Foolish Expectations

Text: Luke 2:22-40

Does God encourage Simeon’s foolish expectations?

The story in the Gospel passage takes place when Jesus is just 40 days old. Brought to the Temple in Jerusalem with his parents, he is seen by Simeon. Simeon took his own faith and its teachings seriously. You would call him religious. He had been told that in his life he would see the coming of the Messiah, a man who would restore Israel to its glorious position as a great and powerful nation. Not one under the thumb of Rome and ruled by petty and corrupt tyrants. When he sees Jesus, Simeon declares that his life’s wait is over. His wait is over. Jesus is the one he expected.

Yet it never happened the way Simeon hoped. In the story, these events happened at the beginning of the life of Jesus. But the story itself was written much later, nearly 100 years later. And by then Jerusalem had been conquered and sacked. The Temple in which the story takes place was destroyed seventy years after Jesus’ birth and before Luke wrote his Gospel. Simeon’s expectations were met only in the story, never in history.

Expectations are difficult and sometimes cruel masters. They start innocently, with a vision of what might be. Wouldn’t it be great if such and such happened? A fine job or a life’s good companion or a house in the country. In the case of Israel at the time of Jesus and Simeon, perhaps a vision of a free and restored Israel. Then to this vision is added a sense that what we hope for is what should be. That is, what we imagine is what we deserve, is natural and logical. Or predicted, by our parents, say, or our friends, or perhaps by a prophet. And finally vision and destiny merge into a kind of confident inevitability. Which becomes a focus and guide for our lives, part of the central story, a part which seems already written but as yet unrealized.

For this reason, unfulfilled expectations can shatter us. Expectations not fulfilled change us. Expectations seem as real as history. They can be as much a part of us as our past. Expectations are not the same as goals. Goals can be met more or less well. A partially realized goal is an accomplishment. But an expectation can only be met or not. And usually not, for no reality can equal the power of our visionary imaginations and hopes.

The destruction of the Temple in the year 70 shattered Israel’s view of itself and of its future. Israel’s expectations, personified in Simeon, were never met.

So how did this sad story ever make it into Luke? Why not leave it out, or remove it?

The expectation of Simeon was an expectation of power. The title Messiah, or Christ, means anointed one. The anointed one was king. The king was the national and religious ruler. The Messiah was a savior in the sense that he would save Israel from being conquered and oppressed, and would restore Israel’s greatness.

Yet the vision that was the foundation of Israel’s expectations was not one of power. It was a vision of light. The goal God set for Israel was not to rule other people and other lands. It was to be a good example to those people and lands. As Simeon sings when he picks up Jesus, Israel’s hope and destiny were to be a light to the nations. Israel was to be light like a beacon, a guide to what is good and godly. And to be light like a spot light, revealing God in all things. The Messiah was not to be a swinger of swords but a swinger of lanterns.

Evangelism, which means spreading the good news, is an activity of action, not of talk. It is a do what I do kind of thing. Not a do what I say kind of thing. Our friend Martin Luther spoke a lot of about the Word of God, but the words of God speak with us in what we do. Our salvation is not dependent on works, Luther reminded us. But it is expressed in works. The word of God goes out from us in works. It is what people see in us and our lives that makes us evangelical bearers of good news. Makes us lights to others.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen. We know about Stephen from the book of Acts. You can read about him mostly in chapters six and seven. Stephen was a leader of the church and was also its first martyr, and much of the readings have to do with his execution by stoning. But he is known mostly for forgiving his executioners. His last words were “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

Saint Stephen’s Day is always the day after Christmas, so this year it was this past Friday. St Stephen’s Day has traditionally been a day for the redistribution of wealth. In a minor way. That is, rich ladies and gentlemen would give gifts to the poor. The Feast of Stephen is a day for being grateful for all the abundance most of us have and realizing that we are called to share some of that with those who have little or nothing.

The closing hymn for today is Good King Wenceslas, who in the song brings food, wine, and firewood to a hungry and freezing peasant. He does this at peril to himself and his companion, but his goodness prevails, and they are kept warm on their mission. The closing words are: Therefore, Christians, be sure, you who have wealth or status, when you bless the poor, you yourselves will find blessing. Or to put it another way, when you provide light, you will find light.

To be a light to others requires humility, trust, and courage. It requires a sense that we are not greater than one another and that we do not therefore deserve more than they. It requires trusting that God will watch over us and provide for us as Jesus tells us God does, even when we make ourselves vulnerable. As caring for others always makes us. And it requires that, since being humble and trusting is scary and can lead to uncertain adventures, we are able to act in the face of fear.

