What is coming into being?

Have you known someone who set an extra place at the table for an ‘unexpected guest’? Maybe Jesus, or Elijah, or a prophet? Or perhaps an angel, lest they entertain one unawares and badly?

In the days when Herod reigned in Judea, the people of the land expected Elijah or someone like him. They just didn’t know who, or when, that prophet would appear. 

In no way did some ordinary household expect his arrival in their own home, any more than an ordinary elderly couple expected a late-life child. “I am old, and my wife is getting on in years.” 

Pious temple-priest family as they were, Elizabeth and Zechariah did not see themselves as look-alikes to Abraham and Sarah, or Hannah and Elkanah, or the parents of Samson. Those were stories in the Bible they read, for sure, but they were centuries, even millenia, old. Part of the tradition, not a daily hope.

And yet. The unexpected came, and met - and exceeded - all expectations. One like Elijah did come, and come he did to that small family. They rejoiced at the unexpected and their neighbors rejoiced with them.

What is God doing? The constant question, behind the questions, of the parents and, we learn, of their neighbors as well. “How can these things be?” Zechariah asks, echoing Abraham, as he, like the other new old father, receives the angelic message.  Zechariah is struck speechless by the news, from Gabriel, that he is becoming a father. Awe-struck all fathers-to-be may be, this is something special, a sign from God.

To be struck speechless may seem a punitive sign, a reward for doubt, but that now voiceless doubt becomes itself a sign of God’s doing.

What is God doing? Elizabeth exults. Like Hannah, wife of Elkanah, mother of Samuel, Elizabeth sees in her unexpected expectation a gift from God and a sign of his favor.

And so it is only right that the child is named for God’s favor, as his name means that: God’s favor, God’s graciousness, rests upon this one, this child.

Knowing what they knew, separately or together, they named their child John - beloved of God, sign of God’s favor, and grace. 

Favored: and the angel who greets Mary will likewise greet her, “Hail, favored one!” “Hail full of grace!” 

And so the families and the hopes of all peoples are drawn together. Peace on earth, indeed, to those whom God favors. 

But back to the neighbors’ question: What will this child become?

What is coming into being?

Any parents would be wondering, and these are in awe. Elizabeth and Zechariah and all the people of Israel and Palestine, must wonder. They stand at the end of a long line of faithful couples, surprised parents, unexpected children, hope, and promise. And now something is happening. 

Something new. Not just as any child is new but as the world is new. For a new order of the ages now begins. John is not only the last of the prophets, he is the forerunner of the new thing that God is doing.

He is promised to be a child of a new age. His birthright would be to follow his father’s steps, and become a temple priest, maybe even in his turn one day offering incense. But his father and mother know better. His path is a break with the past even as it is a fulfillment of promise. He will go before the long-expected one, the anointed one, who will lead his people, and all people, into a new order of the ages.

John, son of a priest and of the line of the first priest, Aaron, did not hold on to these things, and sought no position within the temple structure. Instead he went out to the undeveloped country, the land around the river, where he began to do his work.

He proclaimed and preached and called to all the people to turn aside from any way but God’s way; to prepare themselves as a straight road through the wilderness, a highway for their God. And on that road, that path of faith and hope, they would return to obedience and holy living.

The universality of his message was clear, as was his welcome. Tax collectors and soldiers, Herodian or imperial, were among the many who took baptism under his hand.

What then should we do? They asked. John had some practical advice. And then something more: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!”

It is not what we expected. It is everything we expected. The prophet in the guise of Elijah has come: Prepare the way! and the Anointed One is on the way. How shall we prepare our hearts - this time - for his arrival? (Much of wisdom consists in doing the next right thing.)

What we know about it is this: there are practical things to do. John as an adult will advise repentant sinners,  soldiers and tax collectors among them, to treat others fairly. To do justice, as the prophet said, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. 

Christ is coming. And to prepare to follow his way we set aside a lot we do not want to carry with us any farther. Not simply as tired hikers crossing a weary wilderness, but as those approaching a new and promised land. There are challenges ahead, tasks and even conflicts, that will require us to travel light, or to discard what impedes us. We repent, and turn toward God.

