

The news was just too much even for God. The prophet Micah imagines a scene in which God takes the people to court. “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!” (Micah 6:3). Like a prosecutor God examines their actions, recounting the signs of mercy and loving kindness shown to them from generation to generation, searching for a sign that they are living up to who God called them to be. Headlines shouting about violence, suffering, and inequality are not only bad news the prophet reminds us, but such news is also an indictment of our faith. “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?” (6:8).

The antidote God proffers to end the cycle of bad news is faith. A recent poll revealed the number one issue among Chicago voters is crime and public safety. Gun violence and police reform. Carjacking, police staffing, and police wellness.

Preying on this fear, the gun industry had record-breaking sales in 2020 and early 2021. Marketing for guns shifted from adds about hunting toward offering pistols for personal safety and military-style weaponry aimed mostly at young men. The sales pitch has been incredibly effective. Personal protection ranks #1 on gun owners’ list of reasons for owning a gun. Yet homicides are more than two times higher in gun-owning homes. Suicide risk is four times higher for children and teens who live in gun-owning homes. Men who own guns are eight times more likely to die by gun suicide, while women are thirty-five times more likely. It’s more likely that a gun in your home will be used to harm a family member than for protection. The leading cause of death in the year after getting a handgun is suicide. (Source: Project Unloaded) The nonstop news about gun violence is an indictment of our shared faith. We must dispel the myth that guns make us safer.

The nonstop news of police brutality is the same. Studies show what works to reduce police brutality is to stop using police like a one-size-fits-all response to every public safety need. A gun and a badge do not qualify someone to respond to homelessness, substance abuse, mental health crises, or even minor traffic violations. To improve police behavior, we must change how police are evaluated and rewarded. Are police promoted for making arrests and for being “warriors who are tough on criminals,” or are they valued for being “protectors, trusted by our neighbors.” (Source: Rodrigo Canales, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Yale) (Next month, you have an opportunity to change how Chicago police are evaluated and rewarded in choosing representatives to your police district council.)

A Latin American prayer asks: “Lord, to those who hunger, give bread. And to those who have bread, give the hunger for justice.” As we pray at the eucharist, ‘The cry of the poor is God’s own cry; Our hunger and thirst for justice is God’s own desire.’ (Eucharistic prayer, ELW #VII)

Jesus offered the beatitudes as steps toward a disarmed heart. The Beatitudes we read today (Matthew 5-7) describe a genuinely counter-cultural style of life. In a world of wealth and war, says Jesus, blessed are the poor and the peacemakers. Instead of violence and vengeance, blessed are the mournful, the meek, and the merciful. Remember, Jesus’ beautiful, poetic words weren’t first heard by people like me; those words were gifted to people who were considered the refuse of the ancient world. The faithful hold in tension two truths: one is the message, “I am dust and ashes;” the other is, “For me the universe was made” (Mary Lou Kownacki, O.S.B., Behold the Nonviolent One).

The Beatitudes draw a character portrait of the face and will of God. Together, they provide the foundation for Christian nonviolent resistance. To live the Beatitudes is to live differently and to think differently. “Wherever there is injustice, discrimination, division, discord, violence, we should find peacemakers, God’s children. Where the battle rages between the forces of light and [shadow], we should find peacemakers, God’s children. And God’s children enter the public arena, the conflict, trying to make God’s love visible …the more we analyze the stories behind the newspaper headlines, the harder it is to hide from harsh reality. Our apathy, our lifestyles, our budget priorities mean mourning and weeping for tens of millions around the globe” (Kownacki).

A review of 50 years of mass shootings found these events are becoming more frequent and more deadly. One-third of all mass shootings studied occurred in the last decade. They found these killings are not just random acts of violence but rather a symptom of a deeper societal problem: the continued rise of “deaths of despair.” Nearly all the killers profiled were men. Many were socially isolated from their families or their communities and felt a sense of alienation. They chose mass shootings as a way to seize power and attention, forcing others to witness their pain while attempting to end their lives, either by death or incarceration, in a way that only they controlled. Mass shooters live among us. They are us. They are for the most part the men and boys we know. And they can be stopped before they pull the trigger (By Jillian Peterson and James Densley, “We Profiled the ‘Signs of Crisis’ in 50 Years of Mass Shootings. This Is What We Found,” NYT, 1/26/23). Not by a gun, or by police, or with stiffer laws, but with more neighbor-love.

