The men met for dinner and decided to make this “Brotherhood Dinner” an annual event. Within just a few years, the women of the congregations joined them, and the tradition continued as the “Brotherhood/Sisterhood Dinner.” Over the years, other Nashville congregations were invited to participate, and the inclusion of Catholics and African-American Baptists showed the intention to build bridges where the community at large seemed too comfortable with disinterested coexistence or outright segregation.

For more than sixty years, this dinner gathering was an occasion for many to reflect on the role of faith communities in the fabric of our public life. In recent years, leaders from the Temple (Congregation Ohabai Sholom), St. Henry Catholic Church, First Baptist Church - Capitol Hill, Belmont United Methodist Church, and Vine Street Christian Church realized that our desire to include the Islamic community required some fresh thinking. In addition, we noticed that younger generations were not nearly as eager as their parents to come to the “Brotherhood/Sisterhood Interfaith Banquet.” We wanted to continue the great tradition of coming together to grow in our mutual understanding and to build and strengthen bonds of friendship in our city; but we also knew that new forms had to be found.

For a few years, I had been reading about a young man in Chicago, who was doing excellent work with college-age men and women of many faiths. A couple of times, I had heard him on the radio, thinking, “I wish we could bring this guy to Nashville.” When the congregations of the Brotherhood/Sisterhood Interfaith Banquet were looking for a new form to channel and direct their interfaith passion, I thought the time had come. I called the Interfaith Youth Core, the organization Eboo Patel had founded in Chicago, and learned that his work had gained international attention - bringing him to Nashville would be possible, but the cost was beyond reach for a handful of congregations. Then I learned that Vanderbilt was interested in bringing this recognized interfaith leader to Nashville, and the Elders quickly decided to partner with the university.

Funding from the Roger T. Nooe Lectureship for World Peace made it possible for us to reserve Langford auditorium on the Vanderbilt campus for the keynote event on February 21 (see the poster below). In the morning of that Tuesday, we invited faith leaders from Middle Tennessee congregations and schools to discuss with Mr. Patel how we can continue our work for mutual understanding. We’ll only have breakfast, but to me it will be another course in the banquet of community. Rabbi Mark and Dr. Nooe would be pleased to see what became of their dinner idea.

I hope you will join us for the lecture on Tuesday, February 21, at 7pm, and that you will invite your friends and neighbors. We encourage our members and neighbors to meet at Vine Street at 6:30pm, so fewer vehicles will be used and people with limited mobility can be dropped off near the entrance to Langford auditorium.

This saying is a rather curious way to describe the mission of Jesus, and it is how he himself sees it. He has entered the strong man’s house. Following his baptism, Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan, and now he’s returned, proclaiming the good news of God. He has tied up the strong one, and now he is ready to plunder the house. It may sound like burglary, but in truth it’s an invasion whose purpose is to free those in the house from foreign occupation. Jesus returned from the wilderness not to edify, entertain, or enlighten his audience – as much as we enjoy that – but to liberate us, to set us free from the power of sin, free for life under God’s reign.

Jesus is in the house, and the anxiety level among demons and evil spirits is high. They know him, and they know the purpose of his intrusion: to tie them up and throw them out. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” they shriek. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus is in the house, their time is up, and they know it. No matter how much they cry and whimper, they can neither evade nor resist his authority. Jesus speaks, “Be silent, come out,” and the man is free.

To spread this freedom, throughout all of creation, is the ministry of Jesus. He is not just another teacher or preacher; Jesus is a Holy-Spirit-empowered invader who reclaims the house that has become a playground for demons; he reclaims the place as the home of God’s people. Those who encounter him are astonished, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” This teaching goes way beyond the best of tradition, it goes beyond building on the wisdom and authority of the past for the sake of the future. This teaching is like the voice that spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai. This is new teaching that does not become just another tradition; this is the voice that brings about newness; this is the voice that interrupts the flow of time with the fullness of fulfilment.

Jesus is not just a terrific new teacher. He speaks, and it comes to be; his words bring a new reality into being.

He speaks, and the oppressed are unburdened.

He speaks, and the possessed are unshackled.

He speaks, and the wounded are healed.

He speaks, and sinners are forgiven.

He speaks, and the evil spirits obey.

Jesus is in the house, the reign of God has come near, and it’s hard to say whether it’s songs of angels or the fragrance of new life that fill the air.

The first century world was full of demons and spirits; they regularly interfered in human life, often capriciously. It was common knowledge that they did control human behavior because they were more powerful than human beings. Most of us no longer use this kind of language; our world is not inhabited by demons and other spirit beings. But that doesn’t mean we no longer experience powers in our lives that are stronger than ourselves, ungodly powers that oppress and enslave us.

Some of you know about my friend Ruth who used to think that all those demons-and-spirits-stories in the Bible were just prescientific hocuspocus – until she did an internship with the Salvation Army. She spent time with homeless men on the streets of Hamburg, men whose lives were in the grip of powers they couldn’t escape on their own. Most of them had lost all contact to their families; many struggled with alcohol or drug addictions. And one day it clicked for Ruth.

I know there are all kinds of sociological, medical, and political explanations for the circumstances these men find themselves in. But to most of them it’s a hopeless fight against very powerful demons; they have given up and surrendered. Jesus is the only one who can save them, in a very real way. They don’t need new and better scientific explanations, helpful though they may be; they need people who love them enough to care and face the demons with them. They need to know that there is somebody who hasn’t given up on them and who is stronger than their demons. I know that One, and it’s up to me to embody that hope for them.

I used to think that demons were little more than an imaginative way to understand mental illness or oppressive political systems. But faced with the almost success of the Nazi genocide of European Jews, I keep returning to pre-scientific notions of the demonic. Sure, there are historical factors and political reasons and economic causes and cultural circumstances, but those kinds of explanations can only do the work of trying to grasp what happened from great distance, and to me, such distance feels like betrayal. I need the One who has bound the strong one to help me face the demons.

Robert Lifton is a psychiatrist who conducted interviews with Nazi doctors who had worked in the death camps. He had a conversation about this work with Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor.

We were discussing Nazi doctors—I had begun to interview them and he had observed a few from a distance in Auschwitz—when he posed this question to me: “Tell me, Bob, when they did what they did, were they men or were they demons?” I answered that, as he well knew, they were human beings, and that was our problem. To which Elie replied, “Yes, but it is demonic that they were not demonic.” [2]

In the face of evil, explanations will not do. In the face of evil we need a different kind of knowledge, one that can ground us in the presence of the redeemer. We need the encounter with the living Christ. There is no room in the house for demons and unclean spirits, but they are here because we are here. We need the encounter with the living Christ, because in his presence they become uneasy and frightened and they resist, but he calls them out and throws them out.

