Jesus is coming! - Advent 1a (readings are from 2a)

The first reading is Isaiah 11:1-10.
The second reading is Romans 15:4-13.

The holy gospel according to Matthew (3:1-12)

¹In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea,

       proclaiming, ²“Repent,

              for the dominion of heaven has come near.”

       ³This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

              “The voice of one crying out

                     in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Sovereign, 
              make straight the paths of the Sovereign.’ ”

       ⁴Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist,

              and his food was locusts and wild honey.

⁵Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him,

       and all the region along the Jordan,

       ⁶and they were baptized by John in the river Jordan,

              confessing their sins.

⁷But when John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism,

       he said to them,

              “You brood of vipers!

              Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

              ⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance.

                     ⁹Do not presume to say to yourselves,

                            ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’;

                     for I tell you,

                            God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

                     ¹⁰Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees;

                            every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down

                            and thrown into the fire.

¹¹“I baptize you with water for repentance,

       but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me;

              I am not worthy to carry his sandals.

              He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

                     ¹²With a winnowing fork in hand,

                            he will clear the threshing floor

                            and will gather the wheat into the granary;

                                   but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

The gospel of the Lord.

-----

Advent is finally here!!  Jesus is coming!!

And I just need to say: It’s about time!  I am ready for Jesus to just show up already!

The world is big and scary. December is so busy and it’s still only November!  People are sick.  People are hurting.  And I just need Jesus to make it all right.  And this vision Isaiah casts is a vision I can get behind.

Out of a tree that ought to be dead comes a new shoot—unexpected life trying once again even in the face of death.  A new one to lead—with the Spirit upon him, strong as can be, faithful, full of integrity, fair, and speaks a powerful word.

That doesn’t sound half bad, if you ask me.

And if God is promising it, then I have hope because when it comes to God’s promises, God usually comes through even bigger than promised.

Jesus is coming.  And even as I desperately want Jesus to hurry up, I also wonder what it will look like when Jesus arrives.

The vision that Isaiah casts with a persistent shoot out of the stump of Jesse, wisdom and righteousness, and harmony between those who currently fall into kill or be killed roles is compelling.  That peace and tranquility, like an evening curled up by the fire with a good book, is something I long for and Paul’s letter to the Romans echoes it.

Christ is the fulfillment of God’s promises. All that God has promised throughout history is made manifest in Jesus—and then some. Christ is the hope for us Gentiles.

But then I get to Matthew and think, “Who is John talking about?!”  I mean, yes, there’s the connection with Romans about God fulfilling the promise to Abraham, making children out of stones and all, but the rest of it?

If Jesus is the shoot coming out of the stump of Jesse, what is the ax doing lying at the root of the trees? I’m not sure I want Jesus to come if it means cutting down trees that don’t bear good fruit or if it means being baptized “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

I’m just not sure I’m bearing enough good fruit or have enough grains of wheat in me to outweigh the chaff.  I mess up all the time; I am definitely a sinner.  I don’t want to end up on the wrong end of John the Baptist’s Jesus.

Really, though, it’s almost as if John and Isaiah are talking about two totally different people.                        What if they are?

What if they are each talking about the one they want to come—the one who will support them and agree with them—instead of the actual One who is coming.  What if they are like us and read scripture and find confirmation of their beliefs?  What if they are reiterating the part of God’s vision that gives them the most hope, that gives them power or authority?  What if they are making the One who comes in their own image?

But even so, the One who is coming still manages to blow all of their expectations out of the water.  Because God is bigger than our categories.

It’s like the elephant we were talking about earlier.  [Mentioned in the children’s sermon: how people placed around an elephant with blindfolds on will all describe the elephant differently according to their experience of it.]

We feel our way around God and get a little bit of insight into who God is, but ultimately, I might think that God is thin and flat like an elephant’s ear and you might think God is long and hairy like an elephant’s tail, wide and wrinkly like the side, or long, curved, and smooth like the trunk.

The beauty is that God is each of these and more.  In choosing to love us by coming to be human and to be with us, God does comfort us and God encourages us.  God does bring new life from what once was dead.  God does challenge us.  God calls us to repentance when we sin.  God cries with us when we hurt and grieve.  God calls us into solidarity with the oppressed.  God calls us into a different way of being in the world.  God loves us.