Mercifully, the prophet Micah ends the non-stop cycle of bad news with a reminder of the never-ending grace of God. Micah offers the false prophets, the drunken religious leaders, the corrupt politicians, the greedy businesspeople, the self-serving civic leaders, and all of us, a word of forgiveness.

The last two verses of Micah are read by every year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year in Judaism. Micah writes, “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. (7:18–19) Micah’s last word, then, is not fire and brimstone; it’s an evocative reminder of the energizing hope that God offers to all of us. What would it be like to wake up to good news? Good news begins with living the good news of Jesus. Who will be neighbor?  “Blest are you. Holy are you…Rejoice and be glad yours is the kingdom of God.” (ELW # 728).

Epiphany 3A-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

It was New Year’s Day, 1929. The University of California at Berkely Golden Bears played the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in the Rose Bowl. Halfway through the second quarter, Golden Bears defensive tackle, Roy Riegels, scooped up a fumble by Georgia Tech’s Jack “Stumpy” Thomason, 30 yards from the end-zone. The pivotal play changed outcome of the game. As Riegels later told the Associated Press, “I was running toward the sidelines when I picked up the ball. I started to turn to my left toward the goal. Somebody shoved me and I bounded [bounced] right off into a tackler. In pivoting to get away from him, I completely lost my bearings.” Riegels became disoriented. He spun around and ran 69 yards in the wrong direction. Roy “Wrong Way” Riegels blunder is often cited as the worst mistake by a single player in the history of college football.

Wrong Way Riegels, by all accounts, was a great football player. His story is a cautionary tale. Sometimes, even when we are very good at what we do, and are trying our very best, we are tragically unaware that we are going the wrong way. Those who sit in darkness cannot comprehend the darkness until they see the light. Our redemption begins with changing direction.

Like a lighthouse beside stormy seas Jesus shined a light revealing the outlines of a new and distant shore, a new kingdom, a new life, a new way of being, a new way of being together. Suddenly the disciples understood their life could go a different direction. Or, in the words of Matthew’s gospel, they could repent and follow Jesus.

 Jesus’ first, one-sentence sermon is identical to the message of that wild man John Baptist (3:1). ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near'” (4:17). It sounds to us like some fire and brimstone warning about the afterlife. Yet, we may be surprised to uncover here the core message of grace. To repent is not to feel bad, but to think differently. To repent doesn’t mean to grovel in self-hatred or pious sorrow. To repent is to turn around, to change direction, or make a radical rupture with the past.

The good news of Jesus shines into the hidden corners of the world to lead us out from the pain and suffering caused by hate, fear, or anything else that degrades and dehumanizes us. That’s where we find Jesus today. He is searching out fertile fishing grounds among those in need. Capernaum was in the back-water territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. It was the “wild west,” a rough, unruly place frequented by bandits and revolutionaries derided by religious know-it-alls in Jerusalem as uncivilized, semi-literate, and infected by paganism.  It was a land familiar with brutality, poverty, and hunger, a land unaccustomed to hope.

You might think the disciples had a pretty good life. They fished every day. They lived beside the sea.  They owned their own business.  Maybe it had been that way once, but a process of brining and preserving fish had allowed fishing to become industrialized. In the first-century Roman Empire, fishing was a miserable job controlled by the Roman state — only profiting the elite.

“In the ancient Roman Empire, you didn’t work for yourself. You didn’t choose a job or a career. You worked for Caesar. Your entire family worked for Caesar. You, your parents and children, and your neighbors and friends were part of a massive political and economic hierarchy which took nearly all the work of your hands and gave it to the wealthiest people in the empire — and from which you, your relations, and your community received almost no benefit.” (Diana Butler Bass, Sunday Musings, 1/22/23). This is ‘the land of deep darkness’ into which Jesus journeyed—and doesn’t it sound familiar?