He speaks, and it comes to be.

He speaks, and the oppressed are unburdened.

He speaks, and the possessed are unshackled.

He speaks, and the wounded are healed.

He speaks, and sinners are forgiven.

He speaks, and the evil spirits obey.

In his presence, the demonic cannot keep its grip on power.

When we hear the good news, we are set free and drawn into the ministry of Christ. Like Ruth in her work with homeless men, we learn that new and better explanations are important for our understanding of the world, but not sufficient for doing ministry in it. We must seek to embody for others the liberating and healing presence of Christ.

What strikes me as crucial about the witness of the gospel is its two-fold nature: the battle is won; the strong man has been bound—and the results of that cosmic victory are enacted locally, in everyday encounters, face-to-face. God’s love for creation and humankind is not a global, distant reality. God’s love is not like the wind that blows everywhere, but always concrete like the breeze touching a face.

I was reminded of that earlier this week when I listened to a story on the radio. Immigration has been a contentious issue for years, and the debate doesn’t always bring out the best in us. The temperature quickly rises, the tone easily gets shrill, and conversations turn into ugly shouting matches. In this brief radio commentary, Jose Arreola invites us to a better way.

We had to decide whether we were going north or south to get into California. My friend decided it would be best to go south to avoid the big snow storm up north. But south would take us through Arizona. I really really didn’t want to go through Arizona. I got more and more nervous. I felt paralyzed. My friend kept asking me what my problem was. Finally I told him: I’m undocumented.

I came to the United States when I was three with my family. And Arizona had just passed a law that gave police officers the authority to check people’s immigration status. If we got stopped in Arizona, I could be detained and deported.

My friend is white. He comes from a really privileged, upper-class background. He attended a private high school, the Santa Clara University with me – I went on scholarship. Politically he sees things a little differently than I do. We’ve had our disagreements.

He was quiet for a while. Then he barraged me with questions; I answered the best I could. Silence again. Then he told me about his grandfather. How he hadn’t been able to find work in Ireland, so he decided to hop on a fishing boat and get off in New York. He worked as a janitor without citizenship. Now his son, my friend’s father, is a high-ranking bank executive.

The whole time through Arizona my friend drove like 50 miles an hour. He didn’t even want to change lanes. He told me he wasn’t going to lose his best friend. He wasn’t going to let that happen.

The immigration debate became real to my friend in the car that day. We had a very different conversation than the one politicians are having right now. The minute actual undocumented immigrants are included, the conversation always changes.

Now I’m completely open about my status. I’m still afraid. Conversations don’t always go well. And it’s always a risk. But as long I remain in the shadows, I will never really get to know you, and you’ll never really know me.[3]

Jesus is in the house, the reign of God has come near, and the love of God and neighbor is always concrete. Now it’s up to us to help change the conversation. It’s up to us to do our part in casting out the demons.

[1] Mk 3:27

[2] Robert Jay Lifton, Witness to an Extreme Century: A Memoir (New York: Free Press, 2011) p. 240

[3] My Life Is True works with people at the hard edges of the economy to explain, in their own words, a significant experience or a stubborn problem. Then their two-minute personal stories are submitted as public radio commentaries. For more information, visit www.mylifeistrue.org I heard the commentary on Marketplace on January 23  http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/commentary/secret-keeps-man-margins-economy

Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire, a middle eastern super power before the rise of Babylonia and Persia. In Israel, Nineveh was a hated city. Painful experience had turned it into a symbol of sinful and violent oppression. Nahum’s entire proclamation is infused with pain and rage against Nineveh.

Ah, city of bloodshed,
utterly treacherous,
full of violence,
where killing never stops!
Crack of whip and rattle of wheel,
galloping steed and bounding chariot!
Charging horsemen,
flashing swords and glittering spears!
Hosts of slain and heaps of corpses,
dead bodies without number—
they stumble over bodies.
Because of the countless harlotries of the harlot,
the winsome mistress of sorcery, [Nineveh]
who ensnared nations with her harlotries
and peoples with her sorcery,
I am going to deal with you—
declares the Lord of Hosts.[1]

I am going to deal with you; violence for violence. The city must fall. The book of Nahum ends with a question:

All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has not suffered from your constant malice?[2]

In 612 BCE the city was totally destroyed and never rebuilt. For people who are oppressed and abused by brutal regimes, Nineveh’s fall from glory can be a source of hope, and they can draw strength from the greater power of the Lord who declares, “I am going to deal with you,” and brings down the mighty.

The book of Jonah also ends with a question, but the whole book is like a question mark. It begins,

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, “Go at once to Niniveh, that great city, and proclaim judgment upon it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”[3]

But Jonah set out and went West as far as his feet would take him, until he stood on the beach, with his toes touching the waves of the Mediterranean Sea; but it wasn’t far enough. He found a ship going to Tarshish, a port far beyond the horizon, at the end of the world, as far away as he could from the presence of the Lord. Jonah ran away and got on a boat to go where God was not, only to find out that there was no such place. The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea: Jonah was thrown overboard in the storm, and a large fish swallowed him up. And after three days and three nights, the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land – it was the same beach where his adventure at sea had begun. There he was, fish slobber all over him, when the word of the Lord came to him a second time.

“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”

And this time, Jonah went. Not a word about how he felt, what was going through his mind. All we’re left with, all he’s left with is the stark inescapability of God’s presence and call. Jonah went a day’s walk into the city and cried out,

“Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

That’s just eight words in English, five in Hebrew. No sign of passion, neither rage nor fear. No explanation; no accusation; no call to repentance; just this brief pronouncement. And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

Wait a minute! What just happened here? Somebody pinch me, this is unreal! Did I take the wrong exit? This can’t be Nineveh, symbol of wickedness and arrogant oppression!?

No, you wait, Jonah, because it didn’t end there. No, when the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, put on sackcloth and sat in ashes with his people. And then came the royal decree proclaiming a fast in the city, no food or water, only prayers and repentance, and cattle and goats covered with sackcloth, and you may think that’s a little over the top, and it probably was, but everyone in the city, from king to cattle, repented!

“Who knows?” the king wondered. “God may turn and relent and turn back from his wrath, so that we do not perish.”

God saw what they did, how they were turning back from their evil ways. And God renounced the punishment he had planned to bring upon them, and did not carry it out.

And Jonah? Jonah who had just witnessed the most fantastic response any prophet on the face of the earth could dream of, Jonah was grieved. He didn’t like what he saw, didn’t like it at all, and he prayed,

“O Lord! Isn’t this just what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled beforehand to Tarshish. For I know that you are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and ready to relent from punishing these people. Take my life, for I would rather die than live.”[4]

Jonah was very unhappy because his pronouncement of certain destruction had become, in the ears and hearts of his audience, a call to repent from their evil ways; and the king’s careful weighing of possibilities, “Who knows? God may turn” had become reality.