Because God is bigger than either Isaiah or John can imagine on their own and God is bigger than we can understand.  That is the gift in our community of faith.  God gathers us together to share our wisdom, to find each other’s good fruit and grains of wheat, to learn about each other’s experience of God.  God gathers us to protect the child and the lamb and the fatling; to temper the wolf, the bear, and the lion, until that day Isaiah talks about truly comes. 

God is big enough to create the entire cosmos and God is big enough to hold all our thoughts and ideas about who God is and what God is like together.  God is big enough to hold our contradictions and differences, to hold our busy-ness and distractions.  God is big enough to hold our many understandings of God together.

And so as we take a deep breath and get ready to dive into the busy-ness of the coming month, I wonder if God is not doing a similar thing.  Breathing deeply and then diving toward us.  Setting the little child in motion so that as Isaiah says, “⁷The cow and the bear shall graze, … and the lion shall eat straw like the ox” “⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together.”

Jesus is coming, as both everything and nothing we could imagine.  Jesus is coming as a sprout out of the stump of Jesse, with an ax and winnowing fork in hand, and most importantly, Jesus is coming with love.  For you.  For me.  For our neighbors, our friends, our enemies, and for all of Creation.  Jesus’ love is big enough to hold us all together

Thanks be to God.

Christ shows up in the suffering: Reign of Christ

The other reading referenced is Colossians 1:11-20.

 

The holy gospel according to Luke (23:33-43)

³³When they came to the place that is called The Skull,

       they crucified Jesus there with the criminals,

              one on his right

              and one on his left.

³⁴⟦Then Jesus said,

       “Father, forgive them;

              for they do not know what they are doing.”⟧

And they cast lots to divide his clothing.

³⁵And the people stood by, watching;

       but the leaders scoffed at him, saying,

              “He saved others;

                     let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God,

                            the chosen one!”

³⁶The soldiers also mocked him,

       coming up and offering him sour wine, ³⁷and saying,

              “If you are the King of the Jews,

                     save yourself!”

³⁸There was also an inscription over him,

       “This is the King of the Jews.”

³⁹One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding Jesus and saying,

       “Are you not the Messiah?

              Save yourself and us!”

⁴⁰But the other rebuked him, saying,

       “Do you not fear God,

              since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?

              ⁴¹And we indeed have been condemned justly,

                     for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds,

                            but this one has done nothing wrong.”

⁴²Then he said,

       “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kindom.”

⁴³Jesus replied,

       “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The gospel of the lord.

-----

Today, as the final Sunday in the church year, is Reign of Christ Sunday. It is the day we name Christ as the ultimate authority over all.  We celebrate our God who has all the power.

When we say Christ reigns or Christ is King or Lord—or, in today’s language we might say, Christ is our President—we are making a statement about whose authority we follow.  This is the day that our Gospel reading especially gives us great insight not only into who Jesus is, but more deeply into what power and authority mean to God.

What do they mean?  How do we best understand Jesus? 

Through the cross.

Christ’s reign—Jesus’ power and authority—is best understood in the One who would rather die than kill anyone, who talks to criminals, and challenges the assumptions of his day; the One who doesn’t give into complacency, the One willing to suffer for another.

As Jesus suffers and dies on the cross, we find that, as the letter to Colossians says, “in Christ all the fullness of God [is] pleased to dwell.”  When all of God’s power and might is on display, that power places itself below—it takes on the suffering of the world. God becomes incarnate—taking on our very flesh all the way to the cross, so that when we proclaim that Christ reigns, it is really that Christ is most present in and with those who suffer.

Christ shows up when we’re filled with anxiety at unmarked cars driving by and word of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, la migra, in the area.  Christ sits with us in our anxiety, recalling what it was like when his own family had to flee his home country and live without papers in a strange land.

Christ shows up when the doctor calls about the biopsy and says we should come in to talk to her.  In the waiting and the heartbreak, in the treatment and the sickness.  Christ sits with us in our pain, recalling the pain of the cross.

Christ shows up when we wonder if it’s safe to go out in public because at least 295 of our transgender and gender nonconforming siblings were killed this year just because of their gender identity—23 in this country alone.  Christ sits with us in our fear and dies with us in our death, crucified again and again with each person killed.

Christ shows up.

Whenever and wherever there is suffering, Christ is there. 

Tears rolling down, beaten and broken by people or life itself, Christ shows up.  That is the God we know and the God we worship.  The One who shows up.  The One who takes on all our suffering. 

Because God has literally been to hell and back, there is no experience too foreign, too painful, or too awful, for God.

