Untitled (Isaiah 9:1-7)

Lectio Divina

Advent is about preparing for God’s arrival. The thing about God, though, is that God often arrives in ways we do not expect. To prepare for the unexpected means we must make space—plenty of space. If we are only looking for this, or only looking for that, we may miss God’s arrival.

As we read our scripture, I’m going to pull out a spiritual tool we used several months ago, called lectio divina, or “divine reading.” Maybe you remember it. Lectio divina is a prayerful way of reading scripture. It is a way of making space for God. It is a way of letting God get the first word in our conversation. Instead of addressing scripture with our own interpretations and analyses, we let scripture address us, asking us questions, challenging us, inviting us.

Lectio divina consists of four basic steps, through which I will guide us. Let me say now at the beginning that this practice is entirely voluntary. I will invite you after each step to share a word or a sentence or two with a neighbor around you, but it’s also fine if you prefer not to do that (or you may not have a neighbor sitting nearby).

We begin first with a prayer. Would you join me? Loving God…help us to set aside our thinking, controlling minds. Open us up to your presence in scripture and in our lives. Amen.

1. Now I will read our scripture a first time. Listen for a word that catches your attention, that beckons to you, that makes a special impression on you. Don’t analyze why it draws your attention. Simply abide with it, and let it settle within you. I will leave one minute after the reading for you to identify your word and to sit with it.
   
   [Read scripture. Afterward, wait one minute.]
   
   If you choose, I invite you now to turn to a neighbor (or two, if you happen to be in a clump), and share the word.
   
   2. Now listen as our scripture is read a second time. This time, allow your word to unfold or grow. Notice any images, feelings, or memories that emerge in association with your word. I will leave one minute after the reading before inviting you to share with your neighbor.
   
   [Read scripture. Afterward, wait one minute.]
   
   If you choose, turn to a neighbor (or two, if you happen to be in a clump), and briefly, in one or two sentences, simply name the feelings, images, or memories that emerged.
   
   3. Now listen as our scripture is read for a third and final time. This time, reflect on your word and its unfolding, and consider how God may be speaking through it to you. Is God inviting you to something, calling you, challenging you, asking you a question, declaring something to you? How is God speaking to you through your word? I will leave one minute after the reading before inviting you to share with your neighbor.
   
   [Read scripture. Afterward, wait one minute.]
   
   If you choose, turn to a neighbor (or two, if you happen to be in a clump), and briefly, in one or two sentences, simply name how you sense God’s call through your word.
   
   4. The practice of lectio divina concludes with resting in God’s presence.
   
   I will invite us, then, to pray silently in response to God’s personal call. There is no right or wrong way to pray here. Just be honest with God. Maybe you’ll share your feelings, maybe you’ll ask for help, maybe you’ll express your gratitude…or maybe you have nothing to say. When you’re finished praying, rest in God’s embrace. In one minute, I will say a short blessing to conclude.
   
   Loving God, keep us rooted and grounded in your love, and in your call to us. In Christ: Amen.

“On Them Light Has Shined”

The word that speaks to me most in today’s scripture is “light.” The prophet Isaiah peers into the future, and he sees a light. Not the light of a torch or a bonfire, not the light that people make with their own hands. Humans are not the source of this light. Instead, it comes from beyond. The people who are in darkness suddenly see it. It shines on them.

Hope is a tricky thing. Often when we say, “I hope…,” we have a definite result in mind. “I hope your team wins.” “I hope you get the job.” “I hope more people will come to church.” This kind of hope lends itself to planning and hard work. We do everything in our power to achieve the results that we desire.

But there is another kind of hope. What I would call a biblical hope. Biblical hope cannot see what is coming. As Paul explains, “Hope that is seen is not hope” (Rom 8:24). Biblical hope is not a firm expectation or a calculated plan. It is a trust that waits patiently and pays attention. Biblical hope recognizes that God’s ways are not our ways. It appreciates that salvation might not mean victory on the battlefield or success in the courtroom or negative results from the x-ray.

