Thompson's Blog

The Pesky Truth
Luke 4:21-30

4:21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

What am I supposed to do with a passage of scripture like this? I want you to put yourself in my place this morning and think about what you would say in response to this scripture. What do you say to a group of well-meaning people like yourselves who came to church this morning in hope of hearing an encouraging word, and here’s this story of Jesus telling the good people of Nazareth things they didn’t really want to hear.

On some level, it appears to me that the effective delivery of the truth can be as welcome as a hot poker in the ear. What kind of response should I hope to receive from a sermon on this text? In all honesty, I like to hear people say how nice my sermon was – even when it isn’t. But that’s not the way Jesus was. He seems to have been pretty intent on poking some people in their sore spots.

Now it may be that the people of Nazareth were particularly misguided and in need of exposure to some raw truth. We don’t really know what kind of people lived in Nazareth or what kind of history Jesus had with some of his childhood neighbors. Different towns have different personalities, and I believe there are some places that need a little more prodding than others, but I don’t really think this is what was going on. I’m thinking it would have been easy for the people of Jesus’ hometown to be blindly enthusiastic about their native son who had gained regional notoriety for the amazing things he had done in Capernaum, but Jesus didn’t want that.

Jesus didn’t just want a bunch of people getting excited about what he was going to do. For one thing, that wasn’t politically expedient. We tend to think it’s a good thing to have a bunch of people talking about how great you are, but that’s not such a good thing when you live under an emperor who considers himself to be a god. Roman soldiers were on the lookout for people who were drawing a crowd, and Jesus had work to do before he became the object of the governor’s attention.

I think the people of his hometown would have easily become excited about the possibility of great things coming from one of their own, but he didn’t need that kind of attention and he knew what to say to squash their enthusiasm. He reminded them of the ways in which God had overlooked the needs of the Israelites and extended grace to outsiders.

So once again I say, what’s a preacher to do with a passage like this? Honestly, I’m hoping when I finish speaking this morning you’ll be inclined to tell me how nice my words were this morning, but Jesus doesn’t give a preacher much to work with in this story. This probably would have been a good weekend for me to go to Kansas City!

But here I am. And here you are. I know we’re all hoping we can get out of here this morning without exchanging any unpleasantries, but this isn’t an easy story for those of us who claim closeness to Jesus. The message for all of us is that Jesus doesn’t want blind enthusiasm. Jesus doesn’t just want us to be excited about the grand things he was capable of doing. Jesus wants us to have passion for the truth, and that’s not always what we want to hear.

An epic example of the way people don’t want to hear the truth is revealed in the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, who was a Hungarian physician in the mid-1800s. While working in the Vienna General Hospital, Dr. Semmelweis became distressed by the number of women who died from infections following childbirth in that hospital. So he set out in a very scientific fashion to discover what was going on, and after pursuing a number of different theories he came to realize that it was beneficial for the attending physicians to wash their hands with a chlorine solution. In fact this procedure cut the death-rate of the women by 90%, but this procedure indicated that it was the doctors dirty hands that was the cause of the high death-rate, and they refused to believe it. They wouldn’t accept his finding nor would they institute his recommendation.

The refusal of the medical community to accept his idea was literally maddening to Dr. Semmelweis. He became very verbally combative with his peers, and in time he was commited to an asylum where he was beaten by guards during an attempt to escape, and he died from an infected wound two weeks later. Twenty years later Louis Pasteur would present his germ theory, and it was at that point that importance of disinfecting procedures became accepted, but a lot of people died in the meantime because there were some powerful people were more interested in protecting their self-importance than in knowing the truth.

It’s possible for any of us to become way too invested in protecting what we already believe than in keeping ourselves open to the truth. Jesus certainly understood this and he used the good people of his hometown to illustrate this truth. He didn’t just want to be well regarded, Jesus wanted to help us all see the ways in which we are sometimes inclined to love the wrong things. It was costly for him to be so honest, but he wasn’t confused about what he was out to do. Jesus came to expose us to the truth, and it was by the grace of God that he didn’t get killed before he really got started.

And I suppose this is part of the good news in this morning’s story. Nobody got killed that day. As bad as things got between Jesus and his hometown peers, they didn’t kill him. We don’t know if Jesus escaped the grips of the murderous crowd through an act of God or if his peers came to see what they were doing and stepped back from the edge. The truth always prevails in the long run, but it doesn’t always come to light before good people get killed.

On some level it speaks well of the Nazarenes that they didn’t follow through with their lethal anger. Crowds aren’t known for doing the right thing, but this crowd let him go on his way that day, and that’s unusual for a crowd.

The truth that Jesus brought has the power to transform people, and that is good news for us all. It’s good for us to be exposed to the truth whether we like it or not, and regardless of how we respond to it, it can have a good impact on us. I suppose I could try to do you the favor of trying to expose you to some painful truth, but I think I’ll just expose you to some unusual truth instead.

It has to do with the Dung Beetle, and I know this is something you were hoping to hear about in church today. (You learn the most interesting things on National Public Radio.) One of the great mysteries that baffled entomologists for many years was the navigational system of some Dung Beetles that live in southern Africa. Dung Beetles live off of the dung of large mammals and they do this by creating little dung balls and rolling them away from the dung pile site.

It’s important to get their dung balls away from the dung pile as quickly as possible because there’s a lot of competition for that valuable resource, and in order to keep their newly created dung balls away from their scavenging neighbors these Dung Beetles need to roll their dung balls in a straight line away from the dung pile. If they roll the ball in a circle they’ll come right back in to the dung harvesting fray.

These beetles operate at night and the researches were trying to figure out how they managed to travel in such straight lines. They thought they used the moon for navigation, but it turns out they are able to go in straight lines when the moon isn’t out. They don’t go in such straight lines on cloudy nights, and they’ve determined that these Dung Beetles orient themselves by the light of the Milky Way. They’ve done some testing of these beetles, and when they put them in a planetarium where the stars are scrambled these beetles are totally disoriented. As far as anyone knows, this is the only case where animals other than wise men use the stars for navigation.

I think this little pearl of information illustrates the value of the truth in a way that’s not too threatening to any of us. It’s not so important that we know how dung beetles navigate, but as surely as dung beetles don’t do so well when the arrangement of the stars is distorted, we don’t do so well when we try to travel by anything less than the light of God’s truth.

The truth isn’t always convenient nor pleasant. In fact it can be terrible to encounter the truth about ourselves, and there’s probably some ugly truth about all of us. Just as Jesus found some unsettling things to say to the Nazarenes, I’m sure he could find some disturbing things to say to us if he feared we were going to get too enthusiastic about the wrong things – although I don’t think he would find our demeanor to be something he needed to calm down.

Jesus always provided what people needed, and I’m sure that’s what he seeking to do for us. I’m sure Jesus is seeking to guide us in to the truth, and he’s wanting us to get excited about the right things. Jesus didn’t want to squash all passion – but he wanted people to be passionate about the right things.

Jesus revealed what it truly looks like to live in response to the love of God and that’s what we are all challenged and inspired to do. It is a challenge to live by the light of Christ because Jesus didn’t just do what people wanted him to do. And while it’s never any fun to have our illusions shattered, the worst thing that can happen to any of us is to press on through life with great conviction for false ideals. We shouldn’t fear the possibility of having our cherished beliefs challenged – our greatest fear should be the possibility of living without exposure to people and experiences that cause us to rethink and readjust.

That’s what Jesus did for the Nazarenes, and that’s what he does for us – because he loves us. Jesus loves us and Jesus wants us to live by the light of God’s truth.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Ministry Plan
Luke 4:14-21

14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Not long ago there was this trend within the Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church to get individuals and churches to develop ministry plans. I don’t know if other organizations are still utilizing this type of tool as a means of promoting a higher level of function, but that was the initiative within our conference for about a decade. And I’m guessing this was the case for many institutions within our state and nation. Some of my peers may still be engaged in this exercise, but I stopped turning in a personal ministry plan when the Charge Conference packet stopped asking for one.

It’s not a bad exercise to engage in the process of examining your values and goals, but I can testify that the development of a personal ministry plan is not an automatically transformational activity. It may be that I’m hopelessly entrenched in the way I function, but I think I entered into the process of developing a personal ministry plan with a reasonable amount of willingness, and it was not a life-altering enterprise.

Now it could be that I would be even more disorganized and unfocused if I hadn’t written down what’s most important to me, but I don’t think it altered the course of my behavior very much.

I’m certainly not opposed to the idea of spending time intentionally thinking about what is most important. I actually enjoyed some of the workshops I attended where I was lead through this process of developing a personal ministry plan. It’s not a bad thing for people to try to identify what is most important to themselves as individuals or for groups of people to create statements that best reflect what they intend to do, but I’m guessing most of us have an internal guidance system that tends to override whatever it is that we say we intend to do.