Christ gathers “all the strength that comes from God’s glorious power” and sits down in the sackcloth and ashes.  Christ relocates the power and authority from the places we usually look to, to the places of suffering.  For Christ, power exists to be given up and given over, because no matter how loud or how strong we try to become, strength and power cannot have the final word for a God who gave it all up to come be with us.

It’s like Kid President says, “Even if hate has a bullhorn, Love is louder.”   It is love—in solidarity—that has the final say.

It is in our ability to be with—to be in solidarity with those who suffer—that we also encounter Christ’s truest self.  When we sit and breathe, when we go to doctor’s appointments, when we cry, we encounter Christ with us.

So we follow Christ—our Lord, King, and President.  We follow Jesus to the cross and we look on wondering what to do about that one who suffers.  Do we stand by watching with the crowd?  Do we scoff, mock, and deride?  Or, like the criminal, do we ask Jesus to recognize us, to draw us in? 

And Christ does—Christ always will.  Again and again Christ shows up.  When fear, anxiety, illness, and even death overwhelm us, Christ shows up in full.

Sometimes we recognize it and sometimes we don’t. But Christ is still there.

Christ is in the brokenness.  There is an art form in Japan called Kintsugi where broken pottery is repaired with gold so that the thing that was broken becomes even more beautiful in the brokenness—a new thing is born out of the old that would be discarded or destroyed.

That is Christ’s work.  In communion, Christ, the bread that is broken, connects us to each other and to God.  Our broken bodies come for broken bread and become one body of Christ.  In Christ’s fullness, bread is broken, wine is poured—and Jesus gathers all the brokenness of the world to himself on the cross and fills our cracks, our anxiety, illness, and pain with a love that casts out fear.  Christ’s presence in communion fills us and Christ walks with us in our fear through a dangerous world, through a sick world, through a scary world. 

Christ shows up and Christ shows up on the cross.  Perfect power and authority made known in perfect love and service, not because it is required, but precisely because it is so freely given.

That is who Christ is.  Christ, our King, Lord, and President, is Christ crucified, Christ who suffers with the suffering ones.

Thanks be to God

God's love is who we are: 26th after pentecost

The holy gospel according to Luke (21:5-19)

⁵When some were speaking about the temple,

       how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God,

Jesus said,

       ⁶“As for these things that you see,

              the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another;

                     all will be thrown down.”
⁷They asked Jesus,

       “Teacher, when will this be,

       and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?”

⁸And Jesus said,

       “Beware that you are not led astray;

              for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am the one!’

              and, ‘The time is near!’

                     Do not go after them.

⁹“When you hear of wars and insurrections,

       do not be terrified;

              for these things must take place first,

                     but the end will not follow immediately.”

¹⁰Then Jesus said to them,

       “Nation will rise against nation,

              and country against country;

       ¹¹there will be great earthquakes,

              and in various places famines and plagues;

                     and there will be dreadful portents

                            and great signs from heaven.

¹²“But before all this occurs,

       they will arrest you and persecute you;

       they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons,

       and you will be brought before rulers and governors because of my name.

              ¹³This will give you an opportunity to testify.

                     ¹⁴So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance;

                            ¹⁵for I will give you words and a wisdom

                                   that none of your opponents will be able to withstand

                                          or contradict.

       ¹⁶You will be betrayed even by parents and family,

              by relatives and friends;

                     and they will put some of you to death.

       ¹⁷You will be hated by all because of my name.

              ¹⁸But not a hair of your head will perish.

                     ¹⁹By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

The gospel of the Lord.

-----

No matter who would have won this week, we as a community of faith would have work to do.  Our country, and even our own community, is deeply divided.  The words of Jesus from today’s gospel paint a stark picture of the world and yet for many in this country, “dreadful portents” feels accurate this week or even this year. 

Throughout this election, those who are most vulnerable in our country have been used, tossed aside, or manipulated.  Poor and working class people of all races have been excluded in favor of a focus on the “middle class,” so many others have been explicitly degraded and villainized.

It is not a matter of being a democrat or a republican.  It is not a matter of voting a certain way.  No matter who you voted for or what your reasons for voting, the results of the presidential election tell those of us who are already more vulnerable that we don’t matter or that we matter less.  This is not because a certain “side” won or lost.  It’s deeper than that.

