The Word dwells among us in all our beginnings, middles, and ends: new year's eve year b

The first reading is Genesis 1:1-5, 14-18.
The second reading is Micah 5:2-5a.

A reading from Revelation (21:1-6a).

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;

     for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,

          and the sea was no more.

²And I saw the holy city,

     the new Jerusalem,

          coming down out of heaven from God,

               prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

     “See, the home of God is among mortals.

          God will dwell with them as their God;

               they will be God’s peoples,

               and God’s own self will be with them;

          ⁴God will wipe every tear from their eyes.

               Death will be no more;

               mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

                    for the first things have passed away.”

⁵And the one who was seated on the throne said,

     “See, I am making all things new.”

Also that one said,

     “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

⁶Then the one said to me,

     “It is done!

          I am the Alpha and the Omega,

               the beginning and the end.”

The holy gospel according to John (1:1-14).

In the beginning was the Word,

     and the Word was with God,

     and the Word was God.

          ²The Word was in the beginning with God.

               ³All things came into being through the Word,

                    without whom not one thing came into being.

                    What has come into being ⁴in the Word was life,

                         and the life was the light of all people.

⁵The light shines in the darkness,

     and the darkness did not overcome it.

⁶There was a man sent from God,

     whose name was John.

          ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light,

               so that all might believe through him.

               ⁸John himself was not the light,

                    but he came to testify to the light.

⁹The true light,

     which enlightens everyone,

          was coming into the world.

     ¹⁰The light was in the world,

     and the world came into being through the light;

          yet the world did not know the light.

     ¹¹The light came to what was their own,

          and their own people did not accept them.

               ¹²But to all who received the light,

                    who believed in the name,

                         the light gave power to become children of God,

                              ¹³who were born,

                                   not of blood

                                   or of the will of the flesh

                                   or of the will of a human,

                                        but of God.

¹⁴And the Word became flesh and lived among us,

     and we have seen the glory of the Word,

          the glory as of a father’s only child,

              full of grace and truth.

The gospel of the Lord.

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Today is a day of endings and beginnings.  As we end our calendar year, not only do we prepare to begin a new one, but we are already right in the middle of Christmas and the birth of God with us.  Add into that Advent being the beginning of our new church year, and we have a whole mess of beginnings and middles, even at this ending.

Our readings for today reflect this as well.  A story of beginning creation in Genesis, new hope for a Messiah to come in Micah, a hymn of beginning creation and the Word made flesh in John, and newness in Revelation.  The poetry of these readings pulls us into the mystery that comes with beginning and ending.

The vision laid out in Revelation feels magical, even, with the new heaven and new earth.  For me, especially having grown up in the mountains of Colorado, it’s like the day after a snowfall—this morning, for example.  Everything feels new and bright as the sunlight twinkles like glitter off the new flakes of snow blanketing everything.  It’s not a complete restart, but it feels new enough to be one.

Maybe that’s the real truth of all of these readings—that beginnings and endings are never only one or the other, but instead encompass so much more.  While we frequently think about the world in binaries—beginning and end, dark and light, dog and cat—that has not always been the worldview. 

My favorite Hebrew poetry technique, called a merism, actually shows up all over the place in our readings, especially the reading from Revelation.  A merism names two things typically understood as being at opposite ends of a spectrum or idea, like heaven and earth or male and female, dark and light, as a kind of shorthand to include everything in between.

So when we hear or read about God creating the heavens and the earth, we can think about the creation of the whole cosmos.  And when the One on the throne in Revelation says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end,” we know it means not only the alpha and the omega, but also the beta, gamma, delta, epsilon—the beginning, middle, end, and every new beginning.

The God who comes to us as the Word made flesh isn’t just with us at the beginnings of birth and baptism and the endings of funerals, but instead the Word made flesh is with us in every moment of our fleshy lives.

The incarnation, which we celebrate particularly at Christmas, is God choosing humanity with so much enthusiasm that God takes it all on—the joy and the sorrow.  God takes on our graduations, new jobs, relationships, sobriety and recovery, as well as the layoffs, failed tests, broken relationships, and royal mess-ups. 