And yet there is another question: Now what? What do we do? Not just the people in the first century of the new era, the happy family, the rejoicing neighbors, the repentant soldiers, but us, now. What do we do now?

For the Fore-runner has appeared, and delivered his message, to them, and also to us. Now what? What should we do now?

Present the happy family with new baby gifts? Is that it?  

I think not. I think this particular new guest, grateful as the folks would be for such gifts, wants something more. I’m not thinking of incense or spices or ready money. I’m thinking of love.

Love for him, sure. Who doesn’t love a little baby? Okay, Herod.

But love for Herod? Come on! Love your enemies? That’s spiteful! Isn’t it?

Or is the wisdom of this world not so wise after all? Let us see what happens. The story unfolds.

We are moving, with John, into the kingdom of Heaven. It is just around the corner. And we don’t know quite what to expect.

And on the way, the way prepared with love, we will meet the unexpected.

In his Christmas Oratorio W. H. Auden put it this way:

“He is the Way.

Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;

You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.

Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;

You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.

Love Him in the World of the Flesh;

And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.”

[from For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio by W.H. Auden

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/23421649-for-the-time-being-a-christmas-oratorio]

JRL+ 

Lutheran Church of the Foothills, Tucson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ECmiY-Jf5k

an unexpected party

 

Have you known someone who set an extra place at the table for an ‘unexpected guest’? Maybe Jesus, or Elijah, or a prophet? Or perhaps an angel, lest they entertain one unawares and badly?

Early in the days after Herod reigned in Judea, the people of the land expected Elijah or someone like him. They just didn’t know who, or when, that prophet would appear. 

In no way did some ordinary household expect his arrival, any more than an ordinary elderly couple expected a late-life child. “I am old, and my wife is getting on in years.” 

Pious temple-priest family as they were, Elizabeth and Zechariah did not see themselves as look-alikes to Abraham and Sarah, or Hannah and Elkanah, or the parents of Samson. Those were stories in the Bible they read, for sure, but they were centuries, even millenia, old. Part of the tradition, not a daily hope.

And yet. The unexpected met - and exceeded - all expectations. One like Elijah did come, and come he did to that small family. They rejoiced at the unexpected and their neighbors rejoiced with them.

And yet. And yet. Knowing what they knew, separately or together, they named their child John - beloved of God, sign of God’s favor, and grace. 

"What then will this child become?” Everybody asked. And nobody answered quite what they came to see.

John, son of a priest and of the line of the first priest, Aaron, did not hold on to these things, and sought no position within the temple structure. Instead he went out to the undeveloped country, the land around the river, where he began to do his work.

He proclaimed and preached and called to all the people to turn aside from any way but God’s way; to prepare themselves as a straight road through the wilderness, a highway for their God. And on that road, that path of faith and hope, they would return to obedience and holy living.

The universality of his message was clear, as was his welcome. Tax collectors and soldiers, Herodian or imperial, were among the many motley crowd who took baptism under his hand.

What then should we do? They asked. He had some practical advice. And then something more: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!”

JRL+

How I read my Bible

“How I read my Bible…” a friend began  —  and then went on to “go off” on some other people. Certainly the Bible can give you plenty of verbiage to strew around the place if that is what you are seeking. Check out the Psalms: you won’t find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy  — this side of Mos Eisley. But then again you won’t find entire agreement that these sentiments are, well, right.

How I read my Bible began with precocious curiosity, as it did with an ancestor before me, a 19th Century free-thinking Ohioan named Sarah Marie who at a young age had carte blanche in the local public library. One day (to her parents’  — horror? bemusement?) she brought home a strange new book, the “Holly Bibble”. A good family story. 

How I read my Bible began, then, with opening that same book, if not the same copy. There was Aunt Carol’s copy, Gramps’s multiple copies, and eventually the one my teacher Lee Jagers gave me at a Young Life Bible study. 

By the time of that latter gift, a Phillips New Testament, I was no longer reading it alone. I was in a group, capably led, where the themes and meanings of Scripture texts were discussed. I may have changed some of my opinions and perceptions since then, but I have continued the practice. Read and discuss alone and in a group. But read to seek meaning. 

