The Internet Monk Archives

Advent III Sermon: “Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light”

John 1:6-8, 19-28
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ He said,

‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

• • •

“Blessed are you who bear the light.” So begins a poem by Jan Richardson, a United Methodist minister and one of my favorite artists and bloggers on the internet. In this phrase she captures one of the key themes in today’s Gospel text.

John, it says, came as a witness, to testify to the light. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The rest of the text shows how he did that. When the religious police came to nail him down on who he was, he refused to claim anything more than that. He wasn’t the Messiah, he said, nor was he a great prophet like Elijah. Instead, he just claimed to be a voice telling the truth, a person who had come into the darkness bearing a light, pointing to a light beyond himself. And so he did, relentlessly pointing to Jesus as the one who would come as Messiah and Lord.

What a great calling! And in some ways it is the same calling each of us have. Bearers of the light. Called to be with one another in the darkness and point each other to the light beyond, the light to come.

There are many of us who dwell in darkness during this Christmas season. Some of you are in the darkness of sadness. Perhaps you have lost loved ones with whom you are accustomed to sharing the holidays. You are missing them. Perhaps other difficult and depressing situations are weighing you down. Whatever it may be, your hearts hurt and the darkness seems even darker at this time of year.

I have a simple question. Who will hold up a light for them? Who will join these who are sad, be present and available in the darkness to bear the light to them? Who will show them the love of God in Jesus and perform acts of kindness that will comfort and uphold them?

Some of you are in the darkness of feeling lost. You need direction for your life and can’t seem to find it. The road ahead seems dark and foggy ahead of you. You can’t see your way clear. You have decisions to make but have no idea what the right thing to do might be.

I’ll ask the same question: Who will hold up a light for them? Who will seek out those who are lost in order to be present to them and available to bear a light for them? Who will pray for them and search the scriptures with them and listen to their questions and doubts and help them find guidance if possible?

Now we aren’t all John the Baptist. He had a ministry that was absolutely unique. He came at an appointed time in history, in the darkness of Israel’s exile, and pointed to the One who was coming to be the Light of the world, Savior and Lord of all. We may get opportunities to witness to Jesus like that, but I’m speaking in a broader sense about being a light-bearer here. There are many ways to light the darkness.

Whenever we live in faith, we are pointing to the light. Whenever we recognize our dependence upon God’s grace and the enabling energy of the Holy Spirit to conduct our daily lives, the light shines through us.

Whenever we live in hope, we are pointing to the light. Whenever we refuse to accept that the powers of evil and destruction will win, whenever we carry within our hearts the ultimate optimism that nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from God’s love, the light is shining through us.

Whenever we live in love, we are pointing to the light. Whenever we stretch beyond living in a selfish and small world to include someone else in it, whenever we commit ourselves to being with someone and available to that person for his or her benefit, the light is shining through us.

People all around us are in darkness of one kind or another. It’s a part of this life, this imperfect, transient, beautiful yet often terrible life we live in. The question is not, “Will we experience darkness?” We all will. The question is always, “Where are the light-bearers?” Where are those who will be with us in the darkness and who can point us beyond the darkness to the light to come? Maybe, as I said earlier, some of you are experiencing a good measure of darkness right now. For a lot of people, Christmas doesn’t help that. It just stirs up the pain, the memories, the regrets, and the sadness all over again.

Let’s try to do for each other this year what John did for his fellow Israelites so long ago. He bore the light for them in their darkness. He spoke truth in the wilderness. He testified and pointed to the light.

I’d like to end with Jan Richardson’s poem of blessing for all who take up this holy task this Christmas:

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light

Blessed are you in unaccountable faith
who bear the light in stubborn hope
in unbearable times, in love that illumines
who testify every broken thing
to its endurance it finds.
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.

Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes—
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith
in stubborn hope
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.

May we be blessed bearers of light, people of Christ whose faith, hope, and love illumines every broken thing we find.

• • •

Photo by zharth at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Advent III: Presence — The One Necessary Thing

Note from CM: During Advent, I have asked some of our wonderful iMonk writers to share meditations on seasonal themes each week. I have really missed hearing from our friend Lisa Dye, and I’m so grateful she was willing to send us this contribution for the third Sunday in Advent. In fact, I am grateful for each of these friends and gifted people, and know that what they share will help us prepare our lives for celebrating the Incarnation.

✧ ✧ ✧

Presence: The One Necessary Thing
By Lisa Dye

“He loves thee far too well to leave thee in thy self made hell, A Savior is thy God.”

• Mountains of Spices by Hannah Hurnard

• • •

In some cultures, saving a life requires permanent responsibility for that life. Recently, this unwritten law transcended cultural lines and imposed itself at my house.

The first week in May, on a cold evening after work, I was busily stowing groceries when my husband burst in from the barn carrying a small box from which emanated a chorus of weak mews. “Here, Mama, take care of these babies.” The babies were four feline neonates, eyes still closed, shivering from cold and hunger, their average weight only five ounces each. Doug had just sawed a hole in his barn wall after hearing their cries. Their biological mom, a stray from parts unknown, died in the loft a couple of days previously. I improvised an incubator with towels and a heating pad and sent Doug to the pet store for tiny bottles and a big supply of kitten formula.

To make a long and meandering story short, we thought we’d drawn the pet line in the sand after Jack, our sweet and quirky Labrador, arrived three years ago. Instead, there ensued weeks of bottle feedings several times a day and a small fortune spent in premium cat food, litter and vet visits. I made a few half-hearted … okay, heartsick … attempts at finding the babies homes and gave up after the grandkids all named them (Midnight, Joey, Frost and Stacey) and Annabelle sobbed, “Grandma you can’t sell the cats.”

“Well, first of all, Annabelle, you don’t sell cats, you pretty much have to pay people to take them.”

So now, we are responsible. I have crunched the numbers. Doug and I are in for roughly twenty years of quadruple feline fun … oh, and roughly the amount of one year of my annual net salary over that time frame in their upkeep.

That said we have come to some peace over it. The grandkids are relieved and it seems to be our small part of God’s plan “to bring all things in heaven and on earth (even big dogs and little kittens) together (Eph. 1:10) …” I may change my mind after we put up the Christmas tree.

But the whole situation has got me thinking about what a perfect little metaphor this is to drive home the significance of Advent to me. “What,” you say, “have cats got anything to do with Advent?”

First, I have to explain that I am ambivalent about cats and decidedly a dog person, so there is no desperate reach on my part, to convert any anti-cat people by extolling their virtues. In fact, the babies are a bit on my nerves as I write this … clamoring to sit in my lap, walking across my keyboard and alarming me with breakage in other rooms. Nevertheless, I have an explanation. Let me change tracks a bit.

Advent (from ad venire in Latin, meaning “to come to”) begins the Church’s liturgical year. It is a season celebrating the expectation of Christ’s coming, both literally a second time to Earth and in a spiritual sense into our lives and hearts. Parousia is the Greek version of this concept. In a previous essay, I noted a somewhat different nuance in the Greek. In addition to a promise of coming, it is Presence, in an unceasing way. Christ has come. Christ is here now. Yet, Christ is always yet to come.