In that, we expect to have God’s help. When Simeon is expecting God, the word that Luke uses means “receptive” or “open to God.” This story in Luke, written long after it should have been proven false by the events of history, is not mostly a story of history. It does not suggest that God encourages Simeon in his foolishness.

The story tells us more about God than it does about us. It does suggest, it seems to me, that God is a creature of expectations, too. That even though we, like Simeon, have been disappointed, we find that God continues to be with us in vision, destiny, and confidence. That God’s expectations, at least part of them and in some way we can partially understand, endure.

Expectations can be cruel and hurtful. But they also can support us in hope. We are made in the image of God, we are children of God, and we in our faith expect that the world will someday be as God intended it to be. And in the meantime, we continue to expect that, even though it sometimes takes more humility, trust, and courage than we can find in ourselves, we will with God’s help be a light to others.

Parents Pondering

Text: Luke 1:26-38
Other texts: Luke 1:47-55

Advent is a season of reflection. At the beginning, we are encouraged to look at our past and our present. What have we been doing? What are we doing now? But gradually over the weeks our view changes. And by today, we find ourselves looking at our present and our future. That’s how scripture leads us. Today we see Christmas just ahead. Once we start talking about Mary and Joseph and angels making announcements, we know that Christmas, and the celebration of the birth of Jesus is the point. And that the reflections that are important are less ours and more Mary’s, who ponders her role as mother of God.

And we ponder with her.

I’d like to talk a little theology before we go too much further. A central joy—or a central difficulty, depending on your point of view—a central thing about Christianity is that it claims that Jesus was a person and Jesus was divine. Jesus was more than a good and wise teacher. And also: Jesus was more than God come down from heaven in a human being outfit. Different faiths usually end up emphasizing one or the other aspects of Jesus. More human, or more divine. Early Christian thinkers and writers (meaning third and fourth century ones) spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the two aspects of Jesus could coexist. There were lots of theories. The ones we don’t follow now were condemned as heresies. Jesus wasn’t really divine but only really good, said some. Jesus wasn’t really human, but only pretended, said others. Jesus multitasked, being divine sometimes and human other times, said still others.

In the end, what the church said was that none of these explanations was right. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther spoke adamantly and forcefully, as he usually did, saying that Jesus was 100% human and 100% divine. How that all worked out in detail was not for him to say. Typically Lutheran, it seems an improbable position to hold. But we cannot say that sometimes Jesus does God things and other times does human things. Jesus is always both.

Nonetheless, the church has a tendency to lean a bit to one side of the issue. Usually we talk about the divinity of Jesus, especially when we talk about salvation and power and kingdoms and intercession and such things, as we often do in worship.

But Christmas is a gigantic celebration of the humanity of Jesus. There is a lot of divinity at Christmas, but the person of Jesus himself, the central character, is still just a baby boy. And the stories are stories of moms and dads and births, which are pretty common human stories. As we know here from experience. So today, still in Advent, we get to think about Jesus and things that are human. And especially his mother, Mary.

Mary was an ordinary girl, as far as we know. Not ordinary for long, of course, but there is nothing in the Bible story that says she was particularly good, or beautiful, or pure. Nothing special. She was probably poor. She was probably young, maybe thirteen years old or so. She was related by marriage to some folks who were priests.

Mary is distressed when the angel Gabriel comes to visit. As you can imagine. Our Bible says she was much perplexed and pondered Gabriel’s greeting. But a truer translation would be to say that Mary was freaked out. And also she was discombobulated. The word Luke uses here means she was trying to find words to make sense of a bunch of ideas that did not easily fit together. How could she, poor young ordinary Mary, have a baby who was going to be a king and called Son of the Most High?

It does not take Mary long, though, to see what this all implies. The world will change. In a good way. So Mary sings a song about it (which we call the Magnificat, based on the first word of the song in Latin).

Being thirteen, Mary first wants to know: what about me? How is this going to affect me? But the “Magnificat” is a song of gradually widening implications, as Mary the singer realizes that more and more of the world will be changed through her child. First, she will be: “all generations will call me blessed” and “the Almighty has done great things for me.” Then people like her: He has lifted up the lowly and fed the hungry. Then all of Israel: He has come to the help of Israel. And finally, all the children of Abraham forever.

Mary’s hopes seem grandiose. But they are not much different from the hopes of mothers and fathers generally. Children make us think in the same widening circles: me, my family, the world. When you think about having a child, you cannot help spinning out imaginary futures. Will my child be good, successful, happy, imaginative, respected, kind? Will we be good parents, can we handle this, what if it turns out to be hard, will we make the same mistakes our own parents made? Did Mary wonder about these things? What could the angel’s proclamation possibly mean to a new, young, mother to be? How could she imagine the future of her son?