Read, not just to satisfy curiosity, though that is a good start. Read, not just to fulfill an assignment or prepare a lesson  — or a sermon, but read “sitting under the text” as my Seattle text-study leader cautioned us. Read to learn. Read to be refreshed. Read to understand or not understand. Read to be challenged. 

As the book itself says, numerous times, read to seek Wisdom. Wisdom with a capital “W” becomes, indeed, a course for the Spirit to follow. The Spirit is a wind that blows where it will, so, still, do not read it only alone: sit under the text as under a tree with broad shade, and bring your friends. And a few strangers too.

At the Church of the Beloved in Edmonds, Washington, we tried out a practice I first experienced in a small chapel in San Francisco, among a group in embryo there known as the Church of Saint Gregory of Nyssa: invite a stranger to read the Gospel aloud. You may hear it in new ways.

You may hear it as my friend did, back at the start of this story. As a way to wallop — but maybe, as you sit under the text, it will wallop you back.

JRL+

An edited version of this essay appeared in the Keeping the Faith feature in the Home + Life section of the Arizona Daily Star, December 12th 2021, on page E3, under the heading "Read the Bible to learn."

What then will this child become?

All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him. (Luke 1:66)

Elizabeth, six months with child, welcomes her young cousin Mary, newly pregnant. Elizabeth already knows her child will be special. Like Abraham and Sarah, she and her husband, in their older years, are expecting to become new parents. Like Daniel, her husband is struck speechless by the news, from Gabriel, that he is becoming a father. Awe-struck all fathers-to-be may be, this is something special, a sign from God.

To be struck speechless may seem a punitive sign, a reward for doubt, but that now voiceless doubt becomes itself a sign of God’s doing.

What is God doing? The constant question, behind the questions, of the parents and, we learn, of their neighbors as well. “How can these things be?” Zechariah asks, echoing Abraham, as he, like the other new old father, receives the angelic message.

What is God doing? Elizabeth exults. Like Hannah, wife of Elkanah, mother of Samuel, Elizabeth sees in her unexpected expectation a gift from God and a sign of his favor.

And so it is only right that the child is named for God’s favor, as his name means that: God’s favor, God’s graciousness, rests upon this one, this child.

Favored: and the angel who greets Mary will likewise greet her, “Hail, favored one!” “Hail full of grace!” 

And so the families and the hopes of all peoples are drawn together. Peace on earth, indeed, to those whom God favors. 

But back to the neighbors’ question: What will this child become?

He is promised to be a child of a new age. His birthright would be to follow his father’s steps, and become a temple priest, maybe even in his turn one day offering incense. But his father and mother know better. His path is a break with the past even as it is a fulfillment of promise. He will go before the long-expected one, the anointed one, who will lead his people, and all people, into a new order of the ages.

Unexpected child, expected child: cousins of a common purpose. What is God doing? What shall these children become?

“You my child” - says Zechariah - will go before. As for what will become of Mary’s child stay tuned. The story isn’t over yet.

***

Birth of John the Baptist 

Baruch 5:1-9

Canticle (in lieu of Psalm): The Song of Zechariah : Luke 1.68-79

Philippians 1:3-11

Luke 1.57-66 [= RCL Nativity of John the Baptist, Jun24]

The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold

 

Icon of the Deesis - St. Catherine's Monastery Sinai, 12th century

Our God reigns. Where does he reign? First of all, in the human heart. But it does not end there. It is more than that. Much more: The personal stories of the holy families of Old Testament and New begin personally, with old couples, young women, widows, children, but the implications are divine. 

Imagine Abraham and Sarah, wandering from Iraq across Syria into Palestine and down into Egypt then back into Palestine, all the time hoping the promise would be fulfilled, keeping the faith that someday she would have a child of her own, and they would settle down in the land of promise. 

Imagine their daughter-in-law Rebecca wanting a son, waiting for a child, hoping for that vindication after years of barrenness. And her daughter-in-law Rachel, in turn, in hopes of waiting. 

They each had hope fulfilled, holy promise kept. Isaac was born to Sarah, Jacob was born to Rebecca, and Rachel had her two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. They were not the last. 

