John 17:6-19
David A. Davis
March 21, 2021
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The 17^th chapter of John, the last chapter of the Last Supper Discourse, is labeled by the tradition as Jesus “high priestly prayer.” Priestly, as in Jesus is petitioning God on behalf of the disciples. Lifting them up to the Lord in prayer. Priestly, as in Jesus is commissioning them, ordaining, sending them into the world on his behalf. If the setting of the prayer was transposed through time and place to the chancel of a sanctuary somewhere, someplace, it is as if the disciples would be kneeling before Jesus as he prayed. And as prayed, Jesus would be laying hands on each one.

Calling it the “high priestly prayer” also brings the preacher in the Book of Hebrews to mind. “Since, then, we have a great high priest”, Hebrews, chapter 4, “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”  Or in other words, Jesus knew the world. Not only was Jesus in the world, Jesus knew the world. He knew where he was sending them. “I am no longer in the world” Jesus prayed, “but they are.”  The disciples and those who would come to believe in him through their word, they… we… are in the world.

“In the world but not of the world”.  There’s a well-worn preacher’s phrase.  Think how many of us had those words etched deep within by preachers, conference speakers, youth group leaders. “Be in the world but not of the world!” It functions as a sort of bible-like bumper sticker. It would come as an exhortation, an encouragement, or even bit of threat when it comes to behavior and choices. Because also, most often the expression would drip with implications for the moral life and the avoidance of sin. “In the world, not of the world.”

Indeed, there is clear biblical support for the phrase here in John 17. In fact, the King James and other versions translate v.14 with Jesus saying “they are not of the world even as I am not of the world.” And v.16, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”  Both preceded by v. 11, “I am now no more in the world but these are in the world.”  So, yes, in the world but not of it. It is easy and biblically justifiable it would seem to sum up what Jesus is saying with a call for his followers in generations to come to: “be in the world, but not of the world.”

I just don’t think Jesus thought it was all that easy. Quite that simple. At least the Jesus of John’s Gospel didn’t think it was all that easy. A reader only has to spend just a bit of time in these few chapters in John, or in all of John for that matter, to realize anything Jesus says here in the gospel is not all that easy nor can it be easily summed in a phrase. It’s just not that easy, not all that simple when it comes to what it means for the disciples of Jesus to be in the world. Part of that is just trying to comprehend the beauty and meaning of chapter 17. And part of that is acknowledging that it can’t be all that simple because Jesus was in the world. Jesus knew the world. Maybe that’s why this prayer is so long. So heart felt. So specific. Because Jesus knew that leaving the disciples in the world, that with him leaving and them staying, the challenge would be great.

The gospel of John uses the word “cosmos” a gazillion more times than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Easily more times than all three synoptics put together. In addition to the context of John’s philosophical and theological approach to the world that Shane Berg has discussed in adult (think Gnosticism and dualism), in addition to that, John is just chalked full of the world. So the relationship of Jesus and the disciples to the world, “the world God so loved” in John the relationship, let’s say is…complicated.  This is the world that the Word who became flesh brought into being. The world that knew him not.  Those who heard about Jesus from the Samaritan woman, who then went to listen to Jesus for themselves, they declared Jesus the “Savior of the World”. You remember Jesus declared himself “light of the world” in John. The world Jesus said, he came not to judge but to save. This is the world that will no longer see Jesus, he told the disciples. “But you will see me”.  And Jesus promised them a peace, a peace not as the world gives.

And in addition, there is Jesus’ experience of the world, The experience of the Word made flesh who lived among us. No account in John of the baby Jesus being born into the world, but whole lot of Jesus in the world. Jesus knew the joy of a wedding and the grief of death in John. Jesus stood at the well talking to the Samaritan woman confronting the world’s hate and he went to the pool of five porticoes to see the world’s suffering with all the sick people gather just hoping to be healed. Yes Jesus was in the world and he knew the world, Jesus knew the ruler of the world, the darkness of the world, the evils of the world, the sinfulness of the world, and the violence of the world. After all, it was the world that brutally murdered him.

“And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me.” I am no longer in the world but they are in the world. Protect them. Protect them so they may be one, as you and I are one. Protect them and keep them whole so that their joy may be made complete. Protect them from the evil one and sanctify them in the truth of your word. Sanctify them in truth. And the prayer ends with this “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you: and these know that you have sent me. I made your name know to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.” Yes, “in the world and not of it” isn’t enough. No way it’s enough.

Whatever it all means, that though he is now absent from the world and the disciples are still in it, this prayer? This prayer? It sounds to me like Jesus is asking that his disciples would be drawn into the very heart of God. Not just in the promise of eternal life to come, but in the world right then. The world right now. That prayer language of protection, and complete joy, and oneness, and truth, and glory and love. It is Jesus asking God to draw them in while Jesus is sending them out. The strength of God. The joy of God. The word of God. The truth of God. The peace of God. The love of God. The heart of God and the disciples in the world.

In the world. It can be so hard, sometimes. That high priestly prayer. It’s so long. But not long enough. Because I hope Jesus is still praying it. He knows the world and he knows you and I are still in it. A world of darkness, evil, sin, and violence. A world that seems to find a way to remind us just about every day that it’s pretty much still the same as the world portrayed in the Gospel of John; working against the teaching of Jesus and his justice, his righteousness, his love, his peace at every turn. That world. That’s the world you and I are in. And if Jesus is still praying that high priestly prayer like I hope it is, that means he is still sending us into that world.

A while back we had some trees taken down in our yard and I asked that they leave the wood so I could chop it myself. After a few months weekend chopping bits a time, I finally decided to rent a log splitter. I distinctly remember driving home from the rental place up on Rt  27 after the guy basically showed me where to put the gas and how to start it and that was about it. I was driving home with a piece of equipment that could split logs and take off my arms and legs with out any instruction or training. I was just sent off without even a wave goodbye.

In one of conversations with our daughter and her husband who are expecting their first child, our first grandchild, Cathy and I were recalling how it felt to bring a newborn home from the hospital the very first time. While they do make sure the car seat is properly installed, every new parent feels like they are being sent off bringing a baby into the world without a whole lot of guidance. You get more orientation when you buy a new car!

Jesus is still sending his disciples out into the vast cosmos, a life so chalked full of the world. You and I sent out into the world feeling so unprepared, feeling so small, so prone to hurt others and hurt ourselves. But while Jesus is sending us out, he is asking God to draw us in. Draw us into the strength of God. The joy of God. The word of God. The truth of God. The peace of God. The love of God. The heart of God and you and me in the world. Jesus is praying for us, lifting us before the Lord, sending us into the world because God still loves the world. Jesus still yearns to transform the world, the world he has redeemed. One has to figure that God, and the Son of God, and the Advocate, that the Divine Trio could have worked all this out on their own, the transformation of the world. But in all the mystery of God, the wisdom of God, and what Paul called the foolishness of God, the Crucified and Risen Christ sends the disciples, sends his followers, sends us into the world to keep at it. For to be sanctified in truth, is to be send into the world with the trust and the faith that the very fullness of Christ goes with you. It is to go into the world with the faith and trust that Christ will transform the world through you. Because even as he sends you, he is asking that you be drawn close the very heart of God. Not just in the life to come, but now. Right here. Right now.

So no “be in the world and not of it” is not enough.

Be in the world, and transform it. Because God so loved this world and the Savior of the world is sending you and praying for you.

In the world, and in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, praying and working to make of this old world, a new one.

 

 

 

John 16:16-24
David A. Davis
March 14, 2021

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It’s not just preachers who are searching for the right word or words this week. Journalists, writers, influencers, sports figures, business leaders, teachers, students, neighbors, family members, young, old, every one of us; looking for the right words to describe the last year. The last Sunday we were together in the sanctuary was March 8^th, 2020. Professor Eric Barreto led adult education in the Assembly Room. I preached on Luke 4, Jesus standing up to read from the scroll of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”. The Lenten series was called “The Shape of Salvation”.  It feels like that Lord’s Day was forever ago. Or does it feel like that day was just yesterday? I can’t really decide. Calling it a long year doesn’t really work when so many of the days, so many of the days just run together into one long day in your mind. So many words can be used that picking just a few seems kind of fruitless. On the other hand, a longwinded sermon retrospective on the last year of suffering, death, isolation, distance, division, election, racial tensions, insurrection. Well, I will spare you, and spare me.