God is with us in all of that and each week as we celebrate communion, we receive a tangible reminder of that love and grace that chooses to be with us for it all.  In the bread and wine, which are the body and blood of Christ, Jesus, the Word made flesh, joins in our flesh and journeys with us throughout the week—at every Table, bedside, and bus stop.  

Jesus sticks with us no matter what, so that at the end of all things, we are not surprised to find God with us for what may not be an ending, but just the middle or even another beginning.

Thanks be to God.

god is hope in the face of disappointment: advent 3b

The first reading is Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11.

The holy gospel according to John 1:6-8, 19-28

⁶There was a man sent from God,

        whose name was John. 

                ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light,

                        so that all might believe through him.

                         ⁸He himself was not the light,

                                but he came to testify to the light.

¹⁹This is the testimony given by John

        when the Judeans sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him,

                “Who are you?” 

²⁰John confessed and did not deny it,

        but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” 

²¹And they asked him,

        “What then?

                Are you Elijah?”

He said,

        “I am not.”

“Are you the prophet?”

He answered,

        “No.” 

²²Then they said to him,

        “Who are you?

                Let us have an answer for those who sent us.

                        What do you say about yourself?”

²³John said,

        “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,

                ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’”

                        as the prophet Isaiah said. 

²⁴Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. 

        ²⁵They asked him,

                “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”

²⁶John answered them,

        “I baptize with water.

                Among you stands one whom you do not know, 

                        ²⁷the one who is coming after me;

                                I am not worthy to untie the thong of their sandal.” 

²⁸This took place in Bethany

        across the Jordan

                where John was baptizing.

The gospel of the Lord.

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When I was in college, one of my majors was Spanish, which required me to spend at least one semester in a study abroad program in a Spanish-speaking country. 

I was really excited about this—I’d traveled some and part of my interest in a Spanish major was because I loved getting to know new cultures and new people.

So, as I prepared for my semester in Argentina, my excitement only grew as more and more of my fellow students told me that studying abroad would be “the best experience ever!”  When I finally dove into my five months in Buenos Aires, ready for an unequivocally awesome time, I … was disappointed.

My study abroad experience wasn’t terrible.  I made friends in and outside my program, some of whom are still friends today, and I got to know a lot about Argentine culture and history.  I learned a lot in my classes and I did a lot of soul-searching, discovering more about who I was and, like John in today’s gospel, who I was not.  I also, as with many people spending time in big cities, got catcalled.  I spent more than a few lonely nights at home.  And I had plenty of miscommunications to deal with.

All in all, the experiences that made up my five months in Argentina were probably no better or worse than anyone else’s study abroad experiences, but I had definitely gotten my hopes up ahead of time.  Everyone had said that it would be amazing and not once did someone suggest that there would also be times that were hard or lonely or even just awful.

I wasn’t expecting the hard times because nobody had mentioned that there would be any.  I thought it would be great all the time.  I don’t know if you’ve ever had an experience like that—planning the perfect party or vacation, or even a holiday celebration that only ends up with disappointment—but the original hearers of today’s readings would have been quite familiar with disappointment.

In our first reading, Isaiah is speaking to a people who are finally back from exile, which they’ve longed for for what feels like forever, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  Life isn’t all of a sudden perfect like they’d thought.  The devastation of the exile is still too present in the destruction of cities, the hard memories of their time in exile, and the changes they’ve experienced. 

And yet Isaiah proclaims, “The spirit of the Sovereign God is upon me, because the Sovereign has anointed me; God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners. ”  Isaiah’s message, which Jesus will reiterate in his ministry, is good news for those disappointed people. 

This liberty, this release, this good news doesn’t have the delivery time that every online retailer currently seems to be offering—“oaks of righteousness” do not grow over night, after all. 

Isaiah states that “as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Sovereign God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations,” but he never says it’ll be quick.  The seeds are planted and will grow into oaks … eventually, but not on the timeline of these people who have finally returned from their exile and just want everything back to the way it “should be” now.  Patiently or impatiently, joy will come, but now it’s time for them to wait.

Like those early Israelites returned from exile, the Judeans in the gospel reading are also waiting.  They’re anticipating this coming messiah, and John seems like a pretty good candidate, so the religious leaders send some priests and Levites to investigate.  Filled with hope and expectation for the one who will deliver them from the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire, they ask, “Who are you?”