Naomi returned from across the Jordan to her native village and her daughter-in-law bore a son so precious to her that people said, “Naomi had a son.” It was Jesse, whose descendant was David. (And from the house of David was to come the Messiah.)

Elkanah, a pious man, went to the temple to pray every year, and his wife Hannah went with him. But into her old age she too wanted and wept for lack of a son. In the temple she prayed and the priest discovered her. And God fulfilled her wish - her son was Samuel who became the prophet who anointed David. 

And then here at last, at the end of the old story and the beginning of the new, an elderly, pious, childless couple, faithful to the Lord, are blessed with a child. Like Hannah, Elizabeth feels vindicated: a weight has lifted. And her joy is more than personal: it is as if Israel had awaited vindication, a new hope, a promise of ages come true. 

The old stories, the old songs, the old promises: all these are brought into a new era.

They were scary times. The nation was divided into hostile camps. Compromisers, survivalists, puritanical rule-keepers, insurrectionists. Contention. Mistrust. Fear.

Sadducees were accommodationists, who cut a deal with Herod the Great, awarded rule of Palestine by Caesar Augustus the emperor across the sea. Essenes were separatists, who withdrew from society to keep themselves perfect and safe. Pharisees sought to redeem themselves through piety and purity, keeping the letter of the law and sometimes its spirit. Zealots were all for combat; they brought down the wrath of Rome on everybody’s head. 

And then there were those odd birds, the followers of -- hope. 

Hope. Built on an ancient promise. A series of minor miracles. Long stories long told. Of people who kept faith through dark times, who spoke gratitude when things changed. Whose children grew up with the knowledge of God, and found their way to faith in turn.

It was the beginning of the fulfillment of the promise of ages. It was not yet the new thing. It was at once both the last of the old and the first of the new. But it was not yet fully time. The new would come. And here was the son, and here the promise, here the proclamation. And hear the good news!

***

So we see that Zechariah and Elizabeth and John, like Abraham and Sarah and Isaac, like Rebecca and Isaac and Jacob, like Hannah and Elkanah and Samuel, saw the fulfillment of long held hopes and ancient expectations. And so the traditions and practices of Israel continued into their time. Of course there was a complication. The Romans.

Greg Woolf, historian of ancient Rome, refers to emperors as ‘embodied symbols’. Where the emperor was, the empire was too. But emperors could not be everywhere imperial presence was needed. In their stead, as Laura Hollengreen has taught me, the Romans put up, in their law courts, statues of empires, to represent the living symbol that was (as the saying goes) just a man. Statues then represented the presence of the emperor and the empire. 

We certainly did not want to see one in the Holy of Holies, or even in the sacred city. But they were there, in proxy, in the emperor’s good friend Herod, at the time of John’s birth.

The last of the prophets, the greatest of them, would herald not only the fulfillment of old promises, but the advent of a new era. And in this era the titles and claims of Messiah and of Son of David would come into clashing conflict with the “king of kings” and ‘son of God’ that the emperor styled himself to be.

We can learn from this as we reflect on our own times, when divided nations have factions that variously choose to accommodate or combat or influence or withdraw from the mixing of peoples and ideas and values that comes with a cosmopolitan society. We do not have the embodied presence of an emperor, or statues in his stead. What then do we have? What is the imperial hegemony, the dominant power structure, we swim in, like goldfish in a bowl?

Like the old fish in the joke, you may encounter young fish who do not even know they are swimming. 

But it’s there. Walter Wink wrote about the powers that be, the ‘principalities and powers’ of our time that William Stringfellow and James Wm. McClendon also warned against, who now inhabit our lives. 

We struggle against the unseen - or the unnamed - just as much as the Jews, Sadducees and Pharisees and Essenes and Zealots, did against the visible imperial foe of their time.

So John the Baptist when he came had a lot to do. He was the herald, the precursor. Prepare ye the way of the Lord! he cried. As the way through the desert welcomed their ancestors home from exile, as the dry land cleared the way on the exodus from Egypt, so now John would be the one to clear the way for the arrival of the long expected savior.

