Christ Divided

Text: 1 Corinthians 1:10-17

The Lutheran church in the U.S. is fostering splinter groups. Some people are not happy with the way things are going. Some folks do not like the agreement Lutherans have made with the Episcopalians. Some don’t like the agreement made with the UCC and Presbyterian churches. Some don’t like the stance of the church on the ordination of gay or lesbian pastors, some think the church is too liberal and others think it too conservative. Some think they are the real Lutherans. Some think they are the real Christians. Some of these folks have formed clubs of like-minded people. Some of these clubs have threatened to resign from the Lutheran church. That’ll show ‘em, they think.

Has Christ been divided, Paul asks. Has Christ been divided? You bet he has.

In this letter to the church at Corinth, a church he started, it is clear that Paul is not a happy camper. The church is full of splinter groups, just like the Lutherans. I’m with Paul, some say. I’m with Apollos, some say back. I’m with Peter, say a third group. What are you guys doing? Paul writes to them. You are all strutting around, disagreeing with each other, each group thinking they have it right. Where do you get that arrogance from? Not from me, that’s for sure. And not from Jesus, that’s for sure, too. I appeal to you, Paul writes, stop the division. Stop it.

Not that they should all be the same. That is not it. Paul later writes about how the follows of Jesus have all sorts of different skills and gifts, but they all come together in Christ. No longer Jew or Greek, male or female—we quote Paul from one of his other letters. We are all one in Christ Jesus. What Paul asks is that they all be on the same page, as we would say now.

But not that they spend too much time on the page, or on too many of those pages. Following Jesus is not the same as writing a treatise about Jesus. Eloquent wisdom is not what this is all about, says Paul. In fact, eloquent wisdom sometimes gets in the way. The fights between one Christian faction and the other are rarely based on personal experiences of God or understandings of the heart. They are and have always been more often based on theology and doctrine and creeds and interpretation. Such talk, while really interesting and entertaining (I like to do it, anyway)—but such talk, Paul says, can drain the cross of its power.

When you gather with other Christians, don’t ask them to explain what they believe. Ask them to tell their own story about what God means and has meant in their own lives. That would be a good way to start. It works with people who are not Christian, too, I’ve found.

Paul uses the phrase “brothers and sisters” twice as often in this letter (38 times, to be precise) as in any other letter. He wants the people in Corinth to remember that they are all God’s children, and that God has no favorites among them. If they are putting on airs, it is because of their own valuation of themselves, not God’s.

There is a unity among the followers of Jesus that comes from the heart of Jesus' teachings and his resurrection. But that unity does not come because we think we should be unified and should work really hard at not being divisive. It comes from God’s grace. As a consequence, Paul’s relationship with other Christians does not depend on how Paul feels about them or whether Paul likes them or whether he thinks they are good people or whether he agrees with them. It is based on the fact that God’s grace is alive in them.

Paul was a missionary. And this appeal he makes to the people has a lot to do with evangelism and hospitality. It has to do with evangelism because it means that you cannot convince someone anything about Jesus by talking at them. What you can do, and what Paul does all the time, is tell them some stories. Real ones, that you know about because they are yours. And it has to do with hospitality because everyone is welcome. Everyone is welcome because there is nothing on the face of it that can tell us any reason to not welcome them. Listen to their story. It is the flip side of evangelism. Evangelism: you tell your story. Hospitality: someone tells you his or her story. It works out nice.

Noah [a child in the church] was just baptized. He has become a Christian by this sacrament, marked with the mark of Christ, we said. This is part of Noah's story, should he someday want to tell it. It is part of your story too, having been witnesses to it and having promised to nurture Noah in his faith. He was baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The name we call God. Noah and we share a story and always will.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians starts with the greeting: “to all people everywhere who call on the name of Jesus.” Paul has nothing against eloquent wisdom per se. But it is not the first thing, nor the most important thing, maybe not even an important thing. The first thing, the most important thing, is that we are followers of Jesus.

For now, all those Lutheran groups I mentioned have decided that they will stay within the larger church. Partly because they think they can be more effective. But mostly because though they differ in many ways, they share in common one thing. They are all people who call on the name of Jesus.

Come and See

Text: John 1:29-42

It seems a little foolish.

It seems a little foolish to follow this man to who-knows-where for who-knows-what purpose. To follow Jesus on the strength of John’s exclamation: Look, here is the lamb of God. As if that were a reason. But it turned out that that was reason enough for Andrew and the other disciple (who does not even get mentioned by name). Enough to abandon one kind of life, known and familiar, for another kind, unknown and exotic.