To make the point as clearly as possible…who in the world, who in their right mind, would have expected a messiah who is crucified? Who could have foreseen that a cross, the emblem of suffering and shame, would be the very place where God triumphs over the forces of sin and death?

Biblical hope does not set parameters on the outcome. It only trusts that God is faithful and does good, and it patiently waits and looks for God’s arrival.

It does not make the light. It watches for it.

Hope Is Not a Plan

The Advent story is filled with characters who watch for the light, who are attentive and open to God’s strange and unexpected ways. There is Mary, of course, who is “much perplexed” by the angel’s visit, yet who nonetheless says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:29, 38). She cannot know all that lies in store for her, yet she is willing. Then there is her cousin, Elizabeth, who feels the future of the world kicking in her womb. She knows it is “just” a child, but she also believes that it is bigger than she can imagine (Luke 1:39-45). Her husband, Zechariah, likewise trusts that God’s light will shine through this child “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide [their] feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79). Then there are the wise men, the ancient astrologers, who look up into the sky and see something that they did not expect and respond with hope, with gifts and a warm welcome. And on the other side of the aisle, there are characters like King Herod, who hears the news and formulates a plan to stay in control (Matt 2:1-18). King Herod has no hope. He only has a plan.

Because the Christmas story is so familiar, it is easy for Advent to become a sort of memorial. We celebrate what is in the past, what is well known. But that first “Advent” was all about an unseen future, what was unknown, unexpected. It was all about “hope”—not the planning, calculating kind, but the unseeing and trusting kind. May it be so for us today. May we relinquish our particular desires and expectations and make room for God’s unexpected work. May we look for God in the darkness and in the bad news and in the neglected corners of our lives. No one expected a king to be born out of wedlock between two teenagers in a stinky stable. No one expected a cross.

But that is where the light shined.

Prayer

O God our hope,
You are always coming to us
In strange and unforeseen ways—
Relieve us of our plans,
Our narrow desires and expectations
…
Open our eyes and our hearts
In darkness and in uncertainty
To wait and to watch for and to welcome
What is far different
And far better
Than we can imagine. 

In the name of your gift, Christ Jesus: Amen.

Let Go (Psalm 46)

"Have It Your Way"

My mom was recently telling me a story about one of her first students. She was a young first-grade teacher in Simpsonville, Kentucky, a small rural community outside Louisville. Charlie was one of her students. Like many others, he had not gone to kindergarten, so this year marked his official introduction to the alphabet. When Charlie learned to write his name, he spelled it with an uppercase, backwards r. Several times, my mom explained the proper way to write a lowercase r. But Charlie continued to write the r uppercase and backwards. Finally, one day when my mom was explaining the proper way to write an r, Charlie looked up at her in exasperation and said, "Miss Kruschwitz…it's my name, I can write it however I want to!"

Chances are you've encountered a similar obstinance in a young one yourself. It's not uncommon for toddlers and young children to have a bossy streak in them. They see the world around them as their own little kingdom and expect to get their way. (As my dad likes to joke about my nephews, "They love you and have a wonderful plan for your life!")

I wonder if we don't all have a little bit of Charlie in us. Sure, we learn at an early age that we won't always get what we want, but that doesn't stop our wanting it. We just learn to be a bit more subtle in our attempts to control things. There's a reason why our advertisements declare things like "Have it your way" and "Obey your thirst." We all desire to do things our way. We all desire control and certainty.

A Different Kind of King

Today's psalm envisions God as a victorious king. As "kingdoms totter" and nations unravel (Ps 46:6), God declares with a noble solemnity, "I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in [all] the earth" (Ps 46:10). It's easy to hear this and imagine an all-powerful God in the heavens, pulling strings and bringing everything under his control, a God who has it his way. But if we pay close attention to the opening verses, we get a different picture. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though"—and this is the crucial word—"though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult" (Ps 46:2-3). The psalmist declares that God is a refuge and a strength and a help—not to say that God is in control, but to say that even as the world spins out of control, God is with us, helping us to live well, giving us strength to endure.

