Nadia Bolz-Weber's Blog, page 3

At the Baptism of our Lord heaven simply could not contain God the Father and God the Spirit who interrupt the regularly scheduled programming to bring a very important message.  That message is that this Jesus who just moments ago was standing in line with all the other rif-raf, this Jesus who has just been baptized is the Son of God, the beloved in whom God is well pleased to offer to the whole world. That was God's first move.  From this place of identity Jesus was then equipped for his purpose.   Check out the next few verses:

And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 3The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." 4But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

And the Word that had most recently come from the mouth of God was This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased. Identity. It's God's first move.

I was reminded this week by my friend Dave Lose  that when The Devil says to Jesus "If you are the Son of God...." he calls into question Jesus' relationship with his Father because he knows that Jesus, as with Adam and Eve before him, is vulnerable to temptation precisely to the degree that his is insecure about his identity and mistrusts his relationship with God."

So perhaps there's a reason why when Jesus was baptized and given an identity and purpose from God that the devil's first move was putting this very identity and purpose into question saying If you really are what God says you are… Identity. … It's like the end of the spool of thread that when gotten ahold of can unwind the whole thing.

I wonder if we too are vulnerable to temptation: whether it be temptation to self-loathing, or self-agrandisment; depression or pride, self-destruction or self-indulgence….I wonder if we too are prone to these temptations precisely to the degree that we are insecure about our identity from and relationship to God. We are vulnerable to darkness precisely to the degree in which we doubt the identity and purpose given us by God on the waters of our baptism.

For the record, I have very little predilection for thinking about demons or the devil or that whole powers and principalities thing.  Like a good middle class mainline protestant, I tend to arrogantly look down my theological nose at all of it as superstitious snake handling nonsense. As though it's all the spiritual equivalent of a Monster Truck Rally.  At best I think all that talk about demonic forces is no more than a result of ignorance and lack of education. At worst it's just a way to externalize our own sin.  Because if the Devil made me do then I don't have to face the reality that perhaps I made me do. It's all so ripe for abuse…. some in this room have been victim to other Christians trying to cast out the so-called demon of homosexuality as though spiritual warfare and the culture wars are one in the same thing.

So I hope you hear me when I say, I in no way have any desire to believe in spiritual warfare yet in the last couple years I've quietly began to change my ideas about this.  Based on the Biblical text and my own experience, I now think that there are indeed forces that seek to defy God in the world and that this is demonstrated not only in the evil we see swirling around us in the world – demonstrated not only in the bullets which flew from a legal handgun in Tuscon yesterday into the head of a US congresswoman.. bullets that killed a 9 year old girl and 4 others.  That sort of defiance of God's love and purpose for humanity is obvious.  But I think that in more subtle ways these same forces also can seek to defy God's purpose in our own individual lives… and in our Christian communities. And the first move of the devil is always the same. Attack your identity as the beloved with whom God is well pleased.  And the precision by which the Devil, or evil or darkness (what ever you want to call it) worms into our own lives in just this way is breathtaking.  Like a radioactive isotope custom made for each of us calling into question our identity as children of God.

The longer I try to participate in God's redeeming work in the world the more I am convinced despite my proclivity to cynisicm that there are indeed forces that seek to defy God. And nowhere are we more prone to encroaching darkness than when we are stepping into the light.  If you have ever experienced sudden discouragement in the midst of healthy decisions, or if there is a toxic thought that will always send you spiraling down or if there is a particular temptation that is your weakness then I make the following suggestion: take a note from Martin Luther's playbook and defiantly shout back at this darkness "I am Baptized" not I WAS but I AM baptized.   When Luther himself was hold up in a castle translating the Greek Bible into German so that for the very fist time somewhat regular folks could read the Word of God for themselves, well, while he was doing this he struggled mightily with doubt and discouragement from what he understood to be the devil.  And he was known to not only throw the occasional  ink pots at whatever was tormenting him and causing him to doubt God's promises, but while doing so he could be heard throughout the castle grounds shouting "I am baptized".

Lutheran Theologian Craig Koester says that From an earthly perspective, evil can seem so pervasive as to be unstoppable.  And watching the evening news would seem to support that  idea. But from a heavenly perspective evil rages on earth not because it is so powerful, but because it is so vulnerable. Koester claims that Satan rages on earth because he has already lost and he is desperate"   So if you are going to join me in this crazy practice of picturing our discouragement and doubt as a force that wants to defy God then join me in picturing it not as powerful and unstoppable but picture evil and darkness for what it is:  desperate and vulnerable…. because a light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not, will not can not overcome it

And when the forces that seek to defy God whisper IF in your ear….if God really loved you you wouldn't feel like this…If you really are beloved then you should have everything you want … Remember that you, all of you, have been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit in your.  God has named you and claimed you as God's own in the waters of your baptism.  You, like our Lord, have been given identity and purpose, so when what seems to be depression or compulsive eating or narcissism or despair or discouragement or resentment or isolation takes over try picturing it as a vulnerable and desperate force seeking to defy God's grace and mercy in your life and then tell it to piss off and say defiantly to it "I am baptized" because the water that covered you in God's promises in your baptism is simply the only thing that gets to tell you who you are.

