Sermons and thoughts on faith on Scripture from my time at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
I saw this post on Facebook the other day from a pastor colleague.It read: “crowdsourcing a hymn for Sunday: is singing ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’ sacrilege for Advent even when its themes of peace fit very well into the texts and sermon?”Within minutes it had sparked a number of comments varying from “Don’t do it,” to “Go for it.”Lots of pastors and churchgoers, it seems, have a somewhat difficult relationship with Advent.
Centuries ago, when Christmas was not all that big a deal, Advent was developed as a kind of miniature Lent.But as Christmas has grown into a bigger and bigger cultural event, Advent has been co-opted into a longer and longer Christmas season
And this means that a typical question when pastors and church musicians talk about Advent and Christmas is, “If you don’t want to get your congregation mad, how far into Advent can you go without singing Christmas carols?”And this tension is only aggravated by the Scripture readings assigned for Advent.Until the fourth Sunday, there is no mention at all of Mary or Joseph or a virgin birth, absolutely nothing that looks like Christmas.
If you were not a churchgoer and popped in for today, you would likely be somewhat stunned to hear nothing said about mangers or shepherds or baby Jesus, to hear instead John the Baptist shouting, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
There’s simply no turning John into anything cute or adorable for Christmas.No one puts John on Christmas cards or wrapping paper.No Christmas carols demand that we “Repent.”Yet all four gospel writers feel the need to put John at the beginning of the story they tell.And every single Advent, John pops up once more, a jarring counter-image to sleigh bells, twinkling lights, and a sweet little eight pound, six ounce baby Jesus in the manger.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why the people of John’s day went out to see him.I think I would have avoided someone like John, a crazy looking guy yelling for me to repent.I suppose you have to be disillusioned with life and the world to turn to someone like John.People who are happy and content don’t go out to hear crazy prophets in the desert.And they sure don’t get baptized and change the way they live so that they’ll be ready for the new day that is coming, unless they really, desperately, want and need a new day.You have to be a little desperate to hope that God is going to intervene, that God’s rule is going to come and straighten out a broken and troubled world.
Maybe that’s why John singles out the Pharisees and Sadducees.They were the in-crowd, religious folk, the pastors and elders and bishops of their day.They may have been curious, even intrigued by this prophet everyone was going to see, but they weren’t ready to change, to live differently in expectation of something new.
I’m not sure I’m ready to change, to live differently in expectation of a new day.I’m a lot like those Pharisees and Sadducees.John is mostly a curiosity to me.He’s an Advent oddball, an interruption in the Christmas preparations that are about the only getting ready I’m doing.And John doesn’t call people to get ready for Christmas of for Jesus.He calls them to get ready for God’s new day, a day when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.And Jesus says the very same thing when he shows up.Get ready, turn and change the way you live, for God’s kingdom is drawing near.
But we don’t see it.We can’t really picture a day when “the wolf shall live with the lamb…” when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”We can’t imagine such a thing and so we’ll celebrate and enjoy another Christmas, then get back to life as usual.
But Isaiah and John and Jesus can imagine such a thing.They can picture a day when God transforms human history, when God’s will becomes the way of everyone on earth.They can see it, and so they shout, “Get ready.Repent, for the kingdom has come near.”
I have come to think that the peculiar curse of modernity and the scientific age is the loss of imagination.We have become so accustomed to thinking in terms of cause and effect that we cannot see possibilities not supported by “the facts.”We look around at the world and we “know” that nothing can bring peace, nothing can end terrorism, nothing can make Israel and Palestine, the US and Iran, North and South Korea, get along and trust one another.It just isn’t possible.We can’t even imagine it.
But prophets can.Contrary to what many think, prophets generally do not predict the future.Rather they are people whose intimate relationship with God grants them vivid imaginations.They see things that others can’t see, and they find hope that others can’t find.
Which makes me wonder if John Lennon was a prophet.Although I know many pastors who abhor it, one of my favorite songs is Lennon’s “Imagine.”I suppose some dislike the song because it begins, “Imagine there’s no heaven.It’s easy if you try.No hell below us; above us only sky.”I can see why that bothers people, but in fact it is fairly easy to imagine no heaven.People have such faith crises all the time.People of deep faith at times find themselves struggling to believe in a good and just God who will redeem the world.
But other things are much harder to imagine.“Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can.No need for greed or hunger.A brotherhood of man.Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”
I make no claims that John Lennon was a believer much less a Christian prophet.But the vision his imagination conjures up is remarkably similar to the day Jesus envisions.It is remarkably like the vision of a new day that compels John to shout, “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near.”
