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I hope I am not the only one who has been paying attention to the creche in the narthex. The creche is that small, beautiful scene that has been set up for us in the entry way of the church beginning since the start of Advent. You may have been here when I not only discovered the baby Jesus in the pulpit but boldly held it up and said to the gathered Church, “look I found the baby Jesus.” 

You may know but any self-respecting creche will keep the baby Jesus out of the manger until Christmas Eve and we faithfully put the baby in place before our service on Christmas. But that wasn’t all that was going on. The Wise Men were on a journey around the church. We couldn’t put the Wise Men in place until time and if you will check, they are almost where they are supposed to be. Epiphany, when it arrives will signal us that the creche is now completed. Oddly though, we hear in the Gospel this morning that the Wise Men have already visited and if you’ll check the calendar, Epiphany is on January 6^th. So if you’re a liturgical fundamentalist, you may be a little off kilter this morning. I understand. So am I.

But this doesn’t keep us from learning a lot about the Gospel this morning. We hear that the wise men have already come and gone and left the holy family with a bit of a start. Ironically the Wise Men, or better, the Magi, had delivered a message to Herod the Great that a special birth had taken place and wondered if he knew anything about it. What follows is rather dramatics scene full of intrigue and disaster. 

Herod was widely known in the first century for his brutality and paranoia. He had one of his wives and several of his sons murdered because he thought they were plotting against him. Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor under whom Herod ruled, is rumored to have said that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son. As the would-be Jewish king, Herod could not eat pork, so his pigs were safer than his offspring!

So when Herod the Magi show up at the palace Herod hears the story of a baby born to be, according to the Magi, king of the Jews, Herod does what nearly every despotic leader has done since. He begins to plot how to get rid of this so-called King and implores the Magi to come back to him and report where he can find the baby. As someone has said, “when Herod is troubled, all Jerusalem is troubled with him.” This is just a way of saying that ruthless tyrants do what ruthless tyrants do. And since this is a good descriptor of Herod, we are repelled but not surprised that he plans on killing all the infant boys in Bethlehem in order to destroy the one the Magi said was a king.   

Unfortunately, history is marked with the same kind of savage ways tyrants deal with those who would challenge them. That bright star that led the Magi to Bethelhem was not good news for Herod. You can almost hear Mary’s song in the background reminding us that God has “cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” Despite what Herod thinks, everything has been changed by Jesus’ incarnation. Those world leaders who think the world is something to control and manipulate and those who stand in the way can be easily removed are about to find out that God will not stand for that. “He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy.” Herod and Caesar and whoever would dare to stand in the way of God’s reign of love and mercy will come to know personally that God “has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.” Talk about being on the wrong side of history. Later to underscore who really is in charge, the early Christians introduced a saying, a title really, to stand in stark contrast to what Caesar demanded. Caesar required people to chant in his presence: “Caeser is Lord.” The Christians changed this and we’re pretty much in the dark about its origin. They chanted “Jesus is Lord.” We would be well reminded that no earthly leader is worthy of the admiration and honor that only God is due. Anytime an attempt to make someone else have that kind of authority and power, is just another failed attempt at anti-Christ. I can almost hear the chants of Holy Week when those who were asked if Jesus was their King, replied resoundly with a cry “Our only king is Caesar.” Herod was about to learn that this never turns out well.

  But it’s not only the Magi that have alerted the Holy Family, but an angel gets in on the act. An angel appears in a dream to Joseph who is told to take his young family to Egypt and to stay there until it is safe to return. And so, Joseph, Mary and Jesus align themselves with refugees both before and since and leave their home searching for a safe place to avoid the disaster that Herod had planned.

It’s interesting how things change but how certain things remain the same. I was reminded this week that “the Hebrew Bible orbits around God’s subversion of the politics of Pharoah. The New Testament orbits around God’s subversion of the politics of Caesar. When we miss this, our religion cannot resist the gravitational pull of playing to Pharoah/Caesar politics.” Many people have fallen prey to this. We would be good to remember that Jesus is Lord and not Caesar. And our Lord is a dark-skinned child born to a scandalized mom and a poor stepdad. He spends his childhood as a political refugee, grows up breaking laws and is eventually executed for defying religious leaders. This is story we must tell over and over, lest we fall into the trap of forgetting the temptation of all the Herods and Caesars that continue to make their appearance and our temptation to make them Lord.

There is another problematic characteristic of these three Magi that needs to be mentioned. The magi were most likely astrologers, perhaps even Zoroastrian priests from Persia. They are certainly Gentiles; they come from outside of Israel, and they do not know the Scriptures. But they do know how to read the stars. God reaches out to them and leads them through what they already know. In the ancient world, stars and other signs in the heavens were thought to signal important events. In this case, a bright star rising leads them to discern that a royal birth has occurred in Judea. So they come bringing gifts fit for royalty – gold and frankincense and myrrh.

But did you hear that? They were outsiders. They were pagans. They weren’t believers. They didn’t come all that distance because they were biblical scholars and having learning about the suffering servant of Isaiah, they were simply making sure there biblical understanding was matching up with an actual birth. They were astrologers!

Sometimes it’s too clever by half to try and limit God based on doctrine or theology. Both doctrine and theology are simply our attempts to make sense of who God is and/or what God is doing. Sometimes it’s best to just put our Bible and Prayer Book down, look to the heavens and sit in awe. God is God and if God wants to use outsiders to protect the Holy Family, who are we to complain? Indeed, I learned a long time ago that the best we can do is to look at God and be driven to our knees about God’s vastness, God’s love and God’s desire to draw all people to God’s side. Sometimes God does things, and we seem to think that no self-respecting God would do it that way. But when you think about it, what self-respecting God would send God’s only son into the world as a innocent baby that would need the help of astrologers from Persia. And while we’re at it, what kind of God would bring salvation to the world through an actual crucifixion.

Before we leave this unusual story, the gift of gold for a king is not unusual, but frankincense and myrrh may be a little confusing. “Both frankincense and myrrh come from the fragrant resins of trees, and both have long been used in perfumes and in the making of incense for worship. Myrrh has some very distinctive properties. The name itself means “bitter” in Arabic. Its yellowish-white resin seeps from the trunk of a small desert tree when wounded and hardens into teardrop shapes, as though the tree itself were weeping. Once exposed to the air, its color deepens into gold, then amber, and then scarlet—like drops of blood against the bark of the trees. The resin is bitter to taste, but when ground into a powder or burned as incense, it releases an extraordinary fragrance.” 

Myrrh has long been used for its medicinal qualities as an antiseptic or analgesic agent. According to Mark, Jesus was offered wine mixed with myrrh at his crucifixion (Mark 15:23). In the ancient world, myrrh was also a common agent used for embalming the dead, and according to John’s Gospel, it was used at Jesus’ burial (John 19:39). As such, myrrh seems a strange gift to bring to an infant, a gift more suited for the end of life than its beginning. 

Yet it seems that the magi were indeed wise in their gift-giving. Their gift foreshadows what is to come. Myrrh is a bittersweet gift, but it is a fitting gift for King Jesus born into the world of King Herod, for an infant king born into a world where evil tyrants plot the deaths of innocents. It is a fitting gift for this humble king who will be put to death as a threat against the empire. It is a fitting gift for the shepherd-king who comes to lay down his life for the sheep. The fourth verse of the Christmas carol “We Three Kings” brings out this significance of myrrh very well:

Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume
breathes a life of gathering gloom,
sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
sealed in a stone cold tomb.

Even if we would rather not be reminded, the gift of myrrh reminds us that Jesus’ birth, like every birth, begins a journey toward death. This infant king is born to die, and it is for our sake. At the same time, the healing properties of myrrh remind us that in Jesus’ death and victory over the grave, there is healing for all our ills.” (Elizabeth Johnson). And so God moves directly into the lives of the Holy Family, Herod, the Magi and don’t lose this one, our own. Jesus is Lord and Caeser and Herod and whoever else, is not.

There are certain times of year, certain Sundays that I must fight the desire to listen to the Gospel and just sit down. What can you say after such beautiful words? It’s so beautiful, so profound, so moving, it seems like anything said afterward is superfluous at best and rather insipid at worst.

Yet I also have an urgency to stand and applaud. I am not sure there is anything more moving, more beautifully written, and more theologically profound that the words that came out of this young pregnant teenager on hearing that she will become the God bearer, the mother of God’s own son.

Julie used to accuse me of making Mary younger every year. I think she started out at about 17 and eventually made it to 12. But her age isn’t what causes me to sit up and pay attention. It’s her willingness to agree to something which may end disastrously for her that makes her stand out. Can you imagine what that scene was like, I mean at its very best this is a very odd way to tell a story about how Mary got pregnant with Jesus.

Here is a young, unmarried girl being told by an angel that she is soon to become pregnant. Bad enough, right?  But hold on, it gets worse. One of the things that stands out to me is the whole angel thing.  I mean how often does an angel show up with news like this? Or how many times does an angel show up with any news at all? OK, maybe you are sitting there thinking Darrel don’t take this so literally.  To which I would respond, hold on, what does that even mean?  There’s something here that goes way beyond the story of the event. To make it a mythological attempt to describe the announcement that the Messiah was soon to enter God’s own creation, is to miss the point. It’s a bit like rejecting a TS Eliot poem by saying that it wasn’t literally true or to say a Rembrandt painting should be thrown away because he didn’t paint an actual event that he witnessed. I am not saying that the Angel that showed up to Mary was an imaginary angel.  I am not even asking the question. What I am saying is that the event of the incarnation is such a cataclysmic event, how can we even share the story in a way where people will pay attention. Our problem in the world around us isn’t that people don’t believe the story, they are just simply not paying attention. There’s not a lot of argument going around on whether or not an angel showed up to a teen-aged girl to announce that everything was about to change. That’s not an issue. What is at stake here is whether anyone even hears us.