Maybe the development of mission statements and mission plans helps some people or organizations to recognize strategic gaps between intentions and actions, but I’m pretty convinced we all operate by a clear set of guiding principles – whether we’ve written them down or not – even whether we know them or not.

You might say Jesus had just attended a very unorthodox personal ministry plan workshop just prior to his arrival in Nazareth. The preceding story relates his experience of being tested by satan in the wilderness, and we’ll actually look at that encounter more closely in a couple of weeks, but I think he came out of that experience with a very clear sense of who he was and what he intended to do. As far as we know he didn’t write anything down when that trial was over, but he certainly knew what was written on his heart, and he shared it with the people of Nazareth.

My father once said that there is no such thing as a bad short sermon, and I think there’s a good amount of truth to that, but Jesus wasn’t just trying to keep the message short when he spoke these brief words to those who had gathered in the synagogue to hear what he had to say. After finding and reading these powerful words from Isaiah, his sermon was one sentence long: Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Jesus’ sermon was short, but it was powerful. In fact some of the people who heard what he said tried to kill him. I’ll have more to say about this next week when we look at the next few verses in this chapter, but what Jesus had to say was shockingly clear and to the point. Jesus’ ministry plan was remarkably clear and ambitious in the best sense of the word. Jesus had no doubt about what he intended to do with his life, and many people found it to be disturbing.

We are told that Jesus was filled with the power of God’s Spirit, and that spirit had a very clear agenda. It wasn’t just a spirit that moved him to worship in a lively way, it propelled him to reach out to the people who were most disenfranchised from life. The text says that Jesus found this passage to read, which means that Jesus wasn’t just reading a text that was handed to him. He was very intentional about what he read, and he made it very clear as to what his agenda would be.

One thing this passage does for me is to remind me that Jesus was very much a Jew. We Christians tend to forget this sometimes, but the first place Jesus went when he finished his trial in the wilderness was to a synagogue. Jesus was the perfect manifestation of the message of Judaism. He would be the source of terrible conflict within the Jewish community, but it wasn’t because Jesus departed from the tradition. Jesus had a clear sense of what the Jewish faith was all about, but it wasn’t an understanding that was shared by everyone.

As people who claim Jesus as our guide, I think it’s helpful for us to understand where Jesus came from, and I also it’s important for us to examine the ways in which our intentions to follow Jesus actually match up with the actions we take to follow him. How well do our words match up with our deeds? Are our stated or unstated ministry plans in line with who Jesus was and what he did?

I think it’s important for us to think about these things because as surely as the Jewish community had trouble recognizing the hand of God in the life of the one who perfectly embodied their faith, it’s possible for those of us who claim Christ as our savior to live in ways that are counter to who he was. I’m not wanting to point to anyone or anything that might implicate our current lostness. I don’t want my sermon to be so powerful that you will want to get rid of me, but there’s a significant amount of historical evidence that indicates such a thing can go on.

I also know it’s possible for us to get caught up in the same spirit that Jesus embodied and shared – there’s evidence that points to this possibility as well, but in some ways it’s easier to become disconnected from the true spirit of Christ than to become consumed by it.

A few years ago my son gave me a book to read that made quite an impression on me. It’s probably a good book for all preachers to read, but I doubt that it has ever been included in anyone’s seminary training. The book was called, The Braindead Megaphone Essays by George Saunders. It is a collection of essays on a variety of topics that touch on the way we interact with one another, and the essay from which the name of the book is drawn portrays a party where people are milling about having reasonable conversations with each other until a man bursts into the room with a megaphone and begins broadcasting these really lame messages.

The people at the party try to ignore the intrusion at first, and they resist the loud voice in a variety of ways for a while, but ultimately the man with the megaphone wins out. At some point people stop resisting the loud voice and in time they all allow him to define reality for them. They quit talking about whatever it was that used to be of interest to them, and they only talk about whatever it is the man with the megaphone happens to be going on about.

Saunders, who is a sociologist, uses this image to describe the way in which our public discourse is largely defined by large corporate media outlets who get fixed on certain stories which become the focus of our national attention. I can testify to the truth of this. I don’t feel bad about my recent total fixation on the super snow-storm of the last few days, but CNN has made it the most important thing in my life for the last few days. I find this essay to be pretty convincing, and it serves to remind me of the ways in which we often relinquish control of our lives and our minds to messages that aren’t necessarily rooted in essential truth. And the really insidious thing is that we are generally unaware of the way in which there is someone with a megaphone in the room who is guiding our thoughts and actions.

This may be an usual thing to hear from the guy standing in the pulpit with a microphone, but you need to be suspicious of the various ways loud voices seek to gain control of our minds. And it’s not just large media corporations that do this – I dare say it’s possible to turn your brain over to facebook and other forms of social media. The devices we use have powerful impacts on our lives, and we need to be careful how we interact with them. We are exposed to a lot of loud voices. And the loudest voices aren’t always the least reliable voices, but they often are.

Jesus certainly wasn’t known for being loud. He was known for being the most righteous, and the most gracious, and the most truthful person.

I’m pretty convinced that it’s hard to live in our society without being guided by agendas that have little to do with Jesus and the spirit that guided him. Christianity gets defined in a lot of different ways in our world, and many things that are labelled as Christian have nothing to do with what Jesus taught or how he lived. There are always some loud voices telling us what’s wrong with our society and how to resist the evil of our day, but it’s important for those of us who aspire to follow Christ to listen to listen to sound of his voice – which isn’t easy.

It’s easy to see that things aren’t quite right in the world, but it’s not an easy fix. Jesus announced that he came to liberate people from all kinds of oppression, and I take great comfort in this because we all know how oppressive this world can be. Many of us have access to an abundance of material comforts, but none of us are free from some kind of bondage, and we all are in need of a savior.

Jesus came to provide access to abundant life to all of us, and we need to allow him to show us how to find it. Jesus had a plan, and we need to make sure our plans are in line with his plan.

Following Christ is a high calling, and it’s a hard calling. In fact without the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives it’s an impossible calling. And while Holy Spirit may not speak with the loudest voice, it’s the most persistent voice, and in time if we are open to it – it will get through to all of us and enable us to know that today the words that Jesus spoke have once again been fulfilled in our hearing!

Now is the year of God’s favor – thanks be to God. Amen

The Voice of God
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

It was a dark and stormy night. It was the fall of 1977. I had been trying to work Calculus problems in the library room of the United Methodist Student Center which was located at the corner of Leveret and Maple in Fayetteville. But my work wasn’t going well, and it made me mad. Calculus didn’t make sense to me, and it made me miserable to work at it. But it wasn’t just Calculus. There was hardly anything that made sense to me. I didn’t like where I was living, I didn’t like what I was having to study, and I didn’t have a good place to go rant about how miserable I was.

So I did the next best thing – I decided to walk home in the middle of a thunderstorm. I put my books in my backpack, I put on my rain jacket – made from the first generation of gortex material which was almost waterproof, and I headed for the door. I took a couple of steps out of the building, but I had hardly gone anywhere before there was this tremendous bolt of lightening that seemed to strike directly behind the Kappa House – which was right across the street from where I was standing, and I instantly jumped back against the wall of the Wesley Foundation building.

A moment later I heard this voice come from above that said: Thompson, this is your God. I was speechless for a couple of seconds, and then I heard that same voice start giggling. It wasn’t the voice of God I had heard – it was the voice of Costas Economicles. Costas had been watching the storm approach from an upstairs window in the old Pierce House, which was owned by the Wesley Foundation and where rooms were rented to students at a very cut rate. Costas was an architecture student from Greece who had a quick mind and a wicked sense of humor.

You might think I would have been amused by the situation, but it wasn’t as funny to me as it was to him. I didn’t join him in laughing at the remarkable timing of everything and the quickness of his wit – it made me even madder and I proceeded to do what I had intended to do and I walked home in the rain, thunder, and lightening. I found myself ranting at God about how miserable I was as I trekked through the storm and I actually found myself daring God to take better aim with the next bolt of lightening.

Now this isn’t exactly like what happened on the day Jesus went out to the Jordan River and was baptized by John the Baptist. But clearly there are some comparable elements.

There was water involved in each of the situations. And there was the descending of something powerful. Lightening in my case and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove in Jesus’ case. And there was a voice from above with a Middle Eastern accent. But there are some significant departures between the two events as well – the most notable difference being the source of the voice that came from above.

The presence of God was palpable on the day Jesus was baptized, but it’s easy for me to believe that God was at hand on the night I went out in to the storm. I think the fact that I didn’t get struck by lightening as I walked home that night is a testament to the prevenient grace of God, and while I didn’t make any eternal pledges to God that night, I suspect the events of that night had some impact on my journey in to ministry. Some people might have taken that initial bolt of lightening as a sign to go back inside and finish their homework. Had I done that I might have ended up an engineer after all, but that isn’t what I chose to do.