The land beside the sea was a fertile place to fish for human hearts and minds hungry for hope.  Peter, Andrew, James, and John were ready to hear the gospel because they knew, deep in their bones, they were headed the wrong way.  They were ready to become valuable, dignified citizens of the kingdom of heaven rather than continue being subjects of King Herod or living as cogs in the Imperial economic machine that was the Rome Empire.

I would like to think that today we are living in a similar time more open to receiving gospel. Afterall, haven’t we started to realize we are all going the wrong way? We cannot thrive while the natural world dies. Economic extraction, perpetual growth, and short-term profits will lead us, like lemmings, to our collective doom—not to mention the pound of flesh it demands of our health and well-being. Haven’t these past three years been an epiphany? We have seen how Christian church has become infected by nationalism, white supremacy, and a greedy media machine. We are startled to realize how fragile our democracy has become. We are going the wrong way.

Living and working in Nazi Germany, Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote in The Cost of Discipleship, “Where will the call to discipleship lead those who follow it? What decisions and painful separations will it entail?  We must take this question to him who alone knows the answer.  Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows the where the path will lead.  But we know that it will be a path full of mercy beyond measure.  Discipleship is joy.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 40)

Could it be? The unfolding path behind Jesus will lead us, finally, in the right direction toward happier, more fulfilling lives, however much it may cost us in terms of worldly success.  I recommend to you a little documentary now on Netflix featuring the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, who share their deep friendship, much laughter, and their teachings on the wisdom of living a faith-centered life. It’s called Mission: Finding Joy in Troubled Times.

You don’t have to take their word for it. Acts of kindness toward others have a measurable, lasting effect on our own happiness, and immune system functioning. Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. What’s the key to human happiness, according to the longest study ever conducted on the subject? It’s friendship. More specifically, good listening, being trustworthy, curious about others, empathetic, generous, hospitable, and caring. We could just as easily list all these as fruits of our faith in Jesus. These are the spiritual gifts that bless our lives as we change direction and follow the way of Jesus and his cross.

Jesus went to “Galilee of the Gentiles,” literally, the land of ‘those who are not us.’ We will see this word appear again, translated as “nations” in the Great Commission Jesus issues to the nascent Church at the end of Matthew’s gospel. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

No matter how far we have strayed, grace abounds for those who turn to follow the light. As Martin Luther wrote, “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.”  Hear the good news. Follow me.

Epiphany 2A-23 

Immanuel Lutheran

Two weeks ago, on New Year’s Day, I went to church with extended family on vacation. New Year’s Day is what we call a ‘low Sunday.’  Yet, to my surprise, the worship center, built to hold 1,600 people, was mostly full. Parishioners were eager to maintain a right relationship with Jesus (by avoiding a whole checklist of sins including homosexuality) to ensure each of them, individually, would be among the few people raptured to meet Jesus in the sky and taken to their eternal home in heaven.  (Okay. There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s set aside the part about the rapture for a moment).

So, what do you think?  Can we get right with Jesus and ensure our individual eternal survival by avoiding a list of sins? It’s a simple formula. Grace abounds—except for anyone not living right by Jesus. Hop on the Jesus track and ride the Kingdom train all the way glory. But what if, sometimes, people go off track? Can they hop back on?  What if the moment we fall off track is the exact moment of the rapture? Do we get a pass for at least trying?

We find a clue in today’s gospel. John points to Jesus and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the world.” It may seem small—but notice—here John does not say, Jesus takes away our sins (plural), but our Sin. In other words, Sin isn’t a check list of bad behaviors at all. Sin is a narcissistic human condition.  It is a kind of tunnel-vision of heart and mind locked solely in on our self. Our fragile ego, our petty interests, desires, and grudges become the whole world. The remedy Christ Jesus, the logos, turns our hearts and minds outward toward God, the world, and each other.

In fact, Jesus ripped up all forms of checklist religion once and for all. Jesus takes away the sin of accounting for sin. Just stop it. Stop trying to justify your own righteousness or to elevate yourself above others. In Christ, there are no most-favored people, no most-favored race, no most-favored gender, no most-favored orientation, no most-favored nation, not even a most-favored religion. What’s more, this Jesus rips up any notion there is some big book of life, somewhere just inside the pearly gates, recording all your merits and demerits. Jesus is not Santa Claus. Jesus did not die on the cross to appease the wrath of a violent God out for blood.  It was the crowd. The mob. It is us who demanded that Jesus die.