Just look at the way the world celebrates Christmas. When we lived in Katy, we loved to walk around our neighborhood at night, especially between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We would rate all the yards that had those inflatable Christmas decorations.  The tackiest display was always the winner. And as I remember, there was not much of an argument about which inflatable was the worst… or maybe I should say the best.  The tackier, the better and if it was theologically vapid or whimsical or upsetting, then the more likely we were looking at a winner. There were the typical contestants that for some reason always had a character or two from “A Charlie Brown’s Christmas.” Then of course, one of my favorites would inevitably show up somewhere and that was the inflatable Santa, kneeling in front of a manger, smiling at the Christ child.  That one was hard to beat. But my favorite, year in and year out was always the inflatable green or purple dinosaur, flapping in the wind, wearing a Santa stocking cap and posing in any number of different ways. Nothing says Christmas, I guess, more than an inflatable dinosaur with an ugly sweater.

I am pretty sure a green dinosaur didn’t carry the angel into Mary’s house so that it could announce to her what was about to happen. We don’t need the dinosaur, but I do believe we need the angel.

Angels can be described in several ways but for us this morning let me draw your attention to the way people reacted every time one showed up. It happens here in our story this morning. These people seem to be minding their own business and an angel flaps in from on high, landing, I guess, a few feet away from the human and then utters these very familiar words before the message that they were given from above is uttered.  The angel opens his or her mouth (I am not sure the gender of these angels, but they do have masculine names), and then whispers, I suspect these two words that were supposed to relieve anxiety, but I am not sure they did: “Fear not.”  Ok, an angel out of nowhere, and I am guessing they’re pretty tall, with big wings and, I don’t know, maybe clawed feet? And they tell the person to whom they were sent to not fear? Good luck with that.

But that’s not the point. The point is that something important, perhaps even earth shattering was about to be shared. I mean we don’t get stories of Angels all that much in Scripture. So, when one does make an appearance, we’re supposed to put down all those things we are doing and listen! And not fear.

I think that’s one of the profound things about the story. You see, I think I can speak for the lot of us, but if an angel were to show up, I am not sure I’d even hear it say “fear not” because I would be running as fast as I could in the other direction.

When there is an angel in the story, if it doesn’t cause us to run away as quickly as our legs will carry us, we are supposed to pay attention. I sometimes wonder if all of the hustle and bustle of the season, the sleigh bells roasting on an open fire, or is that chestnuts, the Tiny Tim’s being delivered large turkeys for Christmas dinner, snow and Christmas in Connecticut, all of the verses of “I’ll be home for Christmas” or  “White Christmas” keep us in a deep winter slumber and we, because of being so preoccupied with trying to reinvent that one Christmas we had years ago that seemed so meaningful at the time, are asleep.  We’re not paying attention.

Well, you may be paying attention, but the world is asleep at the wheel. What we need, indeed what we have, is an Angel dressed up in its most dreadful, showing up and announcing that from this time on, nothing will ever be the same. Yes, we need this angel. The world needs this angel to first of all disorient us and then, ultimately to reorient ourselves to the truth that God so loves the world that God is about to make an appearance in the world as one of us.

And thankfully, even though that’s probably enough, the story continues. I think we’d rather stay stuck looking at the Angel because it’s just as unexpected as a green dinosaur but if we do, we miss the part of the story that not only reorients us but redefines how we are to react to this very unlikely story of how God reshuffles the deck. Or how God fulfills the promise of God’s love to the very creation that God created and that had lost its way.

And it all seems to rest on this peasant girl who stands eye to eye with this fearsome creature with words that sound like bad news but that end up being the most joyful, hopeful, life-giving and loving words ever spoken. The angel tells her that she will bring forth from her womb the Messiah, the Lord, Emmanuel, God with us.

The scene in this morning’s gospel takes place a bit later but in it we hear clearly Mary’s reaction, her response to the news that Angel has brought to her.Her song, prefaced by an Angel and her cousin’s child leaping for joy is the most beautiful song of faithfulness that we have in the story ofour faith.

If we weren’t paying attention, if we were busy wrapping presents or decorating the tree or guzzling egg nog, we might have missed what was being sung here. His mercy, she sings, is for those who fear him.  That doesn’t mean that we must be frightened in order to find God’s mercy. Fear, here, means to be in awe. And you have to be asleep to not be in awe. You see, she describes beautifully and poetically the way God has turned everything upside down, or better, how he has set everything right. It’s not the powerful who have been lifted up, but the lowly. The rich have been sent away empty, while the hungry have been filled with good things. God has entered God’s own creation to settle the matter once and for all. The kingdom of the powerful and mighty has been overthrown. God’s realm of mercy, goodness, and love has taken its proper place among the people, rather or not they noticed.

That’s why we need an Angel because he is there to wake us all up. Mary announces to Elizabeth and to anyone who is awake the ultimate game changer. The world will never be what it once was. God’s love has the last word. God’s realm has come. How could Mary have done anything else other than kick up her heels and sing so loudly, it will eventually awaken all who sleep.

My question to you this morning is simply, did you hear the good news? It came to us through a terrifying angel and an unlikely teen-aged peasant girl, God is with us.  Emmanuel.

It’s Advent and if you’ve been around awhile, you know that John makes several appearances during the season but perhaps this is his most famous. It’s difficult to not memorize the beginning of his sermon in this morning’s gospel: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” I want you to listen carefully, because what starts out sounding like bad news, ends up being very, very good news. It’s good to be part of the brood of vipers!

But it’s not just about being part of the brood. It’s clear that John doesn’t have a publicist and doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave those who took some time and effort to come and listen to him. It seems he moves from name called to projection, as he seems to suggest what his listeners had been thinking but no one said, or at least it’s not recorded. He tells them to be careful how they respond to his preaching. He said, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” 

This feels like a low blow. For all these ancestors of Abraham, that was the one thing, the only thing they had. They didn’t have wealth or privilege. They were not oppressors; they were the oppressed. They pitched their tent in a place that John was now threatening to remove. They were absolutely without anything to hold on to other than a sense that they were the chosen ones of God. They were under occupation of the Roman Empire. Even the most holy place of their religion, the Temple, was under constant threat of desecration.

It seems like these people needed pastoral care. They needed to be affirmed and supported. Life was rough. Hopes and dreams were non-existent or meager at best. How could a people, selected by God to be the chosen ones, even show up in public without being completely embarrassed or simply beaten down. And how could Luke call all this haranguing “Good News.” Could it be there’s something more important than privilege.

So John doesn’t let up. John shouts that the judgement he is warning them is not some future event. He says that “even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” It sounds like judgment could be good news.

I expect those who gathered to hear John to say something like, “well John, thanks for sharing, we’re out of here.” But that’s not what they say. In fact, if we’re paying attention, we might be taken up a bit short on their response.  They don’t turn and walk away but instead ask a very important question. It’s simple and to the point, “What then should we do?” It appears that judgment may be good news.

I mean if the crowd was smart, they would leave. But instead of just cracking open the door a little, they throw it wide open. “What then shall we do?” Surely there had to be someone in the back willing to shout John down or at least tell him to shut up. But that’s not what we get. Could it be that judgment is good news?

“In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” I’m at the point where I am about to shout, “Enough John. They get your point.” But wait, next comes a bunch of notorious sinners, the tax collectors, who have a question. Now tax collectors were the worst of the worst. They collected taxes for the Romans and were told that they could keep whatever they could collect from the poor among them beyond the regular taxes that they accumulated. These guys were so bad that if you even hung out with them on a Saturday night, you were contaminated and considered sinful. Tax collectors only had other sinners as friends and couldn’t even go to the Temple.

Yet here they are seemingly make matters even worse by speaking up. But maybe judgment is good news. They had questions but they were also wanting this guy who had to cause more discomfort than relief to baptize them! Baptize them!! Again, if I’d been there, I would have stopped paying attention to John and probably asked the tax collectors if they were out of their minds. But notice they ask John “Teacher, what should we do?” And they got the answer they had to be dreading because it cut into their pocketbook.  It’s not like they were on Social Security. I mean this is all the money they have. And money was needed to live. You needed it buy food, shelter, that sort of thing. Of course, you could barter your way into a Sunday dinner, but what did they have to trade for stuff they needed?  And so, John, doesn’t surprise anyone and responds to them “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”

OK enough is enough. But there must be something here beyond the words we read. After beating up all the Jewish people who came out to hear this “motivational speaker” John turns on the foreigners. The soldiers step up. “And we, what should we do?” And again, John seems to know what these soldiers have been doing and complaining about behind closed doors. “He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation and be satisfied with your wages.” 

We have pretty much exhausted the cast of characters who came out to hear this odd sermon that began in a way that will get you to fail your homiletics course in seminary. You would think he lost them at the “brood of Vipers” line. But maybe God’s judgment is good news..

We suffer from familiarity which can cause to lose the shock of this scene. We have heard it so many times, Advent after Advent. It’s here, we listen, and we go on about our merry way.  But the first hearers felt the scandal. Indeed, it feels like John knows them better than they know themselves. And instead of just shutting down the conversation they begin to wonder how John knows them so well. Luke tells us that they began to wonder among themselves if John just might be the messiah. They seem to understand that God’s judgment is good news.

Have you ever considered why they might think John was the messiah? We have already learned that there was a high degree of Messiah expectancy in the first century in Palestine. Many had stepped forward and made that claim. There was either good money to be made in suggesting that you might be the messiah, or there was at least a lot of fame to be earned if one did that. Biblical scholars point out that a great number of people struggled early on with John’s identity, and many did believe he was the messiah. But at least here, John will have none of that talk. Again, Luke tells us that “John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Doesn’t that mean revealing the truth of how we are living is good news?

He’s not the Messiah but there is one who is coming that is. John is prophetically laying the groundwork for the one who is coming. And when people heard the truth about who it was that they were and how it was they were living their lives, even if it was shameful, they took it as good news. Luke says “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.” And oddly, seeing who we really are, can lead to the ultimate question of God’s judgement, “this is who you are, is it who you wish to remain?” This is good news because that which is denied can never be healed.