When parents think about their children, their minds are full of conflicting ideas, just as Mary’s was. The future for all children is a mix of opportunities and problems, of sorrow and glory. No one knows how things are going to turn out in detail, even when an angel delivers the message.

Children are part of their parents, but they are part of the world too, and increasingly so. Jesus at one point denies his family, a moment which I’m sure was hard on his parents. But children do that. They sometimes have to. They become people who change the world, for good or for ill. And the world will have expectations of them. If Mary really could have foreseen the future life of her son-to-be, how would she have felt on the day he was born?

Mary and Jesus are human-sized human-feeling humans, which makes them like everybody. It is important for our theology and our faith to remember that. It is easy to imagine what Mary was going through, in spite of her since then being encrusted and distorted with centuries of church teachings. Mary was young, poor, frightened and confused, excited and worried and giddily hopeful, and I suspect Joseph was, too. As we would be or have been.

These days are not days for theologizing. Christmas, though it is the event of the incarnation, is not about theology. It is about human, creaturely events and thoughts. Christianity is an earthy faith. Especially for Lutherans, who at their best, like Martin Luther admire things that are physical and messy.

The good news on Christmas is simply divine. A child will be born. His parents will be amazed. They will wonder: what will happen next?

Is Christmas OK?

Gospel: Mark 14:3-7, 9

Is Christmas o.k.?

Do we do it wrong? Have we missed the boat on Christmas? Have we got our priorities wrong? Have we forgotten the true meaning of Christmas? Is Christmas o.k.? Or does it need repair?

To hear some people, you might think it does. Some people say—and ministers say it loudest—that we don’t do it right.

Some people say we are too materialistic at Christmas. Every store has a sale. The merchants are frantic. We worry about what we can buy. We worry if it is OK to buy. Some of us worry we won’t get what we want. Some of us worry we’ll get too much. The part of our minds that likes to think about Things goes into high gear.

Some people say we are too hectic at Christmas. We feel sometimes like we are stuck on an endless journey. Work, pack, ship, repeat. So many parties to go to. So many parties to plan. So many decorations to hang. So many cards to send. So little time, so much to do. Sometimes we feel like the White Rabbit in Alice and Wonderland, running around late, late, late. Late.

Some people say we are too extravagant at Christmas.

Some people say we miss the true meaning of Christmas. We are celebrating, after all, the birth of Jesus. This is Christ’s birthday. Where is Christ among the Christmas trees, where is Christ among the Santas, where is Christ among the crowds of shoppers? Where is Christ among the presents and the parties?

That’s what some people say. Some people say we do it wrong.

It is hard to disagree with what some people say, especially when sometimes those “some people” are us.

But it is hard to agree, too. Christmas can be a confusing time. We are confused about how we feel. Especially in these days. When we listen to our hearts, we hear two voices. One voice speaks about anxiety. The other voice speaks about joy. When you listen to your heart, which voice calls you the loudest?

Do you hear the voice of Christmas anxiety? That voice tells us that we are harassed, apprehensive, and manipulated. That voice agrees with what “people say.” That voice makes us feel guilty, poor, and overwhelmed all at once. That voice says we do Christmas wrong. That voice tells us about things, and money, and time. That voice is dismayed at the extravagance of Christmas.

Or do you hear the voice of Christmas joy? That voice reminds us of the pleasure of thinking hard about the people we are buying gifts for. That voice reminds us of the friends and neighbors who come to all those parties. That voice reminds us of the pleasures in making food for others, and for eating food made for us. It tells us of generosity and the gratitude behind all that shopping and shipping. That voice says we do Christmas right. That voice tells us about people we love. It tells us about things that we are blessed to do. That voice delights in the extravagance of Christmas.

Which voice do you trust? They both speak loudly at Christmas. We get confused. We begin to doubt our own feelings. How can we take such pleasure in all this materialism? Particularly in these hard and perilous and sometimes sorrowful times. How can we be so excited at all this running around? It’s a horrible state, for it makes us feel bad about feeling good. It makes us feel bad about feeling joyful.

Why have we become afraid to delight in extravagance?

We are afraid to be extravagant because people scold us. They scold us as they scolded the woman in today’s Gospel reading.

That nameless woman approached Jesus. She broke open a jar of very costly ointment. She anointed Jesus. How extravagant was this? A denarius was the pay for a day’s worth of labor. The jar, valued at 300 denarii, was worth a year’s wages. She gave a gift that cost a year’s wages, a year’s salary. Imagine that. Imagine giving a gift that cost your whole year’s salary. Imagine spending that much on perfume. What a waste!