Instead, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, not by blood sacrifice, but by becoming our lifeblood. Here is the body of Christ, given for you.  Here is the blood of Christ, shed for you.  The one-life flowing in, with, under, and around all things now, knits us together with God into the Body of Christ.  As the blood flowing throughout the body nourishes and sustains every part of it, so now the life of Christ Jesus flows within and between us. Or, as we like to say around here, “Grace is for everyone, or it isn’t grace.  It’s that simple!  It’s that amazing.”

Perhaps this is where our gospel takes its most surprising turn not toward the sky, or to the afterlife, but here and now, on earth as well as in heaven.  Five times in four verses, (John 1:29-42, 38-39), John’s gospel uses the little Greek work, meno, typically (but not always) translated by the English word, abide. (Which I highlighted for you in reading the gospel today.) The gospel of John encourages us to see these linkages to what comes later, namely, Jesus’ teaching that he abides in the Father and the Father in him. And we as his disciples are then invited to abide in him and he in us. Today’s gospel reading introduces us to these themes, showing us how the Father’s Spirit comes to abide in Jesus at his baptism, and how Jesus invites the disciples to abide with him.

As followers of Jesus, we become a new creation, through Word and sacrament. Little by little, and sometimes, all at once, we are joined together in the One life of God within the Holy Trinity to love and care for each other, creation, and for the common good just as God does. (Which brings us to what scholar Barbara Rossing has called the non-biblical idea of the rapture.) Christian faith will not allow us to make of our religion an ejector seat from this world. Rather, we follow our Lord Jesus from our spiritual home in heaven down into the world to bind up the broken hearted, heal the sick, preach forgiveness of sin, work for justice, and let the oppressed go free.

Christianity is not a religion of escape, but of incarnation.  The Word became flesh and lives among us. Faith is not what we do separately and individually, but what we do collectively, collaboratively, generously, hospitably, communally, and mysteriously. The prophet Isaiah proclaimed, “The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb, he named me” (Isaiah 49:1b). Notice, that God called us by the name—Israel!  We are individuals who find our true self as living members of that giant family as children of Abraham and Sarah.

As Isaiah testified, God proclaims “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

The disciples could not have imagined where their decision to follow Jesus would take them.  He just said, “Come and see” (John 1:39).  He would take them to the cross. He would show them the way to live under and within the shelter of God’s abiding presence even while they walked through the valley of the shadow of death.

Dave Daubert, pastor of Zion Lutheran in Elgin, Illinois has said, “The work of the church is renewing its people.”  We’ve been trying and failing to renew congregations for years.  You can’t do that.  You can only renew God’s people and let them renew the congregation.  “God isn’t interested in a bigger church as much as God is interested in a transformed world.  And that means reconnecting the church with what God is up to in the world.”

Martin Luther King famously said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  In his letter from a Birmingham jail King also warned the universe doesn’t bend toward the better all by itself.

Come and see. Abide with me. To answer the call to discipleship is to actively engage with Jesus.  John uses a string of active verbs–to follow; see; seek; stay; find. Jesus invites us, as if to say, ‘If you follow this pathway with me, and are open to God’s vision for your life, you will see what you truly need to experience wholeness, vitality, and hope in the midst of finitude, brokenness, and loss.’ As we dwell with Jesus Christ our heart and mind is renewed, and our energies reverse direction and begin to turn out from over focus on ourselves toward love of neighbor as our self. Bending and weaving our strength together for the common good, here and now—however we are given to understand the common good—we make life better for ourselves and everyone else, while riding that kingdom train into glory.

Christmas Eve – 22

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

The prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him, describes the nativity scene at the birth of Jesus in the Quran (Surah 19) featuring a great tree.  It’s the first Christmas tree if you will—centuries before the tradition developed among Christians. The tree is not an evergreen, but rather, a date palm. Mary and baby Jesus rest beneath the shade of its branches. Fresh dates from the tree restore Mary’s strength after giving birth and a spring miraculously flowing from the base of the tree provides water for her to drink.