Then John, referring to the real messiah, someone he emphatically says he is not, says that the true messiah has a “winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

We all have felt like chaff from time to time, right? And a lot of fear, and money I might add, has been made by scaring people for a long time by throwing out threats like, “you better do this, and don’t do this, and yeah do that, but you better not do this other thing, because, don’t you know, the unquenchable fire awaits all who screw up.” That’s not the way God deals with us. Instead, what always feels like judgement and condemnation, ends up as love, care, and hope. God is not in the business of quid pro quo, you know, do this and you’ll get that. Or better, don’t do this and this won’t happen to you. Attach a list of moral demands and condemnations, add a sprinkle of hate and hell and well, you have a volatile cocktail that has caused many, many people to feel like God’s love is a tack on. But instead, love, not condemnation, not hate, is the context, the entire context of how God deals with all of us. Judgement is simply an honest look at who you are and how we are living. Without judgement, we wouldn’t know. In this way, God’s judgement is loving and crucial to those who desire to live lives that reflect God’s love.

During this season of Advent when we are all asked to prepare for Christmas with hope, peace, joy, and love we are invited to let the truth of John the Baptist soak in and reveal to us those places where the Good News is blocked by our unwillingness to acknowledge where our selfishness and greed make the good news into bad news. But we don’t have to pitch our tent here, but we can allow this unlikely saint of Advent, John the Baptist, helps us to acknowledge that the love we expect on Christmas morning must be shared and given away, not by what we say but how we live our lives, even if we are tax collectors, soldiers or spies. We need to listen; we need to repent. What seems like bad news, God revealing who it is we truly are, is good news because if we list, after showing us this truth we can hear God say “is this who you wish to remain.” He then give us the grace, God’s love, to change.

Luke begins his story with what is, for us, familiar words. The names are etched in our minds, and chances are it’s hard to separate the story from memories that they might invoke. I don’t think there is anything wrong with allowing these kinds of memories bubble up during this season.  Part of the joy and mystery of Advent is preparing but it is also remembering.

That is what Luke is doing for us this morning. He is recalling all the things that had taken place. He wrote that he did so in order to give an “orderly account of all that had taken place.”   Remember this wasn’t written as these events unfolded. Indeed, the Gospels were written a generation or two later, after the fact. After Jesus ministry, the words he taught had to bubble forth as the Gospel began to be shared, orally before they were ever written down. The parables, the healings, the miracles, the odd stories that took the disciples a long time to understand their significance. And now Luke is telling us an orderly account.

I get that. I am sure that I am not the only one who wishes we would have paid a bit more attention to things as they were happening in our past. I tried to savor profound moments, but I didn’t realize that what seemed mundane at the time, would become significant in my memory. There were things that happened at the time that I didn’t have the insight to understand would be profoundly important. I’d love to go back just to experience those moments again.

When I was in seminary, we almost needed a social secretary to schedule our lives. We were busy. I was a full-time student, Julie worked full-time at the Methodist seminary that was located right across the street from where we lived, and our children were young: seven, four and two years old. We moved them from a quiet, shaded street in Topeka Kansas, to a busy, bustling city block in Evanston Illinois. I could end the story by saying that we lived there three years and then moved one more suburb north to Wilmette Illinois so I could start my ministry at the Church of the Holy Comforter in Kenilworth. All of that is true, but so much would have to be left out. And if there is anything that I have learned over the years is that even the small, seemingly insignificant events can end up being the most defining.

We had talked about going to seminary since our first date. I kid you not. I had a sense of a call to a vocation when I was very young, but I certainly would have not been able to articulate it very well. I had a lot of growing up to do. I had many mistakes I had to learn from. I wasn’t even an Episcopalian, but thanks to Julie, that changed shortly after we began dating. And my memory is crystal clear as I think back on that evening, we sat in a living room, sharing what we wanted to do with our lives. “I want to be a pastor,” I foolishly told this beautiful woman who sat across from me.  I probably should have been a bit more intentional in trying to impress her but I had no idea that this woman would one day become my wife. And there is probably nothing worse one could say to a beautiful person sitting across the room from you than “I want to go to seminary.” But alas I did. And thankfully that didn’t ruin anything.

We used to stand in the kitchen and talk about what an ordained life might look like. I am sure I couldn’t separate it from the clapboard house and a white picket fence, and I am sure I thought my life would be a replay of the book series The Mitford Years, none of which can be compared to the reality of what it became. But even so, we spent hours and hours dreaming out loud. One day, I told her, I would become a priest.

Of course, I first had to find a church and so Julie brought me into an Episcopal Church.  It was a place that would later serve as extremely significant as our son, yet unborn, would one day be buried from there.  It would also be the place where I was baptized, along with Joseph, our son. But of course, we had no idea. It was a beautiful place, a bit smaller than here, but they were what I would call “fancy church.” They had it all from stain glass windows to a stained-glass voiced priest. The pipe organ, the vested choir, the banners, and crosses. I don’t remember if it was a specific holy day or not, but they pulled out all the stops. Julie loved it and I, well I put up with it.

Finally, the sermon was over, and I looked at Julie who was hopeful that I would like it as much as she did. She has this way of looking at me that causes me to do a quick introspection. Did I have mustard on my shirt, was I standing when I was supposed to be kneeling, was I singing off-key? I quickly ran through a list of mental checks. No, I was fine.  She was just wondering if I was OK with all that was going on.

Frankly I thought it a bit fussy. I wasn’t raised in a liturgical environment, but I certainly didn’t want to find a fundamentalist church to raise our future family. So, I kept looking for something to connect to… it wasn’t the procession, the choir, or the liturgy.  It was the Nicene Creed. I leaned over and whispered to Julie “if this church believes what we just said, I can be part of it.” I didn’t realize it at the time but that is a huge part of how I experience God: through study and contemplation of God and God’s church.

We got involved quickly but this nagging sense of a call still haunted me. I had to get baptized and then confirmed, which I did. The priest met with each confirmand before confirmation and so I sat down to visit with Fr. Matthews. He asked me what I wanted to do, now that I was becoming an Episcopalian and despite my best efforts to remain quiet, I blurted out “I want to be a priest.”  He smiled, touched me on the knee and said “well, that’s just great. Why don’t you find something to do before you do that?” I was embarrassed and surprised I had been so bold.  I had a sense that everyone who got excited about the church suddenly wanted to be a priest. I was now counted with those who felt that was the only way to serve.

We moved from that town and got involved in the Cathedral in Topeka Kansas. It was a Rite One church, exclusively and the liturgy was grand. I grew to love the historic language of the traditional service and got involved in many aspects of the liturgy, including being the chief acolyte.  Those were great times as my faith came alive in ways that it hadn’t before.  I still wanted to go to seminary and our talks in the kitchen continued until finally we decided the time was right. “Let’s do this,” we said.  And so, the process toward ordination was begun until Julie called timeout.  It seems that she had gotten herself pregnant. We had decided that we would go to seminary with our two children, but if we felt like three children was in our future, then we would have three children and I would continue my job as a public-school teacher. That would mean we’d have to stop talking about seminary.

As they say, if you want to see God smile, tell him your plans. We met with the Dean of the Cathedral to share our news and he calmly and gently encouraged us by suggesting that we stop talking about seminary and enjoy our children and new baby. We agreed and headed home with the promise to stop talking about all that might have been. We did stop. For one day.

And then it all started again. We couldn’t stop dreaming. And so, to make a long and winding story shorter, we restarted everything and eventually loaded up the family in an oversized U-Haul truck and headed to Chicago.

Someone gave us bad directions and so the joy and anticipation were quickly turned to worry and anxiety and as I led Julie, who was following me with our baby in a car seat, through massive traffic due to a Blue’s Festival in downtown Chicago.  Eventually, we made it through the city and traffic, concerned as I kept seeing signs suggesting that U-Haul trucks were not supposed to be on the street where I found myself, inching under overpasses that were almost too low to make it through, and ended up in Evanston Illinois and the city block where we would raise our children for the next three years.  This was the moment we had dreamed about.

In my mind I had thought we would park on the side of the road near marriage student housing, Julie would emerge first, and then I would see her. Slowly we would begin to run toward one another and finally falling into each other’s arms, we would exclaim, “we made it. All our dreams led to this point. Let this great adventure begin.” That’s not quite the way it happened.

Instead, Joseph, our oldest, bolted out of the truck first and looked around. I hardly noticed him as I focused on running into Julie’s arms. Just as we nearly made our dream a reality, Joseph jumped between us, causing us to stumble backwards and loudly proclaimed, in front of God and whatever seminary community was there to witness, an urgent demand. “Quick, he said. I have to have a bowel movement.”

My story is not unique. You have one too. Ultimately it is a story that shares many things in common: that along the way, when we were looking for many different things and either thoughtfully building a life, or having one built for us, the messiah showed up. Just like happened to those real people, in a real place during a real time Perhaps it was rather surprising, but somehow, amid all the busy-ness or messiness of life, God revealed God’s self to us.  That’s why we are here. Maybe it didn’t turn out the way we expected. Maybe it was better, maybe it was just different. But in a specific time and place, where real people live, God manifested God’s self. And the only response that can even begin to make sense is the story that the Angels sang on that Christmas night, “Glory to God in the highest. And peace to his people on earth.”

Those who expected a Messiah in the first century did not get one they expected. It all started in an unlikely, unexpected way, smelling more like hay and wild animals than a King in a palace. And it ended with disappointment and disillusionment, dying on a cross and buried in a grave. No one hung out after his death and waited for resurrection. That was God having God’s last word. Unexpected, perhaps disappointing and disillusioning. But that doesn’t limit God. God delights in the impossible and unlikely.

Let our Advent preparations continue. Despite all the surprises and disappointments, God will have the last word. And the last word is always good.

In Jesus name

I didn’t grow up in a church that observed Advent. It seemed odd to me to hear lessons about both the birth of the Christ Child in Bethlehem on the one hand, and the second coming on the other.  Plus, there was this implicit command to wait for Christmas until Christmas eve. You see, I was around people who began decorating for Christmas the morning after Halloween and suddenly it felt like I had committed a mortal sin if I were to hang tinsel too early. It seemed oddly out of place to have an entire four weeks singing things like “O Come Emmanuel” but God forbid if we were to sing a verse of “Angels we have heard on high.” It seemed to me that Christmas was such a big thing, why wait to celebrate.  I mean, if you go to a store, you can hear it all from Frank Sinatra singing about White Christmases, Elvis about making it home for Christmas and even a little monkey clanging away on a pair of cymbals to the tune of “Jingle Bells.” I mean, really, who doesn’t love that?