And this is not a matter of having high self-esteem.  This is about nothing less than God's redeeming purpose in the world and that purpose will prevail.  Indeed has already prevailed. Amen.

I have a pastor friend who collects a lot of crèche scenes.  He especially likes really bad ones.  My favorite is a certain one which has all the regular elements one might expect: Mary the God bearer, Joseph her protector, the shepherds, a donkey and some sheep and there kneeling at the side of the Christ child is a wise man.  But not one from the East like in today's gospel reading….but one from the North.  As in the North Pole.  In this crèche scene none other than Santa Claus himself knees at the manger.  You'd think that would be enough irony but no.  It gets better.  Also in the same manger scene with Santa Claus right next to the sheep and donkey…was a pig.  Yes, nothing says Biblical illiteracy like depicting swine at the birth of our very Jewish Lord.    But that's what happens when we are familiar with stories without actually knowing them.

I wonder how well we really know these stories, like the wise men  of which are so familiar.  For instance, if we asked 100 people the following:  who brought gifts to the Christ child, how many people were there, where were the people from and where did they bring their gifts to…inevitably people would respond: 3 kings from the orient brought the baby Jesus gifts in the manger.  And everyone around would likely nod their heads and say "yep. that sounds right"  3 kings form the orient bringing gifts to Jesus in a manger is a charming story but it's not actually the one we find in the Bible…it's the one we find in the insufferable song "We Three Kings of Orient are"

         A closer reading of the text results in the realization that we have no idea how many there were, we don't know how far east they came from, was it the Orient … was it Aurora? When they found the child they entered not a stable or a barn with a manger but a house and most importantly…and I kind of hate to break to you…they were definitely not kings.  They were Magi.  as in ..Magicians… and not the cute kind you hire for you kid's birthday party either.  They were opportunistic, pagan, soothsaying, tarot card reading, astrologers.  Yet we made them and remember them to be kings.

On some level we like the idea of kings bowing down before the Christ child.  We've made them kings because the reality that they were magicians is too distasteful. No one wants the weird fortune teller lady from the circus with her scarves and crystal balls to be the first to discover the birth of our Lord.  So we nicen it up a bit to an idealized picture of multi-cultural diplomacy.

But they aren't fereign kings, they were magi and In case you think I'm putting too fine a point on this listen to St Paul's description of a Magi he and Barnabus met up with in the 13th chapter of Acts

             You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery.

Can you imagine him following this up with "and what was it like when you followed the star to the Christ child?"

Picturing oriental kings at the birth of our Lord is preferable to picturing soothsayers and astrologers and tarot card readers kneeling before the Christ child.  But it was magicians following a star, a light in the dark of the sky which led unlikely pagans to the light which is come into the world.  That's what Matthew's gospel gives us.  Magi. And the magicians are even the first to speak in Matthew.  Yet we made them kings. This couldn't be more ironic….making the Magi into kings like we are doing them some great favor, because honestly everything in this text is decidedly anti-king.  I mean, there is a king in the text…but it's Herod.  A scheming, frightened, insecure, troglodyte who puts a hit out on a toddler.  There's what the text has to say about kings.  But our need for the Magi to be kings, our need to nicen up the story a bit puts us in a position to actually have compassion for Herod.  I mean…the text says that he was frightened and all of Jerusalem with him. the idea that God would enter the world and upturn the very idea of kingship is understandably frightening to Herod.  And for us the idea that God would enter a world amidst infanticide and religious violence is also frightening.  The idea that God would enter the world and keep the most impolite company possible is frightening.  The idea that God would see the mess we've made would be embarrassing.  At least call and worn us so we can clean up the place a bit first.

I wonder if our fear of what this means for God to enter the world in such a disagreeable way makes for some interesting revisionism. But the Epiphany story of the fortune telling circus lady discovering the Christ child reveals a God who has entered our world as it actually exists, and not as the world we often wish it would be. This is a God whose presence is not limited to our polite revisions of Biblical stories, but a God who has come to actually consecrate our fear and frailty and suffer their consequences on our behalf.

This is the difference between being familiar with a story and knowing it.

We are familiar with the big star shining above the top of the manger scene. But know that this light, this star which led these Magi to the Christ is a light that shines for you too.  This light which points to God shines for all of humanity: Samaratins, Magi, tax collectors, High priests, Herod, AND the people who put Santa and swine in creche scenes.

We may be familiar with the story of the 3 kings bringing gifts to Jesus, but I want you to know about the Magi and how their very distasteful and misplaced presence at the side of the Christ child actually means that the indiscriminate nature of God's insistent coming to us defies our polite tendencies to nicen up the story.

My friend Justin reminded me this week that God's love is too pure to enter into a world that does not exist, even though this often how we treat Jesus, as we try to shelter him from the reality of our own brokenness.  We often behave as though Jesus were only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselves, or an idealized version of our mess of a world, and so we offer to him a version of our best selves, and I'm afraid that our religion unintentionally promotes this sort of thing.

The birth of this Christ child is a sordid affair, indeed.  While I have no doubts that there were moments of pure bliss and other worldly joy to the whole affair, it seems to me that these moments occur in, with and under what we would call reality, and not apart from it because this is a God who has come to love and save the world as it actually exists.