What a waste, said the men who were there. What a waste, they scolded the woman. How unreasonable! Whatever made her do it?

People scolded the woman for spending unwisely. Think of the poor, said the men who were there. This jar could have been sold and the money given away.

But the men were hypocrites. There have been and will be many hungry mouths to feed, said Jesus. Did the men feed the poor yesterday, will they feed the poor tomorrow? Were they concerned or were they crabby? Did they love the poor or did they resent the woman? Good question. Could it be that their hearts were filled not with generosity? But with jealousy?

Sometimes the voice we hear sounds a lot like the scolding men. Were they right to scold the woman? Do you agree that her extravagant gift was both wasteful and misguided?

No one knows anything about the woman in this story. We don’t know her name, her wealth, or her status. We don’t know how she knew Jesus. All we know about her is the way she gave her gift to Jesus. We know three things.

One, she gave from love. It doesn’t say so in the text, but how else can we explain that she came to a house uninvited, to give a gift worth a year’s salary, in the face of being scolded and rebuked?

Two, she gave intimately. This was a special gift from her alone to him alone. It was a gift made thoughtfully, carefully, with Jesus in mind. By her gift she and Jesus shared something no others had. She anointed Jesus; she touched him and honored him with her gift. She blessed him by her gift. And she was blessed in turn by his acceptance of it. The gift joined the two in generosity. The gift joined the two in gratitude.

Three, she gave extravagantly. She was not cautious or careful. She was not reasonable. She listened to the voice of joy.

And what did Jesus do? Jesus welcomed her. Jesus brushed aside the anxious voices. Jesus welcomed her and approved her love, her intimacy, and her extravagance.

This Christmas we are celebrating the birth of Jesus. Jesus is God’s very costly gift to us. To all people. Unreasonable and unexplainable. God gives Jesus to us as the woman gave to Jesus, in love for us, and in intimacy that binds each of us to God, and in extravagance.

Let’s put Santa Claus back into Christmas. Toys and homemade gifts, cider and cookies, lots of laughter and stuffed tummies are in the spirit of Christmas.

They spring from our love for other people. They come from our intimate and special affection for friends and family. They come from our sense of God’s good extravagance.

Christmas is o.k. This is time for celebration. This is the time for presents, parties, and, if you like, expensive perfume.

Quiet that anxious voice.

Welcome that joyful voice.

Leave care and caution for other days. Trust the voice that moves your heart toward people you love.

In the coming days, think extravagantly, give lovingly, and go with joy.

Praise be to God. And amen.

Great Beginnings

Text: Mark 1:1-8

Lots of people were expecting Christ. No one was expecting Jesus.

Lots of people were hoping for a charismatic, powerful man descended from great king David to save the people of Israel. Lots of people were hoping for a wise and powerful prophet to free the people from their oppressors. Lots of people were hoping for a christ, which just means anointed one, a chosen ruler, to restore Israel’s greatness.

No one was expecting a couple of motley, lower class wanderers to be the tools of God’s hands. John and Jesus were nobodies. Almost below the lowest social rung, lower than subsistence farmers. Yet, especially in Mark’s Gospel, these two men appear out of nowhere and start shaking things up. I don’t know whether God works in mysterious ways, but I’m certain that God works in surprising ways. Jesus was a surprise to everybody, except evidently not to John.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God. Typical Mark, who is always rushing into things without much ceremony. The sentence doesn’t even have a verb. He gets the facts out quick. This is a story about a man named Jesus, who was prophetic and messianic figure, and more, who has a special relationship with God. Though it is hard for us to think about these titles without putting them in upper case, for Mark and his first readers, they are names to distinguish this man, this particular Jesus, this particular figure.

Mark was an enthusiast. He invented a whole new way of writing. He invented the gospel, which is just an English way to translate the Greek word for “good news.” And the Greek word itself comes directly to us in the words evangelical (as in the Evangelical Lutheran Church) and evangelism. Mark was the first evangelist. The first gospel writer. The first to write this kind of story about someone. Mark invented this form so that he could say to the world: I have to tell you about this amazing guy who was full of surprises. I have to tell you this story. And so he does.

The beginning of the good news, Mark says. Unlike the other three Gospels, Mark tells us nothing at the start about Jesus. No birth story as in Matthew and Luke. No theological hymn, as in John. The beginning of the good news is not the beginning of Jesus himself but the beginning of his work, his ministry. What he does.