Really, when you think about this, Presence is the crux of Christmas and all of Christianity. Presence is the manifestation of Christ being sent and the fruitfulness of our expecting him. Presence is God with us. Presence is the most necessary and vital aspect of his plan to bring all things in heaven and earth together, under one head, Christ. Without Presence, it all falls apart and we each go to our little hell.

Two times in my life, I had the expectation of someone close to me coming to accompany me at important events. I felt a joyful expectation when I thought that person was still coming, but when the moment arrived and the person did not, I felt abandoned and alone. There were other emotions too, but the essential realization was one of being left.

This is what I thought about during the many times I sat bottle feeding handfuls of feline fluff during the quiet of midnight and marveling at my tiny kittens’ fragile, but tenacious will to live. I could have sent them nice thoughts from my warm house to the cold wall of the barn and hoped they figured out a way to make it. I could even have regularly placed bottles of formula out in the barn, but it wouldn’t have been enough. No, their lives depended on the advent and parousia, first of my husband coming to rescue them from their concealment in the barn wall and then on my sitting with them to feed and care for them in an unceasing way. Their lives depended on presence.

Presence is the needful thing for relationship and for union and communion. That is the beauty and mystery of what we see in our Triune God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the complete, perfect, infinite and eternal picture of Presence, Submission and Self-giving among one another. It’s into this family that Christ comes to invite us.

My midnight contemplation amongst cats is making me look at every relationship, spiritual, human and animal with an eye toward the importance of Presence and a desire to facilitate communion. Here are some observations:

Presence is the remedy for need and emptiness, of which there are too many and too much to list or describe in detail. But in human and temporal terms, we can generally see that sickness, poverty and loneliness do not go away without the presence of someone coming to heal, to feed and to comfort. Christ, in human flesh, said at the inauguration of his earthly ministry, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18, 19). Christ’s Presence is the answer to the need of a world groaning in separation from its Creator.

Presence is an intervention and arrival of a new order, or rather a restored order. Human governments and institutions are flawed and broken, the result of human self-interest and separation from God. Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:21, 22). Jesus was talking about Christ’s arrival in his own person. Now, through the Church, it is possible for the culture of Heaven to be restored to earth. To the degree his people give themselves over to Christ’s love and life in their earthly bodies, his Presence will be reflected in human institutions, systems and governments.

Presence is often painful and inconvenient. It requires selflessness and submission. “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant … “ (Philippians 2: 5 – 7). The older I get, the more I am struck that the most pressing requirement in my life is flexibility. I spent most of the first half of my life trying to accomplish a personal agenda, but now I find that is not what serves God, my people or Creation most of the time. No, it is sacrifice of time, energy and personal desire in order to meet needs. This principle of Presence is personified in Christ, who left the beauty and order of Heaven and descended into the clamor and squalor of human need. He demonstrated, in every inconvenience of life, numerous sufferings, and ultimately, death, that Presence requires the self-giving and submission of a servant.

Presence requires persistence, perseverance and time. Presence requires making a decision to show up when needed, as often as needed and for as long as needed. It isn’t enough to meet an ongoing need once and declare a problem solved. It must be done over and over again. It is true in the nurturing of family relationships, friendships, work, the care of creatures and nature. It is true with the sick, the hungry and the lonely. Separations and poverties of all kinds need the continuous action that advent and parousia imply. They require continual Presence. Perhaps that is why John writes in his gospel, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14).

Presence requires acceptance on the part of another. I remember in the first year of my marriage, my dad, whom I’d shut out of my life because of problems during my childhood, came repeatedly to knock on our door and try to repair his relationship with me. Repeatedly, I had my husband send him away and I would flee to a back room so I wouldn’t have to confront him. One day, when Dad came to the door, I tried sending my husband to refuse him again. Instead, Doug said, “Either you go out there and talk to him or I will send him away forever.” I went out and talked to my dad and it was the beginning of a journey back to renewed relationship. I had to receive him for this to happen. At first, I did it in a grudging way. Eventually, I did it in a welcoming and loving way. Now, I am sorry, especially as he is aging and in poor health, for the many times I missed with him by my refusals. All the effort and sacrifice of Christ’s coming means nothing to us if we do not receive and welcome him, not just once, but continually. Even one refusal constitutes a lack or loss of his Presence with us.

It is a fruitless venture for Christ to come always and forever knocking on a door that does not open to him. “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:20). When we say no, we sort ourselves out of communion into smaller and smaller places and ultimately into hell. Hell in the Norse, Germanic and Saxon, means “concealed place.” It may not be so much where we are sent, but where we retreat to hide. It is a refusal of Presence, that of God and of others … and of ourselves to them. To be fair, some of us can’t help it, at least in the beginning. Maybe we’ve been hurt. I certainly was. It can feel safer to stay separate and hidden. I would venture to say that is one of the points of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve … the hell and destruction that come from hiding from God. But unless we choose, at some point, to come out of hiding, we choose Hell.

Finally, Presence, freely given and freely received, is communion. In him all things hold together. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross … This is the gospel … that has been proclaimed to every creature” (Colossians 1: 19, 20 and 23). Yes, this is the gospel of communion … God reconciling to himself all of creation, whether human, nature or creature. It is remedy, intervention, inconvenient service and painful sufferings, persistent arrivals and welcoming receptions. By being fully present to his Presence, we are “taken up into the Godhead,” according to Thomas Merton. By being present to his Presence, we “become Christ,” according to St. Augustine. By welcoming him, we are snatched out of concealment in cold barn walls and self-made hells and brought into the warmth and light of the family of God.

This is why we celebrate Advent. He does not leave us. He is always coming to us. He is always here.

The Saturday Monks Brunch: December 16, 2017

It’s almost Christmas and perhaps you have started the feasting already. Well, for heaven’s sake, don’t stop now! Join us for our weekly Monks Brunch!

Welcome!

• • •

BYE BYE NET NEUTRALITY

One of the big news stories of the week was when the FCC voted on Thursday to repeal Obama-era internet neutrality rules. A story in the NY Times lays out the arguments of both proponents and opponents of the decision.

This is what you should be scared of, according to the decision’s opponents:

Broadband providers could begin selling the internet in bundles, not unlike how cable television is sold today.
Consumers could suffer at the hands of those who can afford to pay more. Big internet and media companies, as well as affluent households could move in a “fast lane,” while everyone else would be in the “slow lane.”
Small businesses worry that industry giants could pay to get an edge too. Remote workers and freelancers fear having to pay much higher costs.

This is why, according to repeal’s proponents, the move will be better in the long run:

They argue that before the regulations were put into effect in 2015, service providers had not engaged in any of the practices the rules prohibit.
“Several internet providers have made public pledges in recent months that they will not block or throttle sites once the rules were repealed. The companies argue that Title II gives the F.C.C. too much control over their business, and that the regulations make it hard to expand their networks.”

A third group argues that a free and open internet is pretty much already a dying project, since a few giant American companies control most of the online infrastructure and there are only a handful of broadband companies that are seeking to become content companies as well.

What do you think?

• • •

REST IN PEACE, R.C. SPROUL

I’m pretty hard on Reformed types around here, but that’s not to say that they haven’t had much positive impact on my life at various points along the road. Like Michael Spencer before me, people in the Reformed branches of the church proved to be among the guides that led me out of revivalistic and church growth style evangelicalism, challenging me to a more intellectually bracing faith with a measure of historical depth and a more creational perspective.