There is a notion that becoming a follower of Jesus, becoming a Christian, allowing Jesus to be one’s guide and leader, is a decision that can be made rationally and with clarity. Something thought through and figured out. And sometimes that may be how it works. But often enough what happens between you and Jesus is unexpected and mysterious, and in a moment one’s life is rearranged. It is rarely prudent.

So it was with the first disciples, who in all the Gospels follow Jesus suddenly and for no apparent good reason. Come and see, Jesus says, and they do.

Or mostly suddenly. They do ask Jesus for his resume, for a reference. “Where are you staying?” Where do you live, might be another way to put it, where do you abide. But “where are you at?” is more the meaning. What exactly is with you? Where do you stand on important issues? They try for a moment to pin Jesus down. But as so often in the Gospels, Jesus will not give them a straight answer. Jesus does not offer them a position paper or a business plan or mission statement. Instead of an answer of this sort, Jesus makes them an invitation. Jesus just invites them: Come and see.

They call him a teacher, and like all teachers he teaches less about truth and more about possibility, which is perhaps better truth. Jesus’ invitation is always: Come and see. Come and see what might happen, Come and see who you might be, Come and see who you might become, Come and see what the world might become, Come and see what it might be like to follow me. The disciples do not know the answers to these questions when they turn to follow Jesus. All they really know is that they have received an invitation. That seems to be enough.

Invitations draw us into the future. Invitations are the foundation for adventure, freedom, and joy. They are spoilers of certainty, stability, and control. Life makes steps by constant invitation. Who knows where they will lead or how things will turn out? You are invited to be married, have a family, change jobs, go to school, start a company, join the army, run for office, speak out against injustice, leave your home. Who knows what will happen? The disciples didn’t.

It seems to me that the invitation that Jesus makes to us has four parts. Or maybe better to say Jesus makes four invitations, each intertwined with the others.

First, Jesus invites us: Come and be with me. The invitation is both personal and corporate. That means that Jesus is asking you to be connected with him. It also means that you will be connected to his ministry, and therefore all the other followers of Jesus. Our focus is on a particular person, Jesus Christ. We are not invited to join an organization that is centered around an idea or a doctrine. The center for each of us is Jesus. At the same time, we are part of a group of people who are all expected to work together and who bring each other hope, comfort, and mutual admiration and also warning, and to embolden and hearten each other.

Second, Jesus invites us: Come and transform the world. In his ministry, Jesus paints a picture of a world different from the one of his time and of ours. In it, people give away all their money. They do not fight back. They lend without expecting anything in return. They love their enemies and their neighbors. They are compassionate even if it leads to trouble. They rely on the good will of others to be fed and housed, and those who have food and housing freely share them. What kind of world would it be if all who followed Jesus did as he preached? Or worked to make a world in which it was easy to do those things rather a world which considers this kind of talk to be unrealistic and naive at best and revolutionary at worst.

Third, Jesus invites us: Come and be brave. The disciples suspected soon enough that to follow Jesus was a risky endeavor. We in our time know it is. To be Christian is to take risks. Not so much risks of persecution, though that has been a risk and still is in some places. But more, the risk involved with doing what Jesus tells us to do and to be. Transformation is not welcome if you like the way things are. If you preach that the last will be first and the first last, those who are first now might not be happy with you. If you love your enemies, your friends might not be be happy with you.

And fourth, Jesus invites us: Come and transform yourself. If we accept Jesus’ invitation to come and see, what we will see is a broader horizon. We might be able to see people who before were invisible. We might act with courage where before we were timid. We might accomplish things that before were impossible. We might love the unlovely. We might let go what before we grasped tightly. We might walk lightly where before we were burdened with things of the earth and things of the spirit. We might trust God where before we trusted no one. We might become different people, with new names, as Simon became Peter.

The invitation of Jesus in all its parts is of the essence of Christianity. A God of grace, as we know God to be, does not coerce us, does not boss us around, does not play games with us. A God of grace makes us an offer. Christianity is in part an invitation to see and be and behave in a new way.

People sometimes describe faith as a body of knowledge, a done deal, learn it and be it. but because it is invitational, it is more experimental. Christianity is an experimental religion, not in the way that people say “an experimental airplane,” but experimental in that we don't quite know what is going to happen moment to moment. We try things out. Our faith is built on experiences. We respond to Jesus step by step, as the first disciples did, opening our faith as he continues as he continues to offer his invitation.