As we move through Advent, most of us are focused on Christmas, on its joy and its traditions, on its warmth and its nostalgia, on the momentary respite its celebration provides from the harsh realities of the world.But John the Baptist interrupts our Christmas preparations.He shows up at the Christmas party like an unwanted guest who throws cold water on our Christmas fun.
But John is no spoil-sport.He does not come to dampen the celebration, but to help us see something more.John interrupts our Advent of waiting for Christmas to prod our imaginations, to get them working again, to call us to hope in God’s new day, a day that cannot be perceived through facts or evidence of how things are, that can only be glimpsed by faithful imagination.
Come, Lord Jesus!Help us see as you see, dream as you dream, imagine as you imagine, that we may live as you lived.
For the last few days, the readings from Isaiah have spoken of judgment and punishment, of how Israel's determination to live in opposition to God leads inevitably to tragedy. But with the prophets there is almost always a move to restore and set things right. "On that day the branch of the LORD shall be beautiful and glorious."
Many people speak of "the God of the Old Testament" who they view as a vengeful, punishing God. But this seems to miss some of the most remarkable verses of the Bible that speak of God working to overcome human foolishness. God is committed to Israel and to humanity far beyond anything that springs from logic or reason. Living in ways that are contrary to the design of the Creator is bound to cause problems, but God keeps intervening, not allowing human refusal to live as we were created to live to have the final say.
One of the great hopes of Advent is the promise that while humanity's incredible capacity to destroy, hurt, oppress, exploit, wage war, and so on does indeed lead to much suffering, brokenness, and death, these foolish actions will not determine the future. God's love, God's commitment to humanity - a commitment and love that at times seems downright ridiculous - will finally bend history to God's will.
And so while I will enjoy the good cheer and the spirit of the Christmas season, my real hope lies in God's commitment to us, to me, and that unquenchable love that keeps God "for us" in spite of how absurd such a notion sometimes seems.
It's the time of year when Salvation Army kettles start to show up at stores and malls. If I've got some change in my pocket, I'll drop a little in as I leave the store, but if all I have is a $20 bill, probably not. And that reminds me of a story I heard long ago about a preacher from Alabama know as Brother Bryan. Bryan was a fixture in Birmingham in the early 1900s as well as an advocate for the poor and homeless. Though pastor at Third Presbyterian from seminary graduation until retirement, he apparently thought of himself as pastor to the entire town.
On one occasion Bryan engaged a fellow - not a church member - in a discussion about the spiritual discipline of tithing. He explained to the man that tithing meant setting aside the first ten percent of his income to God. At this point the man responded, "Oh, I could never do that. I'm wealthy and make a lot of money. I could never afford to give away ten percent of that."
Brother Bryan said, "I think we need to pray about this." He proceeded to look up to heaven and cry out, "Cut him down, Lord, cut him down! Reduce this man's income so he can afford to tithe."
The object of Brother Bryan's prayer seems to be the flip side of Jesus' comments about the widow who put her two coins in the Temple treasury. The more we have, the more protective we become of what we have, and the more difficult it becomes to part with significant portions of it. And I think this raises questions about what makes for a meaningful and full life. Most of us are fully acculturated to the notion that happiness and contentment comes from having a bit more. But much of what Jesus says indicates the opposite.
I wrestle with this in my own life. I have things that I want, that I would like to have. Are these the "bit more" that I think will make me happy? Where is the line that, once crossed, tends to make me more and more protective of what I have so that I can no longer be truly generous with God and others? At what point does more become a curse rather than a blessing? Is there such a line or is it more a matter of heart and attitude?
I won't suggest that Salvation Army kettles are the best measure of one's generosity. Some very generous people may have good reasons to prefer other charities. But seeing a Salvation Army kettle can still serve as a kind of check, a way to reflect on where I am with regards to what Jesus says about full, abundant, and meaningful life.
I've always been a bit uncomfortable with a line in this morning's psalm (as well as the song based on it). "I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, so I shall be saved from my enemies." To begin with, I don't really have what I consider enemies. Certainly I have people who don't care for me and who don't like me. But this is as likely to be my fault as theirs, so I cringe at the notion of God needing to do something about them. Also, this psalm sometimes conjures up images of enlisting God in our national causes. But I am extremely uncomfortable assuming that the enemies of America are necessarily the enemies of God.