One of those guides for me was R.C. Sproul. Though I always felt his books were overly philosophical and theologically rather than biblically oriented, and not as pastorally sensitive as I like, he was a teacher that captured the attention and invigorated the mind. That this emphasis was front and center for him could be seen in the name of his radio broadcast, “Renewing the Mind.” Probably my favorite book of his and the one that had the most impact on me was The Holiness of God.

• • •

A SERIOUS ALARM ABOUT THE FARM

Dr. Mike Rosmann is an Iowa farmer and also a psychologist and an expert on the behavioral health of farmers. For 40 years, he has worked to understand why farmers take their lives at such alarming rates – currently, higher rates than any other occupation in the United States.

The Guardian reports these alarming facts:

Last year, a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that people working in agriculture – including farmers, farm laborers, ranchers, fishers, and lumber harvesters – take their lives at a rate higher than any other occupation. The data suggested that the suicide rate for agricultural workers in 17 states was nearly five times higher compared with that in the general population.

After the study was released, Newsweek reported that the suicide death rate for farmers was more than double that of military veterans. This, however, could be an underestimate, as the data collected skipped several major agricultural states, including Iowa. Rosmann and other experts add that the farmer suicide rate might be higher, because an unknown number of farmers disguise their suicides as farm accidents.

The US farmer suicide crisis echoes a much larger farmer suicide crisis happening globally: an Australian farmer dies by suicide every four days; in the UK, one farmer a week takes his or her own life; in France, one farmer dies by suicide every two days; in India, more than 270,000 farmers have died by suicide since 1995.

I encourage you to read this fearsome and fascinating article, to pray about this public health crisis, and to give thanks for people like Dr. Mike Rossman, whose efforts to provide lasting means of help are documented in this piece.

• • •

TODAY’S DISCUSSION

In the light of what Tom Krattenmaker calls the “sex panic” that is upon us these days, he says at RNS, “It’s Time for a Sexual Counterrevolution.” He writes:

Amid the current wreckage, is it time to declare the half-century-old sexual revolution a mistake? Do we need to go back to the more restrictive sex culture of old?

That would be neither feasible nor desirable. But it clearly is time for a sexual counterrevolution, to restore what was healthy and well-intended in the original revolution and excise the malignancies that have shown up lately in the personages of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and many others, not to mention the everyday workplace occurrences of men harassing the women they work with and supervise.

You can read some of his suggestions, but I’d like to have a conversation around the table about this. So, discuss: What would a healthy sexual counter-revolution look like?

• • •

HOPE YOU MADE IT THROUGH YOUR DECORATING OKAY

Did you know that about 240 people a day go to the emergency room after falling off ladders, getting cut, or getting burned when trying to put up their holiday decorations?

On NPR’s All Things Considered, hosts Robert Siegel and Kelly McEvers interviewed one of the “victims” — extreme decorator Kurt Farmer. Here is an excerpt:

MCEVERS: It happened two years ago. He was putting some finishing touches on the extravaganza when he saw it – an off-kilter candy cane on the edge of his roof. He was in a rush to get to work, but he had to fix it. Kurt Farmer took one bad step and fell from his roof to the concrete below.

FARMER: I shattered my pelvis. Somehow I came down 15 feet and landed literally on my right leg – shattered that into 32 pieces and then collapsed and landed on my rotator cuff and shattered that.

SIEGEL: It took several surgeries and nine months of rehab to recover. The next Christmas, he was back at it with the lights and the inflatables.

MCEVERS: Farmer says he’s in pain every day. He has found ways to make decorating easier, though, like using a mechanical lift.

FARMER: I added another 10,000 lights on my tree this year because I could go so much higher. I had never been that high before because I was doing everything off a ladder.

SIEGEL: He’s also more careful, he says, and more deliberate when he puts up his decorations. One holiday in the hospital was enough.

FARMER: Take your time. And patience is always a virtue because it’s not worth what might happen to take the extra 30 seconds to do it the right way.

MCEVERS: Good advice from Kurt Farmer, extreme Christmas decorator of Alexandria, Va.

• • •

OK, THIS IS JUST PLAIN WEIRD

From NPR: Simon Bramhall, 53, has pleaded guilty to assault of two patients, for, yes, branding his initials onto their organs during surgery. He is going to be sentenced on Jan. 12.

The Associated Press reports that a prosecutor called the case “without legal precedent in criminal law.”

“Bramhall used an argon beam coagulator, which seals bleeding blood vessels with an electric beam, to mark his initials on the organs,” the AP writes.

The internal graffiti very likely did not cause any damage, The Guardian reports: “The marks left by argon are not thought to impair the organ’s function and usually disappear by themselves.”

But in one patient, Bramhall’s brand did not heal over. Another surgeon conducting a follow-up surgery discovered the letters S and B etched into the man’s organ. An investigation discovered that Bramhall had branded a female patient’s liver as well.

In case you were curious, there were other medical professionals present as Bramhall branded his name on those livers, the BBC reports. It was not an isolated incident, prosecutors said.

Bramhall’s misdeeds were uncovered in 2013. (In early 2014 they inspired a lighthearted post in Marketing Week on effective branding — get it, branding? — because the world is objectively terrible.)

As he tendered his resignation in 2014, Bramhall said — and we promise we are not making this up; this is what an actual, once well-regarded surgeon said after burning his initials into human livers — “It is a bit raw.”

“I have to move on.”

• • •

HOW ABOUT SOME FUN CHRISTMAS PHOTOS? (from The Atlantic)

A man dressed as Santa Claus enjoys the snow during the Saint Nicholas Day at the Alpine ski resort of Verbier, Switzerland, December 2, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RC1449D937B0

Men wearing horned, wooden masks and dressed as Krampus prepare to participate in the annual Krampus parade on Saint Nicholas Day on December 6, 2017, in Sankt Johann im Pongau, Austria.

A woman takes a picture of a family near trees decorated with Christmas lights at Ibirapuera Park in Sao Paulo, Brazil December 3, 2017. REUTERS/Nacho Doce – RC15DB1AD740

Over eight thousand members of the public take part in Glasgow’s annual Santa dash make their way up St Vincent Street on December 10, 2017 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Linnea Hennersten, from Lidkoping in southwest Sweden plays the role of Lucia as she leads the procession during the Swedish Sankta Lucia Festival of Light service at York Minster church in York, England, on December 8, 2017.

• • •

THIS WEEK’S ADVENT/CHRISTMAS MUSIC

One of my favorite albums I listen to year after year is Bruce Cockburn’s Christmas. Today, I invite you to enjoy his rollicking rendition of “Early On One Christmas Morn.”

The Evangelical Dilemma

The Evangelical Dilemma

I don’t think Christianity is about converting people.

• Michael Spencer, Wretched Urgency

• • •

I once had a Jewish patient, non-observant, who was one of the most thoughtful, delightful people I’ve met. My ministry to him was the same as it is to all my patients – to provide pastoral friendship, to meet him at his particular location on the homeward journey and to walk together with him in the final season of his life. It was my goal to be someone who would support him, encourage him, let him know that he is loved and regarded as a person of worth and dignity, and to help in whatever way he might ask, as I might be able, to make the end of his life comfortable and peaceful for him and his family.