On the radio last week there was a story of a young girl who was blind. She had been reading a new kind of book, a picture book in braille, with bumps and forms on the page that let her imagine the images as a seeing person would from a photograph. The book was a book about astronomy, and the pictures were pictures of galaxies and nebulae and shooting clouds of interstellar gas. The girl, having been given the gift of the universe through this book, said she was interested in space exploration. The interviewer asked her whether she would like to be an astronaut some day. She said: Uh huh, totally, yes!

Not all of us answer as emphatically when we hear Jesus’ call. Sometimes we respond “totally, yes!” and sometimes it takes a while. We do not know why Andrew and his friend—and later Simon Peter and all the others—we don’t know why each of them followed Jesus. We don’t know whether they were confident or nervous. We don’t know whether they thought they were frightened or amused. We do know that Jesus invited them to come and see—and they did.

It may be that the message of Jesus is universal. But that does not mean it reveals itself in each of us in the same way, or that we all hear it in the same way. It is interpreted in each of our lives in individual ways. And the way you interpret it and respond is a result of how the invitation you hear bangs up against all that you know, and are, and have been.

Our bishop wonders whether it is time go go from “come and see” to “go and tell.” But all we really can tell is that there is an invitation. And all we can really tell is the invitation that we, each of us, have heard. All all we can really tell is what happens to us when we hear jesus call us: Come and see.

Getting to Know You

Text: Ephesians 3:1-12
Other texts: Matthew 2:1-12

Herod wanted to know. He was ignorant. He knew a little something. He wanted to know more. Herod knew what he had heard through rumor, gossip, and from mysterious travelers. What little Herod knew made him afraid. Herod was a frightened man. Anyone who rules through coercion, through violence, is an frightened man. Anyone who rules by making people afraid—and that is how Herod ruled—anyone who rules like that lives in fear. Someday, something will be happen. Herod heard from the mysterious travelers, the magi, that maybe his replacement had just been born. You have to be pretty jumpy to worry about babies who were just born who might possibly someday replace you, but it seems that Herod was pretty jumpy.

The wise men were not super reliable. We call them wise and we call them kings, but really they were not the sort of people anyone in Herod’s time or Herod’s position would normally have respected. Neither kings nor necessarily wise, they were magi, which is the root word for magician, which is what they mostly were. They would not have been honored, being one step up, at best, from charlatans. They claimed supernatural powers. They were held in esteem then about as much as television psychics are today.

But Herod was super-vigilant, and he paid attention to the news that these flaky magi brought. And he gathered his own wise counselors and priests and scholars, who told him a little more about what he wanted to know. But they didn’t tell him enough to find Jesus, fortunately. Providentially, you would have to say. Through providence, Herod’s hunger for knowledge was not satisfied.

Herod wanted to know. He wanted to know so that he could keep his power. That’s one of the big reasons people do want to know things. To be powerful, to get power, to keep power, to protect power. Knowledge is power. That is why we have state secrets. Secrets are powerful. But God in this case knew how to keep a secret.

Today is Epiphany. Epiphany of our Lord, to be more formal, to distinguish it from just plain old epiphanies. The word epiphany means to reveal, or to make manifest, and its roots mean to shine up. As if there were something buried in the ground but which suddenly emits a ray of light, shining up into the sky. Like in the movies when the archeologists digging in the ruins uncover the mysterious source of energy they have been searching for, and a light shines up like a geyser. Epiphany does not mean “turn on the light.” It means “see the light.” Like the hymn, “I saw the light.” See the light which was already there, but perhaps hidden. Or perhaps you were not looking in the right place. Or for the right thing.

Epiphany is an (often sudden) revelation. An understanding.

Paul wanted to know, too. He already knew a lot. But he wanted to know more. Paul wanted to know more about God. And Paul wanted to know God more. God knows how to keep a secret, but fortunately God knows how to reveal one, too.

There is a strong consensus among scholars that Ephesians, from which we just heard, was not written by the Apostle Paul. They think this for a lots of different reasons. But generally it is like the way you could tell whether a letter from your significant other or parent or good friend was authentic. The style, the words used, the ideas or content of the letter—nothing is quite the same as the letters that most people agree Paul himself wrote. It just doesn’t sound like Paul.