This Islamic nativity scene is striking—first—because the story exists at all, second, for how it reflects a very non-European cultural setting. I wonder, what might our Christmas traditions be like if they were somehow reconnected to their Middle Eastern roots?  Jesus was born in the city of David called Bethlehem. Our gospel was likely written in Antioch of Syria (which today is part of Turkey).  It is just sixty-five miles from Aleppo. Might we have more natural empathy with the suffering of people of Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan if our Christmas celebrations had less to do with snow, holly, and conifer and instead helped us “turn back” toward the birthplace of the nativity? (Mariam Sheikh Hakim, “The Little-Known Story of The Islamic Christmas Tree” Huffington Post, 12/16/16)

Like all the brightly colored gifts wrapped and waiting under the tree this year, we must unwrap the gift of Christmas to re-learn what it is. Peel away two millennia of culture and tradition—to re-discover the surprising/challenging/wonderful message of Christmas: People of every time and place share the same address and zip code.

Christ is our Alpha and Omega, the home we came from and the resting place toward which we inevitably travel. Christmas is good news of great joy for all people (Luke 2: 10b). Christ, our savior, took on flesh, was born, lived among us, and breathes life into weary hearts among us still.

If all this were not mysterious enough, our scripture casts the circle of oneness in Christ even wider. Maybe there is something else from long ago, which we forgot, or now need to reclaim. Push back the swaddling clothes to see that humankind is locked in cosmic union with all life, including rocks and hills, trees and meadows, earth and sky. The psalmist and the prophet Isaiah declare, the whole earth joins in singing a new song, and the trees of the field clap their hands (Psalm (96:1-3; Isaiah 55:12).

Yes. The story of Jesus’ birth is about union with God, union with one another, and union with all creation. With the incarnation God is not content to dwell in fullness only within you, or exclusively among us, but the Spirit of God pours out and fills all things with beauty, indelible dignity, and grace. The angels declared to poor shepherds good news for everyone. “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior.”

There’s an old preacher’s story about a newborn’s precocious four-year old sibling who announces to her parents she wants to talk to her little brother alone. After clearing the room the parents put their ears to the door and hear the little girl saying to her baby brother, “Quick, tell me who made you. Tell me where you came from. I’m beginning to forget!”

A child’s strange intuition probes deep in the Christmas mystery of God with us.  Have we forgotten?  How have we missed this?  Listen to the roar of the sea, and all that fills it; watch for the field to exult, and everything in it.  “…all the trees of the forest sing for joy” at the Lord’s coming (Psalm 96:11-12). Let all Christians, Muslims, Jews, people of faith, and people of no faith, clasp hands and hearts.

Somehow, we seem out of touch with awareness of enchantment that came naturally to ancient peoples and persists to this day in cultures of the East, and also among native Americans, and others. The gift of Christmas Christ selected for you offers the perfect antidote. Look, Incarnation means everything sparkles with the fullness and presence of God.  Matter is not empty, but everything speaks of the one life we share.

Re-enchantment born of incarnation is urgently needed among us to restore health and balance.  When we become disconnected from the enchanted world we inhabit, from forests, meadows, mountains, oceans, sky—even from the suffering of entire species—it is easy for our world to empty into flatness. Is it any wonder then that people too can be treated as mere refuse to be held out of sight, isolated, and discarded? Look. Christ Jesus and the holy family became refugees fleeing violence, desperately seeking safety, and a home just like so many millions of families today. How shocking!  How startling, to pull back the blankets of someone sleeping in our streets today and see there, in flesh and blood, Jesus Christ, your Lord.

Most of us learn more from weakness than from strength, in hardship rather than success. It’s not that God intends for human weakness and suffering to be ends in themselves. Sometimes hardships and suffering simply overwhelm us and no good comes from them. But it’s also true that weakness can open the way for greater wisdom, self-reflection, and focus on what is essential.“Our weakness finally opens our eyes to the need for a Savior. Nothing prevents that more than our strength. No one has ever said, ‘I was so successful I just had to come to Jesus.’” (Craig Barnes, Princeton Theological Seminary) Power understood through the prism of the incarnation is different from how the world understands power. It’s the difference between power over others, and the power of connecting with others, which requires us to be open and vulnerable.