This patient had a relative who had been converted to Christianity and to a particular brand that was passionately evangelistic. I saw him one day at the patient’s home and he told me, with a look of frustration, that he had tried and tried to get his dying family member to accept Jesus without success.

Later the patient himself, also frustrated, complained about how this relative had been insistent on “sharing” the faith he had found. But it didn’t come across like “sharing” as much as like he was being forced to agree to something. He said he appreciated that his family member had found something meaningful, but he didn’t like that he was foisting it upon him the way he did.

Afterwards, I was able to have another conversation with the evangelist, who asked me if I had had a chance to “share” with the patient – meaning did I try to win him to Jesus. He went on to say something that stuck with me. “In the end it’s about eternity, isn’t it?” he said. “And if a person is open to the idea of eternity, then it’s essential that he must make a decision about what he will do with it.”

Which leads me to ask:

Is it possible to be truly evangelical in this way and ever just simply love one’s neighbor?

If “eternity” is riding on every moment, can any Christian afford to engage in a ministry like mine?

If this is the case wouldn’t the “wretched urgency” Michael Spencer railed against actually be “responsible urgency”?

In other words, if the house is on fire, shouldn’t we be doing everything we can each possible moment to rescue those in danger of burning?

This was the lesson D.L. Moody took from the great Chicago fire. On the night the fire broke out, Moody was preaching to a large congregation. His text that evening was, “What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?” At the conclusion of his sermon he said, “I wish you would take this text home with you and turn it over in your minds during the week, and next Sunday we will come back here and decide what to do with Jesus of Nazareth.”

The songleader had not even finished singing when a roar of fire engines rushing by the church ended the service. By morning, much of the city lay in ashes. To his dying day, Mr. Moody deeply regretted that he had delayed in confronting that congregation with a choice. “I have never since dared,” he said, “to give an audience a week to think of their salvation. If they were lost they might rise up in judgment against me. I have never seen that congregation since. I will never meet those people until I meet them in another world. But I want to tell you of one lesson that I learned that night which I have never forgotten, and that is, when I preach, to press Christ upon the people then and there and try to bring them to a decision on the spot. I would rather have that right hand cut off than to give an audience a week now to decide what to do with Jesus.”

I have spent much of my pastoral career in a theological system that maintains that logic, and people like D.L. Moody were held up as faithful examples to us. I have known many people who have tried to follow the logic and the example and some became fervent evangelists, in season and out of season. However, for me it has always posed a logical dilemma. If this were actually every Christian’s gospel responsibility, it would make it impossible to simply live in this world or to have any other priorities that didn’t involve being a spiritual EMT all the time. However, I have observed that most Christians, even the most fundamentalist of them, don’t let this logic stop them from building their lives, saving money, planning for the future, enjoying entertainment, taking vacations, and talking to their neighbors about their gardens across the fence when they could be proclaiming the gospel. Me too. Many of us with the more or less continual sense of guilt Michael wrote about.

I know one pastor who could never do my job. I remember him testifying about how he got kicked out of a hospital room where a patient lay dying because he refused to stop trying to persuade the man to accept Christ. Say what you will, the pastor grasped the logic, and tried to be faithful to it. The tearful testimony he gave to us in the congregation was meant to convince us that to do anything less in such a situation would be unloving to the person and unfaithful to the God who called us to be his ambassadors. After all, Eternity™ is at stake!

This was the air we breathed. The Christian life was a life of urgent rescue, and not a life of wasting time on whatever “Knowing God” was all about. We were all on constant 911 calls. The rapture could come any time, and every Christian was given this day for no other reason than to win souls. If you were not on witnessing patrol or on your knees preparing or following up a witnessing call, you were a useless and bad Christian.

• Michael Spencer, Wretched Urgency

I’ve come to believe that this is the “Christianity” of revivalists and Chick tracts, not the Christianity of Jesus and the New Testament. Click the links to Michael’s classic “Wretched Urgency” post above and follow as he winds his way through the NT without finding any urgent concern for converting people there.

Furthermore, I do not see an apostolic insistence on “eternity” as the standard of valuation for how we are to live our lives or engage our neighbors. Where are all the NT warnings about the choice between “heaven and hell” that stands before every person? In my opinion, whatever sense of impending judgment warned about is spoken in the context of the Fall of Jerusalem (by Jesus) or with the expectation that God would soon deal with the powers of empire that were persecuting the early Christians (Paul and the other apostles). It’s simply not a matter of “eternity” as the fellow I met said.

Otherwise, why would Paul say things like:

But we urge you, beloved, to do so more and more, to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you, so that you may behave properly towards outsiders and be dependent on no one. (1 Thess 4:10-12)

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom 13:8-12)

When Paul is advising Timothy and Titus about who to choose for leadership positions in the church, why is there no mention of prime candidates being good at evangelism? Instead, he advises them to look for people of character and good reputation, who take care of things like their families and finances, modeling exemplary attitudes and words, showing experience and wisdom born of faithfulness in daily life.

The root problem, as we’ve discussed many times before, goes back to how people understand “the gospel.”

If the good news is a plan by which individuals can be rescued from their sins so that they will live with God in eternity, then what I’m doing and what most of us are doing equates to fiddling while the Titanic sinks.

We’re letting the house burn, folks, and Joe the Jewish guy is perishing in the flames.

But…

If the gospel is the story about how Jesus became King and God began his rule over this world and all creation,
creating a redeemed, Spirit-indwelt people who can witness to newness of life and the coming of a new creation through living lives of faith, hope, and love,
laying down their lives to serve their neighbors and practicing tikkun olam (repairing the world)…

…then maybe sitting with a dying man and not talking to him about eternity has some real value.

Seeing God at Work

Note from CM: This is an adaptation of a funeral sermon I gave this week. The theme was designed to represent both the character of the deceased and those who cared for her in her final season of life. I commended them as people who consistently displayed down-to-earth, practical, faithful, and genuine love.

• • •

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. (1John 4:18)

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One of my great privileges as a hospice chaplain is to see God at work every day. I realize that sounds like an audacious claim, but let me explain.

How do we see God working in our lives? People try to answer that in many ways. Some focus on extraordinary spiritual experiences. Some talk about having dreams and visions and hearing God’s voice. Others suggest that they witness miracles or occurrences that cannot be explained in any other way than that God is present and working.

But I see God working in much more ordinary and down-to-earth ways. Listen to this verse from scripture: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” The Apostle John tells us here that a primary way of recognizing God’s presence and active involvement in our lives is to see him in the true and genuine love people share with one another.

Another apostle, Paul, describes what this love looks like:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all…. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:9-21)

This passage reminds us that genuine love is not some lofty ideal, concept, or disembodied virtue. It is as down to earth as the basin, water, and towel by which Jesus knelt down on his knees, took his disciples’ dirty feet in his hands, and washed them. It is something you can feel in a family member’s touch. It is something you can hear in words of reassurance from a friend. You can see it in the tireless and often thankless work of a caregiver. When someone brings a meal, or helps out with a financial need, or gives a worn out family member some respite, what you are seeing is love. When we exercise patience with those who irritate us, when we show kindness to those who wish us ill, when we show faithfulness over a long period of time to those who count on us, that is love.

