Salt and light

“You are the salt of the earth.” Jesus says it like he fully expects us to know what he means. But we don’t; his assertive pronouncement makes us wonder, and perhaps that’s the point.

“You are the salt of the earth.” It’s a statement of fact, an affirmation. Jesus doesn’t say, “You must be the salt.” It’s not a matter of trying. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in The Cost of Discipleship, “It is not for the disciples to decide whether they will be the salt of the earth, for they are so whether they like it or not, they have been made salt by the call they have received.”[1]

We love the taste of salt, it’s in our genes. Our bodies crave it, because they cannot function without it. In addition to helping maintain the right balance of fluids, salt helps transmit nerve impulses, and it allows our muscles to work properly. Unrefined salt contains just about everything you find in a bottle of Gatorade, except artificial color and flavor. Unrefined salt is a convenient package of sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium, as well as other vital minerals. It is as though we carry in our bodies an ancient memory of the sea, and as long as we have a tiny dose of the ocean in us, we thrive. Salt is in our blood, sweat, and tears. “You are the salt of the earth” — does he mean essential like that for the world’s wellbeing?

Salt has been, for thousands of years, one of the most widely-used food preservatives, especially for meat and fish. The ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians traded salt fish and salt from North Africa throughout the Mediterranean, and salt roads crisscross all continents, except Antarctica. The soldiers in Rome’s armies were paid with salt allotments, called salaria in Latin, and many of us still work for a salary. Salt was precious, and pressed into cakes it was one of the earliest currencies in the world. Salt has been a crucial ingredient in just about all known human cultures, and it is no surprise that it gave rise to a variety of symbolic uses.

Because of its use as a food preservative, salt came to represent permanence and protection. In ancient Israel and among its Near Eastern neighbors, a pinch of salt was eaten by the parties to agreements and treaties. Sharing salt expressed a binding relationship. In Israel’s scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, the expression “covenant of salt” illustrates the permanent nature of God’s covenant with God’s people. We talk about “rules written in stone” or “iron laws,” but God’s covenants are “covenants of salt,” based in a living relationship of partners who have bound themselves to each other.[2] “You shall not omit from your grain offering the salt of the covenant with your God,” we read in Leviticus, “with all your offerings you shall offer salt.”[3] There certainly was the notion that salt would purify the gift to make it acceptable as a sacred offering, but the pinch of salt served as a reaffirmation of covenant fidelity.

The preservative power of salt may have been the reason behind its becoming the substance of choice to ward off evil forces in general. I remember a grandmother on the Italian side of our family, who would throw a pinch of salt over her left shoulder, muttering a well-worn prayer whenever she felt she needed to keep the devil away. Cultural anthropologists are quite confident that mothers began rubbing their newborn babies with salt thousands of years ago to protect them against evil spirits, as mothers and midwives continue to do to this day in many parts of the world. But I can’t help but wonder — when a mother in Israel rubbed her infant with salt, didn’t she also rub that little one, head to toe, with the covenant promises of God? She may have put a grain of salt on her child’s lips to keep evil out, but didn’t she also do it to give her little one a taste of God’s faithfulness? I like to think she did, and that salt — that wondrous, precious substance — never meant just one thing, but gained ever new layers of meaning, from generation to generation. There still is an expression in modern Arabic, “there is salt between us,” meaning, “we are like family, we are close friends.”

Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth.” He says it to those who have been summoned to follow him on the way of grace; and he says it right after declaring, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Our following him on the way will evoke rejection and defamation, he says, even persecution — and he tells us to rejoice, because we are on the way with him. “You are the salt of the earth,” and for ages his followers have heard him affirm, You are precious. You are essential. You bring healing. You add flavor and zest to the world. You embody divine hospitality and friendship. The earth cannot be without you. We may feel like there’s nothing wrong with adding a little religious icing to the world’s cake, but he tells us what we are: the salt of the earth. Not sugar, not syrup, but salt. A community of followers that adds a particular, essential quality and flavor. People whose life together is vital for the wellbeing of the earth.

You are the salt of the earth. We live in a culture that is incredibly creative, but more and more of our collective attention seems to revolve around consumption and entertainment, and not around building strong communities. There is plenty of hostility toward the gospel that calls us to live as members of one household, and in our context, none of it comes in the form of outright persecution. It’s more like an endless loop of commercials: friendly faces, beautiful images, great music, and clever lines inviting me 24/7 to believe that life really is all about me. We are surrounded by powerful alternatives to covenant living, and we are constantly being enticed to embrace them—rather than living our lives as those who have been summoned to follow Jesus. Rabbi Shai Held commented on today’s passage from Isaiah:

So much of human religiosity comes down to a hoax we try to perpetrate on God. ​We’ll give You worship​, we say in effect, ​and You just mind Your own business. Your place is the church, the synagogue, or the mosque; butt out of our workplaces and our voting stations. You’re the God of religion, not politics or economics.

And God laughs. ​If you want to worship me,​ God says, ​you’re going to have to learn to care about what I care about—and who. And as the Bible never tires of telling us, God cares about the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden. If those people don’t matter to us, then God doesn’t really matter to us either. That’s Isaiah’s message.[4]

Isaiah reminds us that God desires a people who undo the knots of injustice and break the yokes that are keeping their neighbors from walking erect, a people who share their bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into the house and clothe the naked — instead of worrying, Jesus adds, about what they will eat or drink or wear.[5]

In our world, the forces of privatization and fragmentation are winning against the social solidarity implicit in covenantal faith. But God’s imperatives speak against selfish preoccupation with our own needs and passions, declaring again and again that we are members of one another. And it’s not only God’s imperatives. Jesus addresses us in the indicative, “You are the salt of the earth,” and we know one thing for sure: We have been summoned to a holy purpose. We are good for something. We are meant to add something essential.

And the same Jesus who, speaking of himself, said, “I am the light of the world,” says to his followers: “You are the light of the world — in your whole existence, provided you remain faithful to your calling. And since you are that light, you can no longer remain hidden, even if you want to."[6] Being the light of the world is not optional. It is simply who and what we are when we follow Jesus: His light infuses our actions, our speaking and thinking, and it shines forth from all that we are and do, to the glory of God. We are the light because we have been lit — not for our own sakes, but for the sake of the world.

I have a deep desire to understand where we are and how we got here — a fragmented and fragmenting church in a fragmented and fragmenting world — and what this means for us as followers of Jesus and servants of God’s reign. I want to understand the forces that divide and polarize people around the world, the forces that drive us away from each other and into isolation. I want to understand, but that’s not the one thing necessary.

Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” And in each of these bold declarations, the ‘you’ is plural. That may well be the most important detail to hear these days: Amid all that is fragmenting us, there is a hidden ‘us’ being addressed and called forth by Jesus. The one thing necessary is that we follow him.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 130.

[2] Numbers 18:19; 2 Chronicles 13:5

[3] Leviticus 2:13

[4] Rabbi Shai Held https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/august-25-ordinary-21c-isaiah-589b-14

[5] Matthew 6:25

[6] See Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 131-132.

Love builds up

Somewhere in Rome, in a building dating back to ancient times, is the earliest known picture of the crucifixion; some believe it may be from the 2nd century CE. It’s not a devotional image, but a graffito scratched on a wall, showing a man with a donkey’s head strapped and nailed to a cross. Next to the cross is a human figure, and scribbled below it, “Alexamenos worships [his] god.” Presumably one of Alexamenos’s buddies, perhaps a fellow-slave, had created the graffito to make fun of him and his god.[1]

In our sanctuary, there’s a cross on the table, and the outline of a cross in the baptistry window. In the world of Paul and the early church, a place of worship was the last place you would expect to see a cross. Imagine coming into a church and being faced with a large picture of an electric chair or a lynching noose. You find the thought shocking? That’s the kind of shock first-century Jews and pagans would have experienced. If you don’t find it shocking, perhaps even worthy of prayerful reflection, it’s likely because your imagination has been shaped by the gospel of the crucified Christ.

Crucifixion was generally regarded as the most degrading and shameful of deaths in the Roman repertoire of execution.[2] It was a form of public torture, generally reserved for slaves and those who resisted the authority of Rome. The crucified person was often denied burial, with the corpse left on the cross to rot or as food for scavenging wildlife.

Crucifixion was an obscenity not to be discussed in polite company. In a speech defending a Roman senator against a murder charge for which the prosecutor was not only seeking the death penalty, but apparently suggesting crucifixion, Cicero sought to sway the jury, declaring, “The very word ‘cross’ should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, his ears.”[3]

Paul, of course, did the exact opposite: he held up the cross for all to see, in all the cities where his mission took him. The cross was at the center of his proclamation, and he did all he could to make it the center of life in the assemblies of the believers. Paul’s gospel was an insult to the sensibilities of educated men and women: he proclaimed Jesus, God’s crucified Messiah. To Jews, his proclamation bordered on blasphemy; to non-Jews, it was just foolish nonsense.