The church staff meets together on Tuesday mornings. We study scripture together, we pray together, and we share joys and concerns in your lives and in our lives. We laugh,. We cry. We sigh. We listen. We bounce ideas around, we look at the church calendar, we share information from committee work, and of course, we plan ahead. Sometimes, way ahead. I imagine the staff would agree with me that we do our best work when we do it together, even if in a zoom meeting. Have you noticed in virtual meetings that folks have a harder time keeping a poker face? Also, in wanting to communicate while staying muted, people try to show their affirmation, their laughter, their concern with broader expressions. It makes for some interesting screen shots, all those facial expressions. I wish I had a screen shot of the church staff to share from a few Tuesday mornings in the last year. Like when everyone feels like their plate is overflowing and someone brings up that one more thing to new, that one more new idea. Or when folks were just trying to get through a long week in January and someone asked something something about Easter. Or the first time we tried to wrap our heads around planning and carrying out a virtual Advent and Christmas Eve. Or when for the umpteenth time in the last year, one of us realized that all of us were going to have to learn to do a routine church thing in a new way. The collective expression of one of those screen shots, it wouldn’t have been stunned silence, or frustration, or even discouragement. It would have been more akin to a collective look of bewilderment.

Bewildering. That word seems apt for the last year. Bewildering seems to fit. Perplexing. Confusing. Trying to make some sense. Looking down the road when there so much fogginess, lack of clarity. So much to wonder about but not a wonder filled with awe. More like a wonder that comes with being unmoored, unsettled, uncertain when it comes to just about everything. Bewildered.

It also sounds like a good word to describe the disciples here in John’s gospel. The disciples saying to one another “What does he mean….’a little while and you will no longer see and …a little while you will see me’…a little while…what does he mean?” Jesus has been talking to them for quite a while around that Last Supper Table. Maybe Jesus finally stopped to take a breath, or a sip. Maybe this was the first time they could get in word in edgewise. Maybe its more of literary device in John intended to reveal what the disciples had been thinking and feeling the whole time. Regardless, they sound bewildered. Like Nicodemus who was trying to wrap his head around Jesus telling him someone had to be born from above. Like the Samaritan woman at the well wondering how on earth Jesus was going to offer living water when he had no bucket and the well was so deep. Like Philip whose head must have been spinning when he told Jesus it would take six months of wages to feed a large crowd like that.

The disciples wonder here isn’t quite the same as Peter rebuking Jesus and refusing to accept that Jesus would suffer and die on a cross. The bewilderment isn’t a “no, no, no”. It’s more like a “what?”, maybe a “why”. Probably best it’s a “huh?” The phrase “in a little while” is the presenting puzzle in Jesus’ exchange with the disciples. In a little while he’s gone. In a little while he’s back. But there’s a whole lot more here for them to try to understand, to even see through a mirror dimly than Jesus and his shake and bake of here, not here. The Son of Man and his glorification. The hour that has now come. Jesus being lifted up. Jesus not calling them servants but calling them friends. The Advocate being sent. Jesus in the Father and the Father in Jesus. Jesus telling them they would be killed. The disciples may not know that Jesus’ suffering, his death are hours away. That that is days away. But they must have felt the game changing tension and emotion at the Table. And the Jesus is trying to warn them and reassure them all at the same time. To tell them of his crucifixion, his resurrection, his ascension, his coming again, and how he will welcome to the many dwelling places in the eternal realm of God. And as we have come to learn and expect from Jesus in John, perplexing, confusing, and bewildering doesn’t begin to describe it.  “What does he mean?!”

As with every other time in the gospels that the disciples were talking amongst themselves, Jesus knew what they were saying and knew what they wanted to ask him. “Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn to joy.”  I am unconvinced that Jesus’ use of the childbirth metaphor at this point would have been all that revelatory to table full of men. Maybe Jesus’ reference to childbirth supports the notion that there were women in the room. Women at the table. And those who bore a child were nodding. “No one will take your joy from you”, he told them.

Not just joy, but complete joy. Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.”  Your joy may be full. Your joy may overflow. Just a bit earlier Jesus said to them “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (15:11) It is as if Jesus’ response to the expressions of bewilderment on the disciples’ faces and in response to “what does he mean”, Jesus’ response is the promise of complete peace. And here in the context of this table discourse from Jesus about his glorification, his hour, his being lifted up, it is quite clear that the intent of his promise is that complete peace is coming sooner than later. In fact, complete peace is coming in just a few more days. And with the promise of complete peace, Jesus is telling the disciples that when I depart from you, my work is done here. Your joy is complete. Amid their bewilderment and ours, Jesus is telling them that in his death, his resurrection, his ascension, the work of salvation is complete. Our relationship with God is forever made whole.

Complete joy comes in God with us. Complete joy is in the promise of Jesus: “where I am, there you may be also”. A promise not just for then, but for now. Moses told the people of Israel, “God goes with you, God will not fail you or forsake you.” The psalmist asks “Where can I go from your spirit or where can I flee from your presence?” And then goes on to sing of God’s hand, God’s presence from heaven to hell and to the farthest limits of the sea. You know how the Apostle Paul puts it. “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”.  As the Risen Jesus told the disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospel. . “I will be with you always, to the end of the age”.  And for the disciples, for the followers of Jesus, for you and for me, that is complete joy.

Jesus response to the bewildered disciples trying to grasp not only what Jesus was saying to them but to grasp something of the mystery of the will of God and the wonder (as in awe) of God’s plan of salvation, Jesus response is the promise of a peace made complete by his presence. It’s not a promise that peace made complete takes bewilderment away, or provides all the answers. Peace made complete is hardly a promise of life free of suffering, struggle and pain; not not for the disciples, not for us. Complete peace isn’t the opposite of bewilderment. Christ’s promise amid their bewilderment and ours, his promise of peace in him made complete, what it is, is a balm. It’s a soothing, comforting, calming, assuring, balm.

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul

Sometimes I feel discouraged
And deep I feel the pain
In prayers the holy spirit
Revives my soul again

There is a balm in Gilead

Clinging to God with us, Christ with us, Spirit with us, it’s such a balm when life feels so unmoored, unsettled, uncertain..for entire year for heaven’s sake!  Anne Kuhn put it this way in the prayer she offered in Nassau’s daily devotional on Thursday. “Hear our prayers and grant us peace in knowing that no matter what happens in our world, you are faithful and loving and will never abandon us. Amen.”

            That’s prayer for complete peace.

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John 15:26-16:15
David A. Davis
March 7, 2021

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This morning I would like to invite you to join me in pondering the 7^th verse in the 16^th chapter of the Gospel of John. “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you, but if I go. I will send the Advocate to you.”(v.7) “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.” Jesus said, “it is to your advantage that I go away.” This departure, this absence, to see him no longer, it is to your advantage. And the disciples, somewhere inside must have been thinking, “advantage…really?” After I go, Jesus said, “They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.” Nevertheless, it is to your advantage that I go away. Really? Jesus mentions that he never told them everything about what was going to happen because he was with them. But he is telling them now about getting tossed out of the synagogues and pointing to an hour when they themselves will be killed. “I still have many things to say to you” Jesus went on,  “but you cannot bear them now” Sitting around that Last Supper table, it must have sounded like things were going to get worse before they got better. “Nevertheless” Jesus said, “it is to your advantage that I go away”.  Easier to hear, perhaps when one has never been in his bodily presence. For the disciples, though….advantage?