But at a Bible study last night we were talking about the Kingdom that Jesus says is drawing near, and how the ways of this new age are at odds with the ways of the world. The gospels make it abundantly clear that the those who embrace the ways of the Kingdom will find themselves in conflict with the world, just as Jesus did. And Jesus says that if we follow him, we will be hated and despised just as he was. And I have no enemies.
How did we go from Jesus' warning that "If they persecuted me, they will persecute you," to the life of relative ease Christians enjoy in America. No doubt some will suggest that this is because we are a "Christian nation," but does that mean that America somehow embodies the Kingdom or provides a faithful witness to God's new day as Jesus says his followers must?
Even a cursory reading of the gospels will demonstrate how little America looks like the Kingdom. America may be the most wonderful country on earth, but it is not a place where the powerful are brought down and the lowly lifted up, where the hungry are filled with good things and the rich are sent away empty. It is not a place where swords are beaten into plowshares or that believes Jesus when he says, "One's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions," or "None of you can become my disciples if you do not give up all your possessions."
The fact is that the Church has done a pretty good job of domesticating Jesus and his message. That's not an American thing. It began more than 1600 years ago when the emperor Constantine embraced the faith. But of course once the empire became "Christian," Christianity couldn't go around talking about a new kingdom of God what would overthrow the ways of Rome. And so the promises of God's coming Kingdom gradually got relegated to a better life after death. And this domestication continues. It is manifest in the notion that Jesus came primarily to offer personal salvation to individuals and in Glenn Beck's assertion that Christians shouldn't worry about "social justice."
And me, I enjoy a relatively comfortable job as a pastor where my only "enemies" are the occasional folks who get mad because I haven't visited them enough or who didn't like something I said in a sermon.
To be honest, I don't really know where this train of thought is headed, but as we move through Advent and Christmas, when we hear once again about swords beaten into plowshares, the Prince of Peace, and peace on earth, it seems to me that I need to take a hard look at how faithful I am to Jesus' call to be his disciple. Jesus didn't go looking for enemies - he even heals one of those who arrested him - but when he is faithful to God's will, he becomes a threat that earthly powers cannot ignore. So why does the world so easily dismiss me and the Church?
Today's words from Isaiah are justifiably famous. "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." During Advent, we sometimes say that this is what we are waiting for, for the day when God shall put an end to all disputes, and the nations can get rid of their arsenals. Come, Lord Jesus.
But we don't really believe it. When the Soviet Union collapse late in the 20th Century, some people talked about a "peace dividend." If the Soviets were no longer our enemies, if we no longer needed to engage in a never ending arms race, surely our defense costs would plummet. But the peace dividend never materialized. There is always some new threat for those whose security is found in weapons and armies. There is never a point where you have enough weapons or good enough weapons for every possible threat.
But for some reason, the prophet imagines a time when this will not be so. In that time all people will be drawn to God and will learn to walk in God's ways. And God "shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples." The peace dividend will finally materialize when God steps in to settle disputes. But of course that will never happen in our lifetimes. One cannot make plans, set policies, or calculate defense budgets on such fantasies.
Sometimes I think that the curse of our time is our practicalrealism paired with a dearth of imagination. We cannot see beyond the facts, and so we cannot hope beyond the facts. The kindest things we will say about those few who can imagine and dream of an end to war or poverty is that they are "idealistic" or "naive." If we are feeling charitable we may smile at them and nod. But we pay them no attention.
Prophets have vivid imaginations. They see possibilities that the "facts on the ground" do not support. And the biblical prophets are so bold as to claim that their imaginations are rooted in God's hopes and dreams for the world. The world generally dismisses such prophets, but still they call us to latch on to their imaginings, their visions of something new and wonderful.
Perhaps an appropriate Advent prayer would be asking God to restore our imaginations. Then we might be able to hope for, and begin to live toward, the new thing God imagines.
Over the years I have come to realize that Christians approach the Bible from a number of different vantage points. This cause lots of issues and problems, especially for Protestant Christians, with our greater emphasis on the witness of Scripture. And today's reading may be one small case in point.
When Jesus tells "The Parable of the Wicked Tenants," how are we to appropriate his words? For some the Bible is primarily a history, and so this is simply an account of Jesus condemning the Jewish authorities, a passage that provides "proof" that the new covenant through Jesus supersedes the old covenant with Israel.