Jews demand signs, Paul writes. And don’t we also want God to do big and spectacular things, something on the scale of parting the sea or turning down the planet's temperature? Something like a grand-slam final where Jesus is on the court against all the forces that oppose God’s will and purpose, and he dominates the game, and the whole world is watching and cheering as he wins in straight sets? Instead we look at him on the cross, beaten and forsaken by all.

Greeks desire wisdom, Paul writes. And don’t we also want the gospel to be philosophically elegant and aesthetically pleasing? Don’t we want the TED talk that blows us away? Instead we hear the gospel of the crucified Messiah. We look for power, and weakness is given. We want wisdom, and foolishness is given. But in the community gathered around the cross, in the community being shaped by the love of Christ, his humble service, his deep compassion, and the courage of his vulnerability are recognized as the fullest expressions of God’s power and wisdom.

The word of the cross doesn’t fit the mold of what we know and how we know; it shatters it. Paul quotes from Isaiah,

The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote, so I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden (Isaiah 29:13-14).

Paul wants us to see that the cross of Christ was the shocking and amazing act of God who chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; who chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; who chose what is low and despised in the world, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. No more boasting in our wisdom, our might, our wealth, our power.

With his opening reflection on the cross of Christ, Paul is laying the foundation for his argument against elitist attitudes that are fracturing the Corinthian community. One of the issues was about supper: should believers eat food that had been presented as an offering in a pagan temple? Serving that kind of food was common practice at dinner parties, especially when meat was part of the menu. Some believers said, “No big deal; we know there’s only one true God, and those idols are no competition. We can eat anything we please: Christ has set us free.” But there were also those who worried they might fall back into pagan ways if they didn’t stay clear of pagan practices; so they stopped eating meat altogether, just to be safe. Given Paul’s own faith and robust theology, you’d expect him to side with those who act boldly in Christ-given freedom. But he doesn’t. “Knowledge puffs up,” he writes, “but love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1)

In the community that embodies and proclaims the power of the cross, building up comes before personal liberty. The love and faithfulness of God, revealed in the cross, is to shape the love and faithfulness among us, and our witness in the world. Love builds up.

“Building up” takes on fresh urgency when yet another black man has been beaten to death by police. And when we hear the news from Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, and we continue to turn the names of towns and schools into shorthand for mass shootings. “Building up” takes on fresh urgency, but many feel drained by the violence, exhausted and helpless, numb.

Jillian Peterson and James Densley teach criminology and criminal justice. In a recent column, they listed one-sentence details from profiles of the suspected or convicted perpetrators of more than 150 mass shootings in the United States. They had created the profiles from news reports, public documents and their conversations with the shooters’ friends, colleagues, social workers and teachers.

He was accused of threatening to kill his roommate.
At least seven killed and one injured in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Jan. 23, 2023

He believed his family tried to poison him.
At least 11 killed and nine injured in Monterey Park, Calif., on Jan. 21, 2023

One of his only friends died from a heroin overdose.
Seven killed and 46 injured in Highland Park, Ill., on July 4, 2022

It goes on like that, a sad line and a statistic, a startling line and a statistic, over and over, more than 150 times. These events have become more frequent and more deadly over time. The professors write,

This is no coincidence. The killings are not just random acts of violence but rather a symptom of a deeper societal problem: the continued rise of “deaths of despair.” This term has been used to explain increasing mortality rates among predominantly middle-aged white men caused by suicide, drug overdose and alcohol abuse. We think the concept of “deaths of despair” also helps explain the accelerating frequency of mass shootings in this country. Many were socially isolated from their families or their communities and felt a sense of alienation. … Most chose not to ask for help when confronted with hardship, like a breakup or being fired from their job. They chose mass shootings as a way to seize power and attention, forcing others to witness their pain while attempting to end their lives in a way that only they controlled.

At first Peterson and Densley employ medical language, suggesting that “we must treat the underlying pathologies that feed the shooters’ despair.” But the work isn’t for experts only; we must, they say, “find ways to reduce social isolation.”

It’s no small thing to knock on a neighbor’s door with a plate of cookies. It’s no small thing to call a friend you haven’t seen in a while; to write a note, or give a ride, or listen. I want you to remember that sending notes to students at West End Middle is no small thing, and eating supper with Room in the Inn guests, and praying for God’s wisdom to inspire us, and welcoming every person as God has welcomed us.

Allow me to return to the peculiar wisdom of the cross. I want to return because so many of us do feel drained by the violence, discouraged, and numb. I just finished reading a novel about Peter Abelard, one of the great theologians of the 12th century. Toward the end of the book, Peter, in disgrace and despair, is trying to find a measure of peace in a remote, little hermitage. Thibault, one of his former students, is living with him. One day, they’re coming back from fishing, and they hear a tiny cry, like a child’s cry of intolerable anguish, coming from the woods behind them. They rush in the direction of the cry and find that it’s not a child, it’s a rabbit caught in a trap.

The rabbit stopped shrieking when they stooped over it, either from exhaustion, or in some last extremity of fear. Thibault held the teeth of the trap apart, and [Peter] gathered up the little creature in his hands. It lay for a moment breathing quickly, then in some blind recognition of the kindness that had met it at the last, the small head thrust and nestled against his arm, and it died.

It was that last confiding thrust that broke [Peter’s] heart. He looked down at the little draggled body, his mouth shaking. “Thibault,” he said, “do you think there is a God at all? Whatever has come to me, I earned it. But what did this one do?”

Thibault nodded. “I know,” he said. “Only—I think God is in it too.”

[Peter] looked up sharply. “In it? Do you mean that it makes [God] suffer, the way it does us?”

Again Thibault nodded.

“Then why doesn’t He stop it?”

“I don’t know,” said Thibault. “... But all the time God suffers. More than we do.”

He points to a fallen tree beside them, sawn through the middle.

“That dark ring there, it goes up and down the whole length of the tree. But you only see it where it is cut across. That is what Christ’s life was; the bit of God that we saw. And we think God is like that, because Christ was like that, kind, and forgiving sins and healing people. We think that God is like that for ever, because it happened once, with Christ. But not the pain. Not the agony at the last. We think that stopped.”

Peter asks him whether he means that “all the pain of the world, was Christ’s cross.” And Thibault says, “God’s cross… And it goes on.” For a moment, Peter is baffled, and then he exclaims, “Oh God, if it were true … it would bring back the whole world.”[4]

The wisdom of the cross is God’s persistent, vulnerable love that will not let us go. May it fill our hearts and continue to shape our life together.

[1] For more information about the image see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito

[2] James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 209.

[3] The Speech In Defence of Gaius Rabirius, sec. 16, in The Speeches of Cicero, trans. H. Grose Hodge, The Loeb Classical Library (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927) 467.

[4] Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard (Chicago, IL: The Thomas More Press, 1987), 262-265.

Our deep story

Did you hear about the man who was stranded on a desert island for several years after a shipwreck? They finally found him; he was so glad to see human faces again and to talk to real people instead of a deflated volleyball. He was overjoyed that he’d be living among other humans again, but he didn’t jump into the boat right away. Before they left, he wanted to show them his camp. He pointed to a hut, “This is my house.” He pointed to another hut, “This is where I worship.” His rescuers pointed to a third hut, on the other side of his house. “What’s that?” they asked. “Oh, that’s where I used to go to church. Three years ago I got mad and left.”

Church life is messy. Where two or three are gathered in his name, chances are they won’t be together for long before they get the itch for other configurations. We gather in the name of Jesus Christ, but other names pull us in other directions.

Paul opens each of his letters with the greeting, “Grace to you and peace,” and he also closes all of them with a word of grace. No matter how messy the situation he addresses, no matter how hard and heated the arguments between the first and last paragraphs, Paul reminds his listeners and readers that grace embraces and surrounds us, and grace claims and equips a people for God’s purposes in the world. This grace bears the name of Jesus Christ, in whose death and resurrection God has judged the world of sin and begun a new creation where righteousness is at home.

The church in Corinth was barely four years old, when Paul wrote them this letter from Ephesus, on the other side of the Aegean Sea. Corinth was the capital of the Roman province of Achaia, a wealthy city with a steep social pyramid. The number of church members in the city was probably in the dozens, rather than hundreds, but the small size didn’t mean they didn’t find ways to divide. “It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you,” they were reading from Paul’s letter in homes across the city where house churches gathered. Some heads may have turned, some believers may have mumbled under their breath, “They just had to tell him, didn’t they?” Others must have been glad Paul was aware of these issues and addressing them. Would all of them welcome his urgent appeal to be united in the same mind and the same purpose?