In the beginning you never know what’s going to happen. All you know about the beginning of things is that something is going to happen, but you don’t know what it is. Beginnings are the most uncertain times, since they are all about an unknown future. The beginning of something is the end of predictability, pattern, and comfort. No wonder beginnings make people nervous.

But it is worse than that. Because you don’t even know when something is a beginning until you see it having already begun. Beginnings are recognized by the disturbances they cause in our lives. We don’t realize that something new has begun until we are in the middle of those disturbances. You don’t realize you’re falling in love until you are in love. You don’t realize you’ve begun a new vocation until you are in the middle of it. We say: when I first met you, I didn’t realize you were going to be my life’s partner. Life is usually full of events that end up making no difference. People whom we meet who are maybe interesting but not captivating to us. Those events are not beginnings because nothing happens afterward. They are just events, common, frequent, and forgettable. Beginnings are places, seen in retrospect, where our lives are changed. Where they turn. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. A story in which, it turns out, something changed.

John was in the desert preaching repentance. The word repentance means to change direction. To turn or return. Repentance and beginnings are related in that way. Repentance is a good word for Advent, when we are supposed to be thinking about the direction in which we are going and whether it would be good to continue in that direction or whether we might rather change direction. That is hard to think about.

It is appropriate that John was in the desert. The desert is a good place to think about things like this. About change. Even the symbolic desert of our lives. First, the desert is deserted. It has fewer distractions that might seduce us away from our hard thoughts. And second, the desert is a rough place. A tough spot. The prospect of changing things is unattractive when things are going well. Long ago I worked for a large computer company that went under because things looked so good for so long. Maybe something similar is happening with the car companies today. Certainly, it happens in our own lives.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, our lives are full of times of change. When these seem to be good but maybe confusing times, we politely call them times of transition. When they seem to be distressing and uncomfortable, we say things are messed up. Two different views of the same thing, mostly. Something was once one way and will soon be another way, but we never know for sure what that other way will be. There is a lot of trust involved here, like it or not.

John the baptizer, Mark calls him. We usually call him John the baptist, but baptizer is better. It tells us what he was doing, rather than his title. John was preaching a baptism of repentance, it says. One way to interpret this was that John was telling us to change direction, so that God might be more inclined to come be with us. Another way to interpret this was that John was telling us to be receptive to God who was already trying to turn us. Or to put it another way: are we trying to get a message to God or trying to be quiet long enough so God can get a word in edgewise?

What John seems to be doing is preparing his listeners—and by extension, the world—to be open to Jesus who follows John. John is the opening act. John is softening the audience up for the main show. Getting them in a good frame of mind to hear, listen, enjoy, partake. And then Jesus walks onto the stage.

In this way, all baptisms are rites of repentance. We teach that they do not provide spell-like protection or detergent-like permanent cleansing. Instead, baptism is a beginning.

Today some of you will become members of this church by a celebration called the Affirmation of Baptism. That is the prescribed rite for new members. It is fitting that we use this rite because it is about beginnings and also about change. You will hear the promises made for you in baptism. And you will be asked if you intend to continue them. And after hearing them read, you will respond: I will, by God’s help and guidance. You will be saying by this that you are open to God in your lives.

Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirt, says John the baptizer. The Holy Spirit is, it seems to me, God’s agent of surprise. It is the Spirit who guides us when we reach out our hands for help and step timidly forward into the unknown future. It is the Spirit who meets us when we begin to change direction and sometimes bumps us encouragingly when we stubbornly or fearfully don’t.

Thank God that the Spirit is with us in a life full of beginnings. That is good news.

Deep Sorrow

Text: Isaiah 64:1-9
Other texts: Mark 13:24-37

Come down, God! O that you would come down! O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!

There is such longing in these words, these words in Isaiah. So much loneliness. These are words of a people abandoned. People left alone. People confused and without direction. You hid yourself, they say, and we have faded like the leaves in the late autumn days. You have hidden yourself from us, they say, and we are blown about by the cold wind.

When these words were written, it was a time of fragile and uncertain hopefulness. Somewhat like our time now. The exile of the people of Israel was at an end, they were returning or had returned home, but their land and nation had been devastated. They look forward to rebuilding. Yet in this hopefulness the prophet calls expectantly for God’s presence and guidance. God had hidden God’s face.

We are living in uneasy, queasy, times at the moment. Yet the presentation each of us makes is unchanged. As always, we show to the world the best we can. We put on a good face. No one wants to hear about our troubles, we think. If they only knew, we think, they would think less of us. To reveal ourselves to others or to an other makes us vulnerable. Being vulnerable is the last thing we want to do when we do not feel so great inside. When someone asks us how things are going, we might answer “OK” instead of “great” Just a hint. That’s about as much information as they need. Maybe too much.