But back at the Church it seemed like everyone was clueless about this big celebration that was coming on December 24^th and 25^th. Christmas is coming, why weren’t we talking about it?

I am not sure what happened to convert me, but I fell hard for Advent. I completely changed my mind.  To a fault.  Angrily I pushed a cart through Wal Mart with “Chestnuts Roasting on an open fire” blaring down each aisle as I tussled with others to buy that hard to find popular present for the year, from Cabbage Patch dolls to pet rocks.  Am I dating myself?

It got so bad around our house that we even insisted on putting the correct colored ribbons on the “Advent Wreath” we hung from our front door.  Advent’s color is either purple, like we have here, or royal blue.  Get rid of all the red and green. As for me and my family we will not get to Christmas until the calendar tells us it has arrived.

Oh, it got worse.  Given my vocation, Christmas eve was always a significant deal.  There were so many things, liturgically, to get ready.  And then the several services that had to be planned, music chosen, sermons written…. It was a big deal.  Now, since I had been bitten by the Advent bug, none of the family traditions could get started until it was the right time.  There was no fudging allowed, pun intended, because Emily, our daughter, has a birthday on December 11^th. So, if we had to, we could reorient ourselves toward Christmas after that.  But rarely did we.

We at least gave up on some of the things we tried early in our marriage.  I’ll never forget Julie making an executive decision on about our second Christmas together that we would string together cranberries and popcorns to fling (I wanted to fling, but she needed to have everything precisely in the right place).  I don’t know if you have ever tried to take a needle and thread and pierce a popcorn kernel.  I mean the popcorn had been popped but it’s still not easy.  Most of the popcorn I was trying to thread together and a bit of red in them from me sticking my thumb with a needle. Thankfully we let that go after a year or so of trying.

But that didn’t end the hassles of keeping a faithful Advent.  You see, we agreed that the Christmas tree needed to remain in the local lot until Christmas Eve.  At that point, we would all trapse out to Christmas tree farm and cut down the tree we had picked a week or two prior to that moment.  So, we would arrive with a saw, rope and a hope that it would go smoothly.  After all my time was limited, I had a couple of Church services to lead.

Thankfully most of the memories have run together in my memory so very few things stick out as issues that I can recall but one Christmas eve still spooks me.  

We had chosen the perfect tree.  Our house had been built in 1864 and had very high ceilings so we found a tree that would fill the room, from top to bottom. The problem with a tree like that is that it is not only tall but it’s also wide.  We untied it from the top of the car and with the help of the entire family, we carried it to the front door.  I never thought that it wouldn’t fit but as we were eagerly lugging it toward it’s final resting place, it got stuck in the doorway.  I positioned myself at the base, put all three children inside the house with each small hand gripping hard and pulling as I pushed.  It may have taken only a few seconds, but in my memory it seems like we were there for hours, straining to get old Tannenbaum through the door and onto the stand.  We needed to get it decorated before I headed out to church.

Finally, we succeeded. It was majestic. I don’t know, maybe it was seven or eight foot tall but in my memory it seems to have stretched high toward the heavens. I know Christmas is a time when we celebrate Jesus coming down from heaven and this tree looked like it would be a good ladder to get here, if Jesus needed it.  

We, of course, had ornaments that had memories attached to them.  Each Christmas Eve, since the children had been born had been a time for a treasure hunt, and the treasure was always a new Christmas ornament for the tree.  So with all those memories shining brightly from the tree, and after being scolded that the lights were too close together and being asked to rearrange the tinsel so it wasn’t so clumpy, it was done.

I am not sure what we did afterward, but soon the clock urged me to head over to the Church for our first service.  It was no longer Advent, the tree had been decorated and we were ready to celebrate.  Or so I thought.

We made it through the early service and the whole family got dressed in our finest and headed out to what we called Midnight Mass, even though it was actually 10 PM.  I don’t remember much about the service but I do know we had all the wonderful Christmas music we had been waiting on.  It just felt like Christmas.  And then, after shutting everything off, wishing everyone who was there a “Merry Christmas,” we headed home like conquering heroes.  We had done our best by holding off Christmas as long as we could.  Now was my favorite time of the year, sitting in front of a glimmering tree with a sense of satisfaction, that even though the rest of the world had been clanging symbols since Halloween, we were the champions.  We had kept a Holy Advent.  Yay us.

I can almost see where everyone was standing as we eagerly rushed toward the tree to begin our Christmas.  The children giggling loudly, pushing ahead of us toward the living room where our conquered ever green would surely greet us.  I first saw a look of anguish on our oldest child and then a scream came from one of them or maybe all of them.  The tree, decked out in its finest, with memory-filled ornaments and thankfully no popcorn and cranberries strung around it from top to bottom, had completely tumbled over, resting on top of a coffee table and resting next to a love seat.  It was a disaster.

We were able to save everything and reposition the tree on its stand with the help of a brick and some rope. It was the worst thing and the best thing. It started me on a journey that eventually led me to ask the question, “do I really need to pile all this on to an already stressful time?”

Advent is supposed to help us set aside all of the clamor that world is clanging about the Christmas season. It’s supposed to tell us that there is a benefit on focusing on the hope of Advent before we get to the celebration of Christmas.  The Advent mantra of “Come Lord Jesus, Come,” is an important cry as it helps us live more fully into the understanding that Jesus has entered the world and set us free but, as the other part of Advent reminds us, one day he will come again to set things right side up. But it has not happened yet.  Certainly, he has been born and has walked among us but despite that, our lives can be so filled with impatience and dissatisfaction that we find ourselves overwhelmed with frustration. How is it that we can celebrate Christmas like we need to when we’re overwhelmed with all the extra things, we pile on top of ourselves.

Thankfully we have let go of a lot of the things we thought we had to have for Christmas and Advent.  It has become less about making memories and more about preparing our hearts.  As in all things, Julie has helped me with all of that.

When we demand that the season affirms what we believe will make for a grand celebration of Christmas, we fall into the trap of demanding that things work out to our satisfaction then we make the season more about us and not about Jesus.  Richard Rhor reminds us that “Come, Lord Jesus” is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope. The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves.”

That’s what keeping Advent can help us with. Christmas isn’t about us, our traditions, old movies and beautiful Carols. The readings of Advent remind us that the unlikely has taken place. It smells like hay and animals, its messy and real, God has, as theologians say, “condescended” to become human.  We have the opportunity through Advent to prepare our hearts from that.  Without it, its easy to fall into making it about a private celebration of happiness that is “too narcissistically and self-consciously” self-pursed. 

Again, Richard Rohr reminds us that “the “joy that the world cannot give” (John 14:27) always comes as a gift to those who wait for it, expect it and make room for it inside themselves.  That’s my prayer for us. I don’t want any of us to skip forward to Christmas too quickly but I also don’t want to burden any of us with a new list of things to do, to accomplish and to avoid.

Christmas is coming. But wait. Let us spend the next few weeks preparing our hearts for peace, joy, love and hope.

In Jesus Name.

Anybody out here remember when the last Sunday after Pentecost, the Sunday before Advent was called “Christ the King Sunday?” We’ve sort of walked away from that official way of referring to this day, but it still holds on a bit.  I think that’s why we’re careful to not do anything more than a couple of times in the Church because if we do, then it becomes a tradition.  Which reminds me of a joke: How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?  Four, one to hold the ladder, one to screw the light bulb into the socket and two to sit around and talk about how good the old light bulb was.  

The Feast of Christ the King was introduced into the church year in 1925 by Pope Pius XI to counter what he regarded as the destructive forces of fascism and the totalitarian claims of the Nazi ideologies in the Church. I am fascinated by that and it’s a great way to end the Church calendar before we begin, next week, with a new year and the beginning of Advent.  As you know, Advent prepares the way for us to celebrate Christmas by hearing the stories of John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph and the preparations for the birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem. It’s also a time we hear the prophecies of the second coming as well.  

So, to challenge our thinking we turn, not to stables and shepherds, but to the final trial of Jesus. If we are to live in God’s Kingdom(Realm), we, like Pilate, need to know who this man Jesus is, “are you Christ the King?”

The gospel explores that Jesus is not a king that the world would ever recognize. This is a king who speaks to the lowly and the rejected. This is a king who serves rather than being served. This is a king who enters the holy city, not triumphantly on a horse, but seated on a donkey (John 12:14). This is significantly important to us because if we don’t recognize him as King, then we ignore the one thing we are called to do as a follower: participate with him to be part of God’s realm that yearns to break through into our world. It’s not a call to moral perfection, but a call to a revolutionary love where the lost, least, the lonely and the last are not only accepted, but celebrated.

He is a king unlike any other king, and his kingdom is unlike any other, for it is not of this world. What is this kingdom, this reign, like? That is the important question for us today as we reflect upon Christ as our king.

Pilate asks Jesus what he has done. Why have the authorities handed him over to be killed? What terrible thing has he done? Jesus then, in a seeming non-sequitur, declares to Pilate that he does have a kingdom, but it is not a kingdom of this world.

We know that Jesus is the Word of God that has become “flesh and lived among us.” Jesus has come from God and has come “so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16b). We also know that, in order to recognize this king, this only Son, we must be “born from above” (John 3:3). Unless we have experienced this new birth we are unable to recognize the reign of God that surrounds us on all sides. And if we do accept that Jesus is the one who has come from God, if we are willing to listen to the truth he speaks, then one is no longer part of this world, but is a part of the reign of God.

Pilate is busy doing a lot of mocking in the story this morning, both the Jews and Jesus. He struggles with his understanding of what a King is and can’t quite get his head around the fact that Jesus is a different kind of King. Yet, he ultimately refers to Jesus as a King when he announces to the crowd, “Here is your king” (John 19:14). Later, he also highlights this by placing a placard on the cross which read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19).