No one has seen God at any time, but when you see things like that, you are seeing God at work.

Love is practical. Love is hands-on, face-to-face, heart-to-heart, human caring. It is being with someone and staying with them in such a way that they receive benefit and encouragement. It is not always easy. It may well mean taking on difficult, mundane, or distasteful tasks. It can make you cry sometimes. You may feel doubts, discouragements, frustrations, and encounter fears and anxieties. Sometimes emergencies come up in the middle of the night or at other inconvenient times, causing you to lose sleep and get tired and grumpy. You might find yourself exchanging angry words with those around you or even feeling bitter and put upon. Love involves patience, forbearance, saying “I’m sorry,” and extending forgiveness.

Love is as down-to-earth as it gets. It is completely ordinary, and yet, what could be more extra-ordinary than love like this? After all, according to the Apostle John, this is the best vision of God at work that we are ever going to see in this world — “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

This is the love I witness every day as a hospice chaplain, as caregivers show love to family members and friends at the end of life. I often see it in the patients themselves, as they graciously allow others to serve them and then respond to them with words and expressions of gratitude. I see it in my team members, who travel all around our city to visit people in homes, extended care facilities, and hospitals. I can only pray that people will see it in me as I seek to engage others in pastoral friendship.

As author Frederick Buechner once reminded us, this world is both a beautiful and a terrible place. We all try to navigate our way through it the best we can, hoping for as much of the “beautiful” and as little of the “terrible” as possible.

I was recently watching a travel show about the Alps and it showed a guide leading some folks up a mountain to a little inn that had been built at a high elevation with spectacular views. To get there, they had to walk on frighteningly narrow little paths. It looked to this observer like one wrong step could mean certain death. The one who built the path recognized how treacherous it would be, so he attached cables to the side of the mountain that hikers could grasp for support as they carefully ascended. As the guide took his guests up the mountain, he had them hang on to those cables as he led the way. In that beautiful yet terrifying setting, the path maker had provided something that made travelers feel safer, more secure, and hopeful about reaching the top without incident. And, there was someone to walk the dangerous path with them.

That is love. And this is what we all need on our journey. This kind of love enables us to see the beauty while minimizing the terror in this life. And this is the kind of love that enables us to lift our heads and see that a loving God is with us, walking beside us and working on our behalf.

Merton on Advent: Christ in our world as it is

Note from CM: This past Sunday was recognized in many Anglican churches as the Feast of Thomas Merton. Today we present an excerpt from something he wrote about the season of Advent.

• • •

Merton on Advent
Christ in our world as it is

St Gregory the Great said that all Christians should continue the prophetic mission of John and point out the presence of Christ in the world. This may mean many different things. John was able to point out Christ at the Jordan, in a moment of fulfillment, which gave meaning to his whole life. But John also had to witness to Christ in prison, in face of death, in failure, when even the meaning of his other glorious moment seemed to have been cancelled out.

So too, we may at times be able to show the world Christ in moments when all can clearly discern in history, some confirmation of the Christian message. But the fact remains that our task is to seek and find Christ in our world as it is, and not as it might be. The fact that the world is other than it might be does not alter the truth that Christ is present in it and that His plan has been neither frustrated nor changed: indeed, all will be done according to His will. Our Advent is the celebration of this hope. What is uncertain is not the “coming” of Christ but our own reception of Him, our own response to Him, our own readiness and capacity to “go forth to meet Him.” We must be willing to see Him and acclaim Him, as John did, even at the very moment when our whole life’s work and all its meaning seem to collapse. Indeed, more formidable still, the Church herself may perhaps be called upon some day to point out the Victorious Redeemer and King of Ages amid the collapse of all that has been laboriously built up by the devotion of centuries and cultures that sincerely intended to be Christian.

• Merton, Thomas. Seasons of Celebration (pp. 90-91)

Pete Enns: Christmas in “Christian America” and the Old Testament

Note from CM: Now here is an eye-opening post. I guarantee you that the thoughts Pete Enns shares here will not have crossed the minds of many evangelical Christians or to Christians of other brands who emphasize strict observance and piety. In my view it serves as is yet another example of how separated the religious can be from the realities of ordinary life and how little most of us understand about the people in the Bible and what their actual experience was.

His words also confirm to me what I see every day now as I work in the community rather than within the walls of a church. Generally speaking, many of the people I meet who don’t call themselves religious may have more faith and spiritual sense than those who do. And those in the church are often just as bound by superstitious and “worldly” thinking as their neighbors are.

There is something wonderfully human about what Pete writes here, and something that reinforces to me that we’re all in this together. I’m reminded of Bonhoeffer’s words, which reflect my own experience: “I often ask myself why a “Christian instinct” often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, by which I don’t in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, “in brotherhood.”

• • •

Christmas in “Christian America” and the Old Testament
By Pete Enns

Here comes a rant.

Christmas in America is a national holiday, woven securely in a secular liturgical year, with little authentic religious significance for many/most of those who celebrate it.

It’s commercialized nonsense, a vehicle for reaching quarterly profit margins. Christmas means malls, Lexus “December to Remember” commercials, and some very dumb Christmas specials.

OK, rant over. We all know this, and pointing it out is as insightful as saying that network television has too many commercials and toilets flush counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere (or do they?—click here).

My point here isn’t to take aim at the easy target of the secularization of Christmas, but to draw an analogy between Christmas in America and what we read about Israelites in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is, to state the obvious, religious literature. But we tend to assume that the ancient Israelites were as aware as we are of what we read. They weren’t.

There was no “Bible” through most of Israel’s ancient history—what we call the Old Testament did not begin to take form until after the return from Babylonian exile (that is, beginning in the 5th c. BCE) and was still somewhat in flux in the days of Jesus and Paul. And whatever writings were floating around in the days of Israel’s kings (roughly 1000-600 BCE) were the stuff of trained scribes, not Shlomo and Miriam Israelite farmers and sheepherders. People weren’t running around “reading their Bibles” as we think of it today.

I imagine that the ancient Israelites celebrated their rituals—festivals, sacrifices, regular times of worship—with the same lack of awareness for their deep religious significance as most American’s celebrate Christmas. Perhaps, like popular American culture, they sort of just went along with the momentum of their vaguely sacred holidays adapted to cultural norms of the day—if they observed them at all.

If we could walk through ancient Israelite towns sometime between 1000 and 600 BCE (when Israel was a nation with kings and a Temple with religious rituals), would we see an idyllic scene of common every-day Israelites owning the full religious significance of their holidays and rituals?

Or would we see more or less what we see today as we walk through Walmart or Times Square—masses of Americans for whom vaguely ancient religious symbols have been reframed by the dominant culture and reinvested with meaning?

This is why biblical scholars and historians make a distinction between the Old Testament and “Israelite religion.”

The Old Testament is the official record of the literate religious leaders, written not as a straight record of historical events (as if there is such a thing), but as stories, interpretations of the past to prescribe what the people should believe and do in the present—namely in the exilic and post-exilic periods. (I just said a mouthful, but this isn’t in the slightest bit controversial for most. I give this a lot of space in The Bible Tells Me So.)