This passage in particular is full of ideas and words not used elsewhere by Paul. Even so, I think whoever wrote this letter had a good sense of Paul’s hunger to know God.

When you fall in love with someone, you want to know everything about them. If you are falling in love with someone, and they with you, you are willing, eager, to spend time learning about them, discovering them, being surprised by what you find out, being amazed by them.

Paul is in love with God. And the story of Paul told through the epistles is a love story. In it, we see Paul’s excitement at learning about God through God’s call to him and as revealed in Jesus. Paul is amazed by God. And Paul is amazed at what God reveals. The passage in these verses are an explosion of revelation.

“ … you have already heard of the commission of God's grace that was given me for you, and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, [… you will be able] to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ. In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.”

Three things excite Paul about his relationship with God. First, that God would be such a person of grace as to send Jesus to this world to heal the whole world. Second, that God would be so open as to let Paul in particular and humans in general see what God is like inside, because Jesus is God’s insides. What Jesus does, God does. Jesus tells the truth about God in the way Jesus is and what Jesus does. And the third thing that excites Paul is that God has chosen him, Paul, to get the message out.

We all share, more or less, Paul’s hunger to know God. Your presence here is evidence of that. Not all of us—but some, for sure—were knocked off our feet by God the way Paul was. Not all of us were called so energetically to serve God. But some have been, and some will be yet. Our relationship with God is like the relationship between two courting friends getting acquainted, or two people falling in love.

As in all developing relationships, there are ups and downs. Sometimes things go great. Sometimes it seems we feel like were have to break up. We experience little epiphanies. God is revealed to us. We allow more parts of ourselves to be revealed to God; we bring more to God. We learn, as we do with someone with whom we are falling in love, that there are things we can say to God without driving God away. Even though they might be embarrassing and awkward. Even though we have never told these things to anyone else. We long to know, but we also long to be known.

We want to know. Sometimes we want to know like Herod, so that we feel more powerful, more in control. We want to know what God wants exactly, what we can do to make God favor us, what we have to do to stay out of God’s wrath, what we might do to cajole God and get what we want.

But sometimes we are like Paul. Head over heals in love with God. Being powerless but being eager. Letting our relationship with God unfold, looking forward to our future together. Being grateful and amazed.

Jesus Christ, God Incarnate

Text: Hebrews 2:10-18

After the prayers of the people today in the middle of worship, we will say “Into your hands, God of grace, we commend all for whom we pray, trusting in your mercy, through Jesus Christ, God incarnate.” That last little bit is a somewhat unusual, non-standard. In the rule books, this prayer does not end with “God incarnate.” In the books, it ends with “Jesus Christ, our Lord.” Maybe all these Sundays you have been thinking, why does he say “God incarnate”? Why doesn’t he say it the right way?

When we pray the prayers of the people, we pray in the name of Jesus. That is what Jesus taught us to do. Ask for what you want in my name, he said. Praying in the name of Jesus is like invoking a friend’s name when you want the force of your friend to give weight and authority to your words. You might be looking for a job, and you get this lead from your friend Michelle. You call the lead: “Hi. Michelle suggested I call you.” He knows Michelle, so he pays attention to you. Or on the other hand, you might be acting as an agent: “Hi, I’m calling at the request of Mayor Menino of Boston. He’d like to meet with you.” It’s a kind of official name dropping.

When you pray in the name of Jesus, you are saying, “Hi, Jesus suggested I get in touch. Jesus said I should call you.” If we end the prayers with “Jesus Christ, our Lord,” we are doing more like the Mayor Menino thing. Our connection is sort of official. But when we end with “Jesus Christ, God incarnate,” we are invoking the name of Jesus more as our friend than as our boss.

What we are trusting here is that Jesus knows us. He knows what it is like to be a human being, with all the joys and sorrows of human existence. Our prayers during this time in worship are things we desire or celebrate as humans. Human wants and longings and gratitude. That someone get well, that someone be comforted, that someone be safe, that someone be happy at a birth, a birthday, a success after hard work, a break. Someone. Some one. Some human person.

In one sense, what’s the big deal that Jesus was a person? For many people in the world, that’s all that Jesus was. A good, wise, surprising, charismatic, radical, radically compassionate, healing person. For those people, the issue is Jesus’ divinity, not his humanity. That makes sense, I suppose. There are, after all, more examples of good humans in the world than there are of divine humans. But even if it makes sense, that has not been how Christians have thought for the past twenty centuries, or at least the past nineteen. Once things settled down after a few initial heresies, Christians have been historically more likely to deny the humanity of Jesus and to take his divinity as given. Certainly in the passage from the book of Hebrews, from which we just heard, that is the issue.