I’m not sure if I was laughing about what had happened by the time I went to bed that night, but I can tell you it generated some laughs at the Wesley Foundation the next day – and to this day. Just the other day I mentioned this to my friend, Lewis Chesser, who was the director of the Wesley Foundation at the time. Costas was an epic story teller, and while he really didn’t have to elaborate on anything that happened, he loved telling people what had transpired, and it actually left me feeling pretty special. I don’t know many people who have thought for as long as three seconds that they had heard the actual voice of God, but I am one of those people. What else can you do but become a preacher when you’ve had such a close encounter.

Today’s scripture lesson isn’t comical, but it is the account of an unusual turn of events. First of all, a day in the presence of John the Baptist is a day that anyone would remember. I think John the Baptist probably had the looks of the character Tom Hanks played in the movie “Castaway” after he had been marooned on that deserted island for more than a year. And I think he had the personality of the guy known as the Soup Nazi on the Seinfeld show. If you’ve never seen either of those characters I’m sure you have your own image and impression of John the Baptist – a man with the look of a feral animal and the resolve of a soldier. He had a razor sharp focus on serving God, and he gave his all to preparing the way for the coming of the lord.

John the Baptist had a lot to say, and you can’t argue with what he said, but God wasn’t going to change the world through the fiery words of John the Baptist. God was going to change the world through the words and actions of the man who doesn’t say a word in this particular passage of scripture. John the Baptist spoke, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon Jesus, and then God spoke. Jesus never said a word as these things transpired, but we are told that he was in prayer. It’s accurate to say that Jesus was sharing words with God, but we don’t know what they were.

There’s an important message to us in this. I know we often think the most important words are the ones we say out-loud, but I don’t think we know what words to say if we don’t spend some time trying to be quietly present to God.

Sometimes I wish I had understood the value of being quietly present to God when I was a younger person. I was pretty impatient to know what I was going to do and why I was going to do it. I wanted a plan and I wanted to like it. I made some plans, but my plans weren’t working out the way I wanted them to, and it made me mad. I didn’t go to God with quiet patience – I went to God with demands, and that’s not something you should do if you aren’t willing to become a preacher.

I used to think Calculus was mysterious – that was before I started trying to prepare sermons. You may find it distressing to hear that I don’t step in to the pulpit each week with a clear understanding of what God intends for me to say to you. There probably are preachers who speak with that kind of authority, but I am not one of them. I wish I had such clarity in regard to what I need to say and what you need to hear, but God doesn’t speak to me so clearly. I struggle to find the right words, and the words I offer – I offer in hope that they will fall well on your hearts. And I do trust that they can be used by God to provide you with some access to the good news that Jesus Christ came to deliver.

The truth is that it’s impossible for me to figure out what I need to say in a sermon. If it was all up to me to generate the right words and to deliver them properly it would truly be an overwhelming task, but I try to remember that God uses us all in ways we don’t fully understand to do the work of sharing the gospel. I wrestle with the task of preaching, but I also know that the Holy Spirit is as free as a dove. It didn’t descend upon Jesus because of something he or John the Baptist said – it goes where it will and does what it will do.

If you aren’t hearing what you want to hear from the preacher be careful what you wish for because you might find yourself doing something you never imagined. I’m not saying that there is no such thing as bad preaching – I’ve heard it and I’ve done it. There is such a thing as a bad sermon, but God’s word is uncontained. The same Holy Spirit that descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove can come upon us in ways that we would never have imagined. God can use anyone and anything to get our attention and to open our hearts to the truth of the gospel.

It’s interesting to think of the unusual ways that we come to hear the word of God. I don’t know of anyone who has actually heard the voice of God who provided them with clear instructions on what they need to do next. I’m not saying that has never happened or can’t happen. I say that because I don’t know what God is capable of doing nor am I anxious to get some of those clear instructions from God. From what I can tell, God doesn’t send people on easy missions. I known what can happen when you taunt God. I don’t do that anymore.

The voice of God is illusive, but Jesus Christ has revealed to us what clearly pleases God. It pleases God for us to live with love for one another, and when I say one another I don’t just mean the people we already love and cherish. The love of Jesus Christ is the kind of love that has no boundaries. Jesus didn’t just love the people who were living the right way and doing the right things – Jesus loved people because they were people. That was what made him the beloved son of God that he was, and that is what he has invited us to join him in doing.

The voice of God is a powerful thing that comes to us in unusual ways. None of us are too young or too old to hear it, and in spite of my warning not to taunt God, I believe it always comes as a welcome word to willing hearts. The voice of God isn’t loud, but it’s profound, and it changes everything. To hear the voice of God is to come to understand that which is truly important. It’s the voice of God that calls us out of our small worlds of self-concern and points us toward the world with love and compassion.

We haven’t heard many words from God, but we’ve heard enough to know what to be listening for. And thanks be to God — we haven’t yet heard the last word!

Amen.

The Big Picture
John 1:1-18

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

I’m sure many of you have used the phone or computer app called Google Earth. It’s sort of amazing that you can enter an address or a place name and it will take you on a visual journey from somewhere in outer space to the very spot on earth that you are wanting to see. It’s like visually travelling to the spot you have identified from thousands of miles away down to about 50 feet away in a couple of seconds. I don’t know how those Google people have managed to do this, but this app allows you to get a close-up view of every address or named place on earth.

Google Earth is a powerful tool, and it gives you some interesting perspective both on how large the earth is and also how small it is. The truth is, we humans are parked on a pretty small speck in the universe, but having a life on earth is a pretty big deal. There’s an interesting contrast between the powerfully strong individual experiences we all have and the infinitesimally small space we actually occupy. I don’t wake up each morning thinking about what a small creature I am on this small speck of a planet orbiting one of the billions of stars that make up the universe, but I know I am that small. We are all that small, but we usually wake up to face seemingly large challenges and opportunities each day.

This prologue to the Gospel of John sort of reminds me of this experience of going from a really grand viewpoint of reality down to a curbside view of how God chose to step on to the earth. I see in these verses the contrast of the grand scale of God’s glorious design of the universe with the unique desire of God to touch each of our lives.

John uses about five verses to describe what God and the word had been doing from the beginning of time. He doesn’t get caught up in the details of creation. It’s a very general description of what God had been doing for an unfathomable length of time, and then he says: There was a man sent from God named John.

John’s first pin-point focus was on John the Baptist, not Jesus, but I think John the Baptist was someone who had gotten a lot of attention, and John the Gospel writer wanted his readers to understand how John the Baptist fit in the big picture. John the Baptist had gathered a lot of attention, but there was to be no confusion about his role. He was not the light – he was the one who pointed to the light. John the Baptist played a large role in the plan of God to redeem the world, but he wasn’t to be the primary object of our attention.

In some ways I think John the Baptist is a more knowable man. John the Baptist was more disciplined and righteous than average people are able to be, but we understand discipline and order. John the Baptist knew how to follow divine rules, but he didn’t fully embody the grace and the love that would come in the life of Jesus Christ, and those are things that aren’t so easy to comprehend. John the Baptist was remarkable enough to get divine attention, but he wasn’t the one we are to focus our full attention upon. What we see John the Baptist doing is pointing to the one who fully embodied the light of life.

What John the gospel writer wanted us to understand is that Jesus Christ came in to this world to totally transform our understanding of God. Our understanding of God was going to go from being unfathomably general to incredibly specific. This unknowable logos that was with God from the very beginning was going to become a man and dwell among us. God’s way of thinking became embodied in a man, and to meet this man is to have your understanding of life turned upside down.

John provides us with an interesting introduction to the story of Jesus. He brings our attention to that which is most essential, and I think it’s a good passage for us to read as we begin a new year. Just as John invites us to get the big picture in mind I think this is a good time for us to be reminded of that picture. It’s an invitation for us to consider how our own specific lives fit in to this drama that has been unfolding since the beginning of time. There’s no way for us to get our minds around how large this story really is, but by looking at Jesus we can gain an understanding of how the light that was present in his life can shine in our own lives.

And it’s important that we embrace this light because there’s this other reality in this world that we have to deal with – darkness. John doesn’t explain where this darkness came from or why it’s around, but he doesn’t act like it’s not there. Darkness exists, and it’s a problem. It’s a problem for the light, but it isn’t as powerful as the light. The light prevails – but not without a struggle. That’s what I understand John to be saying in this passage, and that’s how I understand the reality of life to be. It’s a struggle to maintain the light of life. The darkness will never fully prevail in the world, but it’s a nagging presence to all of us.

It’s a nagging presence, but it can be contained. John is proclaiming in these verses that the whole enterprise of God establishing creation and eventually taking on the form of flesh and blood was to enable us to live as children of God. God became flesh in order to reveal God’s true nature – which is as light in darkness. We’re told that there is a gift that comes to those who love and seek to follow Jesus, and the gift is for us to continue the tradition of bringing this abstract concept of God into the reality of human life.