What ultimately happens here is a clear choice is put before the crowd about who to follow: the Empire or Jesus. It’s a question that we face as well.  Who’s your King? Is it all the concrete and tangible benefits of the earthly empire, or is it God? Frankly it’s easier to choose the Empire because it can at least be seen and its power is clearly defined.  When it comes to God, it’s more difficult because God’s Realm (Kingdom) seems to be less manifest. In reality, it’s the only true Kingdom but the Empire continues to hold its allure.

When we come face to face with the story as it unfolds, we too are faced with deciding. Are we willing to accept Jesus as our king?  Or maybe better, is our allegiance to the Empire or to the King of Kings? And so, for the crowd, according to John, and the Jewish leaders reject their faith and give their allegiance to the empire, “We have no king but the emperor” (John 19:15). At least they were honest.

Sitting here over two thousand years later it is easy to look down on those who made such a choice. But before we do that, perhaps we should examine our own hearts.  Frankly, the temptation to choose the same way as the leaders and crowd did still is there.  These people weren’t bad people they just chose badly.  We’re not bad people either and often we go down the same path as they did. It’s easy to cash in our chips at the dealers table and walk away. It’s easy to look for tangible evidence of power and put all our hope into that.  The Empire is alluring. It promises everything we want: health, peace, hope in a prosperous future, and can I say even “glad tidings of a great joy for all the people.” The Empire is strong and usually reliable. Who wouldn’t want that? We go through election cycle after election cycle hoping we’ll get it right this time.  Our political leaders, our economic leaders, leaders in the public square all promise a future we all want.  Of course, we’ll say yes.  Indeed, we’re about to enter that time leading up to Christmas where all our hopes and dreams rest with the promise that if we just buy enough then all will be right with the world.

The Realm (Kingdom) of God is different. First of all, we need to reframe a bit. Kingdom values stand in stark contrast with the values of the Empire.  Things like “might makes right,” “Nice guys finish last,” “Do unto others before they do unto you.” Those are all Empire values.  Kingdom values hit us as almost counter intuitive. 

Everything is topsy turvy.  Or perhaps a better way to see it, in the Kingdom, the Realm of God, everything is right side up. The weak are the strong, those who mourn are comforted, the meek inherit the land, the hungry and thirsty are filled, those who show mercy are the ones who receive it, the pure in heart see God, the peacemakers are the children of God and those who are persecuted, inherit the Kingdom of God. 

This even has an effect on the way we see the reason that Jesus came into the world.  He didn’t come to satisfy the wrath of God by having to die to satisfy that. Somebody had to die to deal with our sin, so Jesus volunteered.  No. That’s a pagan understanding of how a deity may work.  I think that Jake Owensby, the Bishop of West Louisiana, has it right, that God created all that is and then revealed God’ self in Jesus because of one thing: love. Here’s what he wrote:  

“Jesus was not God’s reaction to sin but God’s first thought in creating all things, because God’s motive for creation is love. God yearns to be in seamless union with the creation. Jesus was God incarnate: God and human at once perfectly distinguished and yet inseparably intertwined. God’s purpose in creating the universe was to love all things with an infinite, inextinguishable love. Up close and personal. The risen Jesus is the crowning achievement of the creation. He is the same as and yet infinitely more than the Jesus who walked the streets of Nazareth two millennia ago. Christ actually inhabits and animates every earthly body.” Yes, he is infinitely more because of the paschal mystery, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, he is found in the most unlikely places: not up there somewhere past the galaxy, but right here in the midst of us, especially when we love the unlovable.

So today we remember Christ the King, who as it turns out turns everything we know about being a King on its head. And as King, Jesus issues us an invitation to be part of God’s Kingdom, God’s realm. As we hear that call and risk living into the values of God’s Realm, God’s Kingdom, it equips us to begin preparing for Christmas and the celebration that changes everything. But even beyond that, it is the door through which we pass from meaninglessness to significance, from anxiety and despair to meaning and from loneliness into community.

In Jesus name.

I guess it would only be a matter of time before a Gospel would show up in the Lectionary that forced my hand to address something I would rather not.  In this mornings Gospel, generously called the “little apocalypse” by scholars, deals with something that had been so misunderstood, taken out of context and made into a cottage industry.  The End Times.

Oh, I have a lot of sermons I have heard over the years rattling around in my head when I simply utter the words, “End Times.” Maybe you have been entertained, or terrified, by bad movies (bad in the sense of theology but also in plot, acting, directing… you get it) that have made a lot of money in my lifetime, scaring people into believing that the End is Near!  As I think about it, I can even see, in my mind’s eye, a sandwich placard roaming around in some city somewhere with the generous warning: “Turn or Burn.” They seem to go hand in hand.

I mentioned a cottage industry or two that have sprung up in the last several decades centered around a sense of doom and that the world was soon to come to an end.  I know someone out there had to read the series “Left Behind.” Not only books were sold, but movies were also made, t-shirts mass produced and millions of dollars made over stoking a fear that we are living in the End Times.  

I have to confess, and since it’s just us guys this guys this morning, it’s safe to confess isn’t it? I have to confess to having bought this whole idea hook, line and sinker early on in my journey as a Christian.  I was about 16 years old when I was introduced to this.  I think I was told by someone in a compassionate attempt to offer me “fire insurance.” I’d better get right with God as soon as I can because the End is at hand and God evidently was offering cut-rate fire insurance policies to keep me out of hell. And so I consumed all the books I could that reemphasized the whole idea that Armageddon was on the way. We would soon see the rise of the Anti-Christ, Russia would invade the middle east and a war would ensue.  The war would end, if I remember correctly, with the Anti-Christ defeated and a thousand years of peace to follow.  Whoops, I left out the most important part, before this war, the Rapture would take place and all the born-again Christians would mysteriously be beamed up to heaven, leaving only those who refused to accept American Evangelicalism to battle forces of evil.  I can’t remember but I think those folks get a second chance before it all comes crashing down around them.  So for God’s sake, don’t get Left Behind.

Whoa. Just describing this makes me feel like I need to go take a shower. Quietly I hope this all new to you but from the look of some of your faces, I think you read the Late Great Planet Earth, like I did. I got so motivated by all of this that I decided I would figure out who the Anti-Christ was and nearly drowned in all of the numerology and guessing that my new faith could handle.  There was something about the number 666 that clearly would be the key in deciphering all of this.  By the way, this is starting to sound like a Dan Brown novel, isn’t it.  There is a reason it is, and I’ll get there in a moment, but still to this day I cannot express my disappointment when I realized I was not given a direct, divine appointment to help us all out in identifying who this dastardly character was.  After all, count the letters: Ronald Wilson Reagan…. 666.  Of course President Reagan may have been a lot of things, but as it turns out, he wasn’t the Anti-Christ.

I make light of this but there has been real damage done to people who have bought into this rather pagan idea that the world is going to end in a cataclysmic battle between good and evil. Perhaps you know this but one of the stark differences between Judaism and Christianity, as opposed to the Pagan understanding of how things began and how they will end is pretty stark. This is an over-simplification but I believe we can see the difference pretty clearly in the way Genesis describes creation. Instead of a cosmic battle between warring gods, as Pagan theology would argue, God created the Heavens and Earth because God loves.  Creation was not an accident, nor a requirement.  God created in order to share God’s love with God’s creation.  And note how each day of creation ends.  God looks at it, and it is good.  There’s not a battle in sight. Love, creation and goodness. This is an important difference that, keep following me here, makes a difference not only in the way we see the way things begin but also in the way things will find their fulfillment.

The talk of Armageddon, Anti-Christ’s and the struggle between two relatively equal forces of good and evil have more in common with Pagan influences than Christian or Jewish ones. And beyond that, the misreading of eschatology, which is just a churchy way of saying the end of all things, creeps into our understanding of God and how we should live.  In other words, this isn’t a minor difference. It will serve us well to understand that much of the current, popular understanding of the End Times is fascinating but theologically full of errors.

This is why context is so important.  Over the years I have heard and read many sermons that have simply been taken out of context and so the point being made by the preacher is simply an opinion based on nothing more than preconceived ideas.  But before I throw stones, I need to acknowledge that I live in a glass house.  I am guilty of doing the same thing and the resultant damage is something that I must own.  It would benefit us all to go deeper than just a surface reading of today’s gospel, or any gospel for that matter.

But who could blame any of us for seeing that the world we live in seems to be tottering on the brink of some sort of disaster.  There is a litany of issues that we face from political and economic disruption to climate change to geopolitical challenges that may make us feel as if anything got worse, surely God would bail us all out, right?

Although, one does not have to be an historian to know that one of the things that we hold in common with those who have come before is a sense that things are bad.  I mean we could go way back to the bubonic plague, or even further back to Biblical times when it seems Israel was constantly struggling for survival: from being taken captive in Egypt or Babylon (or later) the whole issue of Roman dominance over Israel’s economy, politics and even religious order. If you’d rather, just go back to the middle of the last century when we face Total War, the rise of Fascism in Japan, Germany and Italy, the Jewish Holocaust and the extermination of millions in places far and near in our world.  Not meaning to depress anyone but if anything, we live in a world that is broken.  As one writer put it  “It appears that only wickedness prospers, that might makes right, and that things don’t seem to be changing for the better. The poet, the prophet, the psalmist, and the singer are among the first to say.” so. Dark, David. The Sacredness of Questioning Everything (pp. 19-20). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

We have to believe that there is another world that can exist. But sometimes it is hard to see because the bad news is so prevalent and as we may know, nothing sells like bad news.  We live in the 24-hour news cycle and there’s never better news for the media than some sort of crisis during sweeps week.  I can admit to dropping everything and listening to the television every time I hear the familiar interruption of “Breaking news.”

Yet, I think it’s important that we realize how easy it is to collude with the bad news and find ourselves easily persuaded that there’s no hope and God surely must be asleep at the wheel.  When we see this in us, we might do well if we were to confess it. The great theologian Carrie Underwood once told us it’s best to let “Jesus take the wheel,” but we find ourselves stuck amid bad news and wonder if Jesus knows how to drive.  We end up left with our fingers crossed that the rapture would help us all escape. 