How many among haven’t seen children and grandchildren for more than a year. On the other hand, there have to be many households among us of more than one person where spouses, parents, and children all understand better in the last year that there are some advantages to absence. Presence and absence redefined in our lives. The advantage of absence isn’t new in the last year. For the student driver, eventually the instructor has to not be in the car when you take the road test.  When you take the SAT, the math tutor isn’t there with you. Teaching a child to swim on their own is about a whole lot more than recreation. Athletes who learn to train when the coach and the whistle are nowhere to found achieve higher goals. But absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder.  Certainly, absence is always a plus. Any parent who has ever come home to find evident of a raucous house party knows absence can come with peril. And as some of you have shared with me as your pastor over the years, absence and presence that comes with the loss of loved one….well, in just about every way it is an experience words can’t really capture. Presence and absence hits close to home in so many ways, including when it comes to faith and our relationship with the Savior we have never known “in person”. Here in the Last Supper Discourse in John, Jesus tells the disciples that his absence is to their advantage and as you and I overhear that conversation, Jesus tells us why his absence is and advantage to us as well.

Advantage, disciples! With Christ’s sending of the Holy Spirit comes the power of your testimony. Yes, the Spirit of Truth will testify on Christ’s behalf. But his call is for the disciples to testify “because you have been with me from the beginning.” They have heard everything Jesus said, everything Jesus taught, everything Jesus proclaimed. They have witnessed every healing, every cleansing, every miracle. Jesus’ hour has come and it is time for the disciples to find their preaching legs and to get their testimony groove on. The world will no longer see him and all he has said and done. The work of the Holy Spirit and the witness of the disciples, that’s what’s in play now that Christ’s glorification has come. Stop and think about it. From that moment on, after Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension, the only tool in the box for the gospel made known in and through Jesus, the gospel made known by the author of our salvation, the only tool is the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the followers of Jesus. And those testimony chops would never be strong enough if Jesus hung around doing all the preaching.

“You also are to testify”, Jesus told the disciples. So far beyond the ecclesial office of the preacher is the testimony of those who follow Jesus. Remember and don’t ever forget when and how that testimony begins. “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love.”  Your testimony, people of God, it was never about this preacher or that preacher. Your testimony in the world begins and ends with love.

Advantage, disciples! With Christ’  sending of the Holy Spirit comes the gift of faith and the invitation to a journey with Jesus not bound by his earthly body. As one professor once but it, the presence of Christ known not in his hands, his feet, his hair, his teeth. “The Spirit of truth will glorify me because the Spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that the Spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you.” The relationship promised in Christ’s absence is deeper and more robust. The disciples’ liberation from his earthly presence opens the way for each follower of Jesus to be connected not just to Jesus of Nazareth, but to the Risen Christ, the Ascended Christ, the Advocate, and that God that Jesus called Father. Christ’s absence is the means of access to the very fullness of God.

Here in John’s gospel, we might only be halfway through Jesus last discourse but we are also only hours way from the the Upper Room when the Risen Jesus appears a second time to the disciples; and this time with Thomas in the room.  Jesus invites Thomas to touch his hands and touch his sides to feel the scars, the wounds of his crucifixion. “Do not doubt but believe!” Thomas exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” And the Risen Jesus offers a beatitude as timeless as those from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.” Blessed are those who come to believe when I am no longer here in the flesh. Faith, trust, a yearning for mystery, and a glimpse of the beauty of God’s fullness. It comes in his absence. In comes to you, people of God, in the gift of the Holy Spirit. In comes to you by faith. Blessed are you, Jesus said.

Advantage, disciples! With Christ’s sending of the Holy Spirit comes the wisdom and the responsibility to have, as Jesus would put it, “the eyes to see, the ears to ear.” In the gospels that expression refers most often to those who come to understand what Jesus is saying in his teaching or with a parable. But here, in preparing the disciples for his absence, he tells them that he is sending the Advocate so they have the eyes to see the world as he sees it. The ears to listen to the world as he hears it. “If I go, I will send the Advocate to you. And when the Advocate comes, the Advocate will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.” The Spirit at work in the followers of Jesus enabling them to see everything he would want them to see about the world just as if he was there pointing it all out to them.  The advantage is the Holy Spirit and the “kingdom come on earth” eyes, and ears, and longing of the people of God.

WWJD. What Would Jesus Do? It was catchy back when the bracelet and the bumper sticker and the T-shirt made the rounds. I guess the phrase still hangs around a bit. But the power of the promise coming from the lips of Jesus to the disciples here in John, the profound and compelling promise that comes from the departing Jesus is that the disciples shouldn’t even have to ask. When the Holy Spirit comes, the disciples, the followers of Jesus, you and me, we don’t even have to ask “what would Jesus do” because in his absence he has given us the holy discernment, the inspired heart, and the anointed vision, to see this broken world the way he sees it. The eyes to see and the ears to hear a world full of sin and unrighteousness. When Jesus has filled you with the Holy Spirit, you don’t need him next to you to point out injustice. You don’t need Jesus walking beside you to see the evils of hate and bigotry absolutely flourishing in the world. You don’t have to have Jesus stand before you to tell you yet again to lift up the poor and to comfort the afflicted and to search for the lost. In his absence, you have the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth at work in and through you.

The advantage comes, people of God, with the Holy Spirit and the “kingdom come on earth” eyes, and ears, and longing to see not just the fallen world as Jesus sees it. But also, to see glimpses of his kingdom right in your midst. My wife Cathy and I were doing some mobile delivery of food for Arm in Arm not far from where we live here in Princeton. The delivery was just one bag of staples: a box of cereal and some canned goods. Households with children received a frozen chicken and a second back with some juice and perishables. So it wasn’t much. The delivery is contactless of course. Drop, knock, and go. At our next to last stop, we left  the family the three bags on the doorstep and headed to the last visit several doors away. But before we reached the final delivery, the father of four yelled over to us. He picked up all three bags, walked over to us in his bare feet and said, “Please, I don’t want to more than our share. We are doing a bit better. Someone else will need it more.” We tried to convince him. It really was so little food; “You take, please”  But he wouldn’t. And has we urged him to go warm up his feet, he turned and said, “And I would like to give so others can be helped too”.

You know if Jesus was standing there with us on the sidewalk in Princeton Thursday afternoon, Jesus with his hands, his feet, his hair, his teeth, when that father of four closed the door, Jesus would have pointed and had something to say.

Advantage, disciples. With Christ’s sending of the Holy Spirit comes the power of your testimony. With Christ’s sending of the Holy Spirit comes the gift of faith and the invitation to a journey with Jesus not bound by his earthly body. With Christ’s sending of the Holy Spirit comes the wisdom and the responsibility to have, as Jesus would put it, “the eyes to see, the ears to ear.”

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John 13:31-38
David A. Davis
February 21, 2021

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In the Gospel of Matthew, when the Pharisees and Sadducees were gathered together with Jesus, one of them who was a lawyer put a question to Jesus as a test. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22:36-40)

The Great Commandment, as the tradition labels it, also appears in Mark and in Luke. In Luke the Great Commandment and the lawyer’s second question, “And who is my neighbor” is the lead-in to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have versions of the Great Commandment. But it is nowhere to be found in the Gospel of John. In John, it is not the Great Commandment. It is the new commandment. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

In the first twelve chapters of John, the author doesn’t talk all that much love. John’s Jesus doesn’t say all that much about love. When Lazarus was dying Mary and Martha send Jesus a message: “Lord, the one whom you love is ill.” (11:3) At one point in the 12th chapter, Jesus says “those who love their life will lose it”. (v.25) But that’s pretty much it for Jesus and love in the first half of the Gospel of John. But here in this lengthy conversation with the disciples on the threshold of his suffering and death, Jesus makes a turn toward love. Here with the disciples, with the reality of his departure hitting them in the face, here as Jesus tries to assure them of his presence even as he departs, when it comes to the disciples call to love, Jesus makes a move toward love in a big way. When it comes to Presence in Absence and the Departed Jesus Who Remains, the call to love another is a clarion one never to be missed.