This very curious story ends with a question, and thus it remains open, awaiting our response.

God said, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”[5]

We are quick to identify a city that has become a symbol of evil, violence, and oppression with its people. It doesn’t take much to imagine severe punishment and say with Nahum, “All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you. For who has ever escaped your endless cruelty?” The book of Jonah keeps the door open for a different consideration than the inescapability of punishment. The city is inhabited by human beings, and human beings, as much as they have been shaped by sinful structures, human beings can turn and change. Nineveh, the city of bloodshed, must not remain a paradigm for how the powerful God deals with violent systems in order to bring about true human community. In the curious book of Jonah, Nineveh was spared and allowed to thrive and flourish, because acts of repentance on earth were met by mercy from heaven.

I mentioned earlier that in Scripture, Jonah and Nahum are neighbors, but not next-door neighbors; the wise ones who compiled the books may have thought that the two might clash, and so they inserted Micah between them. And Micah decries injustice and corruption in the cities, he decries oppression and censorship with the passion of Nahum, but he also declares hope, hope gleaned, perhaps from the pages of Jonah.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?[6]

Injustice, arrogance, and covetousness turn every human city into Nineveh, but acts of repentance on earth, who knows, may yet be met by mercy from heaven.

We heard a very short reading from Mark this morning.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

John was arrested because his proclamation was not pleasing to Herod’s ears. But Jesus continued to proclaim the nearness of God’s reign, and he called people to repent. He called people to turn around and start living now with the changes God would bring about to make all things right. None of us want to pretend we know what all these changes might be, but we must start living into the ones we do know, because the time is fulfilled, which is to say there is no better time to wait for. The world continues to be in the grip of sinful powers beyond our control that can make us feel small and helpless: Nineveh is a harsh oppressor, Babylon is a heart-breaking exile, Rome is a violent empire – but rather than wait for their violent demise on a day of divine vengeance, Jesus invites us to live subversively now within these systems as citizens of a better city. That is why we seek to do justice that is steeped in kindness, and we seek to love kindness with passion and humility, and we walk in the company of Jesus lest we forget the power of mercy.

Many surprising things happened that day in Nineveh when Jonah declared that the city would be overturned, and the people of the city decided to turn instead. Ordinary men and women turned away from their evil ways, and – perhaps most surprising of all – the king and the nobles were paying attention, and the people’s repentance, their small acts of turning away from arrogance, injustice, and covetousness, their small acts became the royal decree, the law of the land.

“All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you,” Nahum declared, imagining the world’s applause after Nineveh’s fall. But we dare to imagine the world’s applause after Nineveh’s repentance. We have heard the good news of divine mercy, and we clap our hands.

[1] Nahum 3:1-5a (JPS)

[2] Nahum 3:19 (JPS)

[3] See Jonah 1:1-2

[4] Jonah 4:2-3

[5] Jonah 4:11

[6] Micah 6:8 (NRSV)

On February 21, Dr. Eboo Patel will be in Nashville. In the morning he will meet with interfaith leaders to discuss new approaches to building bridges between the faith communities in our city. He will spend the day in meetings with students and teachers on the Vanderbilt campus, and in the evening he will give a keynote address at Langford auditorium to which the entire community is invited.

This keynote address is the 2012 Roger T. Nooe Lecture for World Peace, and I am pleased about the new level of cooperation that the partnership between Vanderbilt, Vine Street, and Family of Abraham represents. I hope we will continue to work together in seeking new ways to build understanding and strengthen ties of friendship between the many faith groups in our city. 

Members and friends of Vine Street Christian Church will have the opportunity to car-pool to the lecture.

As if to drive home the point that Israel was living in dark times, the narrator tells us that Eli’s “eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see” and “the lamp of God had not yet gone out,” but you can almost see it flickering. Eli was in his nineties. Almost all of his years the old priest had been serving the God of Israel. He had given his life to handling holy things, performing rituals, saying the proper prayers, and listening for the voice and word of God.

Eli had been listening for years. It was not an easy time to listen for the word of God because, as the story says, the word of God was rare in those days. Some may have thought that God’s silence was punishment for their lack of faithfulness. Others must have been quite happy; they didn’t miss that peculiar voice: more time and attention for them and their voices, more room for their aspirations.

Eli went to bed in his room, and I imagine he wasn’t sleeping very well. He was having many sleepless nights because of his sons who had taken over most of the priestly duties. Eli went to bed under the shadow of severe judgment; a man of God had come to him and declared, “Thus the Lord has said, ‘Why do you look with greedy eye at my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded, and honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people?’”

That wasn’t all, but Eli knew what the man was talking about. His sons, the new generation of priestly leadership in Shiloh, had made it a habit to take a cut of every offering, and not just that, they took the best cut of every sacrifice for their personal backyard BBQ. The contemporary term for that type of corruption would be embezzlement. Add to that serious sexual misconduct; everybody in Shiloh and beyond knew what Eli’s sons were doing with some of the female staff.

The old man was troubled by their actions;  he rebuked them for abusing their positions of privilege to enrich and fatten themselves, but he did nothing to stop them. At night, though, he lay awake worrying about the future of his family, the future of the sanctuary, the future of Israel. He went to bed under the shadow of judgment, and in his heart he already knew that things would soon fall apart for him and his priestly family: His sons would die in battle against the Philistines, he would fall from his chair and break his neck upon hearing that the the ark of God had been captured by the enemy, and his daughter-in-law would die giving birth to a boy she named Ichabod, meaning “the glory’s gone.”

Eli went to bed under the shadow of judgment, worried about what would become of God’s people after the glory was gone.

And then the voice of God intruded the darkness, “Samuel! Samuel!” Three times the voice called the boy who was tending the flame in the sanctuary. Three times the boy arose to ask Eli what he wanted. We know it was God calling Samuel, but the boy didn’t, and neither did Eli at first. Discerning the voice of God is no simple matter. Samuel was so used to doing what the old priest told him, it was difficult for him to even imagine that God would speak outside of the sacred tradition he had been practicing, outside of the handling of holy things and the performing of sacred rituals and the saying of proper prayers. But Eli, old Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, old, worried Eli wasn’t completely blind. He finally remembered that the God of Israel was known to do this kind of thing. “Go, lie down,” he said to the boy; “and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

I have long loved this story. Ever since it was first read to me when I was a little boy. I liked it because it was about a kid, a kid I imagined to be like me. I liked it because it showed me that God wasn’t for grown-ups only, but that sometimes God speaks to little ones. I still identify with young Samuel and the slow process of learning to distinguish the voice of God from the busy chatter of anxiety or the authoritative voice of tradition.