I get it. I understand the temptation.  Perhaps we might live more fully into our faith if we treated those who pray for an end to all of this with a bit more humility and sense of graciousness.  It helps me to acknowledge that I do not possess all the truth and neither do you.  Part of the way out of all this mess is to be honest with ourselves, others and God.  And to be honest with Scripture.

Sometimes it is easy to find a theological place where we can hang our hat that makes sense to us, even if it’s not true.  Our religion can breathe life into us, or it can take life from us.  And our tendency is to replace God, and good religion, with a small, insignificant replacement that moves into a place where humanity has always felt at home: idolatry.

So, this morning, let me say this as clearly as I can. One day all of this, will come to an end.  Chances are, we’ll come to an end of the life we have been given before the world does.  This is true, this was told to us by Jesus himself but….  Pay attention to the warning he gave the disciples…. Don’t be overcome with those who seem to be more than eager to proclaim that the End is Near.  No one knows when that will happen.  But we do know that the God of love, the God who clearly came into this world not to condemn us but to save us, will see us through whatever the End will look like.  And I trust that it will look like God has always looked: full of love, compassion and acceptance.  “Anything less is bad worship, bad theology, and a plain old bad idea.”

Jesus is coming again. There’s nothing to fear.  But as he told us, don’t focus on the End, focus on the now and get out there and spread the Gospel by loving others as you are loved.

In Jesus name.

Good morning.  I am going to start this morning with a confession. I’m not a real fan of All Saints Day.  Well, that’s probably not the best way to put it.  I have an issue with the way we, as Christians, often portray saints.  Too often when I hear a story of a saint, I immediately think “super hero.” They are people who lived lives that were so exemplary that it becomes nearly impossible, for me at least, to identify with them.  I do like All Souls day though.  Typically All Saints is reserved for the members of the Christian Hall of Fame… you know, those who lived lives that place them in this group that we call “the great Cloud of Witnesses.”  The big ones are in there. Francis, Augustine, Xavier, Mary, John and so on.  They spent their lives in prayer and performing good works. Some of them were martyrs. Others founded religious orders. Others had visions or performed miracles. . . . I don’t know about you but the way these folks are often described makes me feel like a little league player, suddenly thrust onto a baseball field during the World Series. I am not thinking about hitting a homerun, throwing a strike or even coaxing a walk… I am just trying to get out alive.  There is absolutely no way that I deserve to be on the same field as a Carlos Correa, Jose Altuva, Michael Brantley, Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker…. All these people some of you have never even heard of… but trust me, they’re studs.  They are big time.  I think I will just take my ball, bat, glove and head home. 

All Souls, typically remembered on the day after All Saints, that would be November 2, is my type of day.  These are the saints, the souls, of people we know.  If we know them well, we understand they aren’t perfect and few of them probably never got close to performing a miracle. And yet they lived lives worthy of imitation.  They maybe will never have a book written about them. I bet most won’t even have a sentence in a book about them, yet we recognize something in them that is unique, different, worthy.  My grandma is one of those. The priest who sent me to seminary, Bob Shahan, is one of those.  I had a mentor in Illinois, Bob Myers, he’s another.  I’m sure that just mentioning such people creates images in your head this morning.  Visions of the moments you spent with them.  The difference they made in your life.  All Souls Day is a gift to us to acknowledge those who have helped us along the path of life, helping us understand the presence of God and God’s love.

But maybe I have it all wrong.  Maybe I need to reexamine the Major League Saints that we tend to lump together under the category, “I’ll never be one of those” or “what good are people that are too good.” I mean, it doesn’t take me long to look for my ball glove and head home.

You have to go to the beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount to find where Jesus describes what a Saint looks like.  There are a a lot blessed ares and we tend to make this list into a descriptive set of behaviors that we have to do better in order to become a saint. It’s not what is being said but our tendency is to roll up our sleeves and go to work.  To be a saint is to work hard. So, just think about it a second, if you want to be a major league saint, then you have to try harder.  [More was said about this and I suggest you go online to my website or the church’s for a replay of the video]

Are you familiar with the NFL Combine?  This takes place every year before the National Football League drafts college players. You must be good enough to be invited to the combine, but once you’re there, they start measuring you.  I am not just talking about the size of your biceps. I mean things like how fast you run a 40-yard dash; how high you jump; if you’re a quarterback, how long does it take you to release the ball when you pass it.  That sort of thing.  Your measurables are compared to others but also, they are placed alongside historical numbers… so if you are a running back, you’re compared to others who have come before.

We do that with the beatitudes. Somehow, we insert a few words in the Sermon that Jesus preached that he never said.  Things like “should,” “ought,” or thou shalt.” It is just like us to make Jesus incredible sermon into some sort of transactional process. “If you do this, then you’ll be like that.” But look at it.  There’s nothing like that in the words at all. No commandments.  No moral injunctions.

Rather, what Jesus does is simply describe reality.  As in, “Here are the facts.  Here is how the world works.  Here is an accurate description of life.”  In other words, here is “normal,” God’s normal.

Wait a second. If this is true, this changes everything. And maybe even the way we look at those Heavy-weight Saints who’s busts surely reside in the Hall of Fame.

One of the reasons those Saints usually recalled on All Saints Day seem so out of reach is that we usually don’t hear the whole story. They were not perfect.  Nor did they somehow live life in such a way that they forced God’s hand. You know, they earned it all by doing stuff the rest of us simply can’t or won’t.  The way we usually set it up is to think that they simply worked harder than we do and somehow earned God’s blessings.

So, I want to suggest something to you this morning. What if in our rush to canonize these larger-than-life people, we missed the point. Perhaps we have an ulterior motive in removing the saints from our everyday understanding of how reality works in order to keep ourselves protected from having to change. Or at least keep us at arm’s length to the way God is present among us.

It is in the Sermon on the mount that Jesus makes some audacious claims. He says that “the poor, the mournful, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure-hearted, the peaceful, and the persecuted are “blessed.”  They are the fortunate ones.  The lucky ones.  The ones whose lives are aligned with the heart and character of God.  They are the ones who will experience comfort, inherit the earth, be filled, receive mercy, see God, and be called the children of God.”(Debie Thomas)

In other words, these are the real saints. We often lose sight of this because it’s a bit uncomfortable to know that the way reality is, stands in stark contrast to how we often hope that it is or act like it is. And sometimes the very people we reject are the ones who most closely reflect this reality.

What I see, what you see, is not the same thing that God sees. We “live in a world where the loudest, strongest, wealthiest, and most privileged people prey on the “less fortunate.”  We live in a world where greed and selfishness pay huge dividends, while meekness, mercy, and humility earn little more than disdain.  Too often, my comfort and security have the last say, despite how that might affect others.

And notice that there is a right now and a future in all of this… “Blessed are…for they will be.”  That’s a hope for all of us who live in the “not yet” part of existence.  It’s not yet, but it will be.

Sometimes we just don’t even try. The payoff is too far away so we know what we want and we go after it, living in a place where the payoff may never come. But there are some among us who understand that living amid the not-yet is all we have.  We can try to fake it until we make it, but that never works.

Peter Rollins shares a story in his book Insurrection: To believe is human, to doubt divine that underscores the nonsense of playing at our faith.  It seems that:

Every Sunday the pastor would stand at the front of his Church and with a booming voice finish his rousing sermon with a plea: “Each week I go to a nearby town and serve the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden; what do you do? How do you show your compassion to those in need?” People would applaud the minister’s closing remarks and everyone would wave him off at the end of the service as he hurried away in his little car. The truth, however, was that each week he would go to a golf course and play a leisurely eighteen holes away from his congregation, family, and friends. This deception had been going on for years, but eventually it came to the attention of some angels. They were furious at his lies and reported the situation directly to God. After a little consideration, God said to the angels, “I will visit with this minister on Sunday and teach him a lesson he’ll never forget.” Sure enough, next Sunday, God showed up at the Church. Yet again, the minister informed his congregation that he was going to go serve the poor before leaving for the golf course. This time however, God intervened. When the minister took his first shot, the ball took off, flew through the air, bounced onto the green, and dropped into the hole. The minister was amazed. At the second hole the same thing happened. And the third. And the fourth. Right through to the last hole. With his last stroke, the minister sliced the ball badly, but still it curved around and, like all the others, found the hole in one. All the while the angels in heaven watched what took place in utter disbelief. By the time God returned they shouted, “I thought you were going to punish the minister for all his lies, but instead you gave him the perfect round of golf!” “That may be true,” replied God with a smile, “but ask yourself this: Who is he going to tell?”

It all comes down to this. Our experience of God makes all the difference. But it’s easy to reshape the reality and truth of God into more of a slot machine, or one of those Genie’s that you might find at a Carnival. Insert your request here, and wait for your answer.  Remember the eight ball that used to be popular.  You ask it a question, turn it upside down and your answer appears.  A lot of fun, right?  But that’s not God.

I was recently reading that “near the end of his life, the theologian and activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer became concerned that the Christian understanding of God had been largely reduced to the status of a psychological crutch. He described this understanding of God as deus ex machina. This phrase, which literally means “God out of the machine,” originally was used by second rate Greek playwrights who, after finding a difficult place in their play that they wanted to resolve, simply threw a second rate god into the play and everything was resolved. . 

Rollins, Peter. Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine (pp. 13-14). Howard Books. Kindle Edition.

[More was said about this and I suggest you go online to my website or the church’s for a replay of the video]

And that’s what we do with saints. God is not in the business of justifying our make-believe understanding of how we should live our lives or what makes a saint a saint. And those perfect saints serve as horrible examples because they are sort of “make believe perfect.” Until we understand how reality works, that the blessed are the poor in spirit and the children of God are peacemakers, then we’re just spinning our wheels.

And to arrive at a place where we live our lives, not expecting easy answers to all of what life brings us, with the understanding that God is here, busily shaping and forming us, through both triumphs and tragedies, is to arrive in a place where we discover the truth and reality of a God, who is busily forming us into saints.