Scholars of “Israelite religion” engage the Bible, to be sure, but also archaeological evidence that shows us what people on the ground actually did do.

One example is the constant Old Testament refrain in 1 and 2 Kings about the proper worship of God:

Yahweh and Yahweh alone is to be worshiped,
and that happens only in the Temple in Jerusalem,
with no images of any kind.

Readers today might assume that these injunctions were more or less commonly known at the time, and so we read the biblical stories about the failure to worship God properly as stories of out and out rebellion—“Geez Louise, Israelites, when in the world are you going to learn to obey God?! How many times do you have to be told?!”

But it may be that your average Israelite had no real conception of how God is “supposed” to be worshiped. Or they had an idea, but, like a lot of American’s singing “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” or “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” they effortlessly and unknowingly mix together some vague awareness of what it all “really” means and just going with the cultural flow.

Again, think of what is generally considered to be a fairly “normal” celebration of Christmas in American culture. You buy toys, slippers, and toasters online, wrap them and put them under a tree, and settle in to watch He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special or A Year without a Santa Claus. Maybe go to church and sing “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

There. We did Christmas.

I don’t see my neighbors or the local butcher as rebelling against anything. They’re just doing what they know, flowing along on the cultural currents. They might not know very much if anything about what Christmas “really” means.

They’re just being Americans, born into a culture where, if you’re not Jewish or Muslim, you just “celebrate Christmas like everyone else,” along with your own private family traditions if applicable. And that’s that.

The Old Testament normalizes and centralizes worship practices, which the masses are supposed to follow. Imagine if the federal government tried to impose strict rules on how to celebrate Christmas (beyond making it a bank holiday). We would find a new definition of “chaos.”

Ancient Israel’s actual worship of God may have been more like that of “Christian America” at Christmas than a hyper-alert and knowledgable practicing Christian community today.

Fertility figurines from Judah (1000-700 BCE)

This may help illustrate the point. Archaeologists have uncovered ample evidence that ancient Israelites during the monarchic period (1000 to 600 BCE) engaged in the worship of a fertility goddess like that of their Canaanite neighbors and pretty much every other ancient people of the region. Scads of clay figurines, like the ones you see here, have been found that were the personal property of your average Israelite.

This would not have been seen by them as a rejection of Yahweh in favor of another, but the merging of the worship of their God Yahweh with what “everybody else did.”

Israelites worshiped other deities, in the form of images, in the home. The very opposite of the biblical injunctions.

As I said, the Bible routinely condemns this sort of thing, like commanding that the “Asherah” poles (symbols of fertility) be cut down. That seems straightforward enough: the Bible says that worshiping the fertility goddess is wrong, everyone knows it, so stop it!

But think about it from a different angle. Why do we read on page after page in the Old Testament the condemnation of such worship practices on the part of the Israelites? Why the felt need on the part of the biblical writers to make such a huge point of ridding the land of idols and false places of worship (“high places”)?

Because it was so popular, so common. Everyone was doing it.

The fact that the biblical writers protested so much against false worship probably tells us not so much how “rebellious” the Israelites were against clearly understood commands, but that the ancient Israelites were as detached from their official religion as are many/most Americans from official Christianity.

The celebration of Christmas in America today may give us a pretty good idea of what Israelite life was like, religiously speaking, during the time of the kings. The biblical stories of the past, in that respect, are more like sermons to catechize and motivate the Israelites rather than objective accounts of the past.

Advent II Sermon: An Uncomfortable Awakening (+ a bonus song)

The Preaching of John the Baptist. Allori

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight” ’,

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

❦

Our Gospel for today from Mark reminds us of something important about Advent.

It is not like Christmas.

At Christmas we emphasize the spirit of comfort and joy. Advent is about repentance and asking forgiveness.
Christmas is filled with the sound of singing. Advent is filled with the sounds of people confessing their sins.
Christmas is about the tender story of a young woman giving birth. Advent is about a rough and uncouth preacher standing by the river confronting people as a prophet.
Christmas is a celebration that our hopes have been fulfilled and the light has dawned. Advent is a lament about the agony of waiting and longing in the darkness for the light to come.
Christmas is the joy of welcoming Christ. Advent is wondering whether I am truly ready for Christ to come.
In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the Christmas story is told as one part of a complex group of narratives that invite the reader to ponder and reflect on the meaning of Christ’s birth. The Gospel of Mark begins without any stories, or even the story of Jesus’ birth itself. Instead it begins with a direct and unambiguous call to repent, to confess our sins, to be baptized, to make a stark choice whether we are going to cling to the old ways or turn around and embrace the new ways that are coming.

In other words, there’s no messing around in Mark. He gets straight to the point: the King is coming and it’s time to get ready. One commentator said the opening passage of Mark is like an alarm clock that wakes us out of a dead sleep. Last week’s message was about trying to stay awake when we tend to get drowsy and inattentive. This week’s text assumes we’re asleep and sets off a loud alarm telling us it’s time to jump out of bed, splash cold water on our faces, and get ready to face the new day.

Now I don’t know about you, but I usually don’t like it when that alarm goes off. In my mind that’s exactly why God created the snooze button. I have this deep desire to stay in bed, warm and comfortable and undisturbed. My body, soul, and spirit is overcome by a spirit of inertia. I don’t want to move, except maybe to roll over and pull the covers back over my head.

When Gail and I were first married and serving our first congregation, we lived up in the mountains of Vermont, where winter was real and long, with lots of snow and subzero temperatures. We lived in a parsonage that had been built in 1860. Our bedroom was upstairs and there was no heat up there. The only heat that got up there came through an old stove pipe hole in the floor. We woke up innumerable mornings with ice on the inside of the windows. We wore more clothes to bed than we did throughout the day. We had painted hardwood floors and no rugs or carpeting, so you can guess how cold and uninviting they were. Getting up on those freezing dark winter mornings was agony.

Some mornings I had to get up extra early and go help my neighbor put chains on the small school bus I drove so I could navigate the snowy gravel roads safely. Oh I loved knowing I was getting up to face that!

I think that was when I truly became a night person. Who in their right mind wants to wake up and deal with such things?

I hate to say this, but Advent calls us to an uncomfortable awakening. Especially on this Sunday, when every year we read about John the Baptist and his powerful, direct challenge to the people of Israel before Christ came on the scene. It is not time for “comfort and joy” yet folks. First we have to pass through the agony of waking up, putting our feet on the cold floor, submerging ourselves in the water of death, and being raised up newly alive again, spluttering and shivering with the shock of it all.

All this is not just a silly metaphor. This is as real as it gets. This is about opening our eyes to the truth about ourselves, about the world we live in, and about what we have to do to come clean and make things right. This is about looking squarely in the mirror and facing up to the flaws, the imperfections, the downright ugliness we sometimes see there. This is about taking time to think hard about how I’ve run away from God this year, how I’ve not always told the truth, how I’ve rationalized my words, my attitudes, and my actions, how I’ve not always been the best neighbor to those around me. It’s about cleaning house, clearing away the clutter, emptying out the closets, dusting and scouring using every bit of elbow grease it takes to make my home ready to welcome the most important Guest who’ll ever come there.