I’m not an old man yet, but I am old enough to identify with Eli and his worries about the future. We live in a time of major transitions in the world, in our nation, and in the churches, and with age comes the knowledge of all the things that are no more and the things that are beginning to fade; some of them I won’t miss a bit, but others I know I’ll ache to hold on to and not let go. We worry about the dysfunction in our political institutions, we worry about the economy, we worry about the fractured church and how rare the word of God has become in our time; visions are not widespread.

I love this story because it speaks about a new beginning in the midst of painful endings. The voice of God intruded the darkness. Samuel heard it, but he didn’t know it. Eli knew it, but he didn’t hear it. For the voice of God to be heard and known, the old man and the boy had to come together.

The word of God was rare in those days, but God wasn’t silent. Samuel lay in the darkness and waited, and then the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, and Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” And the Lord spoke and Samuel listened and then he lay there until morning. And in the morning he opened the doors of the house of the Lord like he had so many times before. He opened them wide, knowing that this was a new day, knowing that the Lord was about to do something in Israel that would make both ears of anyone who heard of it tingle. And Samuel began to declare it. The word of the Lord was no longer rare.

As a congregation, we will live through a major transition this year with Julia’s retirement after 36 years as our organist. It’s not a tectonic shift of global proportions, but for us it certainly is a painful disruption at the heart of what we hold sacred and dear. We may find it impossible to imagine worship in this sanctuary without Julia playing the organ, but we know we must. Over the course of just a few weeks, we must learn to bring our sacred traditions and the condensed experience and wisdom they contain into conversation with the new thing God is doing in our midst; over the course of a few weeks we must open our hearts and minds to discover the future God has in mind for us.

I can’t help but hear the story of Samuel and Eli against this background. I am encouraged by its powerful affirmation of God’s presence in all our endings and beginnings, whether large or small. We know that this transition in our worship is small compared to the global changes that effect us is so many ways; but we also know that this very local change is part of larger shifts in our culture and the place of worship in our life. It is good for us to remember that God is not bound to how things used to be nor to how we imagine things ought to be. God is present and at work and speaking in the changes we face, in the beginnings and the endings, and so we can focus on moving forward with trust and attentiveness. God is not bound to the past or the future, but to God’s people. It is good for us to remember that.

When Samuel was asleep in the sanctuary, next to the ark of the covenant, he was there to tend the flame, a small lamp representing the presence of God. The lamp was a witness against the darkness, but it was also a way to carry the fire of the altar from the end of one day to the beginning of the next. A little flame burned all through the night to start the fire again in the morning. Gustav Mahler, the Austrian composer coined a beautiful phrase. “Tradition is the preservation of fire, not the worship of ashes.”

Eli was almost blind when he heard the word of judgment against the priestly tradition he represented, and yet he was blessed to see how God made a way through Samuel for God’s vision and word to be known in Israel. Samuel was young and inexperienced when he encountered the voice of God, but he was blessed to have Eli as a teacher. Each was open to the other, and together they made the word of God heard in a time when it was rare. The fire would continue to burn. It is good for us to remember that in the changes and transitions we are facing.

Whenever we have a baptism here at Vine Street, we say a prayer, and in it we tell the story of life – and a river runs through it:

We give you thanks, Eternal God,
for you nourish and sustain all living things
by the gift of water.
In the beginning of time,
your Spirit moved over the watery chaos,
calling forth order and life.
In the time of Noah,
you destroyed evil by the waters of the flood,
giving righteousness a new beginning.
You led Israel out of slavery,
through the waters of the sea,
into the freedom of the promised land.
In the waters of Jordan Jesus was baptized by John
and anointed with your Spirit.
By the baptism of his own death and resurrection,
Christ set us free from sin and death,
and opened the way to eternal life.
We thank you, O God, for the water of baptism.
In it we are buried with Christ in his death;
from it we are raised to share in his resurrection;
through it we are reborn by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Water is powerful. Water can be chaotic, threatening, and destructive; and water nourishes, sustains, and protects life – in the womb, and the sea, and all over the earth. Water floods and flows, giving life and taking lives. Water is powerful.

A river runs through life from the beginning of creation to the city of God. Today we celebrate that Jesus stepped into that river.

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, and a lot of people from Jerusalem and the countryside were heading down to the banks of the Jordan to listen to John’s preaching and to be baptized by him, confessing their sins. One by one they stepped into the water. They could smell wild honey on John’s breath, they could see the light in his eyes as they said what needed to be said. Then they let his strong, sun-burned arms plunge them beneath the surface, into the silent depth of the old river. Their ancestors once entered the promised land crossing this river; it marked the border between the wilderness and the home of God’s people. The men and women who came to John wanted to be worthy of being counted among God’s people, worthy to live in the land of God’s promise. They prayed that the river would wash away their sins, and that they would emerge from the chilly depth with their lives scrubbed clean, prepared to face the day of the Lord.

Jesus began his ministry where sinners gathered, and he came like the rest of them had come, walking on dusty roads and down to the river’s edge, waiting in line in the heat of the day, and finally stepping into the water to be baptized, like the rest of them. Such a crowd was gathered at the river, you couldn’t have picked him out from the many faces, and the way Mark tells the story, neither could John. Standing in the water, he didn’t realize that his arms were holding the one whose coming he had been announcing. He plunged him beneath the surface, into the cold silence, down into the darkness at the bottom.

As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Water, Spirit, and a voice. As in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth: darkness covered the face of the deep and a wind from God swept over the face of the waters, and God said: Let there be light! And there was light. And God saw that the light was good and called it Day. The beginning of the good news is like the beginning of creation, and it is a new creation: water, Spirit, and the voice of the One who creates, beholds, and names. God saw that the light was good. Earth and sea were good. Plants and trees were good. Sun and moon and stars were good. Fish and birds, cattle, creeping things, and wild animals of every kind were good. God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good. God was delighted. And when Jesus emerged from below the face of the deep, God was delighted. It was a new beginning for the world, a new day.

Mark doesn’t tell us a Christmas story of Jesus’ wondrous birth. Mark is the most economical of story tellers: no genealogy, very little biographical detail; all he tells us is, “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” Everything is pared down to the essentials: Jesus, the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit, enters the water and is himself baptized – acting in radical solidarity with all human beings, disappearing in the deep, not to be washed, but to drown and rise. In his baptism we find the gospel in a nutshell. This is where he comes from and where the heavens are torn apart never to be closed again above the earth.