Already, then, we catch a glimpse of a different kind of king. This is not a king who reigns over the world outside us, who imposes his dominion by force. His reign looks different. Notice what the psalmist says. Twice he insists our king is with us. So, to begin, his reign is not so much about power over the world but presence with us.

And his presence is disarming. What's fascinating to me about this psalm is what God changes. God does not change the circumstances around us. As the psalmist reminds us in the beginning, God is our help, not as insurance that the world will never spin out of control, but as a faithful companion who helps us even as it spins out of control. What God does change is our hearts. The real realm of God's dominion is not without but within. "Come, behold the works of the Lord…He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire" (Ps 46:9). God does not control the world without, where mountains and seas and kingdoms and nations continue to tremble and roar. Rather, God reigns over the world within. God disarms the hearts of humans. In God's presence, wars are ended, weapons are destroyed.

In fact, the most famous verse in this psalm is all about this disarmament. "Be still" comes from a Hebrew world which literally means "drop," as in "Drop what you're holding." Another English expression that captures this sense well is "Let go."

The picture that emerges from this psalm is surreal. Our God is a king whose strength and help is not control and certainty (what we would all prefer) but rather acceptance and trust. "Let go", God says, "as I have let go."

“I Am with You”

I'll be honest. That interpretation by itself might seem fanciful or a bit of a stretch. But there's a key to it that I haven't mentioned yet: Jesus. We Christ-followers believe that "in [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (Col 1:19). In other words, if you want to know who God is…look at Jesus. Jesus shows us what God's kingdom looks like in the flesh. And over the course of his life, Jesus "let go" of a lot. He does not climb the ladder, he descends it. He lets go of power, possessions, home, dignity, and even his very life.

And lest we think of letting go as a form of resignation or masochism, we might appreciate that Jesus' letting go was not suffering for the sake of suffering, but simply a demonstration of what love looks like. Love lets go because it trusts in God's power, which is a power of the heart. It trusts that redemption and restoration happen not by bow or spear or shield (cf. Ps 46:9), but by faithful relationship. The biggest form of help that God offers us, and that we can offer others, is really simple. It is saying, "I am with you. I love you." We see this power every day in the unsung saints of our world, mothers and fathers, teachers and nurses, strangers who take the time to look into our eyes and friends who sit with us through unbearable times.

"I am with you. I love you." This is the gospel at its core. The rest is commentary. This is the good news that Jesus, our king, proclaims as he lets go of everything en route to the cross. It is not the promise that we will have things our way, but rather the immeasurably better promise that we are never alone, no matter the difficult reality we face. It is not power over the world around us, it is even more powerful: it is the power to heal what is broken, to restore what is lost, to reconcile what has been divided.

"I am with you. I love you." This is our refuge and our strength, stronger than any earthquake or flood, stronger than bow, spear, shield—even stronger than death itself, if you would believe it.

Prayer

Our refuge and our strength,
Our help amid change and difficulty,
O Christ—you are our king.
Reign in our hearts,
And disarm us of fear, hate, and our need for control
…
Recalibrate our hearts
To your simple way
Of togetherness.
May we know that your presence and love
Can do what no sword can do,
Can heal, restore, and raise to new life. 

In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.

Out of Control (Luke 21:5-19)

Jesus’ “Mini-Apocalypse”

If you think today’s political climate is a disaster, you should have seen first-century Judea. The Jewish people were split every which way. Nearly everyone agreed that living under the heel of their Roman occupying forces was not ideal. But that was the extent of their union. Everyone had a different solution. The extremists, known as the zealots, desired an armed rebellion. Others, including the community responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, thought it best to retreat to the wilderness and wait for God’s catastrophic intervention. And yet others, including many of the Pharisees and scribes, counseled patience and cooperation. If the Judeans would just settle down and not cause the Romans any trouble, maybe the Romans would take a more relaxed stance and let them live in peace.

Enter Jesus into the fray. He looks upon the temple, the monument of Jewish faith, the glory of the Judean people. It is the center of everyone’s attention. All the different factions are, in one way or another, trying to save it. But not Jesus. He says, “The days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” (Luke 21:6). He then delivers what some readers have called a “mini-apocalypse.” Famine, plagues, earthquakes, war. Trials and death penalties.