I’m speaking in what I consider to be very abstract language, but I don’t just think of the incarnation as being an abstract concept. I may be totally off base, but what I like to think that God did when God took on the form of a human being was to show us what it really means for us to become human. And we humans have a lot to offer to one another.

A wonderful thing happened to me one Christmas Eve a few years ago. I received a call from a friend who was having a hard time. My friend has some severe medical issues, but in addition to having a hard time with his body he was also experiencing a profound sense of fear that the end of his life was near. His medical condition wasn’t life threatening, but he had this sense that something really dark was approaching and it was going to take him away.

On one hand, he knew that it might be an irrational fear that he was experiencing that may well have been brought on by a round of a really strong antibiotic, but he was also in touch with the thought that it may be true. He was asking the question, what if it’s true that he was about to die and that bad news awaited his eternal soul. This is what he was feeling.

He told me he had hoped to attend a Christmas Eve Communion service, but that he wasn’t going to be able to make it. I offered to bring communion to him and that sounded good to him.

When I got to his house I found him in a state of profound resignation to the end of his life. He wasn’t suicidal, but he just thought his life was over. He once again spoke of his sense that something dark was approaching, and that things were not going to be OK. For some reason his words made me think of my mother, and I told him how I had been really lucky in the sense that from my earliest days my mother always made me feel like things were going to be OK. I told him I thought I had been conditioned to believe that the world was a good place, and that I had never really had my illusion shattered.

No doubt the reason I thought of my mother was that she had recently died from a sudden and massive stroke. The person who had always made me feel like things were going to be OK had departed in a manner that didn’t feel OK when it happened. But as I spoke to my friend it occurred to me that the feeling she had instilled in me seemed to have reemerged. I went on to share my belief that this was the message Jesus wanted us to understand – that in the largest sense, regardless of what was going on, things were going to be OK. Jesus was killed in a way that wasn’t OK, but even that wasn’t able to destroy him. His physical body was destroyed, but his presence remains, and we continue to experience this gift of being the children of God. Ultimately, we still have a way to be OK.

I went on to read the communion ritual, we shared the elements, and I think it left both of us feeling better. We didn’t ward off the darkness for good, but we both had a moment of reprieve. I know the exchange we had felt like a gift to me. I had never really articulated how my mother had always made me feel like things were going to be OK, and how it seemed to be a feeling that remained with me even though she was no longer around. My mother was a person who fully embraced the teachings of Christ, and she had that gift of living as a child of God. I’m pretty sure her sense of optimism about life was rooted in her trust in God.

I don’t always feel like things are going to be OK. I’m familiar with that sense of darkness that seems to find it’s way into our lives at unfortunate moments. I don’t think any of us remain illuminated by the light of life every day of our lives, but I believe that people who embrace the life of Jesus Christ and who seek to follow his teachings grow in their ability to share the light of Christ. Following Jesus doesn’t protect us from the assault of darkness, but darkness doesn’t prevail in the lives of those who embrace the light.
John says God has offered a gift to us all – we are offered the opportunity to live as the children of God. As we begin this new year I invite you to embrace this gift and I encourage you to look forward to those opportunities that God will provide for you to be the sharer of light in to all the places you will go.

One of the large oversights of our United Methodist Hymnal is that they didn’t include John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer – which is a prayer he would include in his annual New Year’s Covenant Renewal service. I wish I could tell you to turn in your hymnals to that prayer, but it isn’t there. I think it’s a good prayer for us to pray this morning, so I invite you to pray that prayer with me as I read it to you:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside by thee.
Exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

Magnificent Disruptions
Luke 1:39-55

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 46 And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

A wonderful thing happened to me about twenty years ago. That wasn’t the last time something good happened to me, but this was one of those significant milestone events. When we moved from West Helena to Little Rock in June of 1996 we purchased a small house in the Heights neighborhood. It was too small for us, but it was in a good school zone, and that was our priority. It was a tight fit for the four of us, but it was all the house we could afford in that part of town. Fortunately, soon after we bought the house interest rates dropped rather dramatically, and we were able to refinance and borrow some extra money in order to make an addition on the house.

Sharla and I came up with a design – which was about as simple as it could be, and after speaking to a couple of builders we discovered we had enough money to pay for half of what we wanted. We were a little distressed about the situation, but it turned out to be the most wonderful problem I had ever had because at some point Sharla said, Well, why don’t you just build it.

Now I had dabbled in a few projects over the years, but the thought of cutting holes in perfectly good walls was new territory for me. I was excited about the possibility, but I was also a bit intimidated by the project. So I did what I always did prior to the arrival of Google – I went to Barnes and Noble and I bought a book on housebuilding. I didn’t read the whole thing, but I read enough to believe I could do it, and I embarked upon the journey of home improvement. I didn’t get it done quickly, but I got it done, and now I can’t stop myself from doing other things. That house has been under continual construction or repair for almost twenty years.

Not having enough money to get what we wanted was the best thing that ever happened to me. It hasn’t been quite as good for Sharla. Things don’t get done in what you would call a timely fashion, but I’m so affordable. And it’s been a great source of therapy for me. When you spend your days trying to work with something as mysterious as the Holy Spirit it’s nice to spend your evenings working with boards, and pipes, and sheetrock, and shingles. The opportunity to continually work on that house has been a great gift to me. I might have stumbled in to that avocation if we had been able to afford a builder twenty years ago, but not having enough money to hire a builder has been one of the great blessings of my life.

God never works in predictable ways. God doesn’t operate through the usual channels. If that were the case, we would know a lot more about the mother of Jesus. All we know is that her first name was Mary and she had an older cousin named Elizabeth. We know her fiance’s name was Joseph, and we know he came from the house of David – along with half of the population of Israel. Mary was an unknown young woman – probably a teenager.

As Luke tells the story, God’s favor didn’t fall upon anyone in a leadership position. God’s favor fell upon a nobody. Now I know it’s hard for us to imagine the mother of Jesus being anyone other than the religious celebrity we’ve turned her in to, but before Mary was the Mother of God, she wasn’t what you would call an outstanding person. She was too young to be a mother, and she went to see her cousin – who was too old to be a mother, but it was what God chose to do. God isn’t content to let us operate according to our own plans and agendas. God graciously disrupts this world and provides us opportunities to experience actual richness and grace.

In some ways it’s very unfortunate that we’ve turned Mary in to such a revered character. She may well be the most highly regarded person in human history. Even people who don’t like Jesus would never talk bad about his mother. But I think our reverence for Mary gets in the way of the story. It’s not easy for us to hear how subversive this story really is. A couple of thousand years of church lore has turned Mary in to the most pristine character that has ever lived, but Luke wanted us to see that the mother of Jesus was in a very precarious situation. Mary’s pregnancy wasn’t the result of what we would call sound family planning. She and Joseph were in an awkward situation. This is not what the elders were expecting.

This story of Mary going to visit Elizabeth is a story of two people who were both in incredibly awkward circumstances. What do you think people were saying about Elizabeth when she turns up pregnant for the first time so late in life? That’s some fine fodder for gossip right there. Neither Elizabeth nor Mary chose to turn up pregnant at those moments in their lives. People weren’t going to understand, but Mary and Elizabeth did. They understood that they had been touched by the Holy Spirit, and they celebrated what God was doing through them for the world.

Jesus entered the world in an unconventional manner because God was going to save the world in an unconventional way. The savior of the world slipped in through the back door, and according to this song that Mary sang, he was going to tear off the front door. It’s hard for us to hear this song that Mary was moved to sing in anything other than a very piously presentable way, and it begins and ends in a way that sounds very churchy, but there in the middle it sounds a lot like something a teenager might belt out.

In fact these probably were the words of a teenager. Mary was most likely in her teens when she was touched by God in this profound way. And there might not be anything more frightening to people my age than a teenager who has been empowered by God – they don’t have all of the proper filters in place. They don’t fully understand how their supposed to act. And I’m sure that’s why God chose to use one to alter the course of history.

The truth is that God is more restless than a teenager. God didn’t like the way things were going with the adults in charge, so he found a cooperative teenager, and the world has never been the same. I may be ruining this passage of scripture that we call Mary’s magnificat, but I’m thinking this song of hers is sort of a cross between something a beautiful church choir would sing and something you might hear from a punk rock band. Mary isn’t just rejoicing over the privilege of being used by God, she’s proclaiming that this child she’s going to deliver is going to totally disrupt the way this world operates. I’ve never really understood the lyrics to a punk rock song, but I think they’re pretty enthusiastic about disruption, and so is Mary.

What God was going to deliver through the life of Jesus Christ was not going to be what the elders were expecting. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but it was going to be good.