John’s reply, however, is another disappointment. 

John.  Is.  Not. 

“I am not the Messiah.” Not Elijah, not the prophet.  Not any of the really important titles they want to give him. 

Instead, John is the voice.  The voice crying out not of despair, but of hope—in preparation.  The voice who is a witness to the one who is coming.

John’s call in this moment is to hope and prepare for the one who is to come.  John’s work—crying out in the wilderness—may seem a bit fruitless.  But those seeds, scattered with his words on the wind and splattered with the drops of baptismal water, will find a landing place.  John’s witness will take root in the one to come—the one who shall be called Jesus.

In this time of Advent, we wait and hope.  We wait for Jesus to come again.  We hope for God’s reign to be made manifest all around us.  We wait and hope for peace.  We wait and hope for Good News in the midst of disappointment. 

Even as we sit in this Advent time of knowing that God wins—that Jesus conquers death and evil—we are also sitting in this disappointing time of God’s reign not yet fully on earth as it is in heaven.

This Advent time when the seeds are planted and may even be sprouting, we are still far off from the sturdy “oaks of righteousness” to come.  And yet, this is the time that we make for ourselves.  To join with John in preparing for God to come—bearing witness to Jesus and sharing the hope of a God who will come to us as the baby of homeless peasants who will soon flee to Egypt as refugees.

This time of waiting anticipates joy to come—it knows the ending.  And we can look back to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we can look back at the ways that God has been at work, not only 500 years ago during the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, but every day before and since. As I look back on my study abroad experience in Argentina, I am grateful.  While it was an experience filled with both disappointment and joy, I recognize God’s presence and work in me through that time.  Without it, I wouldn’t be the pastor I am today.

The holidays to come will also be joyful and disappointing.  They will be filled with memories both good and bad, which will bring any number of feelings up for us.  And yet, in all of those memories, God is with us.  In recognizing God at work in the past, working for good even in the midst of disappointing situations, we gain hope for the future that God is bringing about—a future of hope, a future of joy, and a future of Good News for us all.  Our hope rests in the oaks springing up, in the One who comes to us as Jesus, the Word of God, God-With-Us, Immanuel, our Hope and Joy.

Thanks be to God.

reformation bios

Each Sunday during October this year, we learned about different reformers throughout history, culminating in a Eucharistic Prayer celebrating them and the Reformation of which we are all a part.  I mentioned some of them in my Reformation Sunday sermon and in a couple different sermons.

These are the bios, with links to more information, for those who are interested:

Argula von Grumbach lived in Bavaria (now known as Germany) from 1492 until about 1554.  Having received her own copy of the Bible at the age of 10, she was an fierce advocate for reform based on her scriptural studies.  Von Grumbach’s first publication was a letter in defense of a University of Ingolstadt student who had been imprisoned for possessing illegal pamphlets promoting Reformation theology. She viewed her public opposition as necessary when no one else would, it appeared, speak up against this miscarriage of justice. Argula even challenged the faculty to a debate on the doctrines in question!  Von Grumbach’s husband was not supportive of her activity.  Even through he lost his government job because he couldn’t control her, von Grumbach continued to advocate for the Reformation. 

Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen lived in Germany and then Sumatra, Indonesia from 1834 to 1918.  Nommensen was a German Lutheran missionary to Sumatra who also translated the New Testament into the native Batak language, embracing the spirit of the Reformation that people should be able to read the Bible and worship in their native language. He also helped establish schools, hospitals, and seminaries in Indonesia.

Jehu Jones lived in Charleston, South Carolina and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1786 to 1852.  Though his parents were enslaved, they were freed, creating the opportunity for Jones to earn an education and a living.  With encouragement from his pastor, Jones pursued a call to ministry and was ordained by the New York Synod in 1832 and served as a mission developer of several congregations throughout Pennsylvania.  Although he faced racism, which impacted the church finances and his ability to serve the church as God was calling him, Jones persisted to follow God’s will.

Catharina von Bora Luther lived in Saxony (now known as Germany) from 1499 to 1552.  Though she was a nun, during the reformation, she left the convent and married Martin Luther.  Not only did she care for Martin as his wife, she also filled a role equivalent to managing a midsized business.  Von Bora Luther ran the household finances, business, family, and hospitality, prompting Martin to leave everything to her in his will.  Thanks to her education at the convent, Katie and her husband also engaged in theological discussions throughout their marriage.