Which is actually what the world needs.

In case you haven't heard, there is a new game in town.  It's called The Wild Goose Festival and I just can't remember being nearly so excited about something.  Wild Goose is a faith-based justice and music and arts festival happening June 23-27 outside Durham, NC. 

In the Celtic Church the image of the Wild Goose has long been held as a symbol for the wild, unpredictable, and un-tamable nature of the Holy Spirit.

Here's why I'm excited: yeah, my friends will be there and I like (most of) them. Yeah, I'll get to see some amazing art and performances and speakers.  But what I love about the Wild Goose is that NOW is the perfect time for it be happening.  Now is the time in which we have seen barriers between Christians fade away - even ones we'd just as soon keep around.  Now is the time in which Evangelicals are discovering social justice and in which Lutherans are diving into contemplative practices and in which people who have never been part of a church are being broken open by the Gospel and in which churches are realizing that GLBTQ folks are their brothers and sisters and in which the boxes and labels we have all been both protected and persecuted by seem to be falling away and that is nothing if not a result of a mischievous Holy Spirit.   The Wild Goose.  I can't wait to see what She's up to now.

So, just to get it out of the way, I didn't get what I wanted for Christmas.  No, not an ipad or World Peace.  Anyone who knows me well knows that what I really wanted for Christmas was a brand new back since mine is wrecked.  The disk between my L5 and S1 vertebrae is severely degenerated which means at the age of 41 can't stand for more than 20 minutes without being in pain. I mention this because in our Gospel reading for today we hear that  In the beginning was the Word and The Word was with God and the Word was God And the Word became flesh and lived among us. In short: God decided to have …of all things…a human body. 

We Christians have along history of finding this idea disturbing. There was an early Christian heresy called Docetism and I'm not totally convinced that I myself would not have been a docetist given the opportunity.  You see, they were so certain that spirit and flesh could not exist as One that they convinced themselves that Jesus didn't really have a human body…it just seemed that he had a body.  Docetists claimed that Jesus only appeared to be a physical being.   And I get the impulse behind docetism because really, no self-respecting God would become a human when being human means being irretrievably fragile. What can it mean that God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and was made flesh? Seems a lousy idea in a way, given the very sloppy and broken reality of our physical lives as humans.  Our bodies bruise and decay and sag insistently toward the earth so why in the world would God not spare God's self the indignity of  having things like sweat glands and the hiccups?

And besides, having a body is an emotionally complicated thing for us, so why wouldn't we want a "spirituality"  which transcends our broken physical reality. But when we are tempted to think that spirituality equals transcending the physical world of things and bodies we might remember that in Jesus we see that a physical life is a spiritual life…

John's gospel bears witness to a sensual God.  Jesus washed human feet, smelled perfume, and tasted abundant wine.  He used spit and dirt to heal a blind man, his gut churned when he looked upon the hungry crowds. Salty tears ran down his face.  He smelled the stink of death on Lazarus his friend.  Jesus' very own flesh tore when he was beaten and crucified and when he rose from the dead he told Thomas to touch his wounded side,  which was not perfected, but bore the scars of having lived.  Then, as one of his final acts on Earth he ate grilled fish on a beach.  These experiences of the body are not things to be Spiritually transcended …they are perhaps the very things in which we find Christ.

The Psalmist reminds us that God knit us together in our mother's womb and that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Of course I see at least 2 barriers to really really believing this.  Firstly there is the fact that as a middle aged woman my body seems to be deteriorating right before my eyes. How wonderfully and fearfully made is a body which ages, or grows fat, or develops cancer or no longer produces insulin?  The other barrier to believing our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made is that we are literally bombarded by messages otherwise from every billboard we see or commercial we hear. Convincing you that a) your body is bad and b) your body can be "perfect" if you buy a certain product…and let there be no mistake, this is a billion dollar industry.

Yet I wonder if maybe in the incarnation God has done nothing less than baptized all human flesh.  Baptized it, not made it into our version of perfect.  Perfection as we picture it and as it relates to human bodies is impossible.  And perhaps the striving for an impossible perfection is a profound distraction from the way in which we are children born of God.  Because as we know, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

 And even God, when finished creating the physical world including the human form called it good.  not perfect mind you, but good. so as we on this 2nd day of the year  make our resolutions about losing weight or gaining muscle or lowering cholesterol which are all perfectly fine, let us remember that we are born of God and made Children of God and have no business calling what God pronounced good anything but good. Because if the Word became flesh and lived among us ~ then despite our botoxic quest for the illusion of perfection, God's creation is good.

So this week I invite you to take notice every time you see or hear a message about body improvement.  Every pill, or exercise machine, or special gym membership, or tanning bed… every liposuction clinic and celebrity endorsed diet plan.  All of it.  Notice the obsession our culture has with stretching and tanning and increasing and decreasing our flesh into submission to some sort of bizarre ideal.  Then in contrast, notice every time this week that you see or hear this: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, in this we have seen God's glory, full of grace and truth…you have received the power to be Children of God.  Through the fullness of God's Word made flesh you have received grace upon grace.