Now let me make something clear however. We will never be completely ready for Jesus to come. We cannot clean ourselves up thoroughly enough, we can never make preparations that are adequate for a King. Nevertheless, he is coming, John tells us, and the good news is that when he does, it is the Christ who will make all things right. Our text tells us that Jesus will plunge us not simply into cold water but also into the cleansing and healing and renewing power of the Holy Spirit. He is coming to do what we cannot do. Jesus is coming to make us new through and through.

Today God calls us through John the Baptist to wake up from our slumber and to get ready for that.

That is Advent.

And that is what prepares us for Christmas.

• • •

Here is the Bob Bennett song I’ll be listening to this Advent to help me prepare for Christmas.

Advent: A Reminder To Wait for the God Who Takes His Time

Note from CM: During Advent, I have asked some of our wonderful iMonk writers to share meditations on seasonal themes each week. On the second Sunday, we welcome our friend Randy Thompson to contribute his perspectives on Advent. I am grateful for each of these friends and gifted people, and know that what they share will help us prepare our lives for celebrating the Incarnation.

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Advent: A Reminder To Wait for the God Who Takes His Time
By Randy Thompson

Advent is a season of meditation on patience and hope, on expectations past and expectations present. It is a time for reflection on the big picture of God’s little history that often seems in danger of getting lost in the grand current of humanity’s self-importance, a history of rising and falling empires, military adventures, progress, plague, heroism, and baseness. Advent is a time to remember that we have a story that isn’t the world’s story. We forget this at the cost of our integrity, identity and spiritual health.

Advent reminds us first of all that our faith is the fulfillment of centuries of expectation, the hope that God’s promises to Abraham and to David would somehow come to fruition in human history, so that humanity could see God’s purposes in the flesh. Advent is our yearly reminder that Christ didn’t enter the scene of human affairs without context or preparation, but as One looked for and expected, at least by some.

In other words, Advent turns our attention to history. Not to humanity’s history, of powerful men (and they’re almost always men), rising powers, and falling powers. Of great advances and great reversals. Rather, Advent turns our attention to a little history, a history of a people insignificant except for the fact that God called them to Himself and made them His own. A people who began their history as slaves in Egypt, whom God freed and brought to a land He promised to give them. Remarkably, they were a people who more often than not were careless, forgetful, and unfaithful to the God who covenanted with them, Even more remarkably, they are a people who still exist even though they were destroyed as a political and religious entity by the Babylonians two and a half millennia ago. Yet, God’s people survived and returned home to the land God had given them, while Babylon disappeared as a factor in human events.

Through these centuries human voices, speaking for God, articulated God’s warnings, God’s judgments, and God’s promises. For those who had eyes to see through the centuries of political collapse and the decay of righteousness, God was present, involved, and active in history. Those with these eyes to see became a faithful remnant, a starting-over-again-people like the remnant in Noah’s ark.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, God was still on the scene, and had not forgotten His promises. A shoot did indeed come from Jesse’s stump, born to a working class family in Bethlehem, a kingly dynasty reduced to carpentry. God comes in this insignificant but messianic baby, ironically unrecognized by the people to whom a Messiah was promised but recognized by magi pagans from the east.

Despite centuries of expectation and desire, few of God’s people had eyes to see God’s salvation. What God had “prepared in the presence of all peoples,” few had eyes to see, and so God’s Son goes to his cross, “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:29-32) . The Messianic King was indeed seen, but not for who he was. He is seen, but not seen.

Advent reminds us how easy it is to have bad eyes, and fail to see God’s light and glory in the crucified Messiah. Too often our healthy expectations give way to cultural or political expectations that render us unable to see the fulfillment of God’s promises, for God’s promises come on God’s terms, not our own. We expect a royal descendent of David, but see only a baby in a Bethlehem manger. We look right at the real fulfillment of our noblest hopes but are blind, and we go our way.

Advent also serves to remind us that God’s purposes work themselves out in terms of decades, centuries and millennia, and that to be distracted by news cycles, election cycles and instant internet information of dubious accuracy is to misuse our eyes, spiritually, so that we “see,” but don’t. God promised Israel a Messiah, but it take centuries for that promise to be fulfilled. 2 Peter gets it right: “with the Lord one day is as thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day.” (2 Peter 3:8) . We always are in a hurry. We want what we want now. Always now. We hate to wait. Yet, Advent reminds us that God’s time and our times are not the same, and in the final analysis, it is God’s time that matters, and so we come to see, slowly and at times painfully, serving and loving God entails waiting, so that in response to the question, “Where is God?”, the answer is, “Just wait.”

If we reflect a bit further, we come to see that waiting is a kind of faith. We believe, and so we wait, like passengers at a bus stop on a rainy day, believing and hoping the bus will come as promised. Advent reminds us that God’s purposes unfold over long periods of time, and that what we do in the meantime is wait and hope and love each other in anticipation.

Advent reminds us that we too, like God’s people of old, are an expectant people. The fulfillment of the Old Testament hopes and expectations created for us a new hope and a new expectation. The One who ascended into the heavens will return, someday, to earth. Advent is about this expectation too. It reminds us not only of our past history; it also reminds us that history will continue, that there’s a future we can look forward to. In the face of hydrogen bombs, bio-chemical weapons, disease, and environmental crises, Advent’s focus on the future–that there will be a future–is a great comfort. The future is Christ’s, the Divine Logos and gravitational force drawing all human history to its fulfillment in himself, whether we like it or not.

To observe Advent is to be aware of human history, but more importantly, to be aware of the real history of human history, a history of God’s activities unobserved by humanity’s political, military, intellectual and even religious elites, too busy with their own concerns to notice “little” things.

God’s little history played out in a little, weak country amid super-powers and in a crucifixion on a hill outside of a city doomed to destruction under Roman rule. It continues on, mysteriously to us, awaiting a finale at the feet of the Risen and Returning One. Advent jolts us out of our short-sighted socio-political obsessions and refocuses our attention on the big picture given us by this little history, to which our contemporary elites are oblivious. The lighting of each Advent candle reminds us that it took millennia for God to bring the Gospel to us, and that it may well be millennia before Christ’s Second Advent. Above all, the lit candles remind us that in a world that seemingly teeters weekly on the brink of chaos, God is present and at work, slowly.

Very slowly.

Waiting is the calm, patient confidence that God is present, whether we can feel His presence or not, and trusting the godly vision expressed by St. Julian of Norwich against all apparent odds: “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

And so we wait, our waiting a fearless glimmer of the true light shining in the darkness, full of grace and truth.

The Saturday Monks Brunch: December 9, 2017

Welcome to the refectory, iMonks! Time for another edition of our Saturday Brunch. We are in the Advent season and just marked St. Nicholas Day on Dec. 6. But beware! There are many imposters out there —

RUN! He doesn’t know the difference between homoousios and *homoiousios*! He’s NOT St. Nick!

• • •

THE POPE WANTS TO CHANGE THE LORD’S PRAYER?

Andrew Perriman reports that the Pope has a problem with the traditional wording of the Lord’s Prayer.