Listen to this; it’s from a psalm in which God addresses the king: You are my son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession; you shall break them with a rod of iron.[1] Many scholars believe that this psalm used to be recited at the coronation of Israel’s king. It speaks of the king as God’s son, which was a rather common idea among ancient cultures. The voice from heaven doesn’t quote the psalm word for word, but there is enough of an echo for us to hear Jesus of Nazareth being crowned with royal authority.

But the divine voice also echoes another passage of scripture. There is a short poem in Isaiah, where God says, Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.[2] Again it’s not a word for word quote but there’s enough of an echo to let us know that this beloved son is the chosen servant who will bring justice to the earth, and who will not break a bruised reed, nor quench a dimly burning wick. There’s enough of an echo to let us know that this is the one “given as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.”[3] 

Jesus is the servant king who rules not with an iron rod but with words of authority and deeds of healing. He is a king in solidarity with his people, the chosen servant who entered the river with us. He is in the water with us, disappearing in the deep, not to be washed, but to drown and rise. He is in the water with us, to bring to an end all that keeps us from abundant living and make a new beginning.

When we are baptized into Christ, we die with him and rise into newness; his life becomes our life, his story our story, his way our way. We emerge from the waters assured of our identity as God’s beloved sons and daughters, assured of our kinship with God and with each other and with all those on the river banks hoping for a new beginning. The Son of God came that we might know who and whose we are, know it not just in our minds, but hear that voice in our proud and fearful hearts, “You are my child, my beloved, my delight.” No matter who you thought you were before you were immersed in the death and life of Christ, remember this, I have made you my own.

Many of you know Janet Wolf; she used to serve as the pastor of Hobson UMC over in East Nashville. Years ago, the story has been told many times, a woman named Fayette found her way to Hobson. Fayette lived with mental illness and without a home. She joined the new member class, and the conversation about baptism especially grabbed her imagination. During the class, she would ask again and again, “And when I’m baptized, I am…?” And the class learned to respond, “Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.”

“Oh, yes!” she would say, and then the class could go back to their discussion. This is how Janet describes the day of Fayette’s baptism.

Fayette went under, came up spluttering, and cried, ‘And now I am…?’ And we all sang, ‘Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ she shouted as she danced all around the fellowship hall.

Two months later, Janet received a phone call. Fayette had been beaten and raped and was at the hospital. Janet writes,

I could see her from a distance, pacing back and forth. When I got to the door, I heard, “I am beloved...” She turned, saw me, and said, “I am beloved, precious child of God, and...” Catching sight of herself in the mirror—hair sticking up, blood and tears streaking her face, dress torn, dirty, and rebuttoned askew, she started again, “I am beloved, precious child of God, and…” She looked in the mirror again and declared, “…and God is still working on me. If you come back tomorrow, I’ll be so beautiful I’ll take your breath away!”[4]

Fayette’s story breaks my heart, but I am in awe of how she clung to her identity as a precious child of God. She had been in the heart of the sea, and the waters raged and roared and the waves overwhelmed her violently, body and soul, but by the grace of God she remembered.

The Son of God came that we might know who and whose we are, and know it not just in our minds, but hear that voice in our broken and wounded hearts, “You are my child, my beloved, my delight.”

[1] Psalm 2:7-8

[2] Isaiah 42:1

[3] Isaiah 42:3-7

[4] Janet told the story in Disciplines 1999 (The Upper Room). I stumbled upon it in Jan Richardson’s blog, The Painted Prayerbook

The astronomer in that interview mentioned that our New Year’s Day is totally random, astronomically speaking. It has no relation whatsoever to the moon or the sun or the stars. He then mentioned that as a graduate student he once spent an entire New Year’s Eve party locked in a closet by himself, in protest against the sheer arbitrariness of the occasion. I don’t know if his name happened to be Sheldon, but I hope somebody brought him a glass of champagne at midnight and gave him a kiss.

Anyway, when I think of New Year’s, a scene from Forrest Gump comes to mind, where Forrest, Lieutenant Dan, and two girls are celebrating New Year’s. They’ve had a few drinks, and the party is winding down, when, during a long moment of silence, one of the girls sighs, “Isn’t New Year’s great? One gets to start all over. Everybody gets a second chance.” She’s right, of course. The date for New Year’s may be completely random, but it’s good to celebrate beginnings, and even better to raise a glass to second chances. Grateful for the gift, we make promises to ourselves: to eat better and spend more time with the kids; to make our bed every morning and pick up our dirty socks; to text less and talk more.

New Year’s is great. One gets to start all over, and everybody gets a second chance. We leave the old year behind in the archives and step into the new era of possibility and promise. Now perhaps you think you are detecting a mocking undertone in what I’m saying; you may think I’m just making fun of new year’s resolutions we can’t even keep till February, but I’m not. Perhaps you are saying to yourself, “The year may be new, but we are not, we’re just another year older; and before the week is over, we’ll be back in our old, familiar routines.”

I don’t see it that way. I refuse to see it that way, although there is plenty of evidence to justify a little jadedness.I refuse to see it that way, because we just celebrated Christmas. We just celebrated the birth of Jesus. We just received anew the good news of great joy that to us a child is given who is God’s saving interruption of all our tired and deadly routines. We live in a new day, not because Earth has completed another course around the Sun, but because Christ is born, because the Sun of Righteousness is risen.

I love that this year New Year’s Day falls on the first Sunday after Christmas. We begin the year, not with heavy burdens of self-imposed resolutions, but with the gift of this child.

Luke tells us that Jesus’ parents brought him to Jerusalem to the temple to present him to the Lord, and Luke takes us along. We meet Simeon, a righteous and devout man, who has spent his years looking forward to the consolation of Israel. And we meet Anna, a widow of great age, who has devoted most of her life to worship.

Anna is there because that’s where she has been, night and day, ever since her husband died. Simeon is there because he followed the guidance of the Holy Spirit who had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. We meet two old people who have shaped their lives around the promise and presence of God.

Outwardly they are bent by the years; climbing stairs demands all their strength and they must stop several times to catch their breath; their swollen joints hurt, and when Ruth says, “Getting old is not for sissies!” they smile, “No kidding!”

Outwardly they are bent by the years, but inwardly they live on tiptoe. They are open with anticipation, attuned to hear and see what God is doing in the world. For them, life and fidelity have become one. And when Mary and Joseph bring their child to be dedicated, Simeon takes him in his arms, he praises God and declares that now he is ready to die in peace. His arms are cradling God’s salvation, the good news for all people; his eyes have seen a light for revelation to the nations and for the glory of Israel.

David Steele was a Presbyterian minister and writer, and he wrote a little poem about Simeon that begins with a reference to yet another preacher.

This preacher
Claimed scholarly research had documented
That Simeon,
Of Simeon and Anna,
Had pronounced the very same blessing
(The one in Luke 2:27-35)
Over all the babies presented to him in the Temple
Those final years of his life
[…]

He was pulling my leg, of course.