The book of Hebrews has what is called in church jargon “high Christology.” What that means is that in this book Jesus is portrayed as God, eternal and of all time, from the beginning of the world to the end. But Jesus became for a while a person. “For a little while,” it says, he was “made lower than the angels.” That means us, made like us. In Hebrews, Jesus’ godly nature goes without saying. But the book makes a special effort to convince us of his human nature.

He is like us in every respect, it says. He is a brother to us. We are his brothers and sisters. We share the same parent. We share in being creatures made of blood and flesh. For some people, this fleshiness of Jesus gives them the creeps. After all, we know well the things people do that are not so good. We get into some pretty bad stuff, some unpleasant situations, some grimy spots from time to time. How can we say that our God is like us in every way when there is a lot in ourselves that we do not respect at all. Some do not want a God who is human in every way.

Besides, Jesus is made to suffer. In Hebrews, this is the clincher. It was his suffering that proved him to be human. He did not hide behind his divinity and avoid the tough and painful things that people do. Like, for example, being executed. “Why don’t you save yourself,” the people asked Jesus on the cross. But if he had, he would not have been human. Humans don’t get those kind of options. When it says that Jesus is made perfect in sufferings, it does not mean that he is made morally pure through the suffering of himself or others. It does not mean that it is good to suffer. Or that Jesus liked to suffer. It means that Jesus suffered just like all people do. People suffer. Jesus could not be a complete person without suffering. Jesus did not seek suffering, but he was bound to suffer because he was completely a person. Like us in every respect.

By being just like us, there is a sense in which Jesus is more than God. I’m not sure quite how to talk about this. Jesus is God. That’s what the Trinity means. What Jesus does, God does. There is no way in our theology that Jesus can be more than God. What I really mean is more useful, more connected to us. That is still theologically a problem. But, as Hebrews argues—and as I think we often feel—because Jesus was a human, he is closer to us. He knows us better. “He had to become like his brothers and sisters,” says Hebrews, so that he could be more merciful and more effective “in the service of God,” as it says. When God became human in Jesus, God learned something that God did not already know. God learned in a way that before God had not: what it is like to be human. To love and to suffer as a person does.

God as Jesus knows us in a different way. Jesus weeps for his friend Lazarus, his heart aches when he sees people ill, he gets angry at scumbags and oppressors. Jesus is able to say about his executioners, as he is dying, “forgive them,” because he knows how easily people are caught in a mesh of fear and greed and ignorance.

Jesus is human-sized. He knows how big the ocean seems, he knows how powerless we feel and also sometimes how unreasonably powerful. He knows how long it takes to walk from Jerusalem to Nazareth.

And above all he knows death. He knows how it feels to face death. He knows how scary that is. He knows how much the fear of death ransacks our lives. How it tears through our fragile freedom and peace of mind and peace of the world. Makes us less compassionate, makes us fill barns with more goods so we’ll always have enough, makes us hold on to things and familiar systems, makes us fastidious and obsessed. The fear of death and its less-permanent cousins makes us afraid to live. So we are slaves to death, Hebrews says. In a way that Hebrews does not detail, Jesus destroys the power of death and frees those who are enslaved by fear.

To say, to feel, “Jesus is with me” is somehow different than to say “God is with me.” God is with us because it is God’s job, God’s nature. But Jesus is with us, so it can seem, because Jesus is family. Jesus is kin. Jesus is our brother. We can call on Jesus because we are related by the demands of kinship. Jesus speaks for us because he is us.

We pray prayers of concern and celebration. We pray in confidence because we know that Jesus speaks our language—the language of human life—without translation. Our longings are not trivial, our fears not phony, our celebrations not foolish. We know that God has more than an academic, a political, a cosmic understanding of us. Because God lives here. Jesus Christ, God incarnate.

Light Before Christmas

Text: Matthew 1:18-25
Other texts: Isaiah 7:10-16

As signs go, it was not much.

A child born of a young woman. As if that didn’t happen every day. A son, too. Odds of that happening were what: one out of two? Not exactly improbable. And his name was Immanuel.