It appears a good number of them had begun to identify themselves by the name of the person who had first told them the good news of Jesus Christ and baptized them. I belong to Paul. I belong to Apollos. I belong to Cephas. You notice there’s a lot of “I” in those statements. It sounds like those new believers weren’t just saying, “Paul’s alright” or “I really like Apollos; he is such a great teacher.” Folks in the church in Corinth weren’t looking around and appreciating the variety of Christian witness and teaching, they were drawing the first denominational lines. It was getting to the point where their identity was shaped more deeply by their respective allegiance to the particular tradition of Apollos, Cephas, or Paul, than by their new life in Christ.

“Really?” Paul shouts across the sea from Ephesus. “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Other names get in the way of who we are in Christ, and who we are becoming as a people being saved, a people set aside for God’s purpose in the world.

There’s a lot of “I” in our divisions, but our hope for salvation is wrapped up in the grace with which Christ has made us his own. “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me,” Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians (2:20). No longer I, but Christ in me, and all of us in Christ.

Jane Lancaster Patterson writes, “Many people in America today would say that divisiveness is one of the most dangerous issues in our common life, that factionalism and misguided allegiance keep us from being able to address the very serious challenges that confront us today.” She then goes on to name some of the very serious challenges that confront us today: the increasing disparity between rich and poor, climate change, global violence, competition for natural resources, migration due to war and famine (Commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 - Working Preacher from Luther Seminary). Reading her reflections, I was nodding along, but I also noticed that her list didn’t include abortion or crime, not to mention “the deep state” or “the great replacement” — issues that others would have named first on their list. Our divisions run so deep, we can’t even agree on the very serious challenges that confront us today.

Arlie Russell Hochschild is a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research for her most recent book, Strangers in Their Own Land, took her, you might say, from the bluest spot on the bluest coast to one of the reddest spots on the electoral map of the United States, Lake Charles, Louisiana. She didn’t move there, but she traveled back and forth over the course of five years to meet people and visit and deepen relationships. She came, she writes, “with an interest in walls. Not visible, physical walls such as those separating Catholics from Protestants in Belfast, Americans from Mexicans on the Texas border, or, once, residents of East and West Berlin. It was empathy walls that interested me.” She describes an empathy wall as “an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances.” And she continues,

In a period of political tumult, we grasp for quick certainties. We shoehorn new information into ways we already think. We settle for knowing our opposite numbers from the outside. But is it possible, without changing our beliefs, to know others from the inside, to see reality through their eyes, to understand the links between life, feeling, and politics; that is, to cross the empathy wall? I thought it was.[1]

She thought she had “some understanding of the liberal left camp,” but she had “a keen interest in how life feels to people on the right — that is, in the emotion that underlies politics. To understand their emotions, I had to imagine myself into their shoes.”[2]

And that is what she did. She sat at kitchen tables and went to campaign events; she walked through refineries and drove across old plantations; she went to church and to crawfish cookouts, and she did the work of imagining herself into the shoes of the people she met. She asked questions and listened, and whenever she ran into the empathy wall—and she did, again and again—she didn’t walk away, but asked more questions and listened even more carefully. She began to see the world through the eyes of the men and women who welcomed her interest and she came upon what she calls their “deep story,” a narrative not just of a world view, but of how the world is felt. Reflecting on the whole process of discovery and transformation she initiated and shared with her readers, she writes,

The English language doesn’t give us many words to describe the feeling of reaching out to someone from another world, and of having that interest welcomed. Something of its own kind, mutual, is created. What a gift. Gratitude, awe, appreciation; for me, all those words apply and I don’t know which to use. But I think we need a special word, and should hold a place of honor for it, so as to restore what might be a missing key on the English-speaking world’s cultural piano. Our polarization, and the increasing reality that we simply don’t know each other, makes it too easy to settle for dislike and contempt.[3]

Our polarization … makes it too easy to settle for dislike and contempt—that is where we are, and not only in this country, and not for the first time. We forget too easily, and some of us have never learned, how to make room for strangers whose deep stories may be utterly unfamiliar, yet just as human as our own.

We still read Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth, because he addresses the very serious challenges that confront all of us who are called to live as God’s people in the world. Thirty-eight times in his first letter to them, significantly more than in any other of his letters, Paul uses the simple address, brothers and sisters. Thirty-eight times he affirms the common ground and the equal standing of all who are in Christ. Brothers and sisters he calls us repeatedly, so that when the letter is read aloud in the assembly, we would perhaps remember that all of us belong to the family of God. That we don’t “belong” to Apollos or Cephas or Paul or any other earthly label, but that Christ had made us his own; that we belong to no other master, not even to ourselves, but to Christ, and therefore, in a radically new way, to each other. Brothers and sisters he calls us—not ladies and gentlemen, or Gentiles and Jews, or dear members and guests.

“In order to form a Christian community identity within a pluralistic pagan world, Paul repeatedly calls his readers to a ‘conversion of the imagination,’” is how Richard Hays has put it.[4] A conversion of the imagination. A complete reordering of our inherited cultural norms and practices. Our thorough resocialization, from all sorts of backgrounds into a new community where Christ is Lord and brother of all. A community where we look at ourselves and each other not through the usual lenses of who matters and who doesn’t, who knows and who doesn’t, who has a voice and who doesn’t, who counts and who doesn’t, but instead through the complete and radical undoing of all of that in the cross of Christ.

Baptized into Christ, we are being soaked in God’s freeing grace, and we are being transformed after the pattern of Christ. His love makes room for all of us strangers, and in his embrace, his story becomes our deep story.

[1] Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (The New Press, 2016). Kindle Edition. Location 170.

[2] Ibid. Location 70.

[3] Ibid. Location 117.

[4] Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997), 11.

What are you looking for?

In the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus says to John the Baptist who is reluctant to baptize him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”[i] These are the first words he speaks in that Gospel. You read that and you know that for Matthew, the fulfillment of righteousness is key to knowing who Jesus is.

In Mark, Jesus’ first words are, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[ii] To Mark, that is the core of the message of Jesus and of the church.

In Luke, Mary and Joseph have been searching desperately for their boy for three days, and when they finally find him in the Temple, he says to them with astonishing adolescent innocence, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”[iii] To Luke, Jesus’ deep connection to the Temple is an essential part of the gospel.

Now, if you were to write the good news of Jesus according to yourself, what would be the first thing Jesus says? From all the sayings of Jesus you remember and perhaps jotted down in your journal, which one would you choose? Wouldn’t you want to find one that would signal what matters most, one that would draw your readers into the story that changed everything?

In the gospel according to John, Jesus’ baptism isn’t even mentioned, and he doesn’t talk back to his mom until the wedding in Cana in chapter 2. His first words are a question, “What are you looking for?” In this opening scene, he asks two unnamed disciples of John who just began to follow him, after John had watched him walk by and exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

It is notoriously difficult to know what John might have had in mind when he referred to Jesus as the Lamb of God, both the John we know as the Baptist, and the John who composed the fourth Gospel. Was he thinking about the Passover lamb? Possibly. Could he have been thinking about the Suffering Servant in Isaiah who was oppressed and afflicted, and, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, did not open his mouth? Maybe. It’s like John wants to tell us something important about who Jesus is, while also teaching us that his testimony is meant to generate more than a single meaning, and that he wants us to find our own answer.

On the story level, Jesus asks his two new followers, “What are you looking for?” But with the same question he also addresses you and me who have just begun to hear John’s testimony about Jesus, “What are you looking for?” Jesus begins a dialogue not just with his first two disciples, but with every reader, “What are you looking for?”

If this were your realtor, the answer would be easy; you’d start talking about bedrooms, baths, and school zones. If this were your school counselor, you’d talk about your dreams of campus life and about financial aid. And if this were the person in HR whom you sent your resume, you’d talk about career opportunities, job satisfaction, and salary expectations. But this is Jesus asking you, “What are you looking for?”

You don’t have to keep reading, you know, you can sit with that question for a moment. Think about your life. The dreams you once had, and the ones that still energize you. Think about the world, the kids, the damn war, the floods, the hopes you cling to with every fiber of your being. What are you looking for? Think about your curiosity about Jesus, why you find yourself returning to the book of testimonies, what it is that brings you back to the community of believers. What if you started an actual list of things you are looking for in your life, just to help you get to the bottom of your longing and searching?

In a breathtaking prologue, John has introduced Jesus as the light that shines in the darkness, the true light that enlightens everyone, the Word who became flesh and lived among us. Now we hear of two of John’s disciples who are with him when Jesus walks by and their master exclaims, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” They don’t know any better than you and me what that might mean, but they follow Jesus anyway. Why? Not because they trust Jesus, but because they trust John and his testimony about Jesus. Rowan Williams reminds us that “Faith has a lot to do with the simple fact that there are trustworthy lives to be seen, that we can see in some believing people a world we’d like to live in.”[iv]  The journey of discipleship doesn’t begin with six impossible things to believe before breakfast; it begins with a very good question and the trustworthy life of a witness who points to Jesus.