God doesn’t disrupt our lives for the sake of disruption. God wants us to live abundant lives, and it’s our safe routines that often get in the way of our access to abundant life. I believe the message we are to get from the unorthodox way in which Jesus came in to this world is that we shouldn’t be shocked when our own lives get disrupted in glorious ways. It’s often through the breakdowns in our lives that we make new discoveries about who we are, and how we can live in relation to God. It certainly suggests that we should rethink our fortune when unfortunate things happen.

I believe it’s God’s plan for there to be opportunity for new understanding and new relationships to develop whenever our normal routines are disrupted. If you ask anyone who has willingly participated in some kind of a twelve-step program I dare say they’ll tell you a story of redemption and rebirth that out of disaster – from circumstances they never would have chosen for themselves. It doesn’t happen automatically, but a disruption of life can very well be the beginning of a new and better life.

Sometimes it’s a total breakdown that puts us on track to a new life, but we don’t always have to hit the bottom before we make vital changes. I recently heard an interview with John Grisham, and his work as a writer came about through his disenchantment with being a lawyer. He said he had imagined himself doing dramatic work in a courtroom, but he didn’t find himself defending high profile causes in front of packed courtrooms. It turned out to be pretty routine business, and it didn’t really capture his interest. He ended up running for office in the Mississippi State legislature, and he was elected, but he found that serving in the legislature wasn’t as interesting as getting elected, and he noticed that the time he enjoyed most was the time he spent writing while he was waiting for another committee meeting to take place.

John Grisham didn’t have automatic success with the publication of his first novel, but he did discover what he loved doing, and it wasn’t what he set out to do with his life. It came about as the result of not finding any satisfaction in what he thought he wanted to do, and by paying attention to what it was he was inclined to do.

I don’t believe God creates disasters for us in order to show us better ways to live. God doesn’t stop us from creating disasters for ourselves, but I do believe God provides us opportunities for new life whenever our foreseen lives are altered in some way. I also believe God stepped in to this world in a very deliberate way in the life of Jesus Christ, and I believe that act continues to be a source of disruption to the work of evil in this world.

I love the thought that God used an unknown teenage girl to do the mighty act of delivering the one who continues to disrupt the plans of powerfully godless schemers.

Our God doesn’t do what we expect God to do. Our God does what we need for God to do, and I give thanks to God for those ways in which God’s grace enters our lives when our plans get disrupted and our expectations are unmet.

Thanks be to God for magnificent disruptions! Amen.

Here and Now
Luke 3:1-6

1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'”

It’s likely that some of you saw the comedy team of Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall perform a short routine on television on February 9, 1964. It’s not likely that any of you remember seeing them because they performed on the Ed Sullivan Show right before The Beatles were to come on to close out that show. Some of you probably remember where you were and who you were with on the night The Beatles first performed in front of an American audience, but nobody remembers who else was on that show. Seventy-three million Americans tuned in to watch that show that night – a number that haunted Charlie and Mitzi for decades

I like to listen to the podcast of a radio show called This American Life, and it was on that show that I heard the story of that miserable night in the life of Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall. Charlie & Mitzi have been married for 55 years, and they are actually pretty funny, but that was the worst night of their lives.

And they thought it was going to be the best night of their lives. Charlie and Mitzi were living and working clubs in the Los Angeles area at the time, and they thought they had hit the big time when their agent arranged for them to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. But their dream turned out to be a perfect nightmare. Their comedy was geared toward adults, but the live audience was dominated by young teenage girls, and then at the last minute they were told to trim and adjust their act so much that it didn’t even make much sense for the television audience.

They didn’t have a bad night in front of a small audience at an out of the way club. They bombed in front of the largest television audience that had ever gathered to watch anything. They couldn’t bring themselves to watch the tape of the show for 40 years, and they still sort of cringe every time they hear a song by The Beatles. But they’re still together, and they’ve still got a good sense of humor.

I’m guessing we all have a few moments in our lives that we wish we could erase. Mitzi and Charlie didn’t really do anything wrong, but they found themselves in a terribly unfortunate situation. Painfully memorable moments are hard to forget, but memorable moments aren’t always bad. I’m sure we all have moments that we wish we could relive rather than redo. Sometimes things come together for us in ways that create rare moments of joy. Whether good or bad, there are these milestone moments in our lives that serve to guide us as we move through our lives.

Likewise, there have been these moments in history when things have come together in such ways that the course of human life is altered forever. Our text refers to one of those moments. Luke is very specific about the moment in history when a world altering message came to a previously unknown man named John who was living in the Judean wilderness.

It’s a clever opening. At first glance you might think Luke was simply trying to provide accurate information about who was doing what when this monumental message came to this devout man in the wilderness, but Luke is actually making a significant point. Luke likes to highlight the contrast between the people who thought they were in charge with the people who actually understood what was going on. Throughout his portrayal of Jesus, Luke contrasts the people with credentials with the people who actually had faith, and this is exactly what he was doing when he names the official leaders of the day and then points to the man who would actually prepare the way for the savior of the world.

Luke understood what supreme power actually looked like, and he recognized the way in which some people are inclined to seize lesser forms of power in order to maintain the illusion of being in charge. It’s a tragic combination. The desire and misuse of power would ultimately result in the violent death of our savior, but that wouldn’t be the ultimate outcome. God sent Jesus to reveal the nature and extent of God’s love for the world, and while the misguided and twisted leaders of Israel had the power to crucify Jesus they didn’t have the power to keep him in the grave. The word spread – the world changed.

The world shifted when God decided to arrive in the life of Jesus Christ, and there’s nothing anybody can do to change that. We can deny and resist this reality, but it won’t change it, and there’s only one proper response to this new situation. The only appropriate response is to repent and believe in the good news. God decided to come in the life of Jesus Christ, and he refuses to go away. People continue to act like the world is just as it always has been, but the old ways won’t ultimately work anymore. We can continue to try to act like the world is ruled by whoever has the most powerful weapons and other such resources, but John knew otherwise, and he began to spread the word.

John the Baptist is an interesting character to me. His talk of repentance is actually a little intimidating to me. Being the human being that I am I don’t want to change my thinking about anything. And that’s what it means to repent. I know we’ve all been trained to think that what it means to repent is to quit doing whatever you’re doing that you don’t want the preacher to know about, and maybe you do need to quit doing whatever that is, but it honestly doesn’t matter what the preacher may think of what you choose to do or not do.

This business of repenting is much bigger than maintaining proper behavior. What John was calling for us to do is not just to behave a little better, but to change our whole way of thinking. He called for us to believe that this world is ruled by God and not by anybody else.

This world isn’t ruled by Tiberious or Pontious Pilate or Herod or Annas or Caiaphas, or the president, or the governor, or the bishop, or the preacher. It’s not ruled by the terrorists, or the police, or the hottest celebrities of the day, or anybody else who seems to wield power in this world. It’s God who reigns over this world, and Jesus Christ came to show us what that looks like.

And what he primarily showed us is how important it is to love one another. That’s what we are called upon to believe. And it’s for that way of living that we are to prepare.

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness.
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

You know, you learn things when you spend some time on a bicycle. And one of the things you learn is that our Federal and State Highway Departments spend a lot more money on highways that have a lot of truck traffic than on roads with mere automobile traffic. When you’re on a highway that’s made for a lot of truck traffic you have these really wide shoulders, and the roads don’t go straight up or down hills. They spread the grade out over wider areas. They fill the valleys. They cut the tops off hills.

I became mindful of this as I rode my bicycle across northern Alabama. One day I was on this four lane highway that had these long uphill and long downhill stretches. It was a little intimidating to see a long uphill stretch, but that is so much easier to deal with than the lesser financed roads that would go straight up and straight down. I was in the foothills of the Appalachians, and when I went from that major highway to a secondary highway I had the feeling that I was riding over the toes of the Appalachians. I was perpetually going up and down and it was terrible. I couldn’t even enjoy the steep downhill rides because I knew I would be going straight up the other side of the valley.

I don’t know if the Lord is coming to us on a bicycle, or in a truck, on a donkey cart, or in a cloud, but God is coming in some way in a timely fashion. I don’t fully understand how this world will become fully reconciled with the will of God, but God’s will has been fully revealed to us, and God’s will is for us to live in peace with one another. We can try to resist this. We can try to impose our own desires and use our own devices to try to establish the kind of world that we want for ourselves, but it’s God’s will that will prevail.

The only choice we have is whether or not we will help prepare the way of the Lord. We can engage in the work of making God’s will welcome in this world, or we can avoid that difficult work. We can engage in making God’s way clear and available, or we can be content to maintain the familiar ups and downs, crooked paths, and rough places. We can engage in the hard and costly work of living in response to God’s desires, or we can continue to pursue whatever it is that we just want for ourselves.

We don’t get to choose the moment in which we occupy space on earth, and sometimes we get handed a tough gig. Like Mitzi and Charlie, sometimes the opportunities we are provided are not what we expect or would like for them to be, but the challenge to be faithful will always be the same. Our challenge is to respond to life with a loving heart and trusting soul. Our challenge is to do what we can, in this moment in which we exist, to prepare the way for the Lord. To make God’s path as straight and as smooth and as level as possible.