That is a different message entirely.  In other words, our youth-obsessed body-improvement culture in which we find ourselves tells us that we can avoid any appearance of our own mortality through the right combination of elective surgery and Pilates and in the end this is nothing but a simple fear of death itself.  But what God tells us in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ is that we need not fear our mortality in the first place because it simply is not the final word.  Death has no sting when it cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ.  So we need not fear it. nor deny it.

So Jesus came and in his almost disturbingly physical existence showed us what God looks like, not in some ethereal alternate spiritual plane but right here in the midst of our physical, embodied earthy reality.  Jesus said here's what being born of God looks like… it looks like not worrying about what we're to eat or drink; like loving the bodies of other people who, like us, will die; like touching human flesh as if it's holy instead of worrying that it's unclean, like breaking bread and drinking wine with all the wrong people. 

This Christianity stuff is not a religion of disembodied spirituality at all.  This is a religion of Word made flesh, of God revealed in the vulnerability of newborn flesh in a cradle and in heartbreak of  broken flesh on a cross. So if God saw fit to wear our native garb should we not bless and care for our own flesh?  Should we not have concern for any violation or starvation or trafficking of any human bodies as that which God took on to be with us?

As we enter the New Year full of optimism and resolution let us remember that there is a reality beyond our individual self-improvement. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we were given grace upon grace to become children of God and perhaps in doing so we are now flesh become Word.   Word for a hurt and broken and beautiful word. You as Christ's body are no longer about the fear or the denial of death but about life and life abundant. You as Christ's body are becoming flesh made Word, being made into God's loving intention for the world God created. In the name of Jesus, amen

Well, the tinsel is still falling to the ground, that plate of cookies left on the counter has yet to go stale and having just barely been blown out the candles we held while singing Silent Night still hold their red glow - while we gather now on this the first Sunday of Christmas and read aloud the Christmas story not of sheep or shepherds or angels but of the slaughter of innocent babies.  Yeah, That Christmas story.  Merry Christmas.  Merry Christmas indeed.  I'm not gonna lie.  Given the death of my Granddaddy on Thursday and the 3 whole days I've spent cooking for family and sitting at my mother's side as she grieves I was secretly relieved when Matthew offered to preach his sermon from this morning at House for All tonight and the relief I felt was more than just "O good, now I don't have to write a sermon"  It was O good, now I can avoid trying to figure out if there is any good new in the slaughter of innocent babies.  But in the midst of grief Herod was never far from my thoughts this week as though he was taunting me….daring me to give it a try.

So just to get it out of the way…no. There is no "good news" in the slaughter of the innocents.  There is only terror and weeping women.  But this story is not going to be removed from the Bible any time soon so I say screw it.  Let's dive in deep.

You see, I think the trouble is that we've heard the Christmas story so many times that it's not shocking anymore. It simply takes its place on a dusty shelf of over familiarity among all the other worn and tattered stories woven into our unconsciousness somewhere between George Washington and the Cherry Tree and Star Wars Return of the Jedi.  The Christmas story sits among other things we know so well and we brush it off once a year without even bothering to notice how shocking it really is.  But it's ironic that we fail to be shocked by the story of Christmas - even though its ground shaking in it's unfathomable beauty - and yet we hear the story of Herod and are shocked… even though innocent children suffer in our world as a result of human pride and greed and fear and hate every day.  Herod is nothing less than common.

But you know how we're used to hearing Christians say "let's keep Christ in Christmas" well, My friend Joy Carol Wallis, wrote an essay called "Let's keep Herod in Christmas"

And after thinking about this text all week I have to say, I'm with her, because the thing is…the world into which Christ is born is not one of a Normal Rockwell painting….the world has never been that world.  God did not enter the world of our nostalgic silent night snow blanketed peace on earth suspended reality of Christmas.  God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered a world as violent and disturbing as our own.  Herod was the Jewish puppet king for Rome…and the wise men were honestly kinda stupid to show up at Herod's doorstep and say "Hey where's the child who has been born the King of the Jews" to the guy who is supposed to kinda sorta be king of the Jews.  What did they expect… that he would Mapquest it for them?  Whatever it was, I'm sure they didn't expect infanticide on a large scale.  The murder of children by a scared little man trying to protect his feeble grasp on worldly power.  Here in this Christmas story there simply is no mistletoe and reindeer… this scene of a despotic ruler slaughtering children out of little more than his personal insecurity somehow never makes it onto wrapping paper and the display window at Macys….yet the slaughter of the holy Innocents is as much a part of the Christmas story as are shepherds and angels.