But when I read the blessing
And thought about it,
I began to wish he was right
About Simeon … and those babies.
And I began thinking about our babies.
And I wished someone,
Some Simeon,
Might hold my grandbabies high … and yours …
The born ones and the not yet …
Proclaiming to them with great conviction,
“You are the saviors of the world!”
Meaning it so absolutely
Those young’uns would live it,
And love it,
And make it happen! [1]

Now before you wrinkle your brow with suspicion of blasphemous levity and complain about poetic license gone too far, think about it. Don’t you wish every child dedicated in our sanctuary would live as a light to the world and to the glory of God’s people? Didn’t Jesus say as much when he said to the disciples, “You are the light of the world! Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”[2]

Don’t you wish some Simeon or Anna would hold up every child on earth and recognize the promise of God and declare it with praise? Don’t you wish every old man and woman would recognize the Christ in every boy and girl? I do, and I believe it is happening. It happens with those whose hopes and expectations have been shaped by the promises and presence of God. Faithfulness in prayer and study (Anna) help us become attuned to what God is doing in the world. Openness to the prompting of God’s Spirit (Simeon) helps us be in the right place at the right time to witness the presence of Christ.

With the birth of Jesus we celebrate God’s way of interrupting the world’s tired routines with new life that has the power to completely transform us and change the world. Simeon and Anna were shaped profoundly by the promises of God and hence by a story that was yet to be completed. Their hope and fidelity prepared them for a joyful, face-to-face encounter with God’s Messiah. Living on the other side of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we see the story yet to be completed in the light of Christmas and Easter; and our wonder at the power and love of God is even greater than what Simeon and Anna could have imagined.

So how can we not add our voices of praise and blessing to theirs on this new day after Christmas? How can we not ask them to show us how to live in anticipation and hope every new day? How can we not ask them and the other Annas and Simeons among us to help us attune our senses and our souls to God’s unfolding redemption?

This is no day for burdening ourselves with resolutions. This is the day for recognizing the salvation of God.

[1] David Steele, The Next Voice You Hear: Sermons We Preach Together (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1999) p. 46

[2] Matthew 5:14-15

It may not be a great idea for a preacher to tell a bed time story during worship. Some of you may already be on the verge of dozing off, and all you need is a few moments with a soothing voice to gently take you to the land of dreams. I’m not going to worry, though; this is a fine story, and if it is the last thing you hear before you go to sleep, so be it.

Little Nutbrown Hare was going to bed. He held on tight to Big Nutbrown Hare’s very long ears. He wanted to be sure that Big Nutbrown Hare was listening.

“Guess how much I love you”, he said.

“Oh, I don’t think I could guess that,” said Big Nutbrown Hare.

“This much,” said Little Nutbrown Hare, stretching out his arms as wide as they could go. Big Nutbrown Hare had even longer arms. “And I love you this much,” he said. Hmm, that is a lot, thought Little Nutbrown hare.

“I love you as high as I can reach,” said Little Nutbrown Hare.

“I love you as high as I can reach,” said Big Nutbrown Hare. That is very high, thought Little Nutbrown Hare. I wish I had arms like that.

Then Little Nutbrown Hare had a good idea. He tumbled upside down and reached up the tree trunk with his feet. “I love you all the way up to my toes,” he said.

“And I love you all the way up to your toes.” said Big Nutbrown Hare, picking him up by his paws and swinging him up over his head.

“I love you as high as I can hop!” laughed Little Nutbrown Hare, bouncing up and down.

“And I love you as high as I can hop,” smiled Big Nutbrown Hare – and he hopped so high that his ears touched the branches above. Thats good hopping, thought Little Nutbrown Hare. I wish I could hop like that.

“I love you all the way down the lane as far as the river,” cried Little Nutbrown Hare.

“I love you across the river and over the hills,” said Big Nutbrown Hare. That’s very far, thought Little Nutbrown Hare. He was almost too sleepy to think anymore. Then he looked beyond the thornbushes, out into the big dark night. Nothing could be farther than the sky.

“I love you right up to the moon,” he said, and closed his eyes.

“Oh, that’s far,” said Big Nutbrown Hare. “That is very, very far.” Big Nutbrown Hare settled Little Nutbrown Hare into his bed of leaves, leaned over and kissed him good night. Then he lay down close by and whispered with a smile, “I love you right up to the moon – and back.”[1]

This is a wonderful story about being little and being loved. We read it to our children and grandchildren, and they know it’s about them and us – nobody needs to explain it to them. They know more about being little than we can remember, and they learn to love from being loved. We all do.

It doesn’t say in the story if Big Nutbrown Hare is Little Nutbrown Hare’s dad or grandpa or big brother, because it doesn’t really matter. Big Nutbrown Hare could be Little Nutbrown Hare’s mom or grandma or big sister or auntie. What matters is that every little one needs somebody big who loves them right up to the moon and back. Every little one needs somebody big who is there when they go to sleep and when they wake up. We all do.

We need somebody who’s there when we’re hungry or cold or frightened or proud of what we’ve done. Somebody who holds us when we need to be held and watches over us when we begin to move out into the world. Somebody who tells us the names of the animals and sings us to sleep. Somebody who hears us when we cry and comes to wipe the tears from our face.

Calin knows that. Calin is a little boy who is curious about many things; he asks great questions, and he gladly shares his observations about life. Calin says, “Everyone needs a mommy.” Everyone; there is no exception. People are different in so many ways, but this is something we all have in common. Everyone needs a mommy.

Everybody, of course, has a mother and a father, but that’s just simple biology. In order to thrive and flourish, though, and be fully alive, everyone needs to grow up under the loving gaze of a parent or, better yet, two, and aunts and uncles, grandparents and siblings and good friends and neighbors. Calin is little, but he can already imagine that life must be very, very hard for little ones without somebody big who loves them right up to the moon and back.

One day, just a few weeks ago, Calin had a big question. I don’t know when it came up. Was it after he had just finished brushing his teeth? Or was it in the car on the way to soccer practice? I imagine it came out of the blue after he had thought about it for a while: “Why doesn’t God have a mommy?”

Grown-ups know lots of things about God, simply because they’ve been around for a long time and have learned all kinds of interesting stuff and pondered deep questions. Grown-ups know that God is the very life of life, without end or beginning. Grown-ups know that God is the one mystery that is greater than all the mysteries of time and life. They know that God is the source and the ground and the goal of all things seen and unseen. Grown-ups know that God doesn’t need a mommy because God is not born, and God is never alone or hungry or afraid. Grown-ups walk along the edge of what words can express like artists on a tightrope, groping for words that will allow us to speak about God without putting God into a box.