The trustworthy life of a witness who points to Jesus. Tomorrow the nation takes a day to honor the life and witness of Dr. King, whose dream of a world no longer burdened by racism, poverty, and war didn’t end when he was assassinated. Richard Lischer writes,

Long after King himself began to doubt the goodness of the “white brother” and the tainted principles of civil religion, his expression of hope in the kinship of races endures, as the Sermon on the Mount endures, as a mark to aim at in a sinfully divided society. The more pessimistic he grew with regard to humanity, the more optimistic he became about God. Even in the darkest period of his own discouragement, he continued to say to African Americans, “Go ahead! God can be trusted.”

After King’s death, his old mentor Pius Barbour said, “Martin was a great believer in this, the attitude of Jesus: He believed spiritual power could down any power. Can it?” Lischer says it’s a measure of Dr. King’s abiding influence in our lives that we still ask the question and want to answer, Yes.[v] That we want to affirm with our own lives, with our little courage and our spotty faithfulness, that God’s commitment to the redemption of the world is unshakable.

Several years ago, the results of a study on what Americans think about Christianity were published. The research showed that among late teens to early 30-somethings, Christians were best known for what they are against. They were perceived as being judgmental, antihomosexual, hypocritical, too political, insensitive to others, and clueless about real life.[vi] According to the authors of the study, these negative views of Christians weren’t just superficial stereotypes with no basis in reality. Nor were the critics people without previous exposure to churches or Christians. No, they looked at the lives of Christians and they didn’t find those lives trustworthy. One of the authors remembered his first look at the data:

I’ll never forget sitting in Starbucks, poring through the research results on my laptop. As I soaked it in, I glanced at the people around me and was overwhelmed with the thought that this is what they think of me. It was a sobering thought to know that if I had stood up and announced myself as a ‘Christian’ to the customers assembled in Starbucks that day, they would have associated me with every one of the negative perceptions described in this book.[vii]

And that was before the term ‘Christian’ began to fit quite comfortably between the terms ‘white’ and ‘nationalism.’ What can we do about that, you and I?

When Jesus asked the two, “What are you looking for?” they didn’t give an answer. Perhaps they didn’t have one yet, perhaps they had too many to even begin. Instead they asked, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Now you can read that as them asking for his address. I think they were curious about where his life was rooted; where he found courage and hope for the road ahead; where his heart and soul were at home. “Faith,” says Susan Andrews, “begins with curiosity. It is rooted in companionship. It often leads to commitment and conviction, but it all begins with curiosity. Jesus is not only the Word become flesh. Jesus is the Way become flesh. Jesus is a journey.”[viii]

I believe it’s always good to go back to the beginning, back to our initial curiosity, back to Jesus’ opening question, “What are you looking for?” What are you really looking for? It is a powerful question to ask ourselves, to ask one another, and to seek to answer as truthfully as we can. I am looking for a community where love becomes real, a community that embodies grace and solidarity. I am looking for a community where you are accepted for who you are. I am looking for an economy whose currency is gratitude, not greed. I am looking for hope for our tortured planet. I am looking for deep and lasting conversion. I am looking for who I am. And I keep hearing Jesus say, “Come and see.”

Faith begins with curiosity, and it is rooted in companionship. I trust the testimony of those who discovered grace and truth in the company of Jesus, and a taste of life’s fullness. And I believe when he says, “Come and see,” he actually means it quite literally, as in, Get up from the couch and meet the others who are on the journey with me. Talk with them. Work with them. Sing with them. Eat with them. Sometimes they will rub you the wrong way, and that’s actually a good thing. Because we’re never safe against the temptation of claiming God too simply as the sanctifier of whatever we most fervently desire. That’s how we end up with people proclaiming ‘white Christian nationalism,’ convinced they are talking about the kingdom of God.

We need one another, for “we must always seek the truth in our opponents’ error and the error in our own truth.”[ix] We need one another to learn courage and practice humility in the company of Jesus, to have life and have it abundantly.

[i] Mt 3:15

[ii] Mk 1:15

[iii] Lk 2:49

[iv] Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 21-22.

[v] Richard Lischer, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King Jr. and The Word That Moved America (New York: Oxford, 1995), 269. I changed “Mike” to “Martin” to avoid confusion about introducing another character. I don’t think “Mike” is a typo, but “Martin” works just as well.

[vi] David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007); back cover

[vii] unChristian, 222.

[viii] Susan Andrews, Lectionary Homiletics Vol. 16, No. 1, 65.

[ix] See Obama’s Favorite Theologian? A Short Course on Reinhold Niebuhr | Pew Research Center

Remembering our baptism

The Jordan is a mighty river. We have heard about it in ancient stories, sung of it in our songs. The Jordan holds a central place in the geography and imagination of our faith.

Not many of us have seen it in person, and, until a few years ago, I hadn’t either. Then I went to Israel with a group of Jewish leaders and fellow pastors from Nashville. It was a touching and transformative experience—the conversations, the encounters with Israelis and Palestinians, the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, the food, and the very land itself: to stand on the Mount of Olives and look at the old city of Jerusalem and the temple mount, and not just to stand there with the made-for-Instagram view, but to walk down the slope, across the Kidron valley, and to enter the city through one of its ancient gates, and to realize that my feet were touching the same stone pavement that had been there in the days of Jesus; and to see the hills of Galilee, to look across lake Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, and feel the wind blowing across its waves. The pilgrimage churches of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Capernaum paled in contrast to the land itself.

As to the Jordan, I was prepared for a little disappointment. I had heard it wouldn’t be nearly as impressive as it was in my imagination. When you picture the river, don’t think Mississippi or even Cumberland, think Harpeth in August. But size is not the measure of its significance. The Jordan is one of the few rivers in that very dry region that actually flow year-round, turning the valley into a lush, fertile band in an otherwise rather dusty landscape. More importantly, the Jordan marks the border between Israel’s wilderness wanderings and the land of promise.

It was in the plains of Moab, in the wilderness beyond the Jordan, where Moses expounded one last time the covenant commandments before the people crossed the river, committed to living as God’s people, according to God’s will, on God’s land. It was near Jericho, that the waters of the river parted before the ark of the covenant, and the people walked across. The Jordan has been a mighty river in the memory of God’s people, because crossing it means entering freedom and fulfillment. The river flows between wilderness and home, between fleeing and resting. Enslaved Africans and their descendants in the United States who fled the terror of the South didn’t have their geography mixed up when they sang of the Ohio, Deep river, my home is over Jordan; deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground … that promised land where all is peace. Jordan river may be distant and wide, chilly and cold, but the Lord would make a way for God’s people to cross over into the promised land. The Lord would make a way.

John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea and proclaimed, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” John reminded God’s people who they were, and he challenged them to reaffirm that they did indeed want to live as God’s people, according to God’s will and purpose, on God’s land. They came from Jerusalem and the surrounding region, and they headed down to the river to listen to John’s preaching and to be baptized by him, confessing their sins. One by one they stepped into the water.  One by one they said what needed to be said. One by one he plunged them beneath the surface, into the silent depth of the old river. Their ancestors had crossed this river to enter the promised land, and now they passed through these waters because they wanted to be worthy of being counted among God’s people, worthy to live in the coming kingdom of God. They prayed that the river would wash away their transgressions and their shame—so they would climb up the bank refreshed, renewed and presentable.

“I baptize you with water for repentance,” the Baptist said, “but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” A mightier one would come, John declared, and he would bring the fire of judgment. Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan—not to baptize, but to be baptized. He came like the rest of them had come, walking the same dusty roads and down the same rocky paths to the river’s edge, waiting in line in the heat of the day, and finally stepping into the water.

John looked at Jesus, and somehow he knew that the days of preparation and repentance were now over: the day of fire and truth had come. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” he asked. The first words Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Matthew are spoken here, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” He acts in complete obedience to God’s will and in complete solidarity with us. He gets in the water with all who have come to the river for a bath of mercy and fresh commitment, for a new beginning. We step into the river hoping that it will carry away all that weighs on us, our failures and our worries, our broken promises and our self-condemnation, all that keeps us from living lives that are faithful and God-pleasing. We get into the water, and Jesus gets in with us. He steps into the river and is baptized along with all who gather there, not because he needs to repent, but because he wants to be with us.

This is what righteousness fulfilled looks like. Obedient to God’s will and purpose, Jesus is baptized in solidarity with us. He is Immanuel, God with us in our broken humanity. He gives himself to the murky water of our wrongs and regrets, trusting that the river of God’s grace will carry him, and not only him, but all of us with him. Stepping into the water with us, he commits himself to the path of humble servanthood, a path that would lead him to the cross where the flood wave of our sin would drown him.

This brief scene at the river is like a sketch of his entire life and ministry. When Jesus rose from the water, newness erupted: the heavens were opened, the Spirit descended, and a voice from heaven declared, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

When Jesus got in the water with us, something wonderful happened to that old river that marks the border between wilderness and home. In his baptism, Jesus made our lot his own: he let himself be immersed in our alienation from God, our lives far from the kingdom, our trouble with doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly and obediently with God. In his baptism, Jesus made our life his own. And in our baptism, his beautiful, faithful life becomes ours in the forgiveness of our sins, in our reconciliation with God and with each other, and in our call to participate in his mission.