The new commandment here in the 13th chapter is just the first note of that call. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another”. Chapter 14. “If you love, you will keep my commandments” (v.15) Chapter 15. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you… I am giving you these commandments so that you may love one another” (12-14, 17). It’s a three-time commandment. Love one another. Love another. Love another. It is not just a call. It’s a trumpet blast. You remember when the Risen Christ cooked breakfast for the Peter and the disciples after they had gone back to fishing. Three times Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?”. Peter answered each time with a yes. And the Risen Christ answered, “Feed my lambs…Tend my sheep…Feed my sheep.” Or in other words, love one another!

It’s not that the love Jesus has for others isn’t on display throughout John’s gospel. He’s not talking about it earlier in John, he is just living it in his ministry. He had a long conversation with the Samaritan woman as the astonished disciples couldn’t believe he would talk to her. There are the healing stories. He feeds the five thousand. He weeps over the death of Lazarus and brings him back to life. And, of course, he washes the disciples’ feet in act of servanthood and love. In fact, the foot washing happens here in chapter 13 right just before Jesus gives the new commandment. He washes the disciples’ feet, predicts his betrayal at the hand of Judas, and Judas leaves the dinner in the dark of night. The new commandment is nestled here between the betrayal of Judas and the denial of Peter; “before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.”. Love squeezed by betrayal and denial.

Maybe that’s why Jesus won’t let it go in the chapters to follow. Because love can be so easily lost, overshadowed, hard to find amid the reality of sin and the human condition. So Jesus, he keeps at it, he gives it one those divine “three-peats”. Love one another. Love one another. Love one another. Moses only gave the tablets of the Ten Commandments twice! You wonder if the repetition makes the commandment all more demanding or does it sound more like a plea. Like Jesus is begging them, “You have to, you just have to, please, you have to love.”

But this delay in John when it comes to Jesus teaching, preaching, commanding love? This waiting until the end of the 13th chapter and then bringing it pretty much with a fire hose, its actually more than a kind of literary device to juxtapose love with betrayal and denial. Jesus is making a stronger, even more compelling claim for loving one another. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” I am with you only a little while longer. Where I am going you cannot come. But everyone, including you, will know you are my disciples, you are mine, if you have love for one another. Here is where the cynical theologians and interpreters among us try to hedge, make a parochial move. The call is simply to love one another, The commandment stays in the family. Love one another. Of course, nothing can be more antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the breadth of his example and teaching. Loving one another means loving period. By this everyone will know. Everyone.

In the first have of John’s gospel, everyone knows the disciples of Jesus because they are with him. Jesus triples on the new commandment because everyone will know the disciples of Jesus because of their love. Even more, knowing that his absence from them is imminent, Jesus is telling them that in their love for one another, in their love, they will experience his presence. The presence of Christ is experienced by everyone when his followers live a life defined by love. For it is in loving and being loved that the departed Christ is ever present. “Now you are the body of Christ” Paul writes. That profound affirmation to the church is, of course, the down beat to Paul’s iconic oratorio on the greatest gift of love in the 13th chapter of First Corinthians. The body of Christ and the commandment to love.

In the adult education episode for this week, Dr. Shane Berg points out how everything shifts in the Gospel of John at this Last Supper Discourse. It all shifts toward the glorification of Christ, his hour, his being lifted. The eyes of John’s readers are turning to the Lord’s arrest, and trial, and torture, and crucifixion, and resurrection, and ascension. His departure. Readers of all four gospels are familiar with that trope that Jesus keeps telling the disciples about his coming death and resurrection but they never seem to get it. They never understand. That knowledge for the reader, for the church, for the followers of Jesus, it always seems to include a sort of theological, spiritual, pious, maybe even a smug, spoiler alert. That somewhere, somehow in our encounter with the Jesus of the gospels, we know how all this ends. The poor disciples, they don’t get until sometime after Easter morning. But we, we Christians, we got it. We got this. Jesus and his passion predictions, you and I, the church today, we’re good.

But when it comes to the new commandment tucked right here in yet another passion prediction from Jesus in John, when it comes to Jesus and his trumpet blast of love in this Last Supper Discourse, when it comes to everyone knowing that the Church writ large, throughout history, because of loving one another, because of loving and therefore everyone knows the followers of Jesus, when it comes to those taking the name of Christians and the Lord’s timeless, ever present call to love, when Christ’s presence in the world is made known through the church’s acts of love, well, that is a much different kind of spoiler alert, isn’t it. Ancient church history, church history, church…and love? January 2021 was hardly the first time Christian symbols and symbols of hate were paired together. And, my guess is that when it comes to being a follower of Jesus and his commandment to love and all of us getting it, my hunch is that there is not much room for any smugness at all from any one of us. Because love can be so easily lost, overshadowed, hard to find amid the reality of our own sin and our own humanity. Love squeezed again and again and again by the human condition.

Somewhere, in the kingdom of heaven, the disciples are gathered and looking at the world, over the church, over the followers of Jesus, those who sat with Jesus for the long, last discourse, they are looking at a Jesus’ disciples today wondering why so many just don’t get it. And Jesus, well, Jesus, Jesus is now just pretty much begging. “Love one another. Love. You have to, you just have to, please, please, you have to love.”

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II Kings 2:1-16
David A. Davis
February 14, 2021

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Elijah, Elisha, and the mantle drop. It is a classic old Testament story ripe for telling. A narrative full of imagery, all kinds of symbolism, and a list of places whose names should ring a bell. It is also an account that includes actions and things that are said that bring to mind other notable texts of the Hebrew bible. The mantle itself; Elijah’s cloak, remember how it appeared up on Mt Horeb after the wind and the earthquake and the fire. When Elijah heard the sound of sheer silence he came out of the cave, wrapped his face in this mantle as the voice of the Lord came to him. When Elijah first called Elisha, Elisha was working the plow. Elijah passed by and threw that mantle over to him. No words of call, no “follow me”, just the tossed mantle. And then here in our text for this morning, before and after the mantle drop, Elijah and Elisha both took the mantle, rolled it up, and touched the Jordan river as the water parted to one side and the other. The mantle rolled staff-like. Elijah and Elisha parting the water Moses-like. Elijah’s mantle. A sacred symbol of the call of God, the power of God, and the presence of God.

Then there are the places they stopped along the way: Gilgal, Bethel, Jericho. It was a bit of a trek directionally, geographically. It wasn’t a trip that was an endurance test. Even for the ancient world it wasn’t that far. It was not a route that would be recommended by GPS, neither a straight shot nor the fastest way. Bethel is closer to the river. Some backtracking to Jericho. Then back to the river. The trip it would seem was a tad here and there, a bit meandering. Rather than the journey, it had to be about the places where Elijah had them stop. Those places, those names. That’s the point, right? Elijah tried to get Elisha to stay at Gilgal; a place where prophets came from and a holy place of sacrifice to the Lord. It’s the place where King David went after his son Absalom was killed in battle. Bethel. Abram stopped there after God called him. He built an altar to the Lord there. Jacob had a dream there. Jacob’s ladder dream, it was at Bethel. Jacob built a pillar there. And Jericho, Joshua and the battle of Jericho and the walls tumbling down. Well, that’s a long story. Gilgal. The place of prophets. “Elisha, stay here. Bethel. A notable, holy place. “Elisha, stay here.” Jericho. A strategic place. A battle place. A sort of gateway to the Promised Land. “Elisha, stay here.”    

Gilgal. Bethel. Jericho. But the whirlwind, the chariot and horses of fire, and the mantle drop didn’t happen in any of those places. The sacred symbol of the call of God, the power of God, and the presence of God; it wasn’t passed on in one of those notable places, one of those holy places, one of those expected places. It didn’t even happen right at the Jordon River. No, it was over there beyond the river. After they crossed over the river, Elijah and Elisha kept walking and talking. One scholar points out that the journey went from the familiar and known world back across to the place where mysteries happen. Another writer suggests that their encounter with God, the divinely anointed and orchestrated transition of leadership happened far away from any “A-list” biblical destination. A nameless place where lives are interrupted by the “glorious and disturbing’ transforming presence of God. The mantle passing happened beyond the river.