Calin has picked up some of that time-tested knowledge, at home, in Sunday school, in worship – bold words about God – and he responds with what he knows. Mommy and Daddy were among the first words he learned because those names captured so much of his world. He knows how much he depends on them and their love for him, and he thinks about it, and – this is the most remarkable thing to me – he refuses to imagine a world where anyone would be without such loving attention and care. His question reflects more than curiosity about his world; it reflects kindness and compassion and the desire that everyone should receive what they need. Because we know Scripture and the testimony of generations, we know that Calin’s question is a godly one, one that reflects the will and character of God: Everyone needs somebody to love them right up to the moon and back.

Rather than give Calin one of the grown-up answers, we first need to tell him what a wonderful question he has asked; he knows in his heart the care and loving attention God has for all things great and small. Then perhaps we tell Calin that God is so great with love that even mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, and all grown-ups can be little ones with God, like one big family where everyone belongs and everyone receives what they need. And then we tell him and all our children that God knows very well what it’s like to have a mommy. We tell them the story of Jesus.

Jesus was as little and vulnerable as all of us are at birth. He didn’t grow up in a big, fancy house, but his mom and dad loved him. He climbed into their lap and loved listening to their heartbeat as much as any little boy or girl. They taught him to talk and walk, to sing and pray, and they told him bedtime stories. When he was sad or hurt, they comforted him. When he was sick, they sat next to his bed. And at least once a week, they made his favorite breakfast.

God is great with love, but God knows what it’s like to be little. God knows what it’s like to be hungry and thirsty and cold. God knows what it’s like to be sad and afraid and alone, but God is great with love.

One day, Jesus was the loneliest anyone would ever be. He carried all that frightens us; he carried all our meanness and hardness of heart and the loveless things we do to each other and to ourselves; he carried it all. And when he closed his eyes he didn’t smile. But God whispered, “I love you right up to the coldest and darkest place in the universe – and back.”

Because of Jesus God knows what it’s like to be little; because of Jesus we know just how great with love God is. Because of Jesus we know that nothing in life is more important than that we love each other well. So tell the story, sing the songs of love divine, all loves excelling, coming to make its humble dwelling in us; and have a merry Christmas, everyone!

[1] Sam McBratney, Anita Jeram, Guess How Much I Love You

I’d say the best way churches can serve as peacemakers is by being as faithful as they can in their prayers and their service, and by letting the sad reality of division and mutual exclusion bother us again and bother us enough to reach across the barren lands of tolerance between us. It is good that we no longer burn each other as heretics, but it is not good enough. Peace is not the mere absence of violent conflict or persecution; peace is the fullness of life that emerges when relationships are made right.

We heard lines from Psalm 85 today, a beautiful piece of Hebrew writing. I remember well when I first heard verses 10 and 11, I was a teenager.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.

I was a teenager when I first heard these lines, and I was deeply troubled by the lack of righteousness I had begun to see in the world.

I was upset that small farmers in Africa were losing their land and livelihoods, so that agro businesses could grow green beans for export to Europe.

I was upset that governments in the U.S. and Europe were burning corn and dumping vegetables in the ocean to keep commodity prices from falling while people in other parts of the world were starving.

I was upset that the CIA arranged for the toppling of a democratically elected government in Chile to replace it with Pinochet’s military junta.

I was upset that German banks and manufacturers continued to do business in South Africa when the injustice and violence of apartheid was no secret.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

I heard those words and I saw the embrace, and the image never left me. When I think of relationships made right, I think of these verses from Psalm 85 where the pillars of God’s covenant loyalty become a promise for us.

Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.
The Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.

When I think of the world at home, I think of these verses that sing, “All will be well.” All will be well between heaven and earth, between God and humankind, between individuals and nations, between people and the land. All will be well.

The psalm doesn’t begin with that serene sense of peace, though; it begins with memories. It begins in a place where God’s redemptive actions in the past are remembered, and are needed again, now. The tone is rather demanding:

Lord, you were favorable to your land;
you restored the fortunes of your people;
you forgave the iniquity of your people;
you pardoned all their sin;
you withdrew all your wrath;
you turned from your hot anger –
Restore us again! Show us your steadfast love!
Life is not the way it’s supposed to be and we need you to do something about it. Will you not revive us again?

The words come from a place where God’s redemptive actions in the past are remembered, but are needed again, now. And after this long outburst of need and insistent questioning and persistent demand, suddenly the voice and tone change.

There is a moment of silence, a long moment of listening, and a single voice says,

“Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people.”

A single voice calls us to listen for the voice and word of God, confident that God will speak peace to the faithful, confident that God’s salvation is not far away but at hand for those who fear God. Nothing in the psalm indicates how long the moment of listening lasts – a day, a year, a generation? And then there is this burst of beauty and imagination, of promise and trust:

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.

The world will come to be the world God intends, a communion of shalom. All will be well between heaven and earth, between God and humankind, between individuals and nations, between people and the land. All will be well.

We are in Advent. We are in a time of waiting and watching, a time of staying alert and preparing to receive, again. We know something of redemption and of this God whose covenant faithfulness has been attested by generations of God’s people, and we wait for God to come again and speak peace.

Our life in the world is one of dispute and conflict, of juggling divisive issues and keeping violence at bay, and we wait. We are in Advent and we lean forward expectantly, because the world is under promise: All of creation is headed for God’s shalom.

Perhaps the most fruitful way for us to serve as peacemakers is to remember that God calls us to faithful relationship with God and with each other and with all our fellow creatures; and to remember in the ensuing debate over just how to do that, that the fullness God intends for us is not something some of us have and others don’t, but rather something we can only receive together.

Mother Teresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” We may prefer hanging out with the people who are like us. We may prefer talking with the people who think like us. We may prefer worshiping with the people who share our theology or our taste in music. We may prefer living in little tribes of conformity, but all we are doing is confirm our amnesia: we have forgotten that we belong to each other. We have forgotten that the fullness God intends for us includes the people who aren’t like us, who don’t think like us, who don’t share our theology or our musical taste or our political views.

I had a conversation with a group of divinity students at Vanderbilt last week. They told me how difficult it is to put one’s theological hunches into words when everybody in the room comes from a different background – how it can be both exhilarating and very frustrating. How you have to explain so much more and be really careful about what you say about the eucharist. You don’t want to offend a fellow student who may come from a non-sacramental tradition but rather help her hear what you found to be true and how you found it.