Everyone else seems fine. They are all smiles. They are doing well, it looks like. But we are reminded not to compare our insides with someone else’s outside. Who knows what is going on in their lives, their homes, their families, their heads? Maybe they are hard on the outside and soft on the inside, just like us.

For many, for much of the time, suffering and sadness are not far below our OK exteriors. There are no shortage of causes: worries about money, safety, food. Disappointments about careers, relationships, performance. Regrets and unresolved conflicts. And for some, worse: war, poverty, hunger, grief. You have fed us, the psalm says, with the bread of tears. You have given us bowls of tears to drink.

We suffer. Why is that so? It seems to be our nature as human creatures. Perhaps it is because we so easily imagine the future. A time yet to come when the present will be as it should be, could be. Yet it never comes. Or perhaps it is because as social beings we long for intimate and complete unity with others. And yet we are aware of our fundamental loneliness. Or perhaps it is because, even lonely, we are connected with—feel with, which is what the word compassion means—connected with others, even strangers, and bear the burden of all their sorrows. Yet we can do little to relieve them.

O that you would come down! O that you would tear open the heavens and come down! says Isaiah, who tries to explain in this passage people’s sadness. It is because God has abandoned God’s people, he says. We sinned, Isaiah says, because God hid God’s self. The passage through its symbols reminds God and reminds Israel of the time when God last came. Of that time when God came down on the mountain of Sinai and adopted Israel as a people. And gave them guidance. Of that time when God came as fire, burning a bush, speaking to them in a clear voice, and making promises. Come down, God.

We call for one who can know our sorrow and can heal our sorrow. So in our deepest prayers, we pray with the Israelites: Come here, God. Come here, be with me. Come here, guide me. Come here, comfort me. Come here, heal me. Come here, bring me peace.

For some, and in some times, people have felt there is no solution in their age for the suffering that they endure. They have felt that the only solution to suffering is the end of the world as we know it. They cannot imagine a healing powerful enough to restore our present existence to the way it should be. In those times those people hope for a grand upheaval and see it coming. Writings about that upheaval are called apocalyptic. The word comes from the name in Greek of the Book of Revelation, which is the most extensive writing we have of its type. But a smaller version of this kind of story appears also in Mark (which we heard today) and in Matthew and Luke. The verses in these Gospel passages are called the “little apocalypse.” They all predict the immediate return of Jesus and a drastic change in the world. These passages are a problem now because “these things,” as Jesus said, did not happen in the lifetime of his disciples. We can try all sorts of ways to explain this, but it seems to me that these passages are just another way of saying what we have already heard in Isaiah. Come here, Jesus. Come here, be with me. Come down from the cross and return to your people. Help us. Deliver us from suffering and sadness.

This is the season of Advent. Advent is traditionally a time of reflection. It is a time to look at ourselves and our lives and see how well things are going. On the inside. It is time to keep awake, as Jesus says in Mark. It is the kind of awake you feel when you’ve just worked out at the gym (before you get endorphin-sleepy). Where all your senses are sharp and when your mind is open. And with those senses and with this open mind, we try to look closely at the intersection of our lives and God in our lives. During most of our days that spot, where God meets us, is a little vague and easily missed among all the other conversations we have inside our heads. And among all the sorrows that are calling, seeking to be relieved. To attend to God, to stay awake, takes the same energy and concern that attending to any other relationship we might have. Sometimes you take someone you love for granted, but you cannot keep doing that and have the relationship work. And the same is true of the relationship you have with God.

The spiritual disciplines of Lent apply to Advent, too. Especially the discipline of prayer. During these days, talk to God in prayer. Thank God. Ask God for what you want and need. Ask God to help you find out what you want and need. Ask for help, for comfort, for understanding of things. For patience, clarity, and enthusiasm (or whatever are your inside desires). Tell God of your sorrows. Tell God you’d like God to come down and talk with you clearly and immediately.

Our hope is in God because God is our maker. We are the clay and you are the potter, says the prophet Isaiah. Who else knows us better? Who else has more of a stake in us? Who else greets us with such powerful intention? Come down here, God. We need you. We are the work of your hand. We are your people.

We Are the Water

Text: Amos 5:18–24

There have been in the press lots of comments about John McCain’s concession speech on Tuesday. It was gracious, relaxed, and forward-looking. Many people have said that the real John McCain had re-emerged. They said that this was the McCain they had known and admired. Some people speculated on whether the results of the election would have been different if this McCain, this brave and gracious man, had been the one who had campaigned over the past few months. For the general consensus was that in the campaign the candidate had not been true to himself. That in the campaign he had been fighting against his own nature.