He would do it, as we know, through a symbol of his own: a cleansing immersion in the Jordan, the river that the people had crossed centuries before to reach the promised land.

Come out from the cities, into the wild country, come home to the places where God reigns. Not a threat or terror, but the place where God had led them before: as our service sometimes says, through the desert, past the parted waters, led day and night, to home.

That is what the herald of Messiah was calling them to do; he was calling the people again to be the people of God, and to get ready: the day was coming.

It will be a day of fear, of terror, and of obedience. But first and last it will be a day of joy.

The presence of the Lord! He is on the way: get ready. 

Prepare your hearts and make him room.

JRL+

The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold : Luke 1.5-25

Responsorial Canticle: Isaiah 40:1-5, 40:9; 60:1-3 (KJV)

Jeremiah 33:14-16

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Lutheran Church of the Foothills, Tucson. https://youtu.be/gF4Yeo-DFpQ

Martyrs and Kings

Every transition has an end, a middle, and a beginning. The Church Year ends with the feast of Christ the King, the Reign of Christ, a feast instituted by Pope Pius X during the rise of Fascism in Italy in the 1920s. The feast spread to many other church bodies; we celebrate it now as a reminder that God reigns, not us. The Church Year begins anew four Sundays before Christmas Day (whether it occurs on a Sunday or a week day).  

And so as we reach the end of the season that culminates in the feast of Christ the King, we find the story of Jesus about to loop around itself from the end back to the beginning: from the consummation of time to the birth of a baby. "Come thou long expected Jesus" we soon will sing. And he arrives twice! First he comes to us as the infant terrorizing Herod and again as the one before whose throne all will gather. Same person. 

Herod the Great, ruler of Palestine under Roman sponsorship -- who built the great buildings whose ruin Jesus prophesies -- got the message early and he did not like it. That earthbound despot wanted no rivals, especially legitimate ones. Some more recent sovereigns have had similar inclinations.  But God prevails. 

And that is good news that we hear today : Christ forewarned his followers of the difficulties ahead of them and yet reassured them of their ultimate vindication. And so it is when we face hard times, adversity, or mortality: we are not alone. That is why the one who comes is called "Emmanuel" - God with us.

This good news comforts the comfortable and the afflicted, the desperate and the sorrowful and the joyous alike. Since sometimes that can be all of us or any of us this is good news indeed.

That reminder that God reigns came home with force within a decade or two after the feast was first proclaimed. Among those who made it stick in hearts and minds was Kaj Munk, a Danish playwright and pastor, who wrote an impolitic play during the second World War. 

What was the point, and what was the problem, was that he uniquely compared Herod to Hitler. And this did not make the occupying army happy: indeed he was soon a martyr, murdered by the Gestapo, his body found in a ditch the morning after a midnight abduction. 

Call it an arrest or call it an abduction: it was the prelude to murder. He was not the last. Not certainly the last. There have been many martyrs and prophets since his death who have stood in front of evil and proclaimed God’s reign. 

Later in the 20th century it was Janani Luwum, Archbishop in Uganda, who confronted an evil regime with the power of love. He paid with his life. One night he was summoned to the presidential palace, and he stood right in front of his country’s ruler, Idi Amin, and refused to renounce the truth. For that he was shot and killed.

These are among the known martyrs; others are known but to God. But their work continues; their truth persists; and the culmination of this year and all years is still this: God reigns. That means that whatever claims on our allegiance are offered to us, none is as important as the integrity of the faith that God keeps with us. And that we, faltering and failing and forgiven, attempt to keep with God.  

How are we to follow this one who rejected earthly titles but is 'ruler of the kings of earth' and seated at the right hand of God? Challenging questions as we anticipate the arrival of the King of Kings.

 

The book of Daniel and the book of Revelation reveal visions of what God is doing by telling us what they see God doing in the future. In some ways the prophecies of Daniel seem like visionary accounts of what was already happening in his time while revealing what is really going on in the deep currents of time. 

For example, he speaks of four kingdoms that could be the successors to Alexander the Great. 

Indeed it was one of these, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, r. 175 BCE-164 BCE, who was the immediate enemy of Israel at the time of the book’s composition. 