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights,” God spoke through the prophet Isaiah.

I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.[1]

John expected one more powerful than himself. What he didn’t expect was one who would faithfully bring forth justice by not breaking a bruised reed and not quenching a dimly burning wick—one who would show us the face of God through a life marked by humility, compassion, and astonishing faithfulness.

Some of you may remember how cold the water was when you were baptized, and how you felt like a whole new person, or how you didn’t really feel all that different. Some of us, including myself, can’t recall that moment because we were babies when we were baptized. Christians have fought long and hard over when and how to baptize people properly, and it took us generations to realize that the church of God is big enough to hold a variety of traditions and practices. No matter what particular form of baptism we undergo, in it we testify that God has claimed us as children: In our own bodies, we receive and proclaim the good news that our lives are made whole in the life and death of Christ and in the hope of our resurrection with him. Whether we were immersed in a river or had a little water poured over our head, when we were baptized we let ourselves be plunged into the river of God’s grace, we let the life of Jesus become our life, his story our story, and his way our way. 

Tertullian was a Christian author from Carthage in north Africa. Around the turn from the second to the third century, he wrote about baptism,

When we are going to enter the water, but a little before, in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, and his pomp, and his angels. Hereupon we are thrice immersed, making a somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the Gospel. Then when we are taken up (as new-born children), we taste first of all a mixture of milk and honey.

The nourishment the newly baptized were given was milk and honey—the sweet taste of the promised land, the taste of freedom and fulfillment. Tertullian concluded that baptism paragraph telling his readers, “and from that day we refrain from the daily bath for a whole week.”[2] A whole week without bathing—to let the memory sink in? I don’t know. Why not remember our baptism every time we bathe? Why not remember every time water touches our skin, how in astonishing faithfulness Christ has made us his own to save us?

[1] Isaiah 42:1-4

[2] Tertullian, De Corona Militis, ch. 3 http://www.tertullian.org/anf/anf03/anf03-10.htm#P1019_415012

The even older story

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light.
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Christmas Eve was lovely and quiet; the star in the window shone bright against the midnight sky. Amid arctic temperatures, we huddled together in the warm sanctuary, and with wide-eyed wonder we listened and we sang, immersed in the good news of great joy: Christ is born in Bethlehem! God has come to earth as a baby! Joy to the world! We lit our candles, little flames held high to greet the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Then we watched the children tear their way through oceans of wrapping paper, we laughed and talked, ate and drank, played games with siblings and cousins, watched a couple more Christmas movies, and even the most stoic among us remember that moment when we teared up a little, echoes of the old tune playing in our hearts: The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Here we are just one week after Christmas Day, the trees and lights in many homes are already gone, and it’s as though even Matthew wants to make sure we understand that the time of wonder really is over: ruthlessly he yanks us back into the brutal reality of the time of king Herod. Matthew tells us the story of the coming of the Son of God, but he leaves little room for sentimentality. I like a little sentimentality. My mind always wants to act like a stern grown-up, giving me this serious look about the serious state of the world and the need for unsentimental thinking, but my soul is wiser. A little sentimentality hasn’t hurt anyone, and yes, Matthew will make sure we won’t sit too long in a warm, nostalgic bath tub, pretending that Jesus was born in a cute little Christmas village of collectible Victorian houses.

A king is born, but there already is a king, and there is only room for one on the throne. It doesn’t get any more unsentimental than that. The birth of Christ truly takes place in our world, and so we get to hum O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie only until the shouts of soldiers and the cries of frightened children break the wondrous stillness. The streets of Bethlehem are dark and they are filled with the wailing and loud lamentation of horrified parents. Stanley Hauerwas writes,

Perhaps no event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction of Christmas than the death of these children. Jesus is born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants.[1]

Jesus is born into the real world, our world, a world of terror and tears. A world whose rulers consider a human life a small price to pay when power is at stake.

Herod the king, in his raging,
charged he has this day
his men of might, in his own sight,
all children young to slay[2].

Jesus is born in Bethlehem, and Herod is frightened, and all Jerusalem with him,[3] and brutal violence erupts, and still the world out-Herods Herod.[4]

At least 437 children are among more than 8,300 civilians who have been killed in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February, the country’s prosecutor general said on [a November] Saturday in a grim new accounting of the war’s toll.[5]

And lest we get too comfortable identifying Putin as the Herodian figure, unleashing terror to secure his position in the world—how many children died at wedding parties and birthday parties that ended with U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq? Matthew doesn’t introduce Herod this early in the narrative so we’d have somebody to point fingers at. Herod is there this early to show us how the kingdoms of the world resist the coming of the kingdom of heaven with everything we got. But even at their most violent, Matthew insists, the kingdoms of the world cannot stop the coming of the kingdom of heaven.

In the gospel reading for today, the brutal clip of king Herod and his death squads is surrounded by the quiet scenes of Joseph who has learned to listen to the angel of the Lord in his dreams. Many have anguished over the question why God did not send the angel to all the families in Bethlehem, to warn the other parents of Herod’s bloody plan. Why didn’t all the young children and their families leave that place of persecution and death that night, seeking refuge and protection in Egypt? Why didn’t the little Lord Jesus, riding on a donkey, lead them out in a parade of life? I imagine Matthew would say, “Don’t let Herod fool you; this isn’t the whole story yet.”

For many of Matthew’s readers, Herod is a familiar figure. Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was building an empire on the backs of slaves and wanted to keep it that way. Afraid that the Hebrew slaves might become too numerous to control, he told their midwives to kill all Hebrew boys at birth and let only the girls live. But Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives, obeyed God rather than Pharaoh, and many boys lived, among them Moses who grew up to lead his people from the house of slavery to the land of promise. Moses had to flee, and he lived far from his people as a refugee in Midian until the Lord said to him, “Go back…, for all those who were seeking your life are dead.” Moses returned, and the liberation of God’s people began.

Jesus and his parents were refugees in Egypt, when an angel of the Lord said to Joseph, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” Matthew wants us to hear these resonances between the story of Moses and God’s people and the story of Jesus. Pharaoh raises his head again and again, attempting to secure power with violence, but his reign will not last. The kingdom of heaven is come, and no matter how violently the empire of sin resists its coming, the purposes of God will prevail.

The ultimate confrontation between God’s reign and the empire of sin was the cross, erected not very far from Bethlehem. Another Herod was on the throne, yet little else had changed. Joy to the world, the Lord is come—let earth receive her king, we sing, but there are other power arrangements already in place, and the kingdoms of the world resist the coming of the kingdom of heaven with everything we got. Christmas and the cross belong together, and there is nothing sentimental about the cross. Pam Fickenscher writes about the massacre of the infants,

You could make a good argument that we should save this story for another day—Lent, maybe, or some late-night adults-only occasion. But our songs of peace and public displays of charity have not erased the headlines of child poverty, gun violence, and even genocide. This is a brutal world.[6]

This is indeed a brutal world, but because of Jesus’ coming into it, we believe that the last word doesn’t belong to the old story of injustice and violence, but to the even older story of love, and therefore to hope. There is another memory Matthew stirs up with his story of the massacre of the infants. Jeremiah comes to mind, and the days when the Babylonian army sacked Jerusalem and the inhabitants of Judah were sent into exile.

A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.

Rachel was the mother of Israel, one of the great matriarchs, and her tomb was on the way to Ephrat, that is, Bethlehem.[7] Rachel is weeping for her children who are being persecuted, murdered, exiled, sent to camps, and crucified, and she wails inconsolably. In the book of Jeremiah, her tears are followed by a promise of God, and Matthew knows it, but he doesn’t just quote those lines here. It’s as though he wants us to remember the words like a faint echo and carry them with us in this brutal world. According to Jeremiah, the Lord said to Rachel,

Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears … they shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future; your children shall come back to their own country.[8]

Nothing less will do. Herod’s actions are brutal and painful, but they are not how it always will be in God’s world—and the reversal is under way. Emmanuel was born in Bethlehem: God is with us. Jewish mystics taught that only one place on earth would be suitable for the coronation of God’s Messiah; not a high place like Jerusalem, but that lonely place by the road, where Rachel weeps until her children return. The exile of God’s people comes to an end when the Messiah comes to lead them home.

Where shall this be? On the way to Ephrat at the crossroads, which is Rachel’s grave. To mother Rachel he will bring glad tidings. And he will comfort her. And now she will let herself be comforted. And she will rise up and kiss him.[9]

Nothing less will do, and Matthew knows it. He wrote his Christmas story long after Easter. He wrote with the bold hope that the Messiah who was crowned on Golgotha, is God with us in our suffering. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was God’s affirmation of the kingdom he lived and proclaimed, and God’s judgment on the empire of sin. The Messiah has come to bring the whole world home. The last word doesn’t belong to the old story of injustice and violence, but to the even older story of God’s faithful love, and therefore to hope. May we carry the light of this hope in our hearts as we enter a new year.