Others, myself included, see the Bible writers as less concerned with history and more concerned with guiding Christians in their lives of faith. Luke's gospel makes clear that the author expects his readers already to know the story of Jesus. He wants to help them understand its significance for their lives. And if Luke is not trying to relate "what happened," what does he expect his readers to garner from these verses?
Gentile Christians might have heard these verses very differently than you or I do. At a time when most Christians understood themselves to be Jewish, the parable speaks good news to Gentile outsiders regarding their inclusion into the covenant.
But what of us today? If anything, modern Christians' attitudes are quite the opposite of those first Gentile Christians. We aren't the latecomers to the party who others regard with suspicion. We've been running the show for centuries. Rare is the Christian nowadays who thinks of herself as a Jew. We have taken our place as the tenants. We've taken over the franchise. And so, does the parable speak a different word to us as tenants, as franchisees?
One of the fundamental claims of Christianity is that God's Word became flesh in the Incarnation. Such a claim has interesting implications. The Incarnation speaks of a Word that is not some static truth, but that is engaged with us, that seeks to meet us and to somehow change us in the encounter. But reducing the Bible to facts with one simple meaning seems to deny God this freedom to move dynamically in our lives, to speak to us what is important for us to hear now, to say things quite different from what needed to be spoken to First Century, Gentile Christians in the Mediterranean world.
When we go to the Bible, what do we hope to find there? Are we looking for "proofs," or are we hoping to encounter the Living God who seeks to transform us into something new?
Until I became a pastor, I don't think I ever realized that the scripture readings for the first Sunday in Advent were always about "days to come," about the return of Jesus. The first Sunday in the waiting and preparing of Advent is about waiting and preparing for the Kingdom.
Growing up I always thought that Advent was about getting ready to celebrate Christmas. It was simply a way of building excitement prior to the big day, the church's equivalent of the shopping season. But I have come to realize that Advent calls for a much more profound sort of waiting and preparing.
As much as I enjoy celebrating Christmas, the trouble with an Advent that anticipates nothing more than another Christmas is that it anticipates nothing new. It anticipates a celebration, but one that only remembers. It doesn't look forward to much. When we've finished Advent and Christmas is done, nothing will have changed. We will put away the decorations and go back to life as usual.
But the promise of Christmas is that God has acted and will act in history. The coming of Jesus is about a decisive break in human history that heralds a new day, one that the church is called to proclaim, enact, and embody until it arrives. But we appear to have forgotten this. We do not seem to think God will do anything on the earthly stage. We've deferred all that until "after death." When it comes to human history, many Christians imagine a remarkably impotent God.
But Advent calls us to look at the darkness of the world, the pain and injustice, the suffering and war, and to know that the coming of Christ is but the first act of a two act play. Advent invites us to remember that God notices the world's pain and darkness, that God does act within human history, and that God will finally bend history to God's hopes and dreams.
In the uncertainty of our age, I think we would all do well to enter into Advent rather than a Christmas prelude. We would do well to recall that the darkness of human history is the arena where Jesus appears, that the darkness of human history is what God will transform. For when we can truly do that, we may be able to hope and live for something much more than yet another Christmas.
I haven't made it out shopping yet. Nothing against shopping. I'm sure I'll enjoy doing a bit before we get too close to Christmas. But I'll never be one of the those folks I saw on the news Thursday night; in line, dressed in pajamas, standing in the rain at the local outlet mall, waiting for the official midnight start of Black Friday. (The pajamas made people eligible for some sort of special prizes.)
One of the people interviewed on the news spoke of "living for" such moments. I don't want to over-read what may be nothing more than hyperbole, but that remark made me wonder about what it is we "live for." What is it that is truly meaningful, truly sustaining, truly feeds us at the deepest level. Such questions revived when I read from today's psalm. O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
I saw a Christmas themed Lexus commercial this morning where the narrator said something about how, if we're honest, we must admit we've never hoped for a smaller present. Meanwhile a Lexus is packaged and wrapped in the driveway. Again this is probably hyperbole. Many people are happy with small presents. But the commercial assumes we will get it, that we will nod our heads in agreement that bigger is better, that more will satisfy us better than less.
What would truly quench the thirst in many of our souls? What would truly feed the hunger we have that we don't know how to satisfy? Our culture says the answer is, "More, bigger." But we never seem to be satisfied. And our thirst never seems quenched. Perhaps the culture is wrong. But it seems so much more sensible than that silliness Jesus is selling.