Our challenge is to repent – to turn away from the wisdom of those who think they rule, and to embrace the wisdom of God – who has shown us what is most essential and who’s kingdom will prevail.

Thanks be to God for this invitation to abide in the kingdom of God while we are living right here – right now.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Heads Up!
Luke 21:25-36

25 “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27 Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 29 Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; 30 as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. 31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 34 “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, 35 like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

It’s not easy for me to know what to do with this apocalyptic language that the lectionary provides for us on this first Sunday of Advent. I mean – I’m a United Methodist. The most dramatic thing I tend to expect is to get reappointed every now and then. But this is the recommended gospel lesson for today, and I’m sure there’s a message within it that we need to hear. While I don’t live in constant expectation of the world coming to an end, and I’ve never known a healthy person who does – I do believe there is such a thing as healthy alertness.

Although I’m not sure how much crazier it is to be watching for the end of the world than it is to live in perpetual hope of finding the best deal on the hottest items. I was struck by the sheer volume of advertising that came in last Thursday’s newspaper. I’m not saying that a good deal doesn’t catch my eye, but I think the stack of advertisements and catalogues that we get this time of the year is a clear testament to what we think is most important. It speaks to how much more oriented we are to the transactions of this world than we are to the interaction of this world with the next.

I know I can be extra-sensitive to the value of a good deal. I was reminded of this last week. I went duck hunting with my son and his friend Max last Tuesday morning, and when we finished we weren’t that far from the Waffle House in Brinkley, so that’s where we reassembled. I ordered my usual waffle and bacon, but after I heard how much more the young guys ordered I decided to add a couple of eggs to my order. I told the waitress what I wanted, and she responded by saying I should go ahead and order the All Star Breakfast which would add toast and grits to my eggs, bacon, and waffle.

I didn’t want toast and grits, but she explained that it would be cheaper to get an All Star Breakfast than to simply add 2 eggs to my order. And it threw me in to a crisis. I don’t like to waste food, but I don’t like to waste money either, and in the heat of the moment I just told her to forget the eggs. And that threw her in to a crisis. In her attempt to save me some money she was going to deprive me of getting what I wanted. We were stuck in this moment of terrible indecision until my son quoted that famous line about a chicken salad sandwich delivered by Jack Nicholson from the movie “Five Easy Pieces”. You may not know what that’s about, and you don’t need to know what that’s about, but when he said that I knew what to do.

I said: I’ll have an All Star Breakfast but hold the toast, and hold the grits. And that made us all happy.

It’s amazing what we’ll do for a good deal. I had driven twenty miles out of my way to get to the Waffle House, but I experienced a crisis that was created by about a $1.50 difference by the way I ordered two eggs. In all honesty I don’t think I’m in any position to talk about the mental health of someone who thinks the end of the world could come at any moment.

We humans can get worked up about the oddest things. Jesus understood that about us and he wanted us to get worked up about the right things. I don’t believe Jesus wanted us to be overly concerned about when God would choose to bring an end to human history as we know it, but he did want us to pay attention to the way we spend our time on earth. I don’t believe he wanted us to live in fear of anything that might transpire on earth, but he did want us to have deep desire to live with sensitivity to how we might live in relationship to God.

Jesus was not one to gloss over the reality that there are some powerful forces in this world to be reckoned with, but he didn’t give conventional advice about how we should deal with circumstances we find distressing, confusing, and outright frightening. You might say that our natural inclination is to keep our heads low when things are not as we like for them to be, but that isn’t what Jesus advised. Jesus said that when things are falling apart all around us we are to lift up our heads because our redemption is near.

It’s safe to keep your head low, and while this does make a lot of sense in many situations it’s probably not the best posture to assume for life in general. You miss things when you’ve got your head buried for protection. There’s a lot to be said for being safe, but for people who want to live life to the fullest extent it’s more important to be conscious than to be safe.

While this passage seems to be point to the eminent culmination of history and ultimate fate of the earth and its inhabitants, the truth is it probably isn’t going to happen before life comes to an end in a more traditional manner. I mean I’m not speaking with any inside knowledge, but you can only read a warning like this for a couple of thousand years before you begin to think the end is not so near – on a cosmic level.

On a personal level that’s another story, and the truth is that the end is near for all of us. None of us know when that will be or what circumstances will surround that moment, but this world is not our eternal home.

And what I hear Jesus saying is that when we’re frightened and distressed it’s more important to perk up than to duck. It’s advice that goes against our natural inclinations, and I guess that’s why it needed to be said. If all any of us had to do was follow our reflexes there would be no need to think about what Jesus or anybody else had to say.

There are times we need to override our reflexes and actually keep our heads up when we normally would be inclined to keep our heads low. I’m sure this had some clear implications for the people who were following Jesus during the first few decades after he was crucified. They were facing some powerful persecution, and his message for them was not to cower down, but to hold their heads up. They were not to understand the difficulty of their days as a sign of abandonment, but as a time to pay attention.

This parable of the fig tree is significant in that a fig tree is said to look particularly dead during the winter months. The followers of Jesus were to understand that new growth is often masked by the appearance of death. The message for people during hard times is not to retreat into despair but to pay attention for that which is certain to come. Jesus wasn’t giving advice on how to best survive threatening situations, but how to understand perilous times.

Jesus wanted us to concern ourselves with the right things and not to live in fear of the wrong things. Jesus wanted us to be people who are clear about the nature of true life, and who are not too attached to the wrong things.

While the immediate followers of Jesus certainly lived in a time of great resistance to their chosen spiritual path, I’m not sure that we face a world that is any less resistant to Jesus’ words and ways. We don’t have the overt persecution that they faced, but our adversary is no less dangerous. In some ways our enemy is even more threatening than the Roman soldiers were to the lives of the earliest disciples. It may well be harder for us to live as Jesus taught than it was for those who faced lethal force. It’s hard for us to understand the magnitude of the threats we face. Our world isn’t out-rightly hostile to Christian faith, but we face some terrible forms of distraction from spiritual truth. It pays well to pay attention to the transactions of this world and to ignore the less visible ways of the spirit.

We are approaching Christmas, and it probably isn’t very nice of me to dwell on these things that threaten our souls during this traditionally joyful time of the year, but the truth is that I didn’t bring it up – Jesus did. The season of Advent is a time of the year that we are to prepare for something good to be born within us, and we are to nurture hope within each other, but we are to be clear about the true source of hope. We are not to live in hope of avoiding all pain and material failure – we are to live with trust in God regardless of what is going on around us.

As we seek to be people who are focused on being alert, I think we have to work at paying attention to the right things. The things that Jesus would call for us to pay attention to are probably different from the things we generally wake up thinking about. I know I get weighed down by the worries of this life, and I don’t think I’m alone. It’s a tremendous challenge for us to be followers of Jesus in a shallow, materialistic, selfish and scared society. I say this with all due love for my fellow Americans, but I don’t sense that we are living in a spiritually developed society – in spite of the number of people in our country who spend a lot of time and money on church matters.

Maybe it’s unfortunate that we don’t feel threatened by the roaring of the sea and the waves. We are probably a little bit too protected from the elements right now, and it keeps us paying attention to the silliest matters, and not being alert to the most essential matters.

The season of Advent invites us to start over. I think it’s helpful to think of Advent as a new beginning for us and a time where we become particularly focused on the true source of hope for our lives. We aren’t people who need to live with fear, but we are living in a spiritually perilous world. We need to understand the things that actually are threatening to our souls, so we can focus our energies on the things that will bring us true joy. We don’t just need to be alert to good deals – we need to be alert to the subtle promptings of the Holy Spirit to give of ourselves in ways that will be truly nurturing to our neighbors and transformative to ourselves.

Keep your head up and watch for those opportunities that lead to life and away from the death-dealing and spirit-dulling ways of this world. God does provide the opportunity for life in the midst of any situation, and thanks be to God for that.

When our worlds are shaking Jesus tells us to take heart – the time of our redemption is near. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Power of Simple Kindness
Genesis 45: 1-15

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. I dare say it’s our best national holiday. It’s not a holiday that belongs to any particular religion or culture – it belongs to everyone in our country. And we need a day like that. We need a day that causes us to pause and to be mindful of our blessings. Clearly some people have more to be grateful for than others, but for the most part there’s nothing divisive about Thanksgiving. I know Thanksgiving has largely turned in to an opportunity to overeat, to nap on the sofa, and to gear up for shopping, but at least we’re all sort of doing the same thing. It’s a good day for our country. It’s a day that highlights kindness and encourages hospitality.