And if you do a little research you'll find that Bible scholars are all a flutter about how there are no historical documents from that time that mention Herod killing all the babies in Bethlehem so it probably didn't actually happen … as though this clever academic crap can keep away the reality that this has actually always happened and is actually still happening all around us.  Let's just say I looked up the term ethnic cleansing on Wikipedia yesterday and wished I hadn't.  Tyrants like Herod and Pharaoh and Pol Pot and Slobodan Milosevic have always taken that little Lord of the Flies instinct which is really within us all and played it out in three terrifying acts on the human stage.  And that thing which resides in the human heart, when unchecked and filled with power, demonstrates itself in killing fields and showers of gas and the slaughter of babies…that thing in the human heart is nothing less that the desire to be free from God so that we might be Gods ourselves.  And history has shown…we make lousy Gods.  And what makes it worse is that we tend to take the image of what we would be like as Gods (despotic, angry, wanting to be worshipped sycophantically, defensive, insecure, seeking vengence and retribution) then we take that stuff about us and project that on God….as though God must be as lousy at this being-God-business as we would be if given the chance.  And when God had had quite enough of our projections, quite enough of our characterizing God as being as vengeful and paranoid as we are - God's Loving Desire to be Known overflowed the heavens and was made manifest in the rapidly dividing cells within the womb of an insignificant peasant girl.  And when the time came for her to give birth to God there was no room in our societies and institutions and business or any of the other things we are so proud of …and let me just say this: (as much as I love Joy to the World) I'm fairly certain that every heart did not prepare him room. Because we already thought we knew what God was like….and how can a heart prepare room for that which it cannot fathom?  So rather than waiting till our hearts were prepared instead God simply broke our hearts… like only a baby can do.        

So I guess I wonder if keeping Herod in Christmas might remind us that God did not wait till we as the human race got our collective crap together before joining us in the difficult reality of being human.  God didn't just plop God's self down into a Nostalgic Norman Rockwell painting but entered a world as violent and dangerous as our own.  And the weird thing is that God did this heart breaking thing to be with us. Even those who will crucify him. Even Herod.  Because the fact is that God is continually breaking our hearts so that the true nature of God can be known – so that in breaking our hearts God can replace them with God's own.  Perhaps this is what is meant when we sing  O Holy Night.  Long lay the world in sin and error pinning till he appeared and the soul felt it's worth.  May you all allow God to be God for you.  May your soul feel its worth.  Amen



2When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" 4Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. 6And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."

7As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 9What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10This is the one about whom it is written, 'See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' 11Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

 

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"  

Some people when they daydream they daydream about vacations to Europe, or winning the lottery.  But I have to confess; when I daydream it's about things like how cool it would be if someone made a "VH1 Behind the Music" special about John the Baptist.  They could feature interviews with Elizabeth and Zechariah while old Photos of young John eating his first locust fade in and out of the background.  Then after they could go on to feature his juggernaut of a Prophetic career. The fiery street corner preaching, the sold-out crowds at the Jordon. But then his disciples would inevitably talk about when the problems started.  "he just never knew when to stop.  The success did weird things to him"  they would say. "It was like the pressure of being compared to Elijah got to him" So at this point in my daydream there would be a commercial beak with a teaser. Next on "VH1's Behind the Music: John the Baptist", John hits bottom and has a wake up call while in prison.

John the Baptist in our reading tonight from Matthew's gospel is pretty much at a low point.  He is simply not the guy we think of when we hear the name John the Baptist.  Gone is the image of the bug eating Wild man shouting repent.  Gone is the image of a wild-eyed prophet preparing the way of Lord through his own feral oratories. Gone is the street corner preacher shouting of repentance and fire and brimstone. The screaming and baptizing and preaching to enormous crowds is a distant memory.

         Instead we meet John the Baptist today as he sits imprisoned by Herod and wondering if he maybe got this whole thing wrong.  I wonder if he seemed…shorter somehow now that he is profoundly less sure of himself.  Surely imprisonment can take a few inches off one's spiritual stature. 

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, When John heard that Jesus was not instigating a takeover of the Roman occupation, when John heard that Jesus was not picking off Herod and burning all their enemies with unquenchable fire as John had expected, he loses his faith.  And when he loses his faith he starts telling himself his own story.

It was Jesus' disciple Thomas who ended up with the moniker "Doubting" but it could very well have been John the Baptist.  There he sits in a cold dank jail cell with nothing for company but disappointment and his own thoughts.  And does he preach from the cell or sing hymns like Paul and Silas? No.  He doubts.  He wavers. He sinks into disbelief.  So much so that he sends his disciples to go ask Jesus "are you the one?"

When I was growing up there was this tradition in my family where on the day before Christmas and the day before Easter my Mom would dutifully  approach each of us kids one by one and ask the solemn question.  A question – the answer to which would determine if we were to receive presents and candy.  With all the fake seriousness she could muster Peggy would ask "Do you still believe?" Facing our mother as though she were an independent tribunal for Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny we would without fail answer yes, yes, a thousand times yes.  I was reminded of this last week when Tracy posted on my Facebook wall that she had seen a Christmas t-shirt that said you have to believe to receive.

It can be easy to make Christianity into something similar. you have to believe to receive.  as though our success as Christians is partly determined by how robust and unyielding is our faith. Yet the one in the Gospels whom Jesus described as the greatest among men and more than a prophet – even John the Baptizer as he sits in prison does so in a state of unbelief.

         Bonhoeffer writes that Advent is like this.  He says that Advent is like sitting in a prison cell waiting for someone to open the door, waiting for the Word which will release you from prison. The Word that will release you from prison.  If God can create from a Word…if God can speak and it is made real, if the Word of God can be made flesh and dwell among us to comfort and save, if God's Word can do all of this then maybe God's Word can open our prisons of disbelief.  Because when John, the Preacher from the desert, sits in his prison of disillusionment Jesus does not rebuke him for his unbelief.  He does not bemoan a perverse and faithless generation … he sends people to tell him what they see and what they hear.  Jesus sends the preacher a preacher.  He sends others to go tell him the story again and he does so by quoting Isaiah. the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. In John's moment of disillusionment and despair, in his moment of doubt and isolation when he begins to tell himself his own story Jesus sends people to be his Storyteller.  They are sent to bear the story of what they have heard and seen.  They speak the Word of God to their own preacher as some of you have done on occasion.  