[1] Matthew, Brazos 2006, 41.

[2] Coventry Carol

[3] See Matthew 2:3

[4] Robert Lowell, The Holy Innocents https://www.everseradio.com/the-holy-innocents-by-robert-lowell/

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/world/europe/children-killed-russia-ukraine-war.html

[6] http://www.danclendenin.org/Essays/20071224JJ.shtml

[7] Genesis 35:16-19

[8] Jeremiah 31:16-17

[9] Zohar 2.7-9; see Fred Strickert, Rachel Weeping (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2007), 32.

The other nativity

How do you tell the story of Jesus? Where do you begin—when do you begin? For the apostle Paul, the story of Jesus Christ is first and foremost the story of his crucifixion and resurrection, with little attention to his life and teaching. The Gospel of Mark takes us to the river, and begins the story with Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. Matthew and Luke begin with Jesus’ conception and birth, and they add genealogies tracing his line to Abraham and, in Luke’s case, all the way to Adam. Luke and Matthew, together with Isaiah, provide all the familiar characters and props of our pageants and nativity sets, the happy mash up of angels and shepherds, Mary and Joseph, the child in the manger, ox and ass, and the visitors from the east, following yonder star and bearing gifts for the newborn king.

And then John steps into the storytellers’ circle—and his poetic opening takes us neither to the river nor to the little town of Bethlehem; John takes us back, way back to the moment before the dawn of light and time and world. John tells the story, echoing the first line of Genesis: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Matthew and Luke direct our gaze away from the mansions and palaces, they want us to see that Jesus comes from the margins, the overlooked places, the humble homes and improvised shelters of the poor. John also directs our gaze away from the mansions and palaces of the world’s rulers and celebrities—but he points up, far beyond the star the magi followed.

Our generation has been very fortunate to see some of the fantastic images of the universe captured by the Hubble telescope, vast clouds of stars without number,  shimmering, billowing, clusters of galaxies, billions of them, quantities and dimensions beyond fathomable—and this year we have seen the first images from the Webb telescope, with even more astonishing levels of resolution and detail, greater than even the boldest dreamers dared to imagine only a few months ago.

John would be thrilled. To think that telescopes allow human eyes to see way beyond our galaxy, and the deeper we can look into space, the farther back in time we are seeing, perceiving light that has traversed the universe over billions of years—it is mind-blowing and awesome beyond words. John would be thrilled to behold such cosmological marvels.

Cosmology is the system of knowledge about the origins of the universe. It it is a combination of two Greek words, cosmos and logos, with cosmos being the ordered everything-that-is, what we also call world or universe, and logos being that which orders it. In ancient Greek thought, logos is the logic that permeates and structures the universe, the divine reason that orders and gives meaning to all that is. And that is why we call the study of living things biology, and the study of rocks geology, and why you go and see an expert in cardiology when your heart needs a check-up. All things have a logos that orders them and their relationships to each other, from the smallest to the greatest, from the simplest to the most complex.

John, in the opening poetry of the gospel that bears his name, uses this term logos very prominently, saying, In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God. In Jewish thought, logos was understood to be the word of God. God said, “Let their be light,” and there was light, we read in Genesis 1. By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and all their host by the breath of his mouth, we read in Psalm 33. For John, logos is divine speech, word, divine wisdom, divine instruction; logos represents intention and purpose. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it, the prophet Isaiah declared, giving voice to the word of the Lord.[1]

In the beginning was the Word: the Word through which all things came into being, the Word that came to Moses at Mount Sinai, the Word that came to the prophets, the Word that was with God before time and world, the Word that was God, because beyond time and world, God alone is. John doesn’t tell us a Christmas story. He gives us a single line from which everything he has to say unfolds, from the beginning all the way to what we hear and receive and see: The Word became flesh and lived among us. The Word at the beginning of all things, the Word that was and is and forever will be God, became a human being and moved into the neighborhood: visible, tangible, vulnerable, mortal like the rest of us.

John doesn’t tell us a Christmas story, but he does tell us of a birth. The Word was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him, did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. That is the nativity on John’s mind. The Word became flesh so that we might become who we are meant to be in what can only be described as a second birth into a new relationship with the One who speaks all things into being, and hence a new relationship with all things, with one another and with ourselves. The Word became flesh so that we might see his glory and let him order all things which in truth he has ordered since before the dawn of time, him being the very light of life. The Word became flesh so that we might be born into the true fullness of life. John compares this newness to a birth, because it’s not our doing, but rather our letting it be with us according to the Word of God, our trusting surrender to the labor of God.

John tells us we don’t have to wait for a future revealing of the fullness of God’s glory and God’s will for the world or for eternal life to be bestowed. The fullness we long for is available now in Jesus.[2] The light shines in the darkness, as it has shone since the dawn of time, and the darkness did not overcome it. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined, the prophet Isaiah declared.[3] We have seen glimpses of the true light that enlightens everyone, and we sing for joy like birds at the break of dawn. The fullness we long for has come. Thanks be to God.

[1] Isaiah 55:10-11

[2] Gail O’Day, “John.” Ed. Leander E. Keck, The New Interpreter’s Bible: Luke – John (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 497.

[3] Isaiah 9:2

Unimportant. Forgettable.

The first line of the New Testament reads, An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. The gospel according to Matthew opens with a long list of names, beginning with the age of the patriarchs, then tracing the line of David through the age of kings to the deportation to Babylon, and from the exile to the Messiah. Imagine you’re the reader at the lectern. The opening verses of Matthew, that’s your worst-night-mare scenario: line after line of near-unpronounceable names from A like Aminadab to Z like Zerubbabel.

When you quietly read the Bible by yourself, those are the parts you usually skip, why would anybody think that stuff like that ought to be read in worship? Well, the lectionary which recommends readings for each worship service of the year, skips those parts, too, and goes straight to Jesus, Mary and Joseph in verse 18. Yet our ancestors in the faith found significance in that long list of names; we miss that by skipping them.

We miss the names of four women sprinkled among the names of all those fathers: Tamar, the widow of one of Judah’s sons, who was found to be pregnant long after her husband’s death; and Judah harshly denounced her until he realized that he himself was the father.[1] Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute from Jericho who was praised as righteous.[2] Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, who became pregnant by David and told him.[3] And Ruth, the Moabite, who slipped under Boaz’s blanket to convince him to marry her. These four women practiced a kind of righteousness that might appear scandalous, and they prepare us for a seeming scandal in the fifth woman named in the Messiah’s lineage, Mary. They also prepare us for Joseph who is called to practice a kind of righteousness that might appear scandalous, but serves the saving purposes of God.

What we miss by not reading the genealogy is that of the fourteen kings that Matthew lists only two could be con­sidered as faithful to God’s covenant laws. “The rest were an odd assort­ment of idolaters, murderers, incompetents, power-seekers, and harem-wastrels,” as Raymond E. Brown put it.[4] We also miss that most of Jesus’ ancestors after the Babylonian exile were unknown people whose names were never entered in the records of “sacred history for having done something significant.” What we miss is the marvelous unpredictability of God who clearly is not in the habit of choosing the best or the noble or the saintly, and who accomplishes the divine purposes through people whom “others regard as unimportant and forgettable.”[5]

Unimportant and forgettable describes Joseph quite well. In our Christmas pageants, he rarely ever gets a speaking part, and if he does, it’s little more than a brief exchange with a grumpy innkeeper. On paintings of the nativity, he is usually depicted as an older man in the background who is trying to make himself useful by holding a lantern or putting a blanket on Mary’s shoulders. Of the four gospels, Matthew is the only one that draws our attention to him at all. Luke barely mentions him. And even in Matthew, he appears in chapter one, disappears by chapter two, and never utters a direct sentence. Unimportant. Forgettable.

Joseph was engaged to Mary and in his day that meant they had already signed the marriage license. Even though they weren’t yet living under one roof together, everyone knew them to be husband and wife. In those days, if some problem arose during this transition period, you couldn’t just cancel the cake and the caterer, you had to file for divorce. And for Joseph, a problem had arisen indeed, and with every passing week, the problem got a little bigger. An old English carol tells us,

Joseph and Mary walked through an orchard green,
Where was berries and cherries, as thick as might be seen.

O then bespoke Mary, so meek and so mild:
‘Pluck me one cherry, Joseph, for I am with child.’

O then bespoke Joseph, with words most unkind:
‘Let him pluck thee a cherry that got thee with child.’[6]

That’s not what Matthew tells us. The carol ends with Jesus, from the womb, commanding the tallest tree to bend down before Mary so that she can pick as many cherries as she pleases. The boy and his mother take center stage, and Joseph, once again, is pushed to the edge of the scene. Matthew is more than careful to note that Joseph was anything but unkind. Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. Of all the options he had, Joseph chose the kindest one. He could have chosen to shame Mary by publicly demanding a divorce. He could have chosen to have her stoned to death for adultery—he could have, it was perfectly lawful, and some of his neighbors, had they known about the situation, probably would have expected him to uphold the demands of a man’s honor and of God’s law, which in this and many other cases were identical.