 

Jesus is right. He surveys the conflict and chaos that is fomenting in his own time, as various individuals and groups struggle for power and popular support, and he interprets accurately that it only has one outcome. This social climate is not constructive. It is the opposite. It is destructive. And sure enough, about forty years later, the temple falls. Isolated incidents of Jewish protest against Roman taxation and violence against Roman citizens escalate into a full-blown insurrection. The result is a brutal war with the Roman empire, which does not suffer protesters gladly. Its army eventually breaches Jerusalem and razes the temple to the ground.

How Jesus Responds

Jesus cuts a peculiar figure in today’s scripture. Everyone else is trying to stay in control. Everyone else is trying to save the Temple. In contrast, Jesus accepts that things are out of control, and he does not try to control them. It is a curious feature of Jesus’ ministry. He is always calling people—“Follow me”; inviting people—“Take up your mat and walk”; challenging people—“Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor”; asking people questions—“What do you want from me?”…but never does he use force on a person. Never does he control them. Read through any one of the gospels, and ask yourself, “Is Jesus ever in control of any person other than himself?” The cross stands ever as a reminder that Jesus relinquished the way of control.

The good news of Jesus is not control but care. The good news of Jesus is how he responds to a world that is out of control. He responds not by taking up the sword or seeking the popular vote, but by caring for widows and children, by loving his enemies and blessing those who curse him, by befriending strangers and making peace.

For Jesus, what happens to the Temple is out of his control, and quite frankly, has nothing to do with his good news. His good news is not about controlling others but caring for them. That is what his kingdom looks like.

Jesus in DC?

Many of us may have voted this past Tuesday. The airwaves have pounded into our heads that our votes on that one day are more important than anything else we might decide this year. But as I read today’s scripture, I wonder.

I imagine Jesus sitting on the steps of the Washington Monument or standing by the fence around the White House. I imagine him saying, not with revolutionary venom, but with thoughtful pause, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” (21:6). I imagine a host of worried looks and furrowed brows, as we all agonize at the thought of our nation’s demise.

He continues, “There will be big men who rise up and say, ‘Join my cause. It is up to us. The time is now.’ They may even invoke my name. Do not follow them” (cf. 21:8).

He continues, “Terrible things may happen. Do not be terrified. Wherever you are, you are right where you are supposed to be. For there, as the world around you spins out of control, you have an opportunity to respond. You have an opportunity to bear witness to God’s care” (cf. 21:9-15).

Muting the Television to Talk

I remember visiting my grandpa in the nursing home where he lived the last years of his life. Walking through the nursing home’s entrance was like entering a different world. The rush of traffic and all the hubbub of life suddenly became muffled. In its place were the quiet sounds of a community in its last stage of life. There were the sounds of medical equipment beeping. There was the occasional cry from someone needing help. And from just about every room, there was the sound of a television. I could usually pick out the programming within a few seconds: Fox news or CNN. The animated news anchors and analysts could be heard almost shouting, inviting listeners into their righteous indignation and imploring them to take up one cause or another. Even back then, over a decade ago, the news proclaimed that the world was out of control, and it was the listener’s duty to help the right side take control by voting the right way and supporting the right big men and women.

We would enter my grandpa’s room. The news would be on, but he would mute it. As we were finding places to sit, he would insist that my brother and I take a chocolate from a welcome basket that he kept on his dresser. Then we would talk. About family and friends whom we cared about. About the flowers outside my grandpa’s window and the birds that daily visited his feeder. About our hopes and our fears. During our conversation, his nurse Reba would quietly slip into the room and tidy up. My grandpa might take notice and insist that she have a chocolate too. Sometimes, it would be time for a pill, or time for him to use the bathroom, and Reba would tenderly guide him through the necessary movements. All the while, during our close-knit gathering and Reba’s caregiving, the talking heads on television got red in the face. But they did not make a sound. Before we left, we would all hold hands and pray. If it were our last visit before leaving Kentucky, there would be tears.