Muslims, immigrants, people of color, and lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, and queer folks have been taunted; in play grounds with “Build the wall!”, harassed and beaten up,             with hijabs, the headscarves some Muslim women wear as an expression of their faith, torn off                         on college campuses and in people’s own communities.  Women have been harassed on public transportation and at work. Graffiti and threatening notes have popped up everywhere. [1]

Not only that, usually the crisis text line has about 30-80 people working at one time to field all of the texts that they receive from people in crisis from anxiety, depression, and other causes.  Tuesday night, it took over 500 counselors at once to meet the demand.  This has continued to be the case across the board with suicide and crisis hotlines.

For many of us who voted, probably even the majority, the intended message was not this, but for those people who jumped on board with the fear and voted precisely because of the violent, racist, xenophobic rhetoric, they see the results as affirmation of their views.  They understand the results as a country that thinks whiteness is best and should be the only race allowed, where other religions are illegitimate, where people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ folks, and women don’t deserve full citizenship, where violence, harassment, and bullying is ok. 

Many now feel justified in acting on their bigotry and fear.  And many are responding to that out of their own justified fear and anger.

That has become the message of this week.

But Jesus says, “¹³This will give you an opportunity to testify.”

Because that—that hatred and fear—is not who we are as a community of faith.  Violence in any form is not who we are as a community of faith.

Jesus says “they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before rulers and governors because of my name….¹⁶You will be betrayed even by parents and family, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. ¹⁷You will be hated by all because of my name. ”

Following Jesus is not easy.  It means taking risks, it means standing up to bullies on playgrounds, on the streets, and even in politics—from Republicans, Democrats, Third Parties, and Independents.

Today, tomorrow, and in the coming months, we will have the opportunity to testify.  What will your witness be? 

Yesterday we celebrated Carina’s ordination.  We celebrated this community of faith and the ways the Holy Spirit has worked through you all to encourage Carina and lift up her gifts for ministry and leadership. 

You have nurtured in her a faith that understands a neighbor’s pain as her own pain; that sees Christ’s suffering in those who suffer throughout the world.  You were the first ones to share with her about Jesus, to care about being in relationship with her, to encourage her call to ministry.  You embodied God’s love to your neighbors and to her.  Christ’s love has been carried in this community and Christ’s light has shined brightly through you.

In the coming months, we will again have the opportunity to testify to God’s love for Muslim children of God, for immigrant and refugee children of God, for children of God who have survived sexual assault, and for children of God with disabilities.

Not because you have to, but because of God’s love.  God loves immigrants, people living and working in poverty, Muslims, survivors, the vulnerable and the forgotten.  God loves you.  And God’s love is who we are as a community of faith—as beloved children of God ourselves.  God loves us so much that God feeds us in bread and wine; Christ’s own self, given in love for the sake of the whole world.  And through us, God also feeds others—pies, pasta, mole, cheese and crackers, and the nourishment of love, friendship, and support.

The Holy Spirit has been at work in this world since long before any of us were alive and since long before this election even began.  God claims each and every person as beloved and in our baptism, God calls us into the world as witnesses of God’s love—to smile and greet strangers who are really neighbors in the grocery store, to go out of our way when we’re in Rochester or LaCrosse to warmly greet women wearing hijabs, so that they know that we care about them and are safe people for them, to challenge ourselves and friends or neighbors when we think or they say something about “those people” whomever “those people” may be.

We live in a small town, filled with nice people, and it’s easy to think that we aren’t connected to the rest of what is going on in our country or the world.  Yet our interactions are bigger than Rushford and Peterson.  God makes them ripple outwards.  God’s love surrounds us and expands the impact of the love we show to others. 

May the Holy Spirit continue to make our witness ripple waves of love into the universe just as she has always done.

Amen.

---

[1] If you need more examples, you can go to whyweareafraid.com

[2] Alex Darling-Raabe’s friend Maryanne Dyer, who volunteers for the crisis text line.

God holds us in thin places: All Saints Sunday

The first reading was Job 19:23-27a.

 

The holy gospel according to Luke

²⁷Some Sadducees,

       those who say there is no resurrection,

              came to Jesus ²⁸and asked him a question,

                     “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies,

                            leaving a wife but no children,

                                   the man shall marry the widow

                                          and raise up children for his brother.

                     ²⁹Now there were seven brothers;

                            the first married, and died childless;

                            ³⁰then the second

                            ³¹and the third married her,

                            and so in the same way all seven died childless.

                            ³²Finally the woman also died.

                                   ³³In the resurrection, therefore,

                                          whose wife will the woman be?

                                                 For the seven had married her.”