We'll be gathering at the home of friends soon for Thanksgiving with all the fixings. With several families bringing food, there will be no way to sample everything. I'm sure there will be at least five or six choices for dessert alone. Living a long way from my family back in the Carolinas, I truly appreciate being able to join with good friends on this day.
But at the same time, I've been thinking a lot lately about Thanksgiving in the midst of loss. That first Thanksgiving was born out of terrible loss. Huge numbers of the Pilgrims had died, and the original Thanksgiving celebrated the fact that some of them were still alive and had food for the coming winter. Not really about abundance and cornucopias.
In this morning's Columbus newspaper is a Thanksgiving story about a family whose toddler is alive because of an organ transplant, which of course was possible because of another family's terrible loss. Then the pre-game show for the NFL game featured a reunion of those whose lives were changed by transplants from a football player whose mother made the choice to donate his organs after he was killed in a terrible accident. And as a pastor I have regularly observed how people preparing for funerals often discover that this is the first time they have paused long enough to really remember and recall a loved one. The thanks and gratitude of such moments is often poignant, and sometimes tinged with regret.
We live in a culture of accumulation and consumerism, and we often connect Thanksgiving with abundance. But I do not think abundance produces the deepest thanks, something the writer of Psalm 116 seem acutely aware of. I hope that is something I can keep in mind as I enjoy my Thanksgiving meal this evening.
This Thanksgiving, I pray that you have the time to pause, take stock, and give thanks for those deepest blessings of life.
I suppose it is a coincidence that on the eve of Thanksgiving the gospel reading is about Jesus having dinner at Zacchaeus' house. Perhaps you remember Zacchaeus from the children's song; "... a wee little man was he." Short Zacchaeus climbed a tree to see the Jesus parade passing through Jericho. Jerusalem and the cross loom large for Jesus at this point, with Jericho the last stop before entering Jerusalem. But Jesus brings the parade to a halt, looks up into the tree at Zacchaeus, and says, "I'm having dinner and spending the night at your place."
No one is much pleased about this, other than Zacchaeus. Old Zack is a tax collector, which in the Roman world was basically a sanctioned criminal. Jews like Zacchaeus had paid the Romans for their positions. They had a set amount to collect, and anything they managed beyond that was theirs. With Roman might at their disposal, they shook down their fellow Jews, growing wealthy as they robbed their neighbors and supported an occupying empire. Of all the people for Jesus to pick.
On this day when lots of people are headed to Grandma's house, we hear Jesus invite himself to Zacchaeus' house. No Norman Rockwell painting here. Zacchaeus friends are likely as unsavory as he is, and the house is the product of ill gotten gain. But there is Jesus at the table. The occasion overwhelms Zacchaeus, who vows to turn over a new leaf. And Jesus says, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham." In other words, the last person anyone would invite for Thanksgiving is restored to the community, is a beloved member of the family.
Thanksgiving and the upcoming Christmas season usually prompt an outpouring of help for the less fortunate, often in the form of food and dinners. Our congregation does this as well, and many of the recipients are thrilled to receive what we bring. But in my experience, the divide of "us" and "them" often remains. So how do we become community? How do we become family?
As a pastor, I find that it is easy for me to get preoccupied with the tasks of professional ministry, so preoccupied that I can miss opportunities for showing Christ to others. One of the big items in my work is Sunday worship. It is important work, but I wonder what Jesus would think about the way I and many attending worship might respond to someone in need. I can get so focused on the upcoming service that I become oblivious to much of what is going on around me. And I mentioned in this blog before a time when the ushers at our church escorted a man seeking assistance out of the building, telling him to come back later, at a better time.
I wonder if I and those ushers and lots of other folks wouldn't have chimed in with the crowd in today's gospel who "sternly ordered" a blind beggar to be quiet when he cried out for Jesus' help. Surely Jesus had more important things to do. He has just told his disciples that he is headed to Jerusalem where he will be mocked, flogged, and killed. He is on his way to his moment with destiny. Surely he hasn't time for one so unimportant as this blind beggar.
Luke's gospel tells us repeatedly that Jesus brings a new day where the poor and unimportant are lifted up while the rich and powerful are pulled down. God's kingdom is full of reversals, and Jesus enacts one as he heals this blind beggar, who then joins Jesus on the way.
In our current economic climate, lots of congregations and charities are hurting for money. Many churches are struggling to balance budgets, pondering where to make cuts. Mission dollars are often a tempting target because they represent the largest share of "discretionary" spending. And a $5000 cut in mission giving is surely preferable to a $5000 cut in my salary.