Joseph was a righteous man, a man who sought to live according to the commandments of God, but apparently he didn’t “just do what the book says.”[7] He was living a different kind of righteousness. The only way to honor God’s law and Mary was to divorce her discreetly so as not to humiliate her and her family or endanger her and the child. And just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” What appeared to be a moral outrage and cause for righteous indignation, turned out to be, according to the words of the dream angel, a divine initiative. The child in Mary’s womb, the angel said, was not a violation of God’s holy will, but an expression of it, a gift from the Holy Spirit, for the salvation of God’s people. [8]

It was a moment that called for great courage in obeying. Joseph was to keep his marriage to Mary and he was to name Mary’s child Jesus, thus adopting him as his son and making him a son of David. When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife … and he named him Jesus.

We can read the Bible as a book of rules, and seek to live a kind of righteousness that keeps everything in proper order. We can read the Bible and find justification for abusing, humiliating, disgracing, and hurting, and it’s all in proper order. But the story of Jesus starts out with proper order being completely rearranged, which is Matthew’s way of saying that with the coming of Jesus a new kind of righteousness is moving from the background to the center. A righteousness of radical grace. The story of Jesus begins like the story of creation, with the stirring of God’s Spirit. Through this baby, God is making all things new.

According to Fred Craddock, “Joseph is the first person in the New Testament who learned how to read the Bible.” He rose above conventional morality and read Scripture through a lens of radical grace, the lens of a God who authors salvation in unpredictable ways on the crooked lines of our lives. And with great courage Joseph embraced the new life God had initiated and asked him to adopt, quite literally. Joseph was the first person to face the tension of “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you,” the tension between the prevailing understanding of God’s commandments and the newness that entered the world through Jesus.[9] To Matthew, Joseph was the first disciple, already living out the new and better righteousness of the kingdom which Jesus came to proclaim.[10]

Back to the genealogy. Laura Mendenhall suggests, that “when the angel came to Joseph, perhaps God had two adoptions in mind.” The first one would have been Jesus’ adoption as a son of Joseph and therefore a son of David and a son of Abraham. And through the second one “Joseph and his whole family were made part of Jesus’ family.” All the way back to Abraham, the whole family was included into the story of Jesus who came to save his people from their sins. “That whole family tree, the good, the bad, and the ugly, were all adopted when Joseph named the child Jesus.”[11]

The God who wrote the beginnings of our redemption with crooked lines also writes the rest of the story with crooked lines, and some of those lines are our own lives and witness. God continues to use the unknown and the unsung for God’s saving purposes. No one is unimportant. No one is too insignificant to contribute to the story of Jesus Christ in the world. Joseph remains on the edge of the scene, but not his kindness, not his courage. May they illuminate our hearts as we await the final coming of Christ.

[1] Genesis 38

[2] Joshua 2 and James 2:25

[3] 2 Samuel 11

[4] Raymond E. Brown, A Coming Christ in Advent: Essays on the Gospel Narratives Preparing for the Birth of Jesus: Matthew 1 and Luke 1 (Collegeville, Minnesota: LTP, 1988)

[5] Ibid.

[6] The Cherry Tree Carol http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch054.htm

[7] Fred Craddock, “God is with us,” The Cherry Log Sermons (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 5.

[8] See Thomas G. Long, Matthew. Westminster Bible Companion, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 13.

[9] See Mt 5:21-48

[10] Mt 5:20

[11] Laura S. Mendenhall, “Adoption” Journal for Preachers Vol. 25, No. 1 (Advent 2001), 41.

Patient impatience

Isaiah is a great poet among the prophets of Israel. Again and again, his oracles read like they want to be sung, and in today’s joyous announcement of God’s Advent, even the desert, the most lifeless place on earth imaginable, sings.

Isaiah sings of the day when the parched, desolate land rejoices, and bodies that were bound by weariness and despair, sing and dance in a glorious procession of life, on the way to the city of God. Listen! The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. Listen and see the dry and desolate wilderness turned into a verdant and fruitful landscape. See the deathly, desperate land transformed with an eruption of lush life. Listen, look, hum along, and sing! Watch as human beings are being transformed: hands strengthened, knees made firm, hearts healed, eyes and ears, limbs and tongues! Every part of the body not yet engaged in praising the Giver of life is strengthened, opened, healed, unbound! Somebody’s wondering, How can this be? Take it in, let it be.

Chuck Campbell taught preaching at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, before he went to Duke. In one of his classes, he required students to lead worship and preach at the Open Door Shelter for unhoused people in downtown Atlanta. One day they were gathered for worship in front of the shelter, amid the noise of rush-hour traffic. They sang a song, despite the noise, against the noise, and then Chuck’s lesson plans were interrupted.

I noticed one homeless man waving to me and pointing to himself. I was surprised when I saw him for the man can neither hear nor speak and is normally very reserved. But there he was, eager to do something. He stepped into the middle of the circle, bowed his head in silence, and began to sign a hymn for us. It was beautiful, like a dance… In that moment our notions of ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ were turned upside down. The rest of us had been shouting to be heard, but the noise was no problem for our friend.[1]

Normally very reserved, the man burst into song with his hands, his arms, his whole body, fully alive in the worship circle that pointed to the beloved community and embodied it.

“Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come and save you.” God is here. God will come. The prophet offers assurance for the present and the future. God will come, and God’s salvation will encompass all of creation. In Isaiah poetry of redemption, the desert becomes a sea of blossoms, and it rejoices with joy and singing; the lame person is able to walk – but they don’t just walk, they leap like a deer; and the speechless person doesn’t just talk, they shout and sing, with hearts and hands and voices. All of creation is over the top with life and joy! Patricia Tull writes,

It’s true that presuming every blind eye will open — whether literally or metaphorically — is a presumptuous mistake. But so is expecting no blind eyes to open.

In faith, however, we do not take a stance of presumption, but of radical openness to the presence and promises of God. We take a stance of hope and expectancy. And hope proceeds not simply from God’s expected reversals, but from the people the prophet seeks to inspire: a small band of exiles who embrace the promise;  they push back the chaos and recultivate the burned land; they let hope strengthen their weak hands, they let faith make their feeble knees firm, and in wonder they witness the courage of their once fearful hearts. “This is a reversal we don’t have to wait for,” writes Patricia Tull. “It’s one we can enact every day.”[2]

Isaiah sings and James counsels patience. He does so after pronouncing God’s judgment on greed and exploitation. “Come now, you rich people… listen!” he declares at the beginning of ch. 5.

The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.[3]

James counsels patience—until the coming of the Lord. This patience isn’t stoic acceptance, let alone resignation. It is anticipation. And anticipation inspires action.

On November 30, 1955, the night before the launch of the Montgomery bus boycott, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said,

There comes a time when people get tired. We are here this evening to say to those who have mistreated us so long that we are tired—tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression. We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white [siblings] the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved… to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.

It matters greatly who counsels patience, in what context, and to what end. In April 1963, Dr. King responded to a group of ministers who were counseling patience, by writing his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” … This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” … We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” … There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over … I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.[4]

The white religious leaders in the crosshairs of his Letter were not outliers but reflected the views of majority American society, according to Matt Skinner. One survey from 1964, the year after King penned his “Letter,” found [that] 63% of Americans agreed that “civil rights leaders are trying to push too fast.”[5]

It matters greatly who counsels patience, in what context, and to what end. Again in Montgomery, in 1965, at the end of the march from Selma, Dr. King said,

I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody’s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” Somebody's asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?… How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?” I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.” How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.”[6]

James counsels patience until the coming of the Lord. This patience isn’t stoic acceptance, let alone resignation. It is anticipation. And anticipation inspires action.

The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.

Yes, but the farmer does more than sit around and wait for rain. When James counsels patience, he encourages his audience, he encourages you and me, to be steadfast and determined in following Jesus on the way, in marching with Jesus on the way, in shouting, singing, and dancing with Jesus on the way—and to refuse, with holy stubbornness, to abandon the anticipation of the promised harvest. Frederick Buechner, who died in September at age 96, said it best, as he often did.

To wait for Christ to come in his fullness is not just a passive thing, a pious, prayerful, churchly thing. On the contrary, to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is above all else to act in Christ’s stead as fully as we know how. To wait for Christ is as best we can to be Christ to those who need us to be Christ to them most and to bring them the most we have of Christ’s healing and hope because unless we bring it, it may never be brought at all.[7]

Patience is anticipation, and anticipation inspires action. There have been days when God’s people asked, “How long will it take?” And there will be days when God’s people will ask, “How long until the mourning land will rejoice and sing? How long until the blind eyes will be opened?”