         You see, there is no shame in unbelief.  In fact, if you are struggling with your faith it's probably just your turn.  The Western individualism in our culture has really done a number on us convincing us that faith is something we must possess in sufficient quantity as individuals, when in fact faith has always been a team sport.  When Jesus Said "Where 2 or more are gathered I am with you" I don't think it meant that like a diva Jesus needs a guaranteed minimum audience before showing up.  I think it means that we bear Christ to one another.  That we hold the faith on one another's behalf. That faith is never given in sufficient quantity to individuals it's given in sufficient quantity to the community.  This is what being a people of The Book, people of The Story is all about.

         If God forbid something awful happened to one of my children I'm pretty sure I couldn't believe in God in that moment.  I'm  sure I would not want to come to church.  I certainly wouldn't be singing hymns of praise and I for sure would be really pissed at God.  Would all of this mean that I was no longer be a woman of faith? no. It just means that I would need you to do all of these things for me.  Because that's just how it works. There is no shame in unbelief.  In fact, there are times when only in doubting do we begin to take our faith seriously enough for it to be unthreatened.

When you yourselves struggle with what you believe it makes you no less people of faith.   About 9 month after this church got going, someone asked if I would go for a walk because there was something they wanted to talk to me about.  We circled City Park as they proceeded to tell me with some hesitation that they didn't have the same theology of baptism than I did.  They had different beliefs.  After cautiously and painstakingly informing me of this fact I look at them and said "I'm so glad you told me because now I know you better.  But please don't take it personally when I say…I don't actually care."  I don't really care what you believe.  I care what you hear.  Beliefs are fluid and go up and go down.  People in this church believe all sorts of stuff. Trust me on that. But we aren't responsible for making sure we have pure doctrine and right belief about everything…we're just responsible for hearing the story and telling the story.  That's what we do as the church.

And in this Advent season as we are surrounded by the cacophony of competing stories – some of our own making and some of the consumer culture swirling all around us…may we listen for the Word. listen for the story all around you the story of a God who creates life from a Word and for the story of the Word made flesh who dwelt among us.  Tell others of what you see and hear. Because I think Bonhoeffer was right.  Advent is like sitting in a prison cell waiting for someone to open the door, waiting for the word, the story, the Christ, the friend, the song, the faith of your brother or sister which will release you.  Amen

(We then during Open Space - the time for reflection and prayer that follows the sermon - wrote what prisons we need to be freed from on the paper sky lantern that we then released into the night sky at the end of liturgy.  See photo by Amy Clifford above)

"O my Gosh, we're out of turkey"  Stuart yells from the kitchen.  The statement puts a quick stop to the action in the church basement where moments before a clamor of zip-lock baggies, packets of mayonnaise, pumpkin pie bars and mischievious  holiday cheer seemed unstoppable.  Everyone pauses but the children who, unaware of the work stoppage continue to slap "It sucks you have to work on Thanksgiving.  Operation: Turkey Sandwich, brought to you by House for All Sinners and Saints." stickers paper lunch sack after paper lunch sack.

It's our second year doing this;  bringing Thanksgiving lunches to unsuspecting folks all over our city who are unlucky enough to have to work on a holiday when most of the rest of us get to be with friends and family.  Our sack lunches mirror the traditional Thanksgiving meal: sandwiches made from freshly roasted turkeys, pumpkin pie bars and stuffing muffins (all accompanied by salt, pepper, mayonnaise and mustard packets and a napkin).  After assembling the 300 bags we load them into our cars and disperse to find any gas station cashiers, security guards, bartenders, bus drivers or hospital janitors we can track down.  Hopping out our cars we hand them these little gifts saying "Sorry you have to work on Thanksgiving" jump back in our cars and try and find the next victim.  And it's not just the "members" of House for All who are involved.  The local newspaper listed OTS as an alternative idea for how to spend Thanksgiving and we were inundated with people wanting to participate.  So we welcomed so-called strangers into the life of our church to make some food, assemble some bags and distribute some joy for no reason other than the gifts of God are free and for all.  And the only other reason we have for doing any of this is "why wouldn't we?".  Well, that and it's just really, really fun.

In this season in which we find ourselves there is an anticipatory feeling in the air.  A waiting, a longing and yearning.  This is a time filled with preparations and signs and symbols. Everything leads to this promised future. With our turkey stuffed bellies we awaken from a triptafan induced coma of carbohydrates to the coming of what feels like the end times–  For there will be sales and rumors of sales. So stay awake my brothers and sisters, because the doorbusting shopacalypse is upon us. Yet my heart was glad when they said to me let us go at 5a to the house of the Lord and Taylor.  For on that holy mountain people will stream from East and West, North and South and all nations will come and they will turn plastic cards into shiny promises of love in the form of bigger plastic and cloth and metal and wire and they will go down from this mountain to wrap their bits of plastic and cloth and metal and wire they will wrap it all in paper to wait for that day.  The day of mythical sentimentalized domesticity when the hopes and dreams of love and family and acceptance and perfect, perfect reciprocity will come to pass. And the children shall believe that they shall be always good and never bad for Santa will come like a thief in the night. No one knows the hour so you better be good for goodness sake.