³⁴Jesus said to them,

       “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage;

              ³⁵but those who are considered worthy

                     of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead

                     neither marry nor are given in marriage.

                            ³⁶Indeed they cannot die anymore,

                                   because they are like angels and are children of God,

                                          being children of the resurrection.

                     ³⁷And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed,

                            in the story about the bush,

                                   where he speaks of the Sovereign

                                          as the God of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar,

                                          the God of Rebecca and Isaac,

                                          and the God of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel.

                            ³⁸Now God is God not of the dead,

                                   but of the living;

                                          for to God all of them are alive.”

The gospel of the Lord.

-----

It is profoundly ironic that in our readings for today it is precisely those who do not believe in the resurrection who prompt our deeper thinking and experience of the resurrection. Job, as was typical of his time, doesn’t actually believe in the resurrection or everlasting life the way we might today. 

For Job, when you died, you died and the way you lived on was through your descendants and the name, or reputation, you made for yourself.  And yet, today we find new meaning in Job’s words, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last will stand upon the earth; ²⁶and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, ^27awhom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

Much of our understandings and lives are built on others’—on the lives and understandings of those who’ve come before us.  In this way, we hear Job’s words and we are able to find new and different meaning, even as the old understandings may remain, fade, or change.  We hear in Job’s word a promise of everlasting life—a promise of new life in the resurrection.

Jesus’ encounter with the Sadducees also turns things around. You see, the Sadducees try to trap Jesus with complicated questions about the Resurrection—which they don’t even believe in!

So it comes as no surprise that Jesus uses their question as more of a jumping off point than as a question in need of a clear answer. With their resurrection question in his metaphorical pocket, Jesus dives into the nature of God. 

After all, the resurrection only matters insofar as our God is beyond death.

Jesus alludes to Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush, where the name Godgives Moses is “I AM or I will be.”  God is an active God.  God is a present God.  God is God even into the future.  Jesus says, “God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God all of them are alive.”

God’s presence with us is a forever thing and there is nothing we can do to screw it up so badly that that will not be true—for us or for anyone else.  God is God of the living and yet even when we die, God is still with us.

Too often in our culture, we avoid death like the plague and then when people die we give a set amount of time for grief and then expect people to be back to their old selves again.  But that is not how grief works and that is not how love works.  When people we love die, the work of grief is figuring out our new relationship with them—one built less from physical presence and more from heart, feelings, and memories.  Loved ones who have died still remain a part of our lives, just in a different way.

In fact, there are times throughout the year and places where peoples across cultures recognize the delicate difference between the living and the dead. In Celtic tradition, they referred to it as “thin places,”—in thin places and thin times, the boundary between those of us who are alive and those who are dead is thinner and we are more able to sense their presence.

In Mexico, the Day of the Dead—el Día de muertos—is a time spent with those who have died—making altars at home or decorating graves.  Last night we celebrated together—remembering friends, family, and community members who have died, and we built the altar that is in the back, decorating it and adding our own pictures, mementos, food and drink from loved ones.

This time of year, when the earth grows cold, when the harvest finishes, is the time when we are all closer to death.  It used to be that some wouldn’t make it through the winter and so these celebrations of life were what carried people through to the next one.

It is also fitting that today is a communion Sunday because communion is one of those places where “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”  Communion is many things—it is a communal meal in which we participate in God’s alternative economy where all are fed—all receive our daily needs.  Communion is a renewing of God’s covenant of love with us. 

And Communion is also our participation in and our glimpse of the feast to come.  In this, we don’t just practice, but we taste the feast, we participate with the great cloud of witnesses.  When we receive the bread and wine that is Jesus, we are in line with our parents, spouses, friends, and even children who have completed their baptismal journey. We join with our ancestors in the faith throughout the ages to celebrate the power of life that comes from God.

Today especially as a community of faith, we gather to celebrate and remember those we love who have died.  As we do, we also feel their presence and the ways they continue to impact our lives.

For some of us their presence will always be tangible and for others it will fade and morph with time.  For some of us, our grief at the death of a loved one or even a stranger will overwhelm us, for others it will settle in as numbness or come back at unexpected times.

Each of us grieve and process death differently and on All Saints’ Day and special anniversaries, we experience again the presence of those who have died.  Those thin places invite them into our lives again in a different way. We eat their favorite foods, reminisce about memories and over pictures.  We go to bed, wrapped in their arms, only to find that it is our God who is holding us close, remembering with us, and bringing us again to each new day, each new feast, each new life.

Thanks be to God.