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, is a patient woman, glowing with holy impatience. After yet another gun control measure had gone to the U.S. Senate to die, she wrote,

I woke up the morning after the Senate vote thinking about Sojourner Truth, one of my role models, a brilliant and indomitable slave woman who could neither read nor write but who was passionate about ending unjust slavery and second-class treatment of women. At the end of one of her antislavery talks in Ohio, a man came up to her and said, “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Do you suppose people care what you say? Why, I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea.” 

“Perhaps not,” she answered, “but, the Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching.” 

Patience is anticipation, and for Edelman this means,

We must be determined and persistent fleas… Enough fleas biting strategically can make the biggest dog uncomfortable. And if they flick some of us off but even more of us keep coming back with our calls, emails, visits, nonviolent direct action protests, and votes – we’ll win.[8]

We are walking in the light of God. We are marching, singing, dancing in the light of God. Following Jesus on the way to the city of God, we know the one whose coming we await.

[1] Charles L. Campbell, The Word before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 123-124.

[2] Patricia Tull https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23-2/commentary-on-isaiah-354-7a-4

[3] James 5:1, 4-6

[4] https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf

[5] Matthew Skinner, When Patience Becomes Complacency https://sojo.net/articles/when-patience-becomes-complacency-why-we-cant-wait

[6] http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/mlk_speech.html

[7] https://www.frederickbuechner.com/blog/2021/2/1/weekly-sermon-illustration-waiting-for-christ

[8] https://www.childrensdefense.org/child-watch-columns/health/2013/we-must-never-give-up/

Real life

Pastor Kimberly was sitting on the rug with a group of children. She showed them a small statue of a lion lying down, with a lamb resting on its outstretched paws. She asked them what they thought of this. Brandon, one of the youngest theologians in the group, said, “Well in the Bible it says they will rest together. But in real life the lion would eat him!”[1]

Ellen M. drew a picture of the scene from Isaiah as her contribution to our Advent devotional booklet this year. In Ellen’s picture, the lion doesn’t eat the lamb. Both look at the viewer, together with the leopard and the goat and the calf – all of them look at us from the page with wide open eyes, perhaps a little startled by this most unusual arrangement of peace between predator and prey. In Ellen’s picture, only the wolf doesn’t look at the viewer, but at something off to the side, beyond the edge of the page. Perhaps the wolf is watching the toddler playing at the adder’s den, waiting for the peaceful moment to come to a sudden end? Disbelief creeps into the scene, we can’t help it. “On the day the lion and the lamb lie down together, only the lion is going to get back up,” Woody Allen once dryly remarked.

Prophetic vision is one thing; real life is something else. Real life is reflected in news headlines and end-of-year statistics, we tell ourselves, not in Bible stories. In real life we are anxious to hear about the war in Ukraine, the protests in Iran and China, the growing despair in Haiti, the famine in East Africa, and the water levels in the Mississippi. Real life, young Brandon has come to understand, follows its own rules, and in the real-life world, the visions of the prophets are strange announcements.

Isaiah is no stranger to real life, though, as young Brandon will soon discover, assuming he continues to hang out with Pastor Kimberly. Isaiah is fluent in the real-life language of legislation and judicial proceedings and economic analysis.

Woe to you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey!

When orphans are made prey, the predators who eat them up aren’t wolves or lions. “What will you do on the day of punishment,” Isaiah shouts into their dens.

What will you do in the calamity that will come from far away? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth, so as not to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain? [2]

Isaiah underlines what connects the local habits of oppression and what he calls the calamity from far away: the armies of Assyria. “The rod of my anger,” the God Isaiah serves has called them. “The club in their hands is my fury!”[3]

Look, the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the tallest trees will be cut down, and the lofty will be brought low. He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.[4]

Isaiah is no stranger to real life; big trouble is on its way south, approaching Jerusalem, and the lopping and chopping, cutting and hacking in Isaiah’s sentencing speech is at once an accurate description of the devastations of warfare and the divine verdict against the real-life leaders.

I imagine the prophet walking through the streets of the city, but in his sad and furious, broken heart, he is stumbling through a devastated, clear-cut, and trampled landscape, with only smoldering stumps emerging from the ashes that cover the land. I am reminded of images and reports from the Amazon, where thick clouds of smoke hung over the rainforest as work crews burned and chain-sawed through it. The native peoples driven from their land and driven to extinction together with the forest, know the devastation better than any of us, in every aspect of their life and culture. The rest of us depend on satellite images to reveal the extent of destruction, once the rains have washed the smoke from the air: thousands of square miles of forest razed, swaths of jungle the size of small countries destroyed in a matter of months.[5]

Isaiah is no stranger to real life. It was a common tactic in war: the enemy troops set up camp in a ring around the city, just beyond reach of the defenders’ spears and arrows. They stopped all incoming and outgoing traffic, putting an end to all trade. Then they burned all fields and systematically chopped down every fruit-bearing tree in walking distance, clearcutting a wide swath of land around the city. Then they just waited until the inhabitants ran out of food and water – why risk the lives of your troops in battle if you can starve a population into submission?

I imagine Isaiah walking amid the stumps. The land of promise has become a wasteland; the city sits in dust and ashes. He doesn’t lift his head; he doesn’t raise his eyes, he keeps them on the ground, waiting for a word from the God of Zion. I imagine Isaiah walking the land, witnessing the devastation, the continuing violence and oppression, and the lack of true repentance among the people and their leaders. And then he sees on one of the stumps, pushing through the scorched bark, bright green and full of life, a tiny shoot. And it speaks the word of the Lord to him:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

Jesse was the father of king David, long before Isaiah’s time. God had made a promise to David that his house and kingdom would be established forever in Jerusalem. [6] Forever, however, was profoundly in question given the record of the house of David. Forever assumed a kind of rule congruent with the purposes of God, the kind of rule described in Psalm 72:

Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.

Hopes were high that the reign of God in heaven would be reflected in the life of God’s people on earth. But it wasn’t justice and peace that flourished in Isaiah’s days; the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, much as in our own time. I imagine the prophet kneeling in the dust, clinging to the faithfulness of God.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

This one wouldn’t be a puppet of the powerful, for a change. The spirit of the Lord would rest on him, and his governance would be in tune with God’s will. This one would judge the poor with righteousness and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. Kneeling in the dust and ashes, the prophet receives a reaffirmation of God’s commitment to justice and peace. And this commitment is cosmic in scale: Not only are the widow, the orphan, the migrant worker, and the refugee no longer prey for those in power – the shoot from the stump of Jesse establishes a peace that stills every terror, every fear in all of creation.

The lion’s idea of peace is simple. It is the good life without competition: no leopards, no bears, no wolves or shepherds; just a steady supply of tender lambs and fatted calves – all for the lion. The lion’s idea of paradise is a world where the lambs are so fat that they can’t run away, or so stupid that they won’t even try.

The lamb’s dream of peace is a world without lions. Yet Isaiah speaks of one who brings peace to the lamb and the lion. Real life, Isaiah insists, is not what we think we’ve always known, but rather this vision of peace that inspires us to hope and to dare.

Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom includes human beings, young children – the nursing child, the weaned child, the little child – but no adults. Paul Duke suggests that this is because “the new creation wants a human presence – new, bright, undefended, and free – to love and care for it all.” And then he adds, “This, of course, is the child we seek in Christ, in whom the lion of Judah and the lamb of God are one. In this Child we meet the divine vulnerability and the divine strength.”[7]

Real life emerges in the reign of the one who is the lion and the lamb, who accomplishes in us the “deep, radical, limitless transformation in which we – like lion, wolf, and leopard – will have no hunger for injury, no need to devour, no yearning for brutal control, no passion for domination.”[8] Or as Thomas Merton put it, “The Advent mystery is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet Christ.” [9]

Asked about the lion with a lamb resting on its outstretched paws, young Brandon said, “Well, in the Bible it says they will rest together. But in real life the lion would eat him!”

We are here to encourage him to trust, together with Ellen and the rest of us that Isaiah’s fantastic vision of wide-eyed wonder is more real than the diminished life we create for each other without such vision. We encourage him and one another to believe in the deep, radical, limitless transformation in which we – like lion, wolf, and leopard – will have no hunger for injury, no need to devour, no yearning for brutal control, no passion for domination – only life in the fullness of God’s peace.

[1] See Journal for Preachers Vol. 28, No. 1 (Advent) 2004, 6.

[2] Isaiah 10:1-4

[3] Isaiah 10:5

[4] Isaiah 10:33-34

[5] See Matt Sandy https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/world/americas/amazon-fires-bolsonaro-photos.html

[6] 2 Sam 7:16

[7] Paul S. Duke, Feasting, Year A, Vol. 1, 31.

[8] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39 (WBC), 103.

[9] Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration: Meditations on the Cycle of Liturgical Feasts (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2009), 77.