Being Different

In today’s passage, Jesus tells his followers that their world will fall apart and it is out of their control. But he encourages them: “Do not be terrified….This will give you an opportunity to [bear witness]” (21:9, 12). That is not an easy word. The good news that I read is not that Christ is in control of our world. If anything, the world around him seems out of control, and he himself will become a victim of its power-hungry conflicts. The good news that I read is that Christ cares for us, for every single hair on our head (cf. 21:18), and that his care gives us the strength to show the same care to others.

The partisan struggles of our nation that clamor for our attention, lure us with the illusion of control and threaten to distract us from what really matters. We are in danger of worrying more about how we vote once every two years, than how we live every day. We are enticed to make a difference rather than to be different. But that is what Christ invites from us. To be different. To bear witness to a different way, a way of care rather than control, a way that includes blessing those who curse us, loving our enemies, lifting up children, caring for our widowed neighbors, befriending the poor and the homeless.

Remembering those sacred visits to my grandpa in the nursing home, I am struck by a contrast. All those televisions clamoring for control. And all those residents, with little to no control, living by the care of others and, in some cases, showing care themselves. I do not hear Christ on the televisions. But I see Christ in those rooms, slipping in quietly and tidying up, guiding the needful patiently through the rituals of life. I see Christ, frail and feeble in a hospital bed, offering visitors a chocolate, asking how they’re doing, holding hands and praying with them. I see Christ, dying and gaining life.

Prayer

Loving God,
Whose care we know
In Christ crucified—
Help us to recognize in ourselves
The treacherous thought
Of controlling others
And to tune it out
…
Sensitize us to your care
That we might know its salvation
And might bear witness to it
Day by day.
In Christ, whose love endures: Amen.

More Than Survival (Luke 20:27-38)

Heaven—The Self Glorified 

I remember the first time that I read this scripture on my own as a child—let’s say as, maybe, a nine or ten-year-old. It absolutely terrified me. I had already heard about the idea of hell, which frightened me. But this passage made me frightened about heaven. Because what I heard in this passage was that I would not be with my family in the resurrection. Jesus tells the Sadducees that in the resurrection there will be no marriage. “If there is no marriage,” I thought, “then neither will there be families.” Suddenly I was facing an eternity without my mom, my dad, and my brother. I knew heaven was supposed to be the greatest thing ever. But without my family…it might as well be hell.

Today, I read the passage very differently. And yet, I think that my initial interpretation as a child actually contains an important kernel of truth. I interpreted Jesus to be saying that heaven would not be everything that I expected. It would not be everything just the way I wanted it.

Let’s be honest. In popular thought, that’s what heaven is. Heaven is the self glorified. It is the extension of everything we like. All the good stuff from this life—let’s just put that on repeat. In heaven, we’ll be with our loved ones, we’ll be our younger, best-looking selves, and we’ll live in comfort, forever and ever, amen.

This popular picture of heaven is nothing new. It is almost as old as time. Take the Sadducees, for instance. The Jewish aristocrats of the first century, sophisticated and influential—they did not believe in the resurrection. They were above such low-minded daydreams. Yet even they had their own version of heaven. You could call it posterity. Legacy. The family name. The Sadducees didn’t think they would live forever in the same body, but they did think they would live forever by their descendants. A man’s memory, his possessions, the little kingdom that he built in his time on earth—it does not die but survives through his children. A different picture of heaven, but heaven nonetheless. The self glorified.

We see this in the riddle that the Sadducees pose to Jesus. Suppose, they say, a man dies without any children. The ancient Jewish custom prescribes that his brother must marry the widow and “raise up children for his brother” (20:28)—in other words, to preserve the brother’s name and legacy. So, in their riddle, the deceased man’s six brothers, one at a time, marry his wife, but each of them dies childless. Whose wife, the Sadducees ask, will the woman be in the resurrection?