It is a common failing. And an understandable one. The parts of us that are fearful and greedy—fear and greed being two sides of the same coin—those parts of us make us do things we rather not do, really. Or to put it more strongly, to do things that go against the person we really are. Or to say it in another way: to do things that go against the person God made us to be.

Amos was the earliest of the prophets of Israel. Unlike the prophets we read more frequently, Amos wrote before the fall of Israel, the northern Kingdom, and before the fall of Judah and the exile of most of Israel to Babylon. Unlike Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, or at least portions of them, who try to make sense of the destruction of Israel, Amos has no explanations. There was nothing yet to explain. Israel was whole and strong and its people prosperous, more or less. The criticism of the nation that the other prophets saw as a reason for the exile, Amos shares. He criticizes, too. But he offers not an explanation but a warning.

The book of Amos is for the most part dark and gloomy. Amos does not warn the people with the expectation that they will mend their ways. For Amos, the time for repentance has passed long ago. Too late for all that. Amos says that the people have abandoned the ways of God. And as a result, Israel will die. The nation will be destroyed and the land taken away. And the people exiled. Which is what happened.

Israel, Amos says, has gone against its own nature. And for that, it will suffer. Not as punishment, but as the natural result. It’s biology. Going against who you are causes suffering.

The nation of Israel was God’s creation. There was an agreement between God and the Israelites. I will be your God, you will be my people. A covenant, as we say. The covenant was like a design document. It was more than just a series of laws. The agreement between God and Israel—this formal relationship—defines Israel, defines its nature. And essential to this nature, a defining characteristic of this nation, was the idea and practice of justice. Justice. So in the passage we heard today, God says through Amos, I’m not really interested in all this worship stuff right now. Take all that stuff away. What I’m concerned about is justice. It is as if God were saying, You are not the same nation I created and thought I knew. For I see that you have forgotten to be just.

When we talk about justice these days, it often means something about courts and jail and punishment. The justice system, or bringing someone to justice. But that’s not what is meant here.

First, justice primarily is enacted (and justice primarily is demonstrated) through the nation’s treatment of the poor and the outcast. The prosperous and the strong can take care of the themselves, but in Israel’s time, as in every time, the poor have little power and few friends in high places. God’s people watch out for all people, and especially those that no one else watches out for. The sick and the crazy and the inelegant and the uneducated and the hard to understand and the ones that make you uncomfortable. In a just nation, the people care for all the outcasts.

Second, to be just is to be aligned with God’s intentions for the world. Justice and righteousness are intertwined and inseparable. Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, God says in Amos. Righteousness does not mean holy and proud and right and good. It means to be in agreement with God. To be on the same wavelength. Righteousness is like having a friend who finishes your sentences, or one with whom you can just sit quietly together, being with them in harmony, or one whom you haven’t seen in a long time, but when you do, you just start up the conversation as if you were never apart. In a just nation, there is no tension between the intentions of God and the actions of people.

And third, justice is in the nature of humans. As Israel is created to be just, and as Israel becomes ill and confused when it forgets that, so people are created to be just. And we get ill and confused when we forget that. When we see injustice, things seem out of kilter. When we are perpetrators of injustice, it makes us sick. It weakens us inside and takes away our capacity for pleasure and joy. We cannot easily oppress others nor leave the poor and the outcast on the roadside. We do it, but then we pay a price, not through some divine punishment, but in painful and queasy souls.

When we act unjustly, or condone injustice, we are going against our nature. We are not the people we were created to be. We are at odds with ourselves.

When we hear what God says through Amos, we might think that God despises the worship of Israel—”I hate, I despise your religious feasts,” it says—we might think it is because Israel has violated some rule. But it sounds to me that God is more sorrowful than angry, the same way you might be if you saw someone act against his or her own best self. Alas, says God. The word in Amos is a word for grief, not anger. What is happening to Israel is tragic and sad. Israel dies, according to Amos, because it is no longer the nation that God created.

Let justice roll down like waters. If justice is like a river flowing, then we are in the river. When we act in or tolerate injustice, we swim upstream. It is tiring and ineffective. When we act justly, we float downstream. When we put aside our fear and greed, we are able to be the people we really are, God’s creatures. But the river of justice is not something that surrounds us. It is us. There is no such river that exists without us. We are not only in the river of justice, we are that river. When in our daily decisions, large and small, global and personal, we are just, then river of justice flows. And we pray that the world may become what God hoped for in its creation.