Some will remember the infamous call Joshua trumpeted to the people. Part of the quote from Joshua has appeared on a lot of posters, cross-stitches, and painted plates hanging in kitchens over the generations. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  It is from Joshua the 24^th chapter, The full quote: “If you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in who land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” That region beyond the river; a region full of other god worship where the ancestors served, that’s where Elijah and Elisha ended up. That’s where the mantle was dropped and passed and picked up. That’s where Elisha encountered the always notable, strategic, holiness of the call of God, the power of God, and the presence of God.

The prophets meandering journey to the mantle drop and the whirlwind of God reveals the most accessible, understandable, relatable, human element of the biblical story. God’s glorious and disturbing presence transforms lives in the most un-notable places, the least expected of times, even and especially when surrounded by all the other god-worship the world has to offer. God was as present with the prophets along the way as God was present in the whirlwind. God was as present beyond the river as God was in the biblically memorable places where they stopped along the way. So, too, God is as present among us as God would be present to us in some form of divine whirlwind. Our most sacred places are made holy not by name or fame or even by mysterious chariots of fire; but made holy by the presence of God. Unexpected, ordinary places made holy by God’s transforming presence in our lives.

And in those unexpected, ordinary places, the mantle still drops. It is part of the wonder and grace of our life in God; our being part of a community of faith. The mantle still drops. Even here, even now amid the very real, ever present, multiple forces that threaten efforts to be in community. As I sat this week with this text from II Kings, I was thinking about mantle passing. Mantle passing as not simply handing the baton to the next anointed one. But mantle passing more in the sense of what Erik Erikson called “generativity.” Though a broad and complex term, “generativity” can refer to the concern, creation, and empowerment of the next generation to come. The connotations for faith and the church are quite evident in terms of passing on faith and community and worship and values and discipleship and belief and servanthood and Jesus to each and every generation. Generativity, the life of faith, and mantle dropping, mantle passing.

If you have not participated in our adult education series entitled “On Life’s Journey”, you really need to go the church website, click on congregational life, scroll down and click adult education, and find the archive. “On Life’s Journey” is yet another new and creative idea to come out of all of us figuring how to be the church the last year. The series includes several weeks of interviews with young adults from this congregation living, working, studying all around the country. It is an opportunity to listen in on Mark Edwards just having a conversation with a few folks each episode about life, the pandemic, faith, values, division in the country, hope for the future. This week’s session posted yesterday is hosted by Shana Lindsey Morgan as she talks with Theresa Christensen and Rachel Gilmore.

With my mind on mantle passing, I went back this week and watched the entire “On Life’s Journey” series and previewed the one for this morning. If you are like me, you will laugh a bit, probably get choked up at times, and mostly just be awe struck by the wisdom, thoughtfulness, the diverse experiences, the honesty, the vulnerability, and the resilience. All of it so very evident in the lives of the set of young adults. Mark adeptly takes the conversations far beyond Nassau Church and thoughts about faith. But you can’t miss what is said about what life in this congregation has meant either: (paraphrased a bit here)  It was a place where I knew I would be accepted and loved for who I am. I experience the importance of community and will never take it for granted. I missed the intergenerational connections when I went to college. Nassau taught me about the common good and to care about justice. Music is an important part of my life because of Nassau. The friendships that started there ten years ago are still so important to me. Whenever you open your mouth to sing or to talk to another person you are offering praise to God. The people at Nassau taught me by example with their lives. And I could keep going. What I am describing for you is mantle passing.

Of the many things that struck me and moved me as I listened to all of them again is what they were talking about by and large, were the ordinary parts of congregational life. Yes, of course they bore witness to the unforgettable memories of experiences like Montreat and mission trips. But there were not references to some incredibly holy Easter service, or sacred traditions of Christmas Eve, or the laying on of hands at their confirmation. What came up was choir rehearsals and being a junior high youth advisor and playing an instrument in worship and teaching pre-school church school, and serving as deacon, and talking to you, and being loved by you! Mantle dropping, mantle passing, and mantle picking up! It happens in the most un-notable places, the least expected of times, even and especially when surrounded by all the other god-worship this world has to offer. All of it made holy by the palpable presence of God in our life together.

Tim Flood and Kate Torrey welcomed baby Lily into the world on New Year’s Day. Some of you might remember that Kate and Tim recorded a gratitude video for worship back in November. In expressing their gratitude for Nassau Church, they talked about how much they were looking forward to raising their child in this community of faith. Well, at post-worship zoom fellowship just a few days after Lily was born, something really wonderful and joyful happened. Tim, Kate, and Lily came to fellowship! Far sooner than they would have if we were in the building. I think Lily wasn’t even two weeks old yet! In the bit of zoom chaos that happens as folks were appearing and greeting each other, someone asked for a closer shot of the baby. Kate brought Lily right into the center of the frame real close. And then someone started to sing “Jesus Loves Me”. Then everyone started joining in. And you know how sound and singing on zoom doesn’t’ really work. With microphones cutting in and out, it sort of had a Pentecost, everyone speaking in their own tongues kind of feel. I was remembering what Tim and Kate said in their video weeks before as I watched. Wonderful and joyful may not be strong enough words for what I witnessed. For there in zoom coffee, for Pete’s sake, I, once again, experienced the palpable presence of God  in our life together. And right there on my screen full of faces I miss seeing in person more than I can ever say, but right then and there, I watched a mantle drop.

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Isaiah 40:21-31
David A. Davis
February 7, 2021

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“Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted.” Weary. Weary. The psalmist writes “I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood by bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.” Weary. The biblical writer of II Samuel tells how when Israel was yet again at war with the Philistines, how David, even David, the mighty warrior, how David “grew weary.” Jeremiah the prophet, in one of his personal laments, tells of how he cannot stop proclaiming the Word of the Lord. “within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in.” Way back in Genesis, as Rebekah and Isaac were realizing that the challenge of parenting was just as hard once the twins grew up (Esau and Jacob), Rebekah was in angst that her favorite child would marry the wrong girl. She said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of all these Hittite women.” Weary. Even in the bible it can mean so many things.
When a very young child falls asleep right there in the high chair with a face full of spaghetti and a head nodding like one of those bobble heads, when sleep finally wins, that’s not weary. When the runner finishes the trek along the tow path on a Saturday morning after another seemingly fast week of long days working from home, and the knees hurt and the lungs are screaming and the endorphins are racing; that’s something but it’s not weary. After cranking to finish that final paper, more than burning the midnight oil, on a topic that really energized, as the words came with a flourish, the argument came together, and with a strike of the key the last assignment of the semester is turned in and a cry of “yes” can be heard. Thirteen straight hours of sleep is about to come, but that’s not about being weary.

No weary has a meaning all its own. Weary has its own set of connotations. I am pretty certain that every single one of us has experienced a level of weariness, a kind of weariness, perhaps a depth of weariness, a new form of weariness in the last year. A weariness that has nothing to do with being physically tired. A weariness that strikes deep. A weariness described by one of my colleagues as “soul sucking”. Weariness that is so pervasive, so present, so palpable that it is either unnecessary, redundant, or maybe even insulting for a preacher to stand before your and offer the litany of all the reasons why you and I have experienced a weariness redefined.

Years ago, a retired pastor in the presbytery where I started in ministry went into the hospital for some serious surgery. I served with him a on committee and months after his recovery at one of those meetings I made a general inquiry about his health and how he was feeling. He went on in that conversation to tell me how many of his friends came to see him when he was in the hospital; Presbyterians and other clergy he had befriended over the years. While he was grateful for the love and care they brought, everyone of them, he said, stayed to long, talked to much, and seemed oblivious to the reality that he felt absolutely miserable. “Being a patient is a lousy way for a minister to learn how NOT to do a hospital visit” he half-joked, “but at least I know now”. Experience and understanding. Experience and knowing things differently; knowing, seeing, hearing things differently.