Not perfect but open to the truth and reality of a God who loves us. Not a Deus ex Machina, but a God who suffers with us. And that, as it turns out, is how saints are made. We share in God’s own suffering, and God in ours, so that we can share in his resurrection. Saints aren’t perfect but they don’t look to God as a celestial slot machine. That kind of God can’t make saints because that God doesn’t exist. The One that does exist is found in our suffering, our losses and, indeed, in our humanity. An unlikely God, making you and me into unlikely saints. [My conclusion here differs from the one I preached and recommend that if you’re interested you either go online to my website or the church’s for the exact words].

I sometimes wonder if people just don’t listen.  We’ve known people who have their mind made up before they even ask a question. It’s almost like they just like to hear their own voice. I used to think that would be different when it came to things like the Church, or even better, when it came to things like the disciples who’s consistently misguided questioning of Jesus is recorded for us in the Gospels, specifically Mark.  But you don’t have to have been paying much attention to notice that the disciples continue to either ask irrelevant questions at best, or at worse, their motivation in asking seems to be significantly askew.

The disciples were schooled in scripture.  Everyone in Palestine was.  Learning scripture and even memorizing it were common practices.  People knew scripture so well that even quoting the first verse of a Psalm was all that was needed to bring the rest of the Psalm into mind.  And so Psalm 119, that we read a portion of this morning, was well known. “Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the way of the LORD,” was not something unheard of by those who either were following Jesus or at least paying attention to what he was saying.

And yet another scene emerges in our Gospel appointed for today that causes me to wonder what they were thinking.  This time the Disciples are off the hook because they are not at the middle of the dialogue. It’s the scribes this time.

I am not sure if you have considered why we get all these questions that seem to be rapid fired at Jesus.  Jesus gets them from everyone: from his followers, innocent bystanders, the Pharisees and scribes and lawyers, they all ask him, what they felt were important questions.  I think we do the story a disservice if we don’t ask ourselves, “why do they care so much?”

We hear that Jesus came to us “in the fullness of time,” which means that all of the things that needed to be written, and all of the events that Israel had to experience had been accomplished in order for the context of the Messiah to be understood.  Of course, they didn’t right a way but eventually the Church made sense of things like the suffering servant of Isaiah and the purpose of the law. It didn’t happen immediately but slowly, the church’s understanding of the uniqueness of Jesus emerged.  Perhaps you didn’t realize it but the “ancient creed of the church,” the Nicene Creed was not formulated for almost 300 years after the resurrection. In other words, it took awhile to put into words, the uniqueness of Jesus.

But there is something else we need to know.  In the first century in Palestine there was an intense, almost acute expectation that the Messiah would come.  Things were bad. The Romans were a threat to desecrate the Temple.  Allegiances were divided. There had been a steady flow of Messiah-wannabes that emerged.  Some were more likely than others but all of them had ended in disappointment.

So it should not surprise us that when this Messiah turns up on the front pages of the papers, or your Netflix was interrupted by another CNN Breaking News broadcast of the newest escapade taking place around Jesus, it caused a growing sense of curiosity about Jesus.  Who was he? Where did he gain all of his wisdom? Why was he speaking the say he spoke? Was he the Messiah? How could they be sure? You see, there’s a lot on the line when it comes to claiming you’re the messiah. And when this Messiah-like figure keeps saying things like eat my flesh, drink my blood…. Well what does that even mean?

Oh, there were other questions… what is a “Son of Man?” Should we continue to pay tribute to Caesar? Can the Messiah come from Galilee? And eventually things like “Are you the king of the Jews? What is truth? And finally, when the clock was running out, “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us. If you are the Messiah, why don’t you come down from that cross? (Paraphrased from NT Wright) So as NT Wright has said “Layer upon layer it comes, dense and rich within the texts, echo upon echo, allusion and resonance tumbling over one another, so that for those with ears to hear it becomes unmissable, a crescendo of questions to which in the end there can be only one answer. Why are you speaking like this? Are you the one who is to come?”

So even though it seems like we have been listening to an unending string of questions from everyone around Jesus, there was a real desire to know just who he was. Granted, some had already made up their mind and wanted to silence him, but even among some of the Scribes and Pharisees remained curious. Could it be, as some were saying, that the Messiah had come to live and move among us.

Yet, there was not even a consensus on what the Messiah would do when he did come, where he was from or even if he would simply be an angel. It took a long time to unravel that ball of twine. At this point in Mark, we simply have a lot of people asking questions. And that is always a good place to start.

And so today, the scribes, who knew the importance of walking blamelessly before God, decide to see if Jesus is doing that.  No better place to find out than right at the middle of their faith.  The Law was central to them, so they must have gotten together and decided to find out where Jesus stood when it came to the central tenet of their faith. And so, here came the question: One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?”

That breaks down a bit in translation.  What they wanted to know wasn’t, “what’s first on the list,” but rather “which is the most important?” Notice that they had been taken with Jesus’ teaching to this point, as Mark points out that they had “seen that he had answered them well,” and because of that decided to ask their question. Fascinatingly enough, they had been taken by the way Jesus had answered the questions of the disciples.  So, if you have been to, we have some good allies in the Scribes.

And Jesus answers them.  It didn’t take a ten to twelve to fifteen minute sermon either.  Just a bold, clear and concise answer: “you are to love the Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.  And then the punch line “there is no other commandment greater than these.”  That’s it.  That’s the summary of the law.  The great commandment we call it.  With a bit of artistic license, I’d put it this way: it’s all about love.  First find the source, then share it.  Nothing else is important! And ironically for us, if you have been listening over the last several weeks, those who got the right answers are now numbered as two: the blind man named Bartimaeus and the Scribes.  Wrong answers have been provided by a host of disciples.

But don’t get stuck with who’s right and who’s wrong because Jesus reveals to us the importance two principles at work in creation: one is law and the other is grace. The Episcopal priest Paul Zahl writes that these two principles, grace and law are ever present in and around us and seem to be at war with each other.  He says that “[t]he story of the Bible is the story of this perpetual war between law and grace. Law comes in, as the apostle Paul puts it (Romans 7:21-23), and human beings become excited by it. They become excited to resist it. The law, which is any form of external command, provokes the opposite reaction from the one it is intended to provoke. Instead of inciting obedience or submission, it incites rebellion. It provokes revolutionary resentment. …. If somebody tells you to do something, you immediately and instinctively desire to do the opposite. Is the law ever a gratifying thing? Does it produce pleasure? No. …. The law kills, the law incites, the law breeds hatred for itself, the law creates suppression. … The law does not enable us – – to do the things it commends … The point is crucial: law tells us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about ourselves…. But the law fails to convey the power to correct the maladies it diagnoses. The law is painful, like iodine on a cut, but another agent is required for healing to occur. That agent is grace.” Paul F. M. Zahl. Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life (Kindle Locations 40-46). Kindle Edition.

And that’s what Jesus is telling us. Grace is the power to change and grace is experienced fully when it is shared fully. It has nothing to do with figuring it out, indeed, perhaps it is shared best when one realizes that so much of our faith resides in doubt.  I think Paul Tillich was on to something when he wrote: “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.… Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.”  

I have thought a lot about this…. You see, I have experienced loss, in a traumatic way.  I lost my son. I didn’t expect to… I made a lot of bargains with God… you know, I gave you my life; I served the church. Certainly I don’t expect much but at least save my son.  What happened, in his death, was I traveled that corridor with the windows of doubt wide open.[at this point, I went off script and shared my experience.  To hear what I said, please go to either the Church’s webpage or the Facebook page of the Church to hear exactly what I said].

You see, I think Jesus is speaking as much to us as he was to the scribes, pharisees and disciples mentioned in the Gospel. Brian McLaren boldly asserts that “somewhere in the journey of our lives, the faith we inherited often stops working. We go through a transition period, a period of letting go of many things and holding on to a precious few.” For me it stopped working when I thought everything always turned out well…. Just like it was supposed to.  It was a law of sorts.  Remember:

“Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD.  Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways. You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!  Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments. I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous ordinances. I will observe your statutes; do not utterly forsake me.” Do you see how that becomes a law? If I do this, I get that.

But what if things don’t turn out like you hoped? Like you prayed?

If you have never considered this, I pose to you this morning the possibility that there is a deeper level of faith that might surprise you.  What if, in the midst of all of the struggles, disappointments, failures in life, we come face to face with doubt. By doubt that our faith is not some formula to follow or a law to obey. What if the crisis we face introduces us to a truth that Jesus is giving us. Love is the door through which we must pass in order to experience God more fully.  But down that hallway leading to that door, we find many a window of doubt opened and blowing freely through our lives.  Do we run from that? Or do we embrace it as an aspect of a more mature faith, a faith that is more alive?

I was reading a couple of weeks ago that “Sixty-five million adults alive in the United States today have already dropped out of active religious attendance, and that number grows by about 2.7 million more every year. Their reasons for dropping out are complex. Some leave because they begin to doubt God or the Bible or some of the doctrines and practices required by their churches. Many leave because they begin to doubt the church or synagogue or mosque itself as an institution worthy of their trust and support. Whatever the focus of their doubts, at this very moment, hundreds of thousands of people are watching their doubts grow and their religious identity weaken.” McLaren, Brian D. (2021-01-04T22:58:59). Faith After Doubt . St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

It may seem strange to hear me say this, but I don’t think that is bad news. Someone once said that we are still waiting for Christianity to arrive on the shores of America.  Maybe this is a sign that it is coming. Maybe what we need is some good and faithful doubt to replace all of our certainty.  Because without the honest struggling of faith, our religion is nothing more than platitudes that carry no life.

When we travel through that corridor of faith, filled with windows of doubt, we begin to see more clearly the love which makes all the difference. You see certainty can deflate us when life just doesn’t turn out the way we thought it would. But doubt allows for true religion to emerge and remind us that we are indeed, despite it all, participating in a movement that is very good. It has nothing to do with observing, affirming, moralism or simply being part of something. Doubt allows us entry into this mystery where we find God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit engaged in the eternal dance that is God. And in that dance, inside the very presence of God, is love. Beckoning us to let go of all that would limit us and enter that very dance. Our call is to love as we have been loved.  There is no better way to live.