I love the fact that Thanksgiving is rooted in such a good story. In case you’ve forgotten what you learned in elementary school, let me remind you that the tradition of celebrating a day of thanksgiving goes back to the story of how the Pilgrims survived their first year in the New World. The Pilgrims arrived on the coast of Massachusetts in the fall of 1620. According to their own records, they hardly got off the boat that first winter. But those who survived the treacherous Atlantic crossing and the harsh New England winter disembarked in the spring of 1621, and they were soon met by some friendly members of the Wampanoag tribe.

I don’t think these Pilgrims appeared to be much of a threat, but I don’t think anyone would have been surprised if they had encountered hostility from the people Columbus had mislabeled as Indians. Things could have gone badly between them, but they didn’t. The Indians were helpful to the Pilgrims.

One particularly fortuitous turn of events was that the Pilgrim’s ship, The Mayflower, landed near in the neck of the woods where an English speaking Indian named Squanto was living. Squanto had been captured by an English sea captain and sold in to slavery, but he had escaped and had made his way back to America after spending some time in London, and through all of that he had picked up the English language. I guess Squanto’s experience with the English wasn’t all bad because he chose to help the Pilgrims adapt to the new world instead of helping to eliminate them. Consequently, the Pilgrims were much better off when the fall of 1621 came around, and they invited their Wampanoag neighbors to join them in a harvest feast – which we now think of as the first Thanksgiving.

They shared food, and they shared the land for a good period of time. The story of the interaction between the Europeans and the Native Americans got ugly fast in many other ways, but this story of the interaction between the Pilgrims and Wampanoags is a good one. It’s a story that involves a lot of surprising kindness, and stories like that are good to hear. They remind us of the goodness of people, and stories like that serve to extract goodness.

As surely as there are some stories that make us sick – there are these other stories that make us feel better. And we need to hear these good stories. I know my heart has been hurt by so many of the stories that we are seeing on the news lately. There are so many stories of predictable hostility. There is an abundance of hostility in the world today, and it’s hard to see how it’s ever going to be resolved, but it makes me feel better to remember this story of the first Thanksgiving.

Stories are powerful things. They can make us sick, and they can help heal our wounded hearts.

My father didn’t tell a lot of stories. My mother was more of the story teller in our family, but my mother died rather suddenly one year and it left us all feeling pretty devastated. We grudgingly engaged in the business of putting together her funeral service, and out of the blue as we were doing that my father said, You know, there was only one time that Martha threatened to leave me. Well that got our attention, and he went on to tell this story of the time my grandfather (his father) brought an old short-haired bird dog up to our house and tied him to a tree in our yard.

My grandfather was a good man in many ways. I loved having him as a grandfather, but he was not a particularly sensitive person, and he had somehow come across a bird dog that he just expected us to take care of. As my father told the story I remembered the day my mother and I drove up to the house and saw that bird dog tied in the yard. I was probably in about the 6th grade, and I remembered her being pretty quiet as we went in the house. My mother didn’t get loud when she was mad. She got quiet. I remember that we only had that dog for a couple of days, but I never really knew what that was all about until Daddy brought it up as we were sitting there planning my mother’s funeral.

That bird dog wasn’t the first thing my grandfather had imposed upon my parents, but it sort of functioned as functioned as the last straw. Daddy said: Martha told me, “Either that dog goes, or you go!” And then he said: And I didn’t want to go, so I told Tom he had to find somewhere else for that dog to go.

I think that was the first time any of us had laughed since my mother had died, and it was a very healing moment for us. Daddy told me he wanted me to tell that story at her funeral, and I did.

That isn’t a traditionally heartwarming story, but it warms my heart every time I think about it. I think that was the moment my father had to decide who was the most important person in his life, and I think he was proud that he had decided to do what he needed to do to get to stay with my mother.

Stories are powerful things. They can touch us in deep places. Stories of surprising kindness are particularly powerful. I picked this story of the reunion of Joseph to his brothers and his father because it is one of the many stories from our faith tradition that reminds us of how much more powerful it is to be surprisingly kind than to be predictably revengeful.

I think it’s worth noting that Thanksgiving Day wasn’t designated as a national holiday until 1863. It was at the height of the Civil War that President Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation establishing this day as a national holiday and entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.”

It’s good to maintain a grateful heart during times of good fortune, but I think it’s even more important in times of distress to find ways to express a little extra kindness to people who are feeling particularly vulnerable. Thanksgiving isn’t just something to exercise when things are going well for us – Thanksgiving is the hard work we need to engage in when times are hard and relationships are strained.

I’ll be joining all of you good Americans who choose to celebrate Thanksgiving by gorging and napping on Thursday afternoon. That’s a nice tradition that I whole heartedly encourage and practice, but what I know is that the real work of Thanksgiving doesn’t just come when it’s time to clean up the dishes. The work of Thanksgiving comes when you are faced with an opportunity to extend kindness in a surprising manner to someone you may know too well – or to an ailing stranger.

It’s not easy to reach out in a risky way – the way the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims did to each other, but that’s the most fulfilling Thanksgiving tradition that we are called to maintain. And it’s through such acts of costly kindness that we come to experience the greatest sense of fullness. It’s such a good thing to practice courageous kindness. It’s good for your own heart when you do it. And it will help so many more when they hear the beautiful story of what you did when times were hard and hostilities were high.

Thanks be to God for placing the true spirit of Thanksgiving in our hearts and enabling us to live as those who truly understand the power of simple kindness. Amen.

The Story of our King
John 18:33-37

33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” 35 Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” 37 Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

This Sunday doesn’t get the kind of attention that the Sundays of Advent or Christmas or Easter are inclined to get, but in my mind, this is a significant day in the liturgical year. This is the last Sunday of the year, and we call it Christ the King Sunday. It’s sort of like our Coronation Sunday, but it’s known more as the Sunday before the beginning of Advent. It tends to be defined by its relationship to another Sunday. It’s sort of like being known as someone’s brother or sister. Now this isn’t a huge deal. I don’t think our responsibility as Christians is to properly celebrate Liturgical events. God didn’t create the Liturgical Calendar on the eighth day.

But it does come to my attention that this Sunday should be treated as more of a finale’ than a closing out of something that has run it’s course. I’m pretty sure the intention of the liturgical planners was for us to celebrate what we’ve learned and experienced with Jesus over the course of the year. It’s a day for us to make our public profession of who it is that we recognize as our king! I should have asked Andrea to provide us with some fanfare music – the kind of music they play when the king enters the room.

Of course we Americans aren’t so big on kings – at least not the kind of kings that actually have power over us. Elvis was such a powerful presence in our society it was hard for people not to think of him as the King of rock and roll. And I understand he played a few times at the King of Clubs up near Swifton. Cotton was king in this part of the world for a period of time, but it you go to king.com you will find that it is a video game company that has the king and queen of current video games: candy crush & candy crush saga – two games that I have no understanding or experience with.

We still have some talk about kings in this country, but we don’t really understand what life was like under a king. We don’t know about that because this country was largely shaped by people who were tired of living under the rule of a king. I’m not unhappy that we took the bulk of the power out of the hands of one person, but we certainly haven’t eliminated the problem of the abuse of power. We’ve just spread it out among more people.

No, we don’t really understand what it felt like to live under the rule of a king. Living in a kingdom wasn’t always awful for everyone, but it could get awful quickly for anyone who somehow got in the way of the king.

I’m currently very invested in listening to a novel by Ken Follet called World Without End. This is the second of two really long books that I’ve listened to that are set in England in the High and Late Middle Ages. The first book was set around 1150 and the book I’m currently listening to is set around 1350. Now I don’t like to just sit around and listen to a book. I need to be engaged in some kind of mindless activity to justify this time I spend listening to someone read me a book, so I tend to look for opportunities to mow or paint or drive somewhere.

These books are set during times when the king had a lot of control over the way things would go for people. In that world, everything existed for the benefit of the king. This is not to say that there weren’t people who figured out how to manipulate the king in to ruling in a way that helped them, but if you needed for the king to rule in a certain way what you had to do was to convince the King that what you wanted would be to his benefit. It was a brutal system. Basically the king owned everything and everyone that he and his army could control. The priests maintained a little power by reminding the king of his vulnerability after death, but they usually worked together to get what they wanted.

So these novels have sort of put me in touch with the worldview of people who lived under the reign of a king. I’m currently caught up in the lives of Charis, the eclectic nun, Merthyn, the genius architect and his hideous brother, Lord Ralph, who is highly valuable as a brutal soldier for King Edward III. It’s like these people have become my best friends and my worst enemies. I’ve become sensitized to what life was like under an average king.

But life under a king doesn’t have to be all bad – not if you live with Christ as your king. And I wholeheartedly embrace this idea of living with Jesus Christ as my king.

This exchange between Jesus and Pilate is an interesting one. Pilate just comes out and asks Jesus if he was the king of the Jews, but Jesus doesn’t give him a straight answer. He asks him where that question came from. And by doing that Jesus more or less puts himself on the same level with Pilate. People who feel intimidated by the authority of another person don’t ask questions.