“The Lord gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Amid this ever-present, pervasiveness, does the promise of God sound any different to you?

One of the challenges of the poetry of Isaiah is that the reader’s eye can easily be drawn to the most familiar. The lasting image or phrase is what sticks in the listener’s ear. That certainly can be the case with the second half of the fortieth chapter of Isaiah: “they shall mount up with wings like eagles”. But to really ponder the promise of God here, “they shall run and not be weary”, you sort of have read backwards. Or, at the very least, go back to the beginning of the prophet’s argument, go back to where our reading began this morning. If you want to figure out what on earth it might mean to “wait for the Lord” in a season of life so full of weariness, you have to go back bit rather than lift a quote and “posturize” it.

“To whom will you liken God”, says the prophet. Do you think God is like an idol? Something an artist crafts or a goldsmith makes? Do you think God is wooden image that will not rot or topple? “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” You have pretty much been told since the beginning. God is the one who sits above the canvas of the earth. Those who inhabit God’s creation are all just like bugs, a speck compared to the one who stretches out the heavens like a curtain; like a a vast tent to dwell in. The rulers of the earth, the leaders and the nations, the powerful and mighty are nothing compared to the Lord. When God breathes, they just wither and blow away. “To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.” Look up and see, the host of stars in the night sky. Who created these? God put them there. God numbers them. God calls them by name. And because of God’s great strength and vast power, not one is missing. So how can you say your way is hidden from the Lord, that God disregards your plight, your plea, your life? “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. The Lord does not faint or grow weary. The Lord gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Even youths shall faint and be weary and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait on the Lord”. Those who wait on the Lord.

According to Isaiah, to wait for the Lord is to look up in awe and remember the expansive power and might of the one who created you. To wait for the Lord is to find your tiny place in God’s vast universe of mystery and wonder and know that God put you here. God numbers you. God calls you by name. To wait for the Lord is to be brought to your knees by the knowledge deep within that the only thing greater than the vast reach of the One who stretches the heavens like the canvas of an artist is the vast wonder of God’s love…. for you. To wait for the Lord is to cling to the very beauty of God and the promise that the Lord does not faint or grow weary. Faint and powerless and weary may not begin to describe it, but God does not faint or grow weary in God’s care for you, God’s presence with you, God’s love for you. Being weary, really weary, may be a lousy way to come to know the promise of God in a new way, but by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, we can. We do. We will.

Experience and understanding, knowing, seeing, hearing the grace of God differently, anew, afresh. We sang “Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side” last week at a memorial service. Well, we didn’t sing. We listened as George sang. Maybe it didn’t sound different, it just struck deeper. The hymn just after I finish this morning? “God of our life, through all the circling years, we trust in thee.” See what you think, see if sounds, it feels, it strikes deeper. And the anthem: “And God will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of God’s hand.” Yeah, when weariness has been so redefined. It has to sound different.

“Those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” The truth is God is the one who never grows weary. Maybe for the rest of us, the promise of no more weariness is for just the other side of glory, a promise for when the roll is called up yonder, a promise for that great getting up morning. But still, but yet, but now, we wait for the Lord. On this snowy Lord’s Day morning, gathered at the Table, we wait for the Lord. As the psalmist says, “Wait for the Lord, be strong, let your heart take courage. Yay, wait for the Lord.” Being weary, really weary, may be a lousy way to come to know the promise of God in a new way, but by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, you can, you do, you will. And there may be now better place to wait for the Lord, than here at this Table.

For Jesus invites you here. And it was Jesus who said:
“Come unto me all you are weary, and I will give you rest.”

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Genesis 1:1-5
Andrew Scales
January 10, 2021

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The most exciting thing about being a second grader at Tabernacle Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, is that you receive a Bible at the start of the school year. During the Time for Children at the 11am service, my fellow eight-year-olds and I lined up in front of the entire congregation. Fourth graders took turns handing us Bibles while they read a verse chosen especially for each one of us. Our pastor prayed with us, and then we went downstairs for Sunday School.

Mrs. Byers, the director of children’s ministries, started that morning with a word to all the new Bible recipients while we sat cross-legged on the carpet. She said, “Listen to me: each one of you has your very own Bible. Do your best to read it as often as possible. Try to read it every day if you can.” And then we put together a skit about David, the shepherd boy who became king of Israel.

I was not always a good listener in Sunday School. I giggled during the cheesy 1980s Bible cartoons we watched, my crafts were always sloppy, more often than not I was bugging my neighbor instead of singing the songs. But somehow Mrs. Byers’ words that morning stuck in my mind like a seed planted into good soil. That night, I went home, and I opened my New International Version Bible to page one, Genesis 1:1.

I had heard Bible stories from my parents and my church my entire life up to that point, and we had a children’s picture Bible in our home. But I was just starting to read on my own. That night, alone in my bedroom, the opening words of Genesis, chapter 1, felt like an introduction to God. These first words of the Bible were what its authors wanted me to know first and foremost about God.

Reading that Bible over and over again until the gold page edges turned green, I learned that God’s words are powerful. God’s words have the power to make something out of nothing. Not just something… everything. When God speaks, all kinds of good things come spilling out: light and darkness, sun and moon; the oceans and lakes; trees and flowers; fish, birds, and all the animals that live on land. With words, this God could breathe out, stir up the empty waters, and shape each one of us human beings with our own stories, and hopes, and dreams. And God says that all of it is very good, possessing beauty and worth just by being itself.

It made sense to me, because I already knew then that our words, human words, are powerful, too. Kind words, true words, loving words can make people come alive and flourish. Ugly words, false words, hateful words can beat people down, stomp all over them, kill and destroy the good things God has made.

Words have power. The God who began all creation entrusted us, human beings, with the gift of speech, of communication, this extraordinary power to build up or destroy. What we say has power for ourselves and others. Our words, in some small way when compared to God, still play a role in creating the world we live in. It’s as if speaking the truth and loving people is a way of being tuned into—in a relationship with—this God who begins the whole story of the Bible and the cosmos in Genesis with a word.

But being false, lying to people, dividing and destroying others with fear and hatred, these are the actions of someone fashioning an alternative reality that does not reflect the goodness of God’s world. It’s a false world, a world where that person’s words—through cruelty, or malice, or selfishness—have a mysterious power to define, even in some small way, a false reality for everybody else. Maybe you’ve known people like that in your everyday life. Maybe you’ve known a bully at school, in a group of friends or family, someone at work, who needs to dominate and control, whose angry outbursts and hair-trigger temper tantrums keep everybody else walking on eggshells around them. The world revolves around them, it exists for them alone.

This twofold power of words—to give life and to destroy—has been on my mind because I can’t escape the truth that it’s been a terrifying week for our country. Amid a pandemic that is claiming three, four thousand American lives each day, President Trump hosted a rally in our nation’s capital that gathered white supremacist extremist groups from around the country. With lies and conspiracy theories that have been disproven many times over about a “stolen election,” the American President incited a mob to assault a joint session of Congress by breaking into the Capitol.

Some members of that mob carried the Confederate battle flag, others erected a noose nearby, still others hid pipe bombs around the building. They smashed windows, terrorized staff and elected officials, stole government property, shouted racial slurs, and assaulted police officers.

Threads of conversation on social media platforms reveal that there were plots to kidnap and murder the Speaker of the House and the Vice President. These white supremacist extremists were not only destroying the offices and chambers of a federal building; they were attacking our common conviction and ideal that each person’s voice matters. That our votes matter. That our words get to be a part of electing who governs us and makes decisions on our behalf. Finally, at least five people, five human lives that are precious to God, have died as a result of these destructive words and actions.

I’m talking about Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol because it revealed again troubling truths about who we are as a country, and what God calls us to say and do as Christians in this hour. This is not an isolated incident. It is an eruption of the insidious strains of white supremacy in America that have demeaned and destroyed the lives of people of color for generations. The symbols of hatred that signify the long history of terrorizing people in America—the Confederate flag and the noose foremost among them—are in direct conflict with God and God’s ways. The horrors our neighbors have seen and known throughout their lives are not just in history books; these threats to their safety are happening today.