Ahaz, king of Judah, was not looking for a sign. So he said. I’m not going to ask for any old sign, so said Ahaz. I would not ask for a sign from God, he says. Yet even so, he gets a sign. And he welcomes the sign. Ahaz is in a little trouble politically and militarily. He is concerned about an alliance from the north. And the sign of Immanuel points to good news in the end. The king has nothing to fear from his enemies. At least in the short term.

The birth of Jesus is as much a sign as an event. It is a sign of things to come, a sign of God’s eagerness to be part of the world, a sign of God’s hopes and plans.

When we recall the story of the birth of Jesus, we mostly remember the story from the Gospel of Luke (and we’ll hear that version tomorrow, Christmas Eve). But in this year and on this day, still in Advent, we hear the version from Matthew. (There is no birth story in Mark or John, which is interesting in itself.)

In Matthew, the birth of Jesus is a grammatical afterthought. If it portends great things, it is not very portentous. It is in a subordinate clause in a sentence that refers to what Joseph is doing, and in fact the whole passage is mostly about Joseph. Joseph is going to treat Mary honorably, Joseph has a dream, Joseph is comforted by the angel, Joseph is the son of the line of David, Joseph names his son Jesus. “Joseph had no martial relations with Mary until she had borne a son,” it says. That’s the birth story of Jesus in Matthew.

For Luke, the birth of Jesus is a performance. Very suitable to Christmas pageants. For Matthew, the birth is a sign. In Luke, Jesus is welcomed by shepherds and priests. But in Matthew, Jesus and his family have to flee in fear to Egypt to escape from evil King Herod. In Luke, Herod is not part of Jesus birth story at all. But in Matthew, Herod reads the signs. Herod knows that the birth of Jesus is a sign of a new world order, a sign that the days of Herod and his type and his cronies are numbered.

We, like those who lived in the time of Jesus, like people of every time and place, walk in worry and apprehension. Times are dark. We walk in darkness. We look for a sign that the future will not be the same as the past. We hardly know where we are, we cannot see where we are going, and do not know how get there. We look for a light to give us direction and also to illuminate the path ahead so that we do not stumble. We look for light at the end of the tunnel and also the light inside the tunnel, where we are walking.

At Christmas, we proclaim that Jesus is that light. I am the light, Jesus says. In Baptism, like the Baptism of Alec today, we pray that the light of Jesus shines in us so that other people might see it. May your light so shine, we said to Alec, that others may see.

Here in worship the light signs are everywhere. Santa Lucia is a celebration of light, Lucy walks with candles in her crown, we give a lighted candle to Alec (or to his responsible adults; he’s a little small yet), we light all four candles on the Advent wreath, we light all these [aisle] candles.

We are not quite at Christmas, in spite of the poinsettias and tree and this teaser Gospel story. We are still in Advent. And Advent is more than anything a time of looking. Looking hard, at ourselves and the world and God’s promises. At the beginning of Advent, looking back. And now, almost at the end, looking forward. We are tired of dark days and dark times. We look hard to find the light. Unlike Ahaz, we are looking for a sign, looking hard.

In both Luke and Matthew the birth of Jesus is a sign. In Luke it is a sign like a big billboard, something broadcast by Clear Channel Communications. In Matthew, the birth of Jesus is like a street sign in Boston, hardly visible.

But in both stories, the sign is there: Jesus is coming to change the world. Watch out, world. Watch out. The message of Advent is this: The days of the ways of darkness are numbered. There is a new way to be. Jesus shows us. The light shines. The light shines and the darkness will not overcome it.

Peace in the Kingdom

Text: Matthew 3:1-12
Other texts: Isaiah 11:1-8

There is a measuring device out on the street next to the church, down on Tremont Street. The device is called the Discontent-O-Meter. It measures anxiety. It measures how worried people are about the state of the world. It works through trash. If there are hardly any scratch tickets, empty pints, or styrofoam coffee cups in the gutter or on the sidewalk, then things are pretty good. People are feeling more or less OK. But if the street is littered from end to end, and little nips are stashed in the flower pots, then things are tough. I read the Discontent-O-Meter every day as I walk between my house and the church. Right now, things are tough. And have been for a while.

John the Baptizer preaches about repentance. Repent, he says, for the kingdom of God has come near. He takes people down to the river, where they confess their sins. It is hard to tell exactly what happens to those people next. The baptism of John resembled a rite of conversion. People were changed by it. Baptism both cleansed people of the old and initiated them into something new. What was new for them was not, it seems, a kind of restored soul. What was new was that they had become partners, or agents, or members, or citizens, of the kingdom of God. Which was near, though not entirely here.