Only One Foot in Heaven

Text: Revelation 7:9-17
Other texts: Matthew 5:1-12

If you were looking for a book in the Bible that talked about the other world you might decide to turn your Bible over and open it at the back and look at Revelation.

This strange book is unloved by many, including Martin Luther, who felt it had no place in the Bible. He thought it should have been left off the list when they were choosing which books were in and which were out. The book of Revelation has been used and abused from its beginning. It is an example of apocalyptic literature. In fact, the word “apocalypse” is just the name of the book in Greek. It means “things revealed.” The word does not mean the end of the world.

Though on the face of it the book seems to be about that. It is full of weird images and symbols and creatures and violence. Revelation has been used by those who hope for the destruction of the earthly life and for the establishment of another kind of life in another kind of place. A story of escape from the sorrows of this life into a heavenly life. Or escape from its sins. They hope to be part of the elect who make it and not part of those left behind.

It is certainly likely that the community to whom this book was first addressed had plenty of sorrows to contend with. They lived in the empire of Rome under Roman rule. They were an occupied people, with little control over their own lives, powerless, and seeing no hopeful horizon ahead. In times like these, people imagine a radical change, divine destruction of their enemies, and a restoration of both peace and power to the good and the righteous.

But it is not so much the end of the world that such people long for as it is the end of the age. The end of the evil times and a restoration of the times as they were intended to be. A return to ideal and so far unachieved good times. So you might consider the story of Revelation not to be the story of ruin of the world but a restart after a seemingly failed first attempt. A re-doing, not an un-doing.

There is a tension in our lives between wishing for a better present or longing to escape the present. Do we stick with the bad or do we flee? Stay in or get out? Do we work from within or resign? Do we make do with what we have been dealt or do we re-deal, or do we leave the table altogether? When we talk about the coming kingdom of God, do we hope in our hearts most for the good life on earth or the good life in heaven? What exactly is God’s promise? To save us out of our lives someday or to strengthen and bring joy to our lives this day?

This passage from Revelation that we just heard starts with praise and worship of God seated on the throne. “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to God forever.” You are not mistaken if you think that these words resemble the Gloria that we sang at the beginning of worship today. It is not a coincidence. The words of our worship that honor and thank God and acknowledge God as the source of all things often come from the Book of Revelation. So we start, in worship as in this reading, as in perhaps our own spiritual lives, with a glance, a bow, a thank you, to God. We start with the ineffable, with a sense of mystery and grandeur, with gratitude at what we have been given, and with humility.

But the last part of this same passage turns the worshippers’ attention back to the things of this life. The Lamb who sits at the center of the throne, always interpreted as Jesus, looks after the sorrows and trials of us, his people. In the Gloria, we end with Jesus’ presence here with us. “For God has come to dwell with us,” we say. God is with us here, here where as it says in Revelation, here where there is hunger, thirst, and scorching heat. Here in this world the Lamb guides us to springs of water and wipes away our tears. At the end of Revelation the people come to a new city, the New Jerusalem. The book of Revelation ends not with all the world being taken up into some heavenly castle, but gathered instead in a new place into which God has been restored and re-seated as sovereign.

The list of blessings or beatitudes—same word—appear in both the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. But in Matthew, whose version we just heard, the earthly is qualified constantly by the heavenly. What appears in Luke as “blessed are the poor” becomes “blessed are the poor in spirit.” “Blessed are the hungry” becomes “blessed who hunger for righteousness.” And so forth. I used to disdain the Matthew version, thinking that it spiritualized the physical. But now it seems to me that together these two versions—the physical and spiritual—describe our nearly equal needs for both physical and spiritual food, peace, and companionship. You cannot bless one without the other.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which we are a part, has a motto. It says: God’s work. Our hands. We cannot leave the work of the world to God, sitting on our couches waiting for the dramatic end, nor can we do the work ourselves, trusting in our own abilities and goodness. Faith, this church, has a motto too. It appears on our website and in the literature we send out. It says: Spirit, Joy, Reverence, Service. There is no way to separate out the life of the spirit from the life in the world. The life of worship from the life of service. God knows, we are physical and spiritual creatures. God constantly call us back into real life from our fantastic visions of escape.

All Saints day used to honor only the Christian martyrs. Then about 1200 years ago it was changed to honor all the official Saints. And then later to honor all the Christian dead. Yet on this day we honor all who come to worship and to serve the Lord. Not to flee from the world but to serve it. Martin Luther reminded us that we are saints and sinners both. Both sinners and saints at the same time.

Here we stand. With one foot in heaven and one foot on earth. Thanks be to God.