This distorted bogus version of the story of how God entered our world in Christ seems to be playing all around us.  It can be difficult to discern the real contours and dimensions of our actual Christian story during a time of the year when TV specials and bill boards and radio ad seem to be kind of telling it. So conflated are the symbols of faith with the symbols of culture that it can be hard to discern the difference. This, this is why I prefer Lent…a season when we are at least not assaulted by doorbuster sales for sack cloth and ashes. The world leaves us quite alone to celebrate that one by ourselves.

But this is it, the first Sunday of Advent.  And I invite you to hear again the gospel for today which speaks of the coming of our Lord:

  But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son,  but only the Father.  Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.  Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.  But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.  Therefore you must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

So, as a perfect foil to the noise of cultural Christmas on this first Sunday of Advent we are greeted not with images of the virgin Mary or the soft cooing of a new born savior but with a text my friend Russell described as "the anticipated threat of Jesus kidnapping someone at work and then breaking into my house and robbing me".  yes, our gospel text for today will not be alluded to in and Peanuts Christmas specials or sales at Target.

         Be ready says Jesus.  Be ready.  During this season of Advent we talk a lot about wakefulness and waiting and anticipation…which are all lovely.  But the thing this text talks about the most…. the quality attributed first to angels, then to Jesus then to you is not longing or watchfulness … it's the quality of not-knowing.  While absolute certainty has long been the hallmark of religion, here we see that perhaps being in a state of emptiness and not-knowing  is actually quite hopeful…. since a full cup has no need of more wine or as My Mom used to say "once someone is right about something they stop taking in new information." 

Be ready says Jesus. Be ready. And while it's easy to assume that being ready is the same as knowing what to look for – I'm pretty sure that when we think we know what to look for we often miss what we were meant to find altogether. So I began to wonder if the angels not knowing, Jesus not knowing, you not knowing and the word "unexpected" might point to something other than putting all our eggs in the "knowing what to look for basket".

Like when our ears already know the story we might miss the fact that Jesus then says be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. Maybe just maybe being awake, and alert and expectant has nothing to do with knowing and certainty and has a lot to do with being in a state of un-knowing…of having what Richard Rhor calls a beginner's mind.  Maybe we use our knowingness - our certainty we're right -  as a sort of loss-prevention program…a system by which we actually protect ourselves from the unknown and the unexpected.  That is to say, maybe it isn't certainty at all but a spiritual not-knowing that is what "being ready for Jesus" looks like.  And maybe to me that's a little scary.

Because here's the thing: like the house owner, Knowing what to look for - as a way of avoiding being robbed - is only advantageous if we assume being robbed is a bad thing.  Perhaps having an un-knowing beginner brain allows us to be taken unaware by the grace of God…the grace of God which is like a thief in the night.  When we actually don't know what to look for everything that happens to us is the unexpected.  Perhaps the good news here is that Jesus has been staking the joint and there will be a break – in.  The promise of Advent is that in the absence of knowing we get robbed, that there was and is and will be a break in…because this God in which we live and move and have our being is not interested in our loss-prevention programs but in saving us from ourselves and our culture and even our certainties about the story itself.  This holy thief wants to steal from us and maybe that is literal and metaphoric at the same time.  Because in this season of pornographic levels of consumption in which our credit card debts rise and our waistbands expand maybe the idea that Jesus wants to break in and jack some of your stuff is really good news.  I started thinking this week that maybe we should make Advent lists – kind of like Christmas lists but instead of things we want Santa to bring us, we write down things what we want Christ to take from us. You know, in hopes he could pickpocket the stupid junk in our houses, or abscond with our self-loathing or resentment…maybe break in and take off with our compulsive eating or our love of money in the middle of the night.  Don't you kind of long for God to do something unexpected?

Then as we listen to our sacred story this Advent let us tune out not only the noise of cultural Christmas, but also our own assumptions and expectations about what we think this story means.  Let us listen together with beginner's ears.  With ears that listen for God's surprising grace.  The kind of grace which will knock the wind out of you. 

Under the cover of a deep blue Advent darkness may Christ, this holy thief, rob you of your certainty about what you think the story of Jesus is all about.  May this thieving God envelop you in the surprising story of God's suffering love which takes from us that which we can really really do without and replaces it all with God's own self.

Luke 23

32Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. 33When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. 34Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. 35And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" 36The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, 37and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" 38There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews." 39One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" 40But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." 42Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 43He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

A few months ago there was a group of you in my living room when the topic of Jr High School came up.  Someone asked how I felt about My daughter Harper starting middle school and I said it terrified me.  I would never willingly send my child to enter like, Kabul .. why would I want to send them to enter Middle School which is basically the emotional equivalent of a war zone?  The 5 of us sat there and recalled our own painful experiences form that age in our lives.  That night as we sat together … grown adults in our 20s 30s and 40s we could barely speak the derisive nicknames and insults which were tailor made for us by our peers like verbal garments for us to wear. Or just as painfully perhaps the ones we made for others to wear. The socially Darwinistic environment of Jr High seems to create this ability to emotionally eviscerate each other through insult.  And the wounds don't go away.  Not entirely at least.