For Christmas, Jesus continually turns the world upside down. Jesus’ subversive gift challenges to human-crafted structures that oppress and bind. Jesus unlocks the human imagination to see a third way — the Jesus way—that takes us beyond either/or and into both/and. This way of Jesus brings healing to individuals, communities, and nations. (Pastor Renée Notkin, Union Church Seattle)

“What the incarnation represents is God entering history not as the screenwriter of the drama but as an actor within it. Jesus is the suffering protagonist. No one thought it would start quite this way, an infant placed in a manger in a troubled corner of a troubled world. You would have thought he [that baby] would be among the most inconsequential individuals ever. You would have been wrong.” (Peter Wehner, Christmas Should Humble Us, NYT, 12/24/19)

We wonder at these things.  Scripture only says, ‘Mary treasured all the words people said about Jesus and pondered them in her heart’ (Luke 2:19). At the communion rail, and the font, in scripture and in prayer, and wherever two are three are gathered in his name, you are midwife to the incarnation of grace God is bringing into being among us.  In Christ, you are light for the world.

The poet and liturgical artist Jan Richardson writes:

I cannot tell you how the light comes.

What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining.

That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us.

That it loves searching out what is hidden, what is lost, what is forgotten or in peril or in pain.

That it has a fondness for the body, for finding its way toward the flesh, for tracing the edges of form, for shining forth through the eye, the hand, the heart.

I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does.

That it will.

That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee.

And so, may we this day turn ourselves toward it.

May we lift our faces to let it find us.

May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes.

May we open and open more and open still to the blessed light

that comes.

(How The Light Comes, Jan Richardson, printed in Circle of Grace, p.59)

Advent 4A-22

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

I met a kid at tutoring on Monday night. His name was ‘Nottie.’ I had to ask him to repeat it for me.  I wasn’t sure I heard it right. ‘Naughty,’ I asked?  Barely interested and without looking up, he said, “yes.”  Obviously, he was already clued in and a little bored with the topic. His name sounds funny to English speakers.  My name, Montgomery, is unusual too. Suddenly I thought of all the ways kids at school might have teased him for something he had no part in choosing. I once asked my parents why they choose my name—thinking that if it had something to do with the Montgomery bus boycott, that would be cool. But no. It seems they just wanted something ‘different,’ that, and my mother liked the actor, Montgomery Clift.  I asked Nottie whether his name meant anything in his native language, Amheric. His response surprised me.  Yes, he said, ‘Nottie means ‘kissed by God.’

Beautiful. Sometimes a name can express all a parent’s hopes and dreams in a single word. Joseph’s name meant “God will give.”  It connected him to Joseph and his multi-colored dream coat. It connected his story to the indestructible promise God made to his ancestors to bless them with abundance throughout the generations.

Joseph was coming into his own. He would have a family, a career, maybe even his own business. Yet, the shock and scandal of Mary’s pregnancy threatened to shatter all his grand expectations. On one pivotal night, because of a single dream, Joseph chose to trade his own good name for one synonymous with disgrace and derision.  He would look like a fool to his friends and family. Joseph says yes. And the baby is born: Emmanuel, God-with-us, the promise of Israel. Joseph was kissed by God.

Joseph’s willingness to forsake conventional righteousness, ennobled him. That he changes direction overnight in a dark conversation makes him an Advent icon.  As Carl Jung might have said, Joseph was awakened by his dream. As ephemeral as this new dream was, both Mary and Joseph proved willing to turn their lives inside out so that the urgent prayers of Israel could be answered by the birth of a baby whose name would be, “save” (Matthew 1:18-25). (Suzanne, Suzanne Guthrie, At The Edge of the Enclosure, 2013).

It’s well known that Mother Teresa once had a profoundly vivid experience of the presence of Jesus as a young woman.  That vision was the beginning of her legendary ministry among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India.  Years later, near the end of her life, she was asked about it in an interview.  The reporter assumed she must have had many such experiences all through her amazing life.  Her answer was a surprise.  No, she said, it had happened only just that once –and never again.  Yet she had lived her entire life in faithfulness to that dream and that is why we honor her. Mother Teresa was kissed by God.  Beware the kiss of God.