The nature of the kingdom of God would have been clear to the crowds that gathered around John in the desert. It would have be a realm of this world. But in God’s kingdom, the poor are not abandoned, one nation does not occupy another as Rome had, the powerful leaders of the church and state do not strut around in fancy outfits while the people wear rags, the many do not starve while a few feast. Pretty much what you would expect. What we pray for every day here.

When the Pharisees and Sadducees come to John to be baptized, he calls them the brood of vipers. Children of snakes. Not because they are individually bad folks—maybe they are, but probably not, just regular folks in power—but because as a group they have not been welcoming of God’s kingdom. What have they as a group done to even things up between people on the outs and the people who are in? Will they repent? That is, will they turn to a new kind of life? Will they change their ways? It sounds like John does not think so. They come for show and perhaps for solace, but they probably do not come looking to be empowered to change the world. They are not discontent.

What we hope for in the kingdom of God is food, shelter, care, compassion, fellowship, fairness, and all the blessings of life. Those are the things that we can do something about, and the prophets have told us for millennia that God calls us to do something about them.

But what we long for most in the kingdom of God is peace. Peace is the sign, peace is the marker, peace is the reward of God’s kingdom.

People walk down Tremont Street with a lot on their minds. An appointment, a family problem, some issue at work, how to make ends meet, how to be safe, whether to buy something, how their clothes feel, where they’ll be next year, sorrow at some recent loss. These things occupy the front of their minds. Each day there is something new to ponder about. But I think that in the back of their minds, in the hidden and dark, deep anxious thoughts, in the constant background, is war. War today and the threat of war tomorrow and the sorrow of war in the past.

There are people today who remember World War II and the Korean War and the Vietnam War and the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq. Plus the first Arab Israeli War and the Suez War and the Six Day war and the Yom Kippur War. Plus the Russian war in Afghanistan and the war in the Balkans and the war in Somalia and the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia and the war in Rwanda.

For over half of my life the U.S. has been actively at war. And in every year in the life of each of us here, somewhere in the world there has been active fighting, destruction, and death from war. There has not been a single year in any of our lives in which the world has been at peace. War is not new.

Maybe this is old hat. Everyone knows that wars go on always. But if it is old hat, it is a sad old hat, one that ought to be retired. Each day that war rages makes us more tired. Moves us high on the Discontent-O-Meter. It is a worldwide discouragement.

It is not meant to be. It is not what God has in mind. The design of the world is for peace. The story of creation in Genesis is a story of creaturely harmony and peace. The story of the fall is the story of the world broken. The prophecy that we just heard in Isaiah is the promise of a world restored. It is a radical promise. A time of unending peace is so strange that it will be as if natural enemies—leopard and lamb, lion and calf—will live together. As if predators never preyed on the young and weak. As if our fears for ourselves and those we love had no basis.

We might pray, as I think John the Baptizer must have and that people who came to him must have, that the oppressors become the oppressed. We might pray for victory of the righteous over the unrighteous. We might hope that the lion and the calf switch places, and pray that the lamb puts fear in the heart of the leopard. That would be a change. Sort of.

But I don’t think it would do much for reducing the reading on the Discontent-O-Meter. We think sometimes that what we want is victory, when what we really long for is the end to all battles.

If the kingdom of God is near, we are all in this together. Can just one of us be healed while all the rest are broken? Can just one of us be comforted while the rest suffer? The notion that John likes, that some are wheat while the rest are chaff, is not born out by the actions of Jesus nor by our own experience. We are each of us a little wheat and a little chaff. I speak, at least, for myself.

Even so, we could pretend that we know who is wheat and chaff. We could pretend that is is we who are authorized to separate the wheat from the chaff. We certainly have tried that tactic over and over again. People did that long before Jesus was born and sadly, have continued to do it long after he was crucified. But the results do not seem so great. It has not done much for the state of the world.

Things are not so good so far, as my son used to say. It is not good for the people who walk down Tremont Street, it is not good for you, to live in a world in unending battle. It drives us crazy and sad and moves each of us up on the Discontent-O-Meter. I bet it moves God up on that scale, too.

Advent is a time for reconsideration, which is another word for repentance. I’m not saying this is simple. But maybe it is time to consider. Jesus, the one we follow, did preach another way to live. He came to heal the world, he said, and in doing so to heal that part in our minds in which resides dark sorrow. And replace it with the light of God’s kingdom.