In Jesus name.

Good morning. It’s been an interesting journey through Mark that we have been on this fall. We have encountered a series of episodes that put the disciples in a light that perhaps we’ve not seen before. They keep watching and listening but missing the point. Even though as you know, the disciples had been with Jesus for about three years, they still didn’t see the truth about who he was and where he was leading them. I think we can learn much from their inability to simply catch the vision, because we, too, struggle with all of this. And if we have learned anything it is this: it doesn’t matter if you ask the right questions, just be honest.

This morning we are introduced to someone new who we have not met. We don’t know his story, where he came from, who his family is, nor do we even know his name.  We do know his father’s name, Timaeus but slap a “Bar” in front of Timaeus name and you get what is roughly translated “Son of Timaeus.”

Not only that, this guy is not only poor, notice he is begging, but he is also blind.  Sort of a double whammy of unfortunates.  Certainly not the kind of guy you’d expect to find in the Gospels and certainly, if he does appear, not the sort who cause more than just a side glance from the disciples and Jesus himself. 

To get the full impact we must know that for those who were following Jesus either closely or even from afar, being poor and blind were tangible evidence that this son of Timaeus had been doubly cursed by God.  For those in the first century, God’s blessings were seen in several ways, not the least of which was good health and a fat bank account.  Bartimaeus had neither.

If you have been following along as we have journeyed over the last month or so in Mark, we know that the disciples have lowered the bar significantly for us by consistently missing Jesus’ point. They have been angry that someone has horned in on their action by not having the right credentials but still helping people, they have argued about who Jesus liked more and we even had two of the leaders closest to Jesus asking an inappropriate question about maintaining their significant position once everything was said and done. And there had been the attempt by the scribes to trip Jesus up on a specific moral point, only to hear him turn it back on the questioners and lift up the value of those who everyone thought had no value.  Jesus has been busy.

Now Mark just about slam dunks his point.  What they (what we) expected from a messiah isn’t what we got. How we expected God to act, isn’t how God reveals God’s-self.

Let me pause here for a second. Do you see the significance in this? Is it possible that we may still be looking for God in all the wrong places? Is it possible that we often miss God moving directly in our lives because our eyes are cast skyward, and God is moving right in front of us or beside us or behind us?  Are we stuck, like those in the first century who think that a life full of good health and a healthy retirement account are signs of God’s blessings on us?

It took a blind man to truly be able to see the point. Jesus is about important business, there’s a trip to Jerusalem, a trial, suffering and a cross that causes a shadow to fall across Jesus’ path. He has no time, so it would seem to us, to waste his time on someone who has already been rejected by God… remember the son of Timaeus is blind AND poor. Yet Jesus continues to surprise, supplant and replace our expectations with the truth and reality of God’s love. There seems to be a pattern emerging here.

Let’s get back to the story… As Jesus headed toward what had to be more important people to meet and situations to encounter, he passes by Bartimaeus. In what had to be an awkward moment, this blind man interrupts the whole lot of them by shouting.  He loudly calls out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (v. 47). Now we have heard this story a lot over the years and so we can be forgiven if we don’t realize that this is the first time that Jesus is identified as “Son of David.” This should bring us back to Jesus’ Jewish roots and, even if you don’t know much about Hebrew history, this is a significant thing to call someone. If nothing else, it does calls to mind King David who was a mighty military ruler.  But notice that this Son of Timaeus seems to have something other than a strong military leader in mind. He cries out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Bartimaeus seems to see that this Son of David is different and is one who comes with mercy and not wrath as in a strong military leader promising conquest and violence. His is the cry of one who sees the reality of who Jesus is, bring love mercy, forgiveness and ushering in the Realm of God.

Ironically, Bartimaeus, though blind, sees more clearly the truth   more clearly the truth about himself. In contrast to James and John, who seek to sit beside Jesus in his “glory” as a way of enhancing the way that others see them — not as former fishermen, but powerful guys who will be sitting at the right and left hand of the King — Bartimaeus sees his own situation clearly. Unlike the “Sons of Thunder,” Bartimaeus recognizes more than just his blindness. He also sees his need for mercy. He isn’t using Jesus to gain something for himself, but he sees himself as a beggar in need of the grace and mercy embodied by Jesus. In a world where people believed that physical challenges were signs of spiritual brokenness, Bartimaeus doesn’t argue for his own righteousness or about the unfairness of it all. He simply wants mercy. Here a prayer I pray a lot: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!” The drama of this morning’s Gospel heightens as Jesus hears the cry. And stops to listen.

Mark says that Jesus “stood still” before telling the crowd to bring Bartimaeus to him (v. 45). You might think this is just a throw off phrase that Mark inserts, but it’s more than that. Because Jesus stood still, Bartimaeus could find Jesus.  He threw off his cloak — the outer garment he likely used for a blanket and as a catch-all for donations he might receive at the city gate — and “sprang up” to come to Jesus (v. 50). Notice Jesus’ question to the blind man. It’s the same question he asked of James and John: “What do you want me to do for you?” (v. 51). The disciples wanted Jesus to make them great, but Bartimaeus only wanted mercy most of all, and to be able to see again. He uses the same word “teacher” to address Jesus that the two disciples had used. I may be wrong, but I think this is important. I don’t think Bartimaeus ever read the scriptures because he had been born blind, yet he gets it.  He understood that Jesus was much more than the greatest military leader in Jewish history.  But his power was found in mercy.   of a merciful Messiah who could open a new world for him.  

And now we come to the crossroads of the story this morning.  Jesus said to him: “Go, your faith has made you well” (v. 52). Bartimaeus responds to the command of Jesus not by going on his merry way but, instead, he changes his agenda and makes a life-altering decision. He follows Jesus “on the way” (v. 52). He could have gone home. He could have enrolled in the local community college or trade school in order to acquire skills that would help him live the rest of his life quite a bit better than he had lived it so far. But he seems to ignore Jesus entreaty to go… go wherever you want, but you are healed. Instead, perhaps because he saw clearly who Jesus was, much better than the disciples who had been walking in the dust of their rabbi for some time, he makes a life changing, indeed an eternity changing decision to “follow Jesus on the way.”

Maybe you know this but when the first King David, the one who was known as the greatest King in the history of Israel, entered Jerusalem as a conquering hero, the inhabitants taunted him saying that “the blind and the lame will turn you back” (2 Samuel 5:6). David would take the city and thus have “the blind and the lame” removed before his entry (2 Samuel 5:8-9). The Son of David, in contrast to his ancient relative, removed blindness instead of the blind as he goes up to the city. The story of Bartimaeus is a powerful reminder of the power of God to heal but maybe more importantly it reminds us Jesus can restore the sight of those who have been blinded by power, expectation, despair, or sin. It doesn’t work the way we expect it to work. It is a kind of divine reversal, that power isn’t found in strength but in weakness and salvation comes not through a sort of cataclysmic, pagan Armageddon bringing about the end of the world but through suffering and death on the cross.

We live in a world full of blind people. If we are truly honest with ourselves, we fade in and out of blindness all the time.  There is something about God that just seems too much.  We want, indeed we feel as if we need to control all of this God-talk. We spend much of our time trying to get a handle on the Gospel.  I think that’s why we make it into something it’s not. Life is tough. It’s challenging. There are things that happen to us, sometimes it’s things we do to others and we just want it to all be more manageable.  If we do talk about God in polite company, our tendency is to water things down a bit so as to not be offensive.  Or, in my mind, what’s even worse is when we make it all into a zero sum game; you know it’s a hassle to follow Jesus but it sure beats going to Hell.  So if I must, let me say the right words, pray the right prayers and escape as much of the damage life brings as possible.  In other words, we seek to make God into our own image, hoping that somehow it will all be enough.

That’s us in our blindness. You see if we talk too much about the religious people Jesus encountered, we pull up our chair a bit too close to something that just seems to stick in our crawl. You see, we are religious people. We fall into the same category of mistakes as we’ve been reading about over the last month or so. We want our religion to pay off somewhere.  I mean, it’d be great if we followed Jesus and our bank account grew and no bad news from the doctor would ever come. That’s what those religious people in Jesus day thought and quite frankly that sounds appealing. Maybe it’s just me, but the religion of the Pharisees, Scribes, Lawyers and even the Sadducees sound enticing. The problem, of course, is that Jesus doesn’t seem to be satisfied with us settling for something so shallow, so empty, so lifeless. Jesus wants for us, the truth. It’s supposed to set us free, right?

So much of the life of faith is spent spinning our wheels and hoping to not get stuck. We want things to turn out the way we want things to work out. But sometimes it just doesn’t. Sometimes jobs are lost, divorces happen, illness overwhelms, and we find ourselves asking, what happened?  What sin did we commit or how is God getting even with us? It’s like we signed on for something and somebody either did the bait and switch or just enjoyed watching us fall when the carpet was suddenly pulled out from underneath us.

I get that. That’s why I can preach about it. I am no different than any of you. I want life to be manageable. I want to make it to the end without limping or leaking oil. But that’s not the promise, nor has it ever been.

Yet, there is always good news here.  You see, I think part of the problem we all face is that we fear that we will be, in the end or somewhere between now and then, alone, without any experience of love and support. But that is just our blindness hiding us from a light that refuses to be snuffed out. Things don’t always go well but this I do know to be true: that despite the struggles, the losses, indeed even the deaths, God will not abandon us.  There are, what St. John of the Cross called Dark Nights of the Soul, where our prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling but when we experience such darkness, we need to readjust our vision.  Maybe if we stop looking up and started looking at each other; maybe if we would stop looking at God as some sort of mystical, divine genie, giving us three wishes, we would find the God that truly exists and continues to calls us to love the world as God does. For you see he doesn’t condemn us but seeks to set us free from all that binds us: things like a belief that everything always has to turn out just perfectly. It’s a risk to let go of all of that that has kept us so wound up. But, at the end, even if we’re leaking oil and dealing with all that life might bring, we will come face to face, and see with our own eyes, our God who said, there is nothing that can ever separate you or me from God’s love. And we will know, fully, that’s enough.

In Jesus Name.

Amen.