The Catholic Church is unhappy with the line “lead us not into temptation” (mē eisenenkēs hēmas eis peirasmon) in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:13; Lk. 11:4). The problem is that it appears to attribute responsibility for a person falling into temptation to God. Pope Francis has said: “It’s not a good translation…. I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen. A father doesn’t do that, a father helps you to get up immediately.” If anyone leads us into temptation, he suggests, it is Satan. So an alternative translation is being considered, something along the lines of “Do not let us enter into temptation”.

I’m with Andrew on this one, however. I think the Pope (like most Christians I’ve ever met) misreads this line and fails to understand it in the context of Jewish eschatology. I’ll let him explain:

What Jesus has in view is not general moral failure (the modern theological assumption) but the “testing” of the faith of his followers by persecution. The word peirasmos in this context refers to an “evil” or painful situation that tests the validity of a person’s faith.

The Lord’s prayer is not a piece of routine liturgical supplication. It is an urgent missional prayer, best illustrated by the parable of the widow who prayed for justice against her adversary. Jesus concludes: “ And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk. 18:7–8).

The petition not to be led into a time of testing has a very specific eschatological purpose—to keep suffering to a minimum. When it came, as it inevitably would, testing was the work of the devil, aided and abetted by sinful desires. But even then it had a positive value: it proved the genuineness of their faith, and if they passed the test, they would gain the crown of life, which is a reference to martyrdom and vindication at the parousia.

For years, I’ve prayed a version of the LP that says, “And lead us not into the time of trial, but deliver us from the Evil One.” I think that captures it. In the case of the disciples, it was the troubles surrounding the Fall of Jerusalem and the devastation of the Jewish nation. In our case, we look forward to similar times of trouble throughout the “last days,” which by my reading will increase at the end of the age.

The entire Lord’s Prayer looks forward. Even as we pray for daily bread and forgiveness, we anticipate that living in this world will be hard, and we ask God to spare us from the troubles to come.

• • •

CONGRESS MAKES LOVE OUT OF NOTHING AT ALL

Drew Broach reports at NOLA:

Meat Loaf, the Wagnerian pop-rock singer who hit the charts in 1977 with the “Bat Out of Hell” album, must have wondered, “Who am I? Why am I here?,” this week when four successive U.S. senators at a Banking Committee meeting quoted Jim Steinman-penned lyrics that he made famous. It made for some light moments in the otherwise heavy discussion of the proposed Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act.

Referring to the title of the bill, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said: “As Meat Loaf used to sing, ‘Two out of three ain’t bad.’ But this bill doesn’t even meet the Meat Loaf minimum.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., chimed in: “Meat Loaf also said, ‘There ain’t no coupe de ville in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box.’ In other words, we live in a real world.”

“In that same song,” added Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., “he said, ‘Baby we can talk all night, but that ain’t getting us nowhere.’ So I’m looking forward to processing the amendments.”

Not to miss an opportunity, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., objected: “Meat Loaf also said, ‘Life is a lemon, and I want my money back.’ So on behalf of all the consumers who [got] the short end of the stick from Wells Fargo and Equifax, I want to have a bill to make sure they get their money back.”

Yessiree folks, Congress has descended to the level of Meatloaf. Well, at least they cited an appropriate song for these days, and here it is in all its over-the-top glory:

• • •

AND THEN THERE’S THIS POOR GUY (with the great ‘stache)…

NPR reports that Richard Klose from Laurel, Mont., got a surprise phone call this week. He had been elected to the city council, even though he didn’t run.

It wasn’t a scam. Nobody else ran for the position, either, but some people wrote in his name. In fact, Mr. Close got three write-in votes out of the 52 votes cast, more than anyone else. So, he’s on the city council.

He told the Billings Gazette that since he’s retired, he may as well give back to the community. I guess that’s what you get for being the popular guy in a small town.

And hey, with a mustache like that, he might as well be sheriff too, right?

• • •

A MAGNIFICENT 100-YEAR ACHIEVEMENT

WASHINGTON (RNS) — The largest Catholic church in North America is now complete.

After 100 years of construction, thousands of worshippers Friday (Dec. 8) witnessed the blessing of 24 tons of Venetian glass that embellish the dome of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Called the “Trinity Dome,” the glass mosaic is the final architectural element of the church, a shrine to Mary which sits next to the Catholic University of America and is visited by nearly 1 million people a year.

A 10-minute procession of cardinals, bishops, and priests preceded the two-hour ceremony and Mass to mark the dedication of the dome. Washington Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl who celebrated the Mass called the basilica a “modern-day masterpiece.” Faith, he said, was the reason why so many people, for so many years, sacrificed to finish the church.

Here are a few pictures of the church. Check out THIS SITE where you can see 50 photographs of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. You can also go the Basilica site and take virtual tours.

• • •

MEANWHILE, BAD CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY IS AT LEAST PARTIALLY TO BLAME FOR THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY…

Diana Butler Bass hit the nail on the head with her tweet this week: “Of all the possible theological dog-whistles to his evangelical base, this is the biggest. Trump is reminding them that he is carrying out God’s will to these Last Days.” She was speaking, of course, about the President’s announcement that the U.S. will now recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Julie Ingersoll at RNS explains the theological component in this decision and why many evangelicals are cheering it.

For many of President Trump’s evangelical supporters this is a key step in the progression of events leading to the second coming of Jesus. There’s an interesting story as to how that came to be.

The nation of Israel and the role of the city of Jerusalem are central in the “end-times” theology – a form of what is known as “premillennialism” – embraced by many American conservative Protestants.

While this theology is often thought of as a “literal” reading of the Bible, it’s actually a reasonably new interpretation that dates to the nineteenth century and relates to the work of Bible teacher, John Nelson Darby.

According to Darby for this to happen the Jewish people must have control of Jerusalem and build a third Jewish temple on the site where the first and second temples – destroyed centuries ago by the Babylonians and Romans – once were. In Darby’s view this was a necessary precursor to the Rapture, when believers would be “taken up” by Christ to escape the worst of the seven-year-period of suffering and turmoil on earth: The Great Tribulation. This is to be followed by the cosmic battle between good and evil called Armageddon at which Satan will be defeated and Christ will establish his earthly Kingdom. All of this became eminently more possible when the modern state of Israel was established in the 1940s.

Ingersoll goes on to trace the popular dissemination of this teaching through fundamentalist and evangelical groups that began in the 1960s and 70s, particularly with the release of Hal Lindsey’s book, The Late Great Planet Earth. It became even more a part of Christian and conservative culture through Jenkins and LaHaye’s Left Behind series. We’ve explored this often here at Internet Monk. HERE is one example.

But just know that we are not simply talking politics when our country makes a decision like this. There are many “prophets” who have the ears of those in power and who are spreading this stuff. Bad theology can have real world consequences, and things could get pretty scary. Might be time to break out the “save us from the time of trial” version of the Lord’s Prayer.

We are already beginning to see some of the fallout.

• • •

THIS WEEK IN ADVENT/CHRISTMAS/WINTER MUSIC

I just discovered a marvelous album of piano, chamber ensemble, and choral music by Ola Gjeilo, a U.S. based Norwegian musician, called Winter Songs. Here is one of the instrumental pieces, a meditation called “Home.” A blessed Advent week to all of you.