Separation. Reconciliation.

Text: Matthew 24:36-44 Other texts: Romans 13:11-14

Separation. Reconciliation.

Separation and reconciliation. They make the world go ‘round. Literally. Our planet longs to move on in a straight line, free from the sun. Without the sun, that’s just what it would do. But the sun pulls it back, every second the sun pulls the earth away from its headstrong straight-ahead path, and therefore the earth circles the sun. Even though its momentum seeks independence, it is grateful for its constant reconciliation with the sun. For without that, there is no life here. No us. No Advent.

In a similar way the electrons circle the core of the atom, allowing large things to form like people and churches. And inside those cores, quarks circle each other. This is not a permanent condition. Particles break loose from time to time. Good thing they do, or there would be no energy for life or electricity or much else. But in the short term, at least, things do not fall apart, the center does hold, we have a world that exists long enough for us to be grateful for it.

It is not just physics. Children orbit their parents, then run away to the playroom, the playground, the playing fields, in widening curves. And then return for comfort, hope, safety, peace. Lovers circle one another, binary stars. They drift away, run away, or are pulled away by other callings, to work or war or wondering about the green pastures on the other side of the fence, and then if lucky are drawn back to one another in a partial unity that is both fragile and rugged.

We are not permanent creatures. In the last few months at Faith we have had a bushel of births and deaths. We come and go. Together and not.

Separation is inevitable. So when Jesus speaks about two women, one taken and one left, that is not remarkable in any way. That’s life. Ordinary life. Matthew wants to show Jesus talking about a remarkable time, the end time. Matthew, like his contemporaries, was interested in the end of the world. Because, among other things, the world for them was not so great. Jesus lived on this earth in a time when the end of time seemed welcome, the separation of all of us, or some of us, from this worldly world. And a reconciliation, at the same time, of people with God, with God’s love, living in a unity with others and with God that would be more close than the closest lovers. A new place and time.

Two will be in the field, but one will be taken and one left. That is the way of things. We do not have to conjure up some sort of cosmic dislocation for that to happen. It happens all the time. In the simplest ways. Friends move away. Or we do. Spouses or partners part. Children grow up and move on. Interests change. People get sick and out of the loop. People leave us through death.

It is the way of things, but it is not what we want. We want to be close to one another. To not fight and quarrel and do battle. To not be estranged and awkward and at odds. To not be lonely. To not be hateful to others. To have no love unrequited. We want reconciliation.

We want this for ourselves, our individual selves, in our own lives with our own families and friends and colleagues, even, and neighbors.

We want this for our world, for the nations and peoples of the world.

We want this for us and God.

The story of God and humans is a story of separation and reconciliation. In the days of Noah, as Jesus says. God gives up on humans, washing them and creatures all away, then in the end saves them after all. Isaiah tells Israel that it and God are estranged, but in the end the two are back together again. We get angry at God and, it seems, God at us. But never for long, and never forever.

Imagine the disciples living at the time when Matthew’s Gospel was written, long after Jesus had died and been raised up. Imagine how frightened, sad, and hopeful they must have been. Imagine how desperately they must have wanted Jesus back, as desperately as we want an old friend back, as desperately as someone who has lost the one who gives one’s life meaning, as desperately as one who is left behind.

In Advent we long for the coming of Christ and the re-coming of Christ. It is an emotionally complicated time. We anticipate separation and reconciliation. The coming of Jesus at Christmas and the return of Jesus—who knows when. No one knows, Jesus says. The mystery of faith, we say in the prayer of thanksgiving: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.

Some find the end-of-the-world stuff creepy. Especially in these days when people write about it with such glee and triumphalism. But the separation we hear about in this story is not the point of the story. That is the context of it, the sorrow of it. No one hearing this story would have been pleased by hearing that in the field one will be taken and one left. That is not a good thing. That is just plain sad.

What is a good thing is that we continue to expect in some time to find hope, peace, joy, and love. That the son pulls us back around. That we expect in some time to be reconciled to one another, all of us, all people, all peoples, and that we expect to be reconciled with God.

Advent is a time for reflection on our life now and on what might come into our lives in the future. It not a time for us to be either gloomy or self-righteous. Put aside the works of darkness, the apostle Paul says, and put on the armor of light. In these weeks ahead, be with God. And be with one another.