I listened and I nodded a lot, yes, it is difficult to do theology in an environment like that. “It was much easier when I went to div school. We were all white, we were all protestants, and the entire faculty was protestant and white and mostly male. I wish I had had the opportunity to study New Testament with a Jewish woman. I wish I had had the opportunity to study with Catholics, Mennonites, and Pentecostals. When we discussed the theology of the Lord’s Supper, we thought it was great fun laughing at Catholic sensibilities and teachings. It was easy enough, there were no Catholics in the room. At the end of my time in seminary, we met for a weekend with a class of candidates for the priesthood from a Catholic seminary. The conversation changed in an instant. We suddenly realized how little we had actually thought about the doctrines we had learned to repeat, because nobody had challenged our thinking.”

Mother Teresa had it right, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Peacemaking begins with reaching across the barren lands of a tolerance that is nothing more but a mask for our ignorance, our fear, or our lack of interest. Peacemaking begins with listening to the voice and the voices we have excluded, intentionally or not. It may be the voice of spouse or a child, the voice of a Muslim neighbor or a pro-life co-worker or the old woman who never makes eye-contact. Peacemaking begins with the invitation, “Tell me your story.”

Things are far from how they’re supposed to be, and yet God’s salvation is near. We are in Advent. We are in a time of waiting and watching, a time of staying alert and preparing to receive, again. God’s covenant faithfulness has been attested by generations of God’s people, and we wait for God to come again and speak peace.

We are in Advent. We await the divine gift of a human community that will perform its life according to the will of the Giver of life. We practice kingdom living one relationship at a time. We practice leaning forward expectantly, because the world is under promise.

I smiled when I heard this on the radio, and I could see her walking along the edge of the woods, her eyes on the ground, fully absorbed in noticing and naming unique and spectacular little green things most of us would call weeds, or maybe wildflowers on a good day.

Attention is a strange and wonderful thing. The things I do attend to can so completely absorb my senses that I forget about time and everything else. And the things I don’t attend to in a sense don’t exist, at least not for me. We say we “pay attention,” suggesting that, when we are attentive, we are spending limited currency that should be wisely invested. We select a portion of all that’s there, and this thin slice of life becomes part of our reality, and the rest is consigned to the blurry margins and the shadows of oblivion.

Attention’s selective nature enables us to comprehend what would otherwise be chaos. We live in daily noise, some more so than others; we move through jungles of thoughts and ideas; we are drenched in feelings, constantly exposed to images; and attention allows us to protect our minds from overload and make our world from all that is happening.

About five years ago, the Washington Post published a great article. It was about a man playing the violine outside the Metro.

A youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was just before 8am on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, this violinist performed six classical pieces, and more than 1000 people passed by. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade was Joshua Bell, one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the greatest music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.

His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities – as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would great art have the power to disrupt the ordinary, hurried routines of passersby?

The musician played masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, including Bach’s Chaconne for solo violine, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.

The acoustics in the arcade proved surprisingly kind. The stone, tile, and glass somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician’s masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang – ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.

The writer apparently was paying attention, but what about the commuters?

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run – for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look. Now, if a great musician plays great music but no one hears, is it still great and beautiful art or is it just more noise on a busy Friday morning?

Bell said, “At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.” This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.

Before he began, Bell hadn’t known what to expect, and he was nervous. “It wasn’t exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies; I was stressing a little (…) When you play for ticket-holders, you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I’m already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don’t like me? What if they resent my presence ...” [1]

It’s not that they didn’t like him, they simply didn’t hear him. For the vast majority of commuters that Friday morning Joshua Bell’s music was only part of the background while their minds were focussed on getting their kids to school before work or how to impress their boss with a presentation later in the day.

American Philosopher William James wrote in 1890, “Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalisation, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.”[2]

Attention allows me to focus on some things and filter out others; it distills the vastness of all that is into my world – and that means I must make choices. And making choices requires effort. And sometimes – too often, I’m afraid – I just take the lazy way out and drift along, and I squander precious currency on whatever happens to capture my awareness. Some of us like to blame technology for our diffused, fragmented state of mind, it’s the internet, it’s the cell phones, it’s texting and social media, but our seductive machines are not at fault. They each come with a power button.

Attention implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. Thus the question is solely what it is we want to deal with, and that defines how often, how long, and how far we withdraw from other things.

I am talking about attention this morning because I believe it is at the heart of the question you asked me to address.

When we look back in history, we can see that dictators like Hitler were bad and we wonder why Christians didn’t stand up sooner to save the people. What about nowadays? When do we know to act, what to do? Where is our collective power?

When I first saw this question, my eyes skipped several words and jumped to “Hitler,” and I felt the pain and guilt and shame connected to that cursed name. I thought about the terror of those years, the unimaginable murder of Jews on an industrial scale, the war mongering, and how it all began in the hearts of human beings and with thoughts and words.

When we look back we can see… but the question that has haunted me since I started asking questions about my family, my people, my culture, my church, the question that I can’t answer is, why didn’t more people see when they didn’t have to look back? What was it they were paying attention to when they weren’t paying attention to the persecution of their neighbors? What were they paying attention to earlier when they weren’t paying attention to the transformation of public discourse into hate speech?

A pastor in Silesia, one of the many who had swallowed the junk food of so-called race theory and of Arian superiority, of German Christians and of “the Jewish question,” this pastor, this shepherd of his people, stood in the pulpit one Sunday morning and told the members of the congregation who didn’t qualify as Arian under the race laws, he told them to get up and get out – three times he told them, and we wonder why they didn’t all stand up and leave, we wonder why they didn’t all stand up and walk out together and leave him alone in his house of lies.

Then there was movement at the front of the sanctuary. There was a cross above the communion table, front and center, and the crucified Jesus came down from it and walked out, saying, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

What about nowadays? When do we know to act, what to do? I don’t know, what are you paying attention to?

Jesus points to the marginalized, the poor, and the suffering ones and says, “Can you see me now?”

Ezekiel, after lamenting the fall of the holy city, utters his severe indictment against the political class,

“Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals.”[3]

In a tradition of obligation that begins at Sinai, God’s covenant people are meant to be a community that is preoccupied with the well-being of the neighbor, and a community that is prepared to exercise public power for the sake of the neighbor, particularly the vulnerable neighbor in the person of the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant. Ezekiel insists that power cannot be sustained or give prosperity or security, unless it is administered with attention to the well-being of all who have little or no power. And Jesus asks, “Can you see me now?”

Everything depends on what we pay attention to. The real world in which God invites us to live is not the one made available by the rulers of this age, the masters of distraction, the peddlers of the simple answer, and the manipulators of our fears. The real world in which God invites us to live emerges when we let the good shepherd guide our attention, shape our imagination, and give us the courage to act.

[1] See the full article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

[2] William James, The Principles of Psychology, Chapter XI: Attention

[3] Ezekiel 34:2-5; the readings of the day were Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 and Matthew 25:31-46