As Christians, we believe, nevertheless, that God’s Word is more powerful than all earthly powers. I took Mrs. Byers’ words to heart almost thirty years ago now, and I’m still reading my Bible and getting to know this God who speaks to us. I learned while studying Jewish scholar Nahum Sarna’s commentary this week that the word for the “breath,” or “wind,” or “spirit” of God that hovered over the formless waters—God’s ruach—it is the same word in Exodus 14 for the wind that parted the Red Sea when God brought Moses and Israel out of slavery in Egypt (Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis, 6). God’s spirit troubles the waters of creation before calling forth light, just as God’s spirit pushes apart the sea to liberate Israel from bondage.

That was a connection that I had never made before, even in a lifetime of reading the stories Genesis and Exodus. The God who speaks creation into existence is the same God whose Word confronts the systemic evils that demean and oppress human beings. Theologian Miguel de la Torre writes in his commentary on Genesis, “The good news is that God’s spirit still hovers over the formless void of broken lives and the great darkness in which the marginalized find themselves” (De la Torre, Belief: Genesis, 12). The same Spirit that was at the beginning of Creation and delivered Israel from Pharaoh, is the Spirit Jesus breathed on his disciples to equip them for the work of the Gospel. The spirit of God is present, stirring, hovering, just as God is about to speak and make something good happen.

Just as we can grow in understanding the God to whom the Scriptures bear witness, we can also grow in understanding how God calls us to confront white supremacy today. We believe that God is still speaking, still stirring people to confront sin and falsehood, still illuminating us in the power of the Spirit. What does listening for God’s life-giving word look like in response to the death-dealing ways of white supremacist ideology and violence? I believe that Christians, and right now white Christians especially, can begin to listen for God’s voice today by listening in good faith to people of color share about their experiences of white supremacist terror in America.

One of my favorite prophetic voices of our time is the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, who along with Presbyterian minister the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, has revived The Poor People’s Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. initiated in the last year of his life. Two summers ago, Princeton Presbyterians hosted a book club for students and young adults that read Barber’s book The Third Reconstruction. He calls for a recovery of the idea of fusion coalitions from the First Reconstruction after the Civil War. According to Barber, “Between 1865 and 1900, interracial alliances in every Southern state arose to advance public education, protect the right to vote, and curb corporate power by reaching across the color line” (Barber, The Third Reconstruction, 116).

Groups at Nassau Presbyterian Church like the Mass Incarceration Task Force and the recently formed Anti-Racism Team are already exploring how to participate in networks and partnerships that confront the long histories of racial discrimination and terror in our country.

Committing to anti-racism work means that we are beginning the task of understanding uncomfortable truths we have so often hidden from. Listening to truth-tellers begins to dismantle the false realities and assumptions we’ve had about how destructive and demeaning the impact of white supremacy is in the United States. It’s a painful process, because sometimes we have to acknowledge our own complicity, our active participation knowingly and unknowingly in hurting, excluding, and frightening our neighbors.

But that repentance, the turning away from white supremacy’s sinful ways toward God’s ways, is a process of growing in relationship with God and our neighbors. It is an introduction to new depths of empathy and solidarity, of loving and being loved. God’s Word, Jesus Christ, comes alive among us through the power of the Holy Spirit when we commit ourselves to saying “no” to the words and actions that demean and destroy human life. God calls us today to the creative work of justice, speaking and walking in ways that reject white supremacist extremism, and affirm the dignity and voice of every human being.

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James 5:13-16 [i]
Lauren J. McFeaters
January 24, 2021

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We are a people of prayer. We pray for every kind of reason and in every kind of circumstance. We pray when we’re in distress and when we give thanks. We sing our prayers when we have something to celebrate or lament. We pray at birth and at death. We pray alone and together. We pray while crying and while laughing.

During pre-martial counseling, I often tell couples, prayer is one of the most intimate acts of a marriage. I counsel families and individuals that when prayer is at the heart of life together, they will know a new kind of relationship. During Covid we’ve prayed by Zoom, all over social media, at the dinner table, by email, masked and distant, unmasked and at home. Last night I prayed on the phone. Nothing can stop our pray.

• Who teaches us to pray? Who taught you to pray?
• How do you know how to pray? Do you know how to pray?
• Would you like to learn how to pray? For many of us the answer is Yes, teach me to pray!

For the early Christians seeking to be Doers of the Word and not merely Hearers, James comes along with a Letter that could be titled: How to Pray. And through it, he guides us in the way of prayer.

In the beginning of our Letter, James sets the stage for prayer: Be quick to listen, unhurried to speak, and slow to anger. He teaches the church to let go of it’s hierarchy of the wealthy on top, and poor below; to act with gentleness and wisdom, to watch our language. James is very big on how we speak to one another. Because, as we all know, words can hurt; words do a lot of damage. ^[ii]

Interestingly, Martin Luther called James the “Epistle of Straw” and he sought to keep it from the Biblical Canon. For Luther, James is a lite-weight, trifling, and insignificant offering of scripture. He believed the Letter doesn’t carry the weight of revelation necessary for salvation and is a scrawny mix of chaff and weeds. ^[iii]

Not so fast Buddy. Rather than straw, we find James offers us the building blocks of a Life of Faith: it’s not about how to get “Right” with God: Do these things or Don’t do these things. God has already made us right through Jesus Christ.

It’s about, how do we step into faith as people who have received such grace, bound to one another and responsible for care. Well? We must pray. ^[iv]

What does it mean to pray in the name of the Lord?

Can I tell you there are thousands upon thousands of articles and books on how we can pray, but little to nothing on how to pray in the name of the Lord.

There was a time in seminary when I was working on a group project with Karlfried Froehlich. The class was on the History of Christian Art. My group was to study Prayer as found through historical paintings – but first came a study of the scriptural references about Jesus and Prayer. My job was to cut and paste every reference to prayer in scripture.

Now, when I say cut and paste, don’t think I had a keyboard with the strike of a key and the sweep of a finger. I mean:

• Take the Bible to the Library Xerox machine,
• copy the pages,
• use scissors to cut references,
• and glue to organize the clippings on charts.

What appeared before us was fascinating. I knew that Jesus prayed. But what I didn’t know is scripture hardly ever tell us what he prayed, how he prayed, or how we are to pray. A few sentences at most are revealed:

And Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say:

‘Father, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come.’”

 Praying, “Loving Father,

protect and guard my people.

Shelter them as they live the life ahead of them.”

“I pray that they be one heart and mind and

as long as I have been with them,

I was the one who guarded them.”

I’m saying these things in the world’s hearing
So my people can experience
My joy be completed in them.^[v]

Do you hear the theme? What comes through is Jesus’ prayer of protection; that he is our sanctuary and shelter. Such love he has for us that he prays protect and guard my people and shelter them as they live the life ahead of them. That we may have his joy.

James knows this. It’s the core of the Christian Life.

• Are you hurting? Pray.
• Do you feel wonderful? Sing out your prayer.
• Are you sick? Call on the church to pray and anoint.
• Prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet.
• And if you’ve sinned, you’re forgiven—healed inside and out. [vi]
• The prayer of a person living right with God is something formidable and remarkable.

When I asked earlier:  Who taught you to pray, I had someone in mind. My mother-in-law taught me to pray. May Lou Brothers did not believe in dilly-dallying about prayer or quietly, lingering around the edges of prayer.

She believed in praying for specifics. She’d say God wants our specifics, our particulars, so there’s no use in being wimpy about prayer:  be bold, courageous, and daring.

If she knew someone was struggling with cancer, she didn’t ask God to gently hold that person and soothe their cares; she prayed that God would take those pockets of Stage 3 cancer in the lower left lung and annihilate it, eradicate it, and wipe it out.