Nevertheless it has implications beyond that moment, for Daniel prophesies not only what is happening, or has happened, or is going to happen, but what it means. What it means is that God reigns; not Pharaoh, not Nebuchadnezzer, not Cyrus, and certainly not Antiochus IV Epiphanes. 

 

What then is the nature of that reign? Jesus refuses the label of comparative kingship, as if he were to be a head of state alongside the clients of Rome or its rival powers. No, his kingdom is not of this world: it is a heavenly kingdom. But what is that to us? What does it mean for us? 

 

It means our loyalty lies beyond the immediate present press of events; our faith is in something transcendent, someone eternal. The Ancient of Days, in fact. The one who is and was and is to come. And in the Son of Man, who is likewise the first and the last, first born of the resurrection and witness of all that is coming to pass, has come to pass, and will come to pass.

 

And we are in their hands, ultimately; the hands of God. 

 

Our God reigns. Where does he reign? Most of all, in the human heart.

Yes, first of all in the human heart. But it does not end there: it is more than that.

When Jesus speaks of truth he speaks of what is solid, reliable, real. And it implies there is something to be done. Truth that is God made known in Jesus Christ is actionable knowledge. If you know Jesus, you act upon that knowledge.

And so when you know that truth, you have a way, a life, before you: a truth that will set you free.  Free to center your life on the abundant grace of God, revealed in Jesus Christ in its fullness. 

So as the psalm says there may be a night of sorrow but it will open into a new dawn of joy.

 

That is something people of faith have held onto, from that day to this, when that night looks black.

 

And that is the sunrise into glory that we anticipate on the feast day of Christ the King.

JRL+ 

Ancient of Days

 

William Blake, Ancient of Days

As I was watching,

        thrones were raised up.

    The ancient one took his seat.

        His clothes were white like snow;

        his hair was like a lamb’s wool.

        His throne was made of flame;

        its wheels were blazing fire.

Daniel 7:9, Common English Bible

The "Ancient of Days", from the visions of the book of Daniel, is one of the most famous images by the mystical poet and printmaker William Blake (1757-1827). His apocalyptic visions have been turned into song, notably the revolutionary poem, "Jerusalem", which somehow became a triumphant hymn. (A friend used to play the version from "Chariots of Fire" on loudspeakers while he mowed his lawn). But Blake was always revolutionary, and even more so was his master, and ours, Jesus. How are we to follow this one who rejected earthly titles but is 'ruler of the kings of earth' and seated at the right hand of God? Challenging questions as we anticipate the arrival of the King of Kings.

The book of Daniel and the book of Revelation reveal visions of what God is doing by telling us what they see God doing in the future. In some ways the prophecies of Daniel seem like visionary accounts of what was already happening in his time while revealing what is really going on in the deep currents of time. For example, he speaks of four kingdoms that could be the successors to Alexander the Great. Indeed it was one of these, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, r. 175 BCE-164 BCE, who was the immediate enemy of Israel at the time of the book’s composition. Nevertheless it has implications beyond that moment, for Daniel prophesies not only what is happening, or has happened, or is going to happen, but what it means. What it means is that God reigns; not Pharaoh, not Nebuchadnezzer, not Cyrus, and certainly not Antiochus IV Epiphanes. 

What then is the nature of that reign? Jesus refuses the label of comparative kingship, as if he were to be a head of state alongside the clients of Rome or its rival powers. No, his kingdom is not of this world: it is a heavenly kingdom. But what is that to us? What does it mean for us? 

It means our loyalty lies beyond the immediate present press of events; our faith is in something transcendent, someone eternal. The Ancient of Days, in fact. The one who is and was and is to come. And in the Son of Man, who is likewise the first and the last, first born of the resurrection and witness of all that is coming to pass, has come to pass, and will come to pass.

And we are in their hands, ultimately; the hands of God. 

So as the psalm says there may be a night of sorrow but it will open into a new dawn of joy.

That is something people of faith have held onto, from that day to this, when that night looks black.

And that is the sunrise into glory that we anticipate on the feast day of Christ the King.

Our God reigns. Where does he reign? Most of all, in the human heart.