The Sadducees’ question is meant to show that resurrection is a silly idea. Surely all seven brothers cannot all be married to the same woman in the resurrection. But what this question really does is show the Sadducees’ self-centered mindset. They are thinking of resurrection in the same way that they think of posterity—as an extension of everything that is ours in life. Just as a man’s son would carry on his name, his possessions, the family business, and so on, heaven in their mind would do the same. A man would have the same wife, and presumably he would maintain possession of his other property as well.

And if that word “property” lands wrong, if it sounds harsh to your ears, I think you’re hearing it right. I think you’re hearing what Jesus heard. True to their patriarchal world, the Sadducees are thinking about wives as the property of men. Whether they are thinking about their posterity, where a wife is the necessary vehicle for childbearing, or whether they are thinking about the possibility of resurrection, where a man’s possessions live on forever, including his wife—in the end, the Sadducees are really only thinking about one thing: themselves. How will everything that is mine live forever?

Letting Go in Order to Live

When as a nine-year old I heard Jesus deny the reality of marriage in the resurrection, I heard an elimination of family. But now I simply hear a challenge to the Sadducees’ self-interest. Jesus effectively responds, “You marry in order to preserve your name and your kingdom, but in the resurrection there is no need to preserve these things. The resurrection is about more than self-preservation” (cf. 20:34-35).

If the resurrection isn’t about the survival of the self and everything just the way we like it, then what is it about? Knowing that the Sadducees are students of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible), Jesus alludes to a passage in the Torah, where God confronts Moses as a burning bush and refers to Godself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (20:37). Now, when Moses was alive, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were long dead. Yet here God claims to be in relationship with them. Why, Jesus asks, would the God of the living claim these relationships unless “to [God] all of them are alive” (20:38)?

What grabs my attention here are Jesus’ examples. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These are the ancestors of Israel, and all three of them lived as landless sojourners. It all began with Abraham, who left his house, his homeland, and all that he knew. Why? Because God promised that Abraham would be blessed in a way that would bless all the families of the earth. The paradox of faith, is that by giving up his life, Abraham multiplied life. By letting go of the life that he knew, he lived a fuller life than he could have known. By giving up all that was familiar, the little kingdom he had spent decades building, he and his became a blessing to all the families of the earth.

“Alive to God”

Consider the saints in your own life, the individuals who bore witness somehow to the way of Christ. How did they bless you? Was it through the possessions they accumulated, the name that they made for themselves, the little kingdoms that they built? Is that why you remember them? Or is it because they set all of that aside and gave themselves to you?

This past year, I lost a good friend, Jim. To make a long story short, I’ll say only a few things. Jim lost most of his sight seven years ago. When that happened, he retreated from much of his life. He lived alone and became a bit of a survivalist. Even so, he would occasionally venture outside his home to be with friends and family. And when he did, he was a blessing. He had a way of listening and conversing that made you feel like you were the only person in the world. This was how he loved, how he gave himself to others. Here, in the moments when he let go of survival and risked life, he lived in God. I believe that he is, as Jesus says, “alive to God,” because his love lives on in my own life. His love continues to give me life—to multiply life. In the few months that I have been here, I have heard you speak similarly about Anne, Catherine, and Jean, all of whom were a blessing to you and others by the way they gave themselves in love. And as their love lives on and gives us life, we know also that they are “alive to God.”

Never Lost, Only Multiplied

As a child, I had hoped that heaven would mean the survival of my family and all that was mine. Today’s scripture had terrified me that it would be the opposite. With no marriage, I would lose my parents and therefore my family. But now, I believe that Jesus was inviting the Sadducees and all of us beyond a life of survival, whether that’s through posterity in this world or in some heavenly immortality.  Life and resurrection are not about me forever and ever amen. They are about a self-giving love that defies death and multiplies life.

If I could go back in time, what would I say to my nine-year-old self, worried about losing his family in heaven? I would say this: What lives in love is never lost, only multiplied. 

Prayer

Living God,
God of Anne, Catherine, and Jean—
When we settle for survival,
May we remember the example
Of the saints who have gone before us
…
Inspire us by their self-giving love
And lead us more deeply
Into your life and resurrection. 

In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.