So in this age we find ourselves in which bullying is finally finally finally being addressed it's interesting that the gospel text for today is one in which Jesus himself is being derided, mocked and taunted.  And strangely, this is the text for this festival of the church called Christ the King Sunday.  We celebrate Christ as King by reading the text in which he is insulted, mocked and killed.

All the taunting of his final day came form the fact that he would not defend himself. No genuine Messiah would go and get himself killed in a totally preventable way. Yet Jesus would not take and eye for and eye he would not call 10,000 angels as the old gospel hymn says.  He would not do any of the things that a self-respecting messiah would do.  I mean, during his ministry people had seen what he could pull off.  Healing others, feeding others, providing huge vats of wine out of water for others– with those kinds of powers and a little more self-esteem? .. man… Jesus could have had it all.  "save yourself" they chanted….And if the taunts of the crowd have a familiar ring there's a reason – remember when Jesus had been fasting in the wilderness – another voice saying to him "If you really are the son of man turn these stone to bread… if you really are the son of God then throw your self down from the top of the temple and have angels catch you.  At the very beginning of Jesus ministry Satan tried this same thing and it didn't work so, as Luke 4:13 says when the devil had finished every test he departed from Jesus until an opportune time.   Like the day of his death. 

          The leaders, the first thief, the crowds, the soldiers…they all mocked Jesus as though to say obviously you're not the son of God because the God we know is  powerful and vengeful and slightly insecure and would never allow himself to take this level of insult. The crowds made some fairly reasonable suggestions for what a genuine Messiah might do in a situation like his own crucifixion.  Satan made a few Messiah makeover suggestions himself – feed yourself – do some tricks show off your mad skills.  Everyone thinks God should do what we would do if we were God.  And then we judge God according to how we think God is doing with that. And hey, I'd love to clean Jesus up a bit so he'd at least be presentable in public but as one of my favorite theologicans, Gerhart Forde says "God is simply not a being who can be manipulated by our opinions"  

We'd love God to be the King of our particular value system.  But here's the thing – most of God is unknowable.  Period.  And really we should probably be grateful for that.

Yet when it comes down to it the most reliable way to legitimately know anything at all about the nature of God is to look to how God chose to reveal God's self in Christ.  And most notably we see who God is in how God chose to reveal God's self on the cross.  And just to be clear: The cross is not about God as divine child abuser sadly sending his little boy off to be killed because we were bad and well, somebody had to pay.  Because the irony about viewing the cross this way is that the whole thing was about God saying  pay attention – don't avert your eyes from the cross.  This this is the logical end of your value system.  Here is where it will always end. In the suffering of God.  Here is the extent I will go says God to defy your idea of me as a vengeful God.  If you think I am about smiting your enemies then think again for I will not lift even a finger to condemn those who hung me. I will simply not be known as the God of vengeance.  I will simply not allow you to project your puffed up human traits on me as though I'm a bigger better version of the best parts of you or a bigger badder version of the worst parts of you

On the cross we don't see a legal transaction where Jesus pays our debt.  We see God. The Word made flesh hangs from the cross. And let there be no mistake – this is Christ the King.  And while his scornful and shameful death is insulting to our idea of a king and a God the divine royalty of Christ is simply unassailable.  by us or anyone else.  because sometimes things are so holy that they cannot be desecrated try as we might.

In the previous chapter of Luke as Jesus sits at table sharing his last supper with his friends they break out in an argument over who will be the greatest.  Jesus says "the greatest of you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves…I confer on you says Jesus to his faltering friends "I confer on you a kingdom so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and you will sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

Even Jesus speaks of his kingdom and of thrones and judgment.  Yet today on Christ the king Sunday we see that Christ's kingdom is comprised of thieves and Christ-deniers.  Today on Christ the King Sunday we see our king enthroned yet the throne is not one of gold and jewel but of  blood and puke stained wood and the crown is not one of gold and jewel but of twisted thorn. And as his crown is piercing his brow it is from here the King of Glory judges the world who put him on a cross.  From his rough hewn throne of a cross Jesus looks at the world…those who betrayed him, those who executed him those who loved him and those who ignored him and he judges it all.  The pronouncement is made and the judgment is ….forgiveness.  Forgive them Father for they know not what they are doing is, as my friend Justin reminded me this week,  an eternally valid statement. From his cross Christ the King loves the betrayer, the violent, the God killer in all of us. Because his divine self was unmockable.  Protected and apart and unmanipulatable by our opinions and value systems.  And it finally is only a God who enters our human existence and suffers our insults with only love and forgiveness who can save us from ourselves.  It is only a self-emptying God who walked among  as Christ Jesus, who, in the words of St Paul, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself,  humbled himself to the point of death— even death on a cross.

There in that self-empying we see the image of God.  There on the cross we receive the blessedness of God's own self poured out for us. And the imago dei, the image of this very God is within you and is also that which cannot be profaned.  Cannot be insulted.  Cannot be mocked. Cannot be injured.  For you are children of a crucified king.