We love to sing “Away in a Manger?” “Silent Night?” “Joy to the World?” These hymns evoke such warm feelings and teary-eyed tenderness we forget what stress the Holy Family must have been under. Our psalm today is full of lament in search of answers from God. “How long will your anger fume when your people pray?” (Psalm 80:4).  In a jam like Joseph, it’s only right he would be fitful and agitated, raise his fist and shout, “Why me, Lord?”  What have I done to deserve this?  Soon there will be other shoes to drop too. The holy family will flee to Egypt, and King Herod’s desperate attempt to kill baby Jesus will result in the slaughter of the innocents. Call Angel Gabriel. Get him back. This whole thing sounds wrong. Sometimes, we can be right in the middle of a miracle and still complain about it. Do you know that you too, are kissed by God?

Like Joseph and Mary, we stand apart to stand for the whole. We give ourselves to God’s dream for this fallen world. Can we see ourselves becoming like Joseph and Mary? Which dream shall we live by –the dreams approved by the world, or those which God has for us and our lives together?

Maybe you think Joseph and Mary were chosen because they were different—or because they were good—maybe even very, very good? Researchers confirm, over and over, the great majority of us still believe the way you get to chosen by God is by being a good person—that you get what you deserve. We hear this message everywhere playing on an endless nauseating loop. Santa’s coming so, ‘You’d better watch out, you better not cry, I’m telling you why –only good little boys and girls get presents—and all the rest on the naughty list get a lump of coal.

We Lutherans know better. By grace alone is central to who we are. Grace is God’s fundamental driving power, expressed by God’s dogged commitment to bring beauty out of what’s broken. Or, as the great contemporary theologian, Bono of U2 sang, grace travels outside of Karma. Joseph and Mary said yes to God’s preposterous, dangerous, adventurous invitation and that made all the difference. Others would call them naughty. Yet they were kissed by God. They lived by faith alone.

Which brings us to the greatest Christmas miracle of all.  I mean, why did God bother with Joseph and Mary at all?  Why take on flesh, live among us, suffer and die?  Well, apparently, God’s way of being is a call to radical solidarity.  Active, practical care is God’s way, not only of deepening relationship with us, but also of making worlds worth living in, including the whole more than human universe. Now that’s quite a Christmas gift.

We live in radical solidarity with all life.  We live, not with all the answers, but by faith. The Welsh poet -R.S. Thomas ( 1913-2000) wrote a poem called “The Bright Field” with some good advice for would-be dreamers of God.  He wrote:

I have seen the sun break through

To illuminate a small field for a while,

And gone my way and forgotten it

But that was the pearl of great price,

The one field that had the treasure in it.

I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it.

Life is not hurrying on to a receding future,

Nor hankering after an imagined past.

It is turning aside like Moses

To the miracle of a lit bush,

To a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once,

But is the eternity that awaits you.

Advent 3A-22
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

It’s a blue Christmas for John the Baptist. He paces back and forth in his narrow cell. Imprisoned by King Herod, he questions the choices he’s made. Last Sunday, he seemed so sure of himself. John preached a baptism of fire and spirit in the wilderness beside the Jordan. But now, facing death, he’s not so sure. He sends messengers to question Jesus. “Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3).

Some might hand out demerits to John for his lack of faith. But not Jesus. He does not put John on the naughty list. Jesus doesn’t throw John under the bus. Questions and doubts are not enough to rupture their relationship or call into question John’s loyalty and dedication. As we say every Sunday, ‘Wherever you are, whatever your background, regardless of your doubts and questions, you are welcome in this community of faith.’

“Truly,” Jesus said, “I tell you no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist” (Matt 11:11). Yet, this is not the sort of faith story we like to tell—even though many of us, and, if we are honest, have lived some version of it. We like conversion stories that go straight from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, from despair to joy and stay there. Yet, John’s story doesn’t follow this happy trajectory. It’s an anti-conversion story. “John’s journey is a backwards one. From certitude to doubt. From boldness to hesitation. From knowing to unknowing. From heavenly light to jail cell darkness.” (Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus, “Has It All Been For Nothing?”, 12-8-19). All our striving, all our planning, all our praying and hoping— has it all been for nothing?