And they have this exchange that reveals Jesus to be a king, but not a normal king. Normal kings either fight or negotiate to maintain their lives and their territory, but Jesus didn’t do either one of those things. Jesus identified himself as a king, but as he said, his kingdom is not of this world.

Jesus was a king, but he wasn’t a normal king in any way. Normal kings issue decrees and expect total obedience. Normal kings are always needing more money to finance their castles or their wars, so they always have to figure out who to tax and what rules need to be in place to make sure they can extract as much as possible from the people and the land that they own.

Jesus seems to have only made one decree. It had two parts to it, but it was basically the same message. He said the most important commandment is to love God and to love our neighbors.

Sometimes I just wish he had been more direct with his instructions I wish he had said how many times to pray each day, how to sit when we pray, and exactly how much are we to give. Now I know you’ve all heard that we are to give a tenth to the church, and I’m not saying that’s not a good thing to do. I think we’d probably be floating in money if that’s what everyone actually did, but in all honesty he didn’t make it that easy. The commandment to love God and to love our neighbors requires us to be perpetually vigilant on how we spend our time and money.
When Jesus is your king you can’t just give 10% to the church and let that be it. There’s that child who doesn’t have a coat. There’s that neighbor who needs a kind word. There’s this world that needs people who will speak up for those who are despised and disenfranchised. I wish I could bring myself to say that you only need to give generously to the church and you will have met the obligation that our king Jesus expects from us, but that is only the beginning of what he wants from us.

It’s hard to live with a king like Jesus. He doesn’t send our children to war, but he calls for us to love the very people who cause wars. This is not to say he calls for us to agree with hateful ideologies, but he doesn’t want us to love our own safety more than we want this world to become a better place for all people. And making this world a better place for all people is going to cost us all more than I want to think about.

Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, but I believe he loved this world. He didn’t allow himself to be killed by the rulers of this world in order to abandon this world and to go abide with God in a better world. I believe he gave up his life in the way he did in order to reveal what love really looks like and how powerful it is to give of ourselves in loving ways. He gave of himself in the way he did to reveal what it looks like to abide in his kingdom.

I don’t believe Jesus expects us to bail out of this world as quickly as we can so that we might join him in his kingdom that doesn’t belong to this world, but I do believe Jesus Christ has shown himself to be a king worth serving while we live in this world. And I can’t say that about any of the other kings I know to exist.

None of us are immune from having to show some level of obedience to some system that seems to play an essential role in our world, but there is only one king worth serving with complete allegiance. It’s not easy to sort out how much we have to give to the lesser kingdoms of this world in order to keep ourselves and our families fed and relatively secure, but when it comes down to it I hope we all understand who the King really is – and what we must do to abide in his kingdom.

Thanks be to God that we aren’t just subjects of minor kings in fleeting kingdoms – we have been invited to serve the true king now and forever. Thanks be to God for Christ – our King!!
Amen.

Navigating Calamity
Mark 13:1-8

1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” 2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” 3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” 5 Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.

It seems fitting to consider the dark events of last Friday night in Paris in light of this morning’s scripture lesson. The horror of that situation leaves me somewhat speechless, but I’m compelled to say something about it, and I think what Jesus had to say is good for us to hear. Because Jesus wasn’t unfamiliar with horrible violence. You might even say that the world that Jesus inhabited was largely managed by brute force. The people of Jesus’ day and place were more likely to experience the threat of violent death than we are, but I’m guessing this old problem has always felt surprisingly raw and unwelcome.

People who love God will never be accustomed to violent destruction, but Jesus didn’t want us to let it have the power that it yearns to have. Jesus knew about death and destruction. He knew of natural disasters, he knew of political torture and he knew of war. Jesus also knew how religion sometimes fuels the engines of hateful movements, and he warned us not to go there. He knew there would continue to be great upheaval in this world and that there would always be great opportunity for us to react to the events of this world in a lot of different ways. He knew there would always be somebody with a bold scheme, and he warned us to be careful. It’s easy to lose sight of God in the drama of a desperate moment.

Misguided passion for God has always been a problem in this world. I don’t really know how people reconcile killing innocent people with obedience to God, but I know it’s been going on for a long time, and it’s been a blight within every major religion. I don’t know enough about Islam to know how badly these current murderers have distorted the teaching of Muhammad, but I don’t believe that the mass killing of innocent people is what he intended his followers to do. I don’t know what he actually taught, but I know that there are people who have found their way to God through his teachings, and there are others who use his words to do the most hateful things imaginable.

I don’t know what Muhammad taught, but I know what Jesus taught, and I know there are people who have used his words to do hateful things. It’s easy for good words to get hijacked and used in bad ways. Passion for personal power is often portrayed as passion for God. It’s easy for people to be confused about who they are serving, and Jesus warned us about this. Jesus didn’t want us to be confused.

Jesus didn’t want us to react badly to bad things. He didn’t want us to be overly excited about fleeting things or overly distressed about discouraging things.

When the disciples saw Jesus coming out of the Temple they commented on what a magnificent building the Temple was. I’m sure it was an amazing facility, but Jesus didn’t respond in the way they would have expected. He started talking about its destruction. He spoke of the way in which every one of those amazing stones was going to be thrown down, and he sort of acted like that was going to be a good thing. He wasn’t plotting its destruction, but he wasn’t distressed about its destruction.

It wasn’t that he had no appreciation for good architecture. But what he didn’t appreciate was the way God was being misrepresented by the things that were going on in the Temple, and he was looking forward to the day when God would become less identified with a particular place and more identified with a way of living.

Jesus didn’t confuse magnificent things with the magnificence of God. He didn’t want us to be overly impressed with anything in this world nor did he want us to be overly distressed by the destruction of any thing in this world.

And this is hard. Moments of social upheaval are very threatening to us, and we want clear instructions on what we need to do to regain the security we think we need. Good leadership is a valuable thing during moments of national or personal disaster, but Jesus warned us to be careful about who we chose to follow. It’s amazing how quick some people are to explain what role God is playing in any given disaster. Jesus didn’t want us to be taken in by people who offer easy answers in difficult times.

Of course as soon as Jesus started talking about the trials that were to come the first thing the disciples wanted to hear from Jesus was an easy answer. When they heard Jesus talk about the destruction of the Temple they wanted to know when it was going to happen and what they needed to look for, but Jesus didn’t make it easy for them, and it’s not easy for us.

Jesus anticipated the way in which some people are inclined to take advantage of unfortunate situations, and he didn’t want us to be taken in by those who utilize moments of insecurity to promote their own agenda. I dare say this is exactly what has happened within the Muslim community. False teachers have offered easy answers to complex problems.

I guess you could say this is my overly simplistic analysis of what’s going on in the world today, but what I also know is that there’s not an easy solution to this problem of religious terrorism. I don’t know what needs to happen to reduce tension within the world, but our challenge as Christians is the same that it’s always been. Our challenge is to fully love life and to be fully engaged in this world, but to not be overly reactive to anything that goes on in this world.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have any outrage or remorse about what we see happening in the world, but Jesus didn’t expect for things to be easy for any of us, and he didn’t want us to think that the difficulties of this world are a reflection of what God intends.

Terrible things are going on in this world. Criminals shoot honorable judges in the presence of their children. Terrorists shoot people as they attend concerts or have dinner. Refugees leave everything and risk dangerous journeys in search of safety for their families. Natural and unnatural disasters abound, and it’s probably natural for all of us to try to generate reasons for the difficulties that we face, but Jesus didn’t want us to think that way.

Jesus wanted us to have an attitude of trust in God regardless of what is going on around us. It’s important for us to look to God for comfort and direction as we seek to navigate the trials of this world, but we shouldn’t expect easy answers. What Jesus wanted us to understand is that none of the events of this world compare to the ultimate glory of God. Jesus offered this image of the trials of this world as being like the pain of childbirth.

From what I understand, the pain of childbirth is real, but it’s not futile pain. While much of what we see happening in this world seems very futile I don’t believe it reflects any kind of abandonment from God.

It’s a hard thing to balance our inability to know what’s going on or what to expect with our need to trust, but I believe that is exactly what it means to have Christian faith. We are to love this world, but our ultimate home is the kingdom of God – which extends well beyond the turf on which we currently stand.

I don’t have an easy answer for what we need to do, but it’s easy for me to tell you where to look to find some peace and understanding. Jesus wasn’t confused about what was going on in this world. He fully understood what would go on in this world, and he fully understood God. Jesus knew how to live in this world in perfect relationship with God, and he has invited us to follow him. It’s not an easy path, but it’s the true path, and it’s the path that leads to the place where true peace abounds.

Thanks be to God for being with us in the life of Jesus Christ, and for the light he offers in times of great darkness.

May the light of Christ shine brightly among us. Amen.