Vine Deloria, Jr. was a member of the Yankton Sioux tribe and lived from 1933 to 2005.  As a professor and activist, he worked legally and politically in support of treaty rights in relationship with the u.s. government, promoted American Indian spiritual traditions and religious freedom, and furthered Native American historic and scientific thought.  Deloria was a prolific writer, educator, and advocate, challenging and deepening many deeply held beliefs and theories.

Søren Kierkegaard lived in Copenhagen, Denmark from 1813 to 1855.  He lived with depression throughout his life, which informed his philosophical writings on the importance of experiencing life rather than just describing it.  Kierkegaard’s writings challenged the church of his time, which he viewed as failing to embrace the costliness and risk of following Jesus, and gave voice to the depths of despair and a mystic experience of faith that resonates with many still today.

Katharina Schütz Zell lived in Strasbourg, on the border between Germany and France from 1497 to 1562.  As one of the first women to marry a pastor, Schütz Zell was active in ministry as a partner with her husband, visiting those who were sick or in prison and supporting refugees during the Peasants’ War.  She was prolific in her writing and hymns, publishing the Hymnbook of the Bohemian Brethren in 1531.

Philipp Nicolai lived in Germany from 1556 to 1608.  Serving as a pastor in various communities and advocating fervently for what became known as Lutheranism, Nicolai is most remembered for his hymns.  Two of his hymns, which survive in many hymnals today are “Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying,” and “Oh Morning Star!  How Fair and Bright.”

Leoncia Rosado Rousseau, known as Mama Leo, was born in Puerto Rico in 1912 and came to New York City to live from 1935 to 2006.  Rev. Rosado Rousseau birthed the Damascus Christian Churches movement and ministered with people in the throws of addiction and people living on the streets.  Even with little support from colleagues, her ministry inspired programs for faith-motivated recovery programs and inspired Nicky Cruz, who went on to establish TRUCE, a worldwide evangelistic ministry, and Jim Jimenez, pastor of the Rock Church.

Marie Dentière lived in Geneva, Belgium and Strasbourg, Germany from about 1495 to about 1561.  As an abbess, when Dentière learned about the Reformation, she left her position and encouraged other nuns to leave as well.  She and her husband began a girls’ school and Dentière spoke out in both support and criticism of her fellow reformers, gaining enough respect from John Calvin that she wrote the preface for one of his sermons. 

Leymah Gbowee was born in 1972 in Liberia.  In 2011 received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work for women’s safety, rights, and full participation in peace-building in her country.  Motivated by her faith, Gbowee organized Christian and Muslim women to protest corruption in the government and end the civil war and continues to advocate throughout the world.

Dag Hammarskjöld lived mostly in Sweden from 1905 to 1961.  Serving in the financial and business sectors in Sweden, he gained the knowledge and education to move into areas of international political service as well, eventually becoming the Secretary-General of the United Nations.  For his work with the United Nations, Hammarskjöld posthumously received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Olympia Morata lived in Italy and Germany from 1526 to 1555.  From even a young age, Morata proved herself to be a scholar, even lecturing at the court of Ferrara in Greek and Latin.  Her scholarly endeavors kindled deep faith so that even when she had to deny a position lecturing at a university due to health concerns, she continued to write with deep theological and faith convictions that influenced other reformers.

Elizabeth Fedde lived in what is now Oslo, Norway, New York City, and Minneapolis from 1850 to 1921.  As a Norwegian Lutheran Deaconess, Fedde founded the Norwegian Relief Society, a deaconess house and the hospital that became the Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn.  Moving to Minneapolis, she founded another deaconess center and hospital that because part of Hennepin County Medical Center, and continuing on to establish centers of care for people throughout the country.

Darnell L. Moore was born in 1976 in Camden, NJ and lives in Brooklyn, NY.  As a fierce advocate rooted in anti-racist, feminist, queer of color, and anti-colonial thought, in connection with religion, Moore has presented at theological seminaries, national conferences, and global settings.  Moore especially focuses on youth development and social justice from marginalized communities in this country and throughout the world.