We might call it spiritual failure, or maybe faithlessness? In the sixteenth century, another John, Saint John of the Cross, would call it the dark night of the soul. We might judge ourselves for it. Jesus doesn’t. Notice, Jesus responds to his cousin’s pained question with composure, gentleness, and understanding. What was happening to John wasn’t fair. The stupid capricious power of King Herod cut John’s life short. This gospel teaches us it’s okay to doubt, question, rage, and shake our fist at God –as many psalmists do.

Yet, honestly, I think there is something more hidden within this gospel. Some wisdom that waits to open for us whenever we, like John, come close to treading on despair. In fact, something like the disillusionment John experienced may even be necessary for us to glimpse the joy and hope that comes from God alone. Of course, Advent is perfect for this. Our ancestors in faith passed down stories like this one about John to rekindle the spirit, to restore our imagination precisely in times when everything appears hopeless, to help us endure our own dark night of the soul.

Fears of the apocalypse seem to be everywhere in popular culture. There was Planet of the Apes and Mad Max. The Blade Runner and the Matrix. Zombies—lots of zombies. In Star Wars, The Hunger Games, and the endless Avenger series, good battles evil on a cosmic scale. Yes. The Advent blues seem to fit us like an old pair of jeans. In the 1950’s we were so sure of ourselves, so confident about the future. We had conquered the evil of fascism and overcome the great depression. Now our addiction to an economy of extraction, the politics of fear, an endless war on terrorism, the rise of Christian nationalism, and the propagation (seemingly) everywhere of religion that fosters hate rather than love, clouds our optimism for the future with fear. In the darkness of night, the question creeps into consciousness—has it all been for nothing?
Our ancestors in faith knew this moment would come. They packed the mysterious themes and images of apocalypse into the bible to open and reveal their wisdom in just such a time as this. After all, they knew about disillusionment. They too, experienced desolation. The economy we worshipped, the privilege and high esteem in which we held ourselves is coming to an end. Yes, they council, but do not fear. These are but the birth pangs, the beginning of wisdom which holds the cure to warring madness. Could we dare to hope the world is about to turn?

See, our ancestors bequeathed to us the key that opens the gates of the New Jerusalem. Faith in Jesus unlocks our fear and frees our imagination to glimpse the world God intends which is already here and not yet. We are meant to be citizens of this counter world in partnership with creation, where love is love, and beauty is revealed in the harmony of contrasts. We are called to walk by faith into the heart of God’s vision for life together that God will show us.
But Jesus doesn’t sugar coat it. The baby born in a barn will die a criminal death. John’s death will be both tragic and dumb—a travesty of injustice. To add icing on the cake, soon, Jesus’ mother and brothers will show up too, presumably wanting to question their problematic child and brother and lock him away at home. How does Jesus answer?

Our reading today describe at least eighteen — eighteen! — sorts of people in pain who might be forgotten by the world but who are nevertheless remembered by God: the blind, the lame, the diseased, the deaf, the dead, the poor, the dumb, the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoners, the bowed down, foreigners, orphans, widows, the humble, and then, my three favorites, those with feeble hands, weak knees, and fearful hearts” (Daniel Clendenin). God’s heroes may suffer violence, yet they are not the ones who inflict it.

This holy season of Advent invites us to honor doubt, despair, and silence as reasonable reactions to a broken world. To create sacred space for grief, mourn freely, and rage against injustice. To let joy be joy, sorrow be sorrow, horror be horror. To feel deeply because that’s exactly what God does. (Thomas)
In the gloom of his prison cell, Jesus prepared John to meet the living God who is always more, who’s coming is always different, whose power is always greater and more glorious than we could have imagined. See, the Lord Jesus stoops from heaven to put a new song in our heart. See, Christ comes to walk with us. Jesus enters our life with comfort and courage no matter how messy or fraught with ugly strife, bickering or bitterness. Jesus comes not in wrath but in love; not as one who seeks to destroy, but as one with power to transform and renew. Jesus took on flesh and lived among us. This spirit of Christ is upon you. Our dark night is ending. The first light of hope breaks now as the dawn.