If a marriage were falling apart, she’d pray for God to intervene so powerfully that the two people wouldn’t know what hit them; that they’d be knocked over by grace; and look so deeply into their hearts that nothing could defeat their love.

I wish you could have known her. Mary Lou Brothers was a modest, wisp of a woman. Born in Post Falls, Idaho, she was humble and petite, but she prayed like an Amazon. She was elfin, but her intercessions were ginormous. She was unobtrusive but she intervened like the prayer warrior she was; like she was ten feet tall and could fly to the moon.

And that’s exactly what James has in mind for the people of God; what Jesus our Pastor has in mind as the practice of a Resurrection Life:

• To pray as if we can be set free on the wings of hope.
• To pray as if our burdens can’t hold us down.
• To pray with enthusiasm that sets our words skyrocketing to the heavens.
• The gift is this: We are loved by a Lord who prays for us – in specifics.
• And who makes it our sacred responsibility to pray in his name for others.

Thanks be to God.

 

ENDNOTES

[i] James 5:13-16 (NRSV) Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

[ii]  Rick Morley. “On Doing and Being – A Reflection on James 5:13-20.” September 20, 2012, www.rickmorley.com.

[iii]  LW 35:362. Luther’s Works American Edition. Edited by J. Pelikan and H.T. Lehmann. 55 vols. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955.

[iv]  Rick Morley.

[v] John 17.

[vi]  Eugene Peterson. The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English. Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress Publishing Group, 1993.

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Matthew 2:1-12
David A. Davis
January 3, 2021

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I learned something about “homage” just recently. It came from a surprising source. I didn’t learn it by reading and studying Matthew 2:1-12 yet again this week. It didn’t come in a particular study of the Greek word in Matthew. Most of us have little to no experience with “homage”; neither the word nor the practice. But my surprising source is sort of all about “homage.” At the very end of the final episode of this season’s Netflix series “The Crown”, Prince Phillip, husband of the queen, is making a rather weak effort to comfort and encourage Princess Diana who is distraught about her marriage to Prince Charles and the realization that she will always be considered nothing but an outsider in the royal family. After acknowledging that he too has been nothing but an outsider in his marriage to the queen, he then says this: “Everyone in this system is a lost, lonely, irrelevant outsider, apart from the one person, the only person, that matters. She is the oxygen we all breathe. The essence of all our duty. Your problem, if I may say is you seem to be confused about who that person is.” And the screen shows the Queen standing alone at the altar of the church on Christmas Day.

Now I didn’t mention that what I learned about “homage” may not have come in the most uplifting of quotes. But it pretty much seems like a definition of “homage” nonetheless. “The one person, the only person that matters. She is the oxygen we all breath. The essence of all our duty.” “Homage” in context. “Homage” in a culture context.  Interestingly, the presence of the word “homage” in the Matthew translation is not an archival holdover from the King James version. No, in the King James, the word is “worshipped”. “When they were come into the house, they saw the young child with his mother, and fell down and worshipped him”. Apparently, when it comes to the King’s English, one pays homage to only one monarch.

Homage and the context of monarchy. Which brings us back to King Herod. The wise men, the magi, the star-followers, those well-schooled fellows from the East came to Jerusalem. “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to pay him homage?” When King Herod heard about the stately pilgrims who were looking for a child who has been born king, the bible says he was “frightened.” That’s the bible being polite. Kings don’t get scared, they get ticked. He was angry that there would be any talk or rumor spreading, or God forbid, a movement, that would seem to imply a king coming from anywhere other than his family, his own offspring, his own flesh and blood. “Herod was frightened and all Jerusalem with him” Translation: Herod was flying off the handle in an angry tirade of word and action and all Jerusalem was frightened not with him, but by him. You know how that works, when the king is bothered, everyone is expected to be bothered, when the king is angry, everyone should look angry, when the king is happy, then everyone’s happy. That’s how it is supposed to work in cultures that define “homage”.

In the New Revised Standard version, the word “homage” appears only hear in Matthew 2 and then once near the end of Mark’s gospel. The soldiers “clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, “Hail king of the Jews!’. They struck his head with a read, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him.”  In cultures that define “homage”, it can be twisted. It can come with a cruel, violent sarcasm.

What I have learned about “homage” recently tells me that here in the final scene of the Nativity of Jesus, it is an extremely loaded term. For the Magi, and the Child Jesus and “homage” to be in the same sentence ought to strike anyone who remembers that Herod is somewhere in the picture. “Homage”  show respect and reverence and honor. To formally and publicly declare oneself in service to another. To bow before the one who is the essence of your duty. “Homage” may be something of a foreign word to us, but it was not to those astrologers from the East. Given the culture they embodied, that context of kingship and vassals and lords and servanthood and power, they would have understood it. They lived it. They knew it. The Magi, the Wise Ones, the star followers, they weren’t coming to simply kneel down and adore the child born a king. Those Wise Men from the East, they weren’t kings. The child was the king. Their visit was more than gift giving, it was even more than praise and worship and adoration.  It was a daring, subversive, dangerous act in a culture that defined “homage.” And they would have been wise enough to know it. Before the myrrh, before the frankincense, before the gold, they knelt and paid homage. In a culture that defined “homage” they fell on their knees before the wrong king.

“Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod.” A couple of bible translations toss in “warned by God” or “it was made clear to them by God in a dream.” Translators affirming what most readers have always assumed. The warning in a dream was a divinely inspired, Holy Spirit, kind of nudge. But what if with a good night’s sleep and a dream, the Magi just woke the next day and came to their senses. Because they were wise enough to know what happens when you pay homage to the wrong king. They were wise enough to know how King Herod would react to the announced presence of another king. They were wise enough to know how the Herod’s of the world act when they don’t get all the “homage”. According to Matthew, “Herod was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.”  Yes, in cultures that define “homage”, it can be twisted. It can come with cruel violence. When those in power demand “homage” and rage in anger and launch tirades, cruelty and violence can abound. Herod was infuriated not just because the Magi tricked him. He was infuriated because they paid “homage” to the wrong king.

“They left by another road.” Another road. The astrologers from the East are never heard from again in the gospels. Their lives post-“homage” left to be captured only by the image, the symbol, the sign of “another road’. After the Christ Child drew them in, after the light of God’s grace broke through the darkness of the night trumpeting the news of the Word Made Flesh to far corners of the earth, after the Holy Spirit’s guiding and pushing, a leading that pierced through the world’s canopy of wisdom and culture and power with the clarity of a morning star, after the Christ Child bid them to come, after boldly defying the epitome of worldly power, might, violence, and evil, after the rejoicing and the bowing and the submitting, after the respect and the reverence and honor, after they declared themselves in service to the Savior, to the Messiah, to God with us, to the Child Jesus, the relationship of servant and Lord thus being established, after giving themselves to that Christ Child who so brought them to their knees, who so drew them in, it was another road.

Another road where power comes in servanthood, where strength is defined by love, where forgiveness reigns, where the poor and the outcast and the stranger go to the front of line, sit at the head table, are cared for, thought about, identified as first, not last, greatest, not least. Another road. Where war is no more, justice and righteousness pour forth, and peace mends the world. Another road. Where wisdom is defined by a cross, victory comes through selflessness, and life rises from the undying love of the dying Savior born king. Another road. A kingdom that forever redefines “homage”.

In his book “Mere Christianity”, C.S. Lewis writes that being drawn into Christ was the only thing we were made for. That really is the story of the Magi, isn’t it. Them being drawn into Christ there under the star, at the manger, paying “homage”. Maybe that’s the gospel definition of “homage”: being drawn into Christ. For Lewis, that is Christ’s greatest gift. That he draws into himself, that when he offers himself back to God, Christ’s gives to God as well.

Lewis goes on in “Mere Christianity” to suggest that handing your whole self over to Christ, to allow yourself to be drawn in, or to pay homage as it were, that is the almost impossible thing to do. “The challenge comes at the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. But the first job consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to the other voice, taking the point of view, letting the other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.” That’s C.S Lewis on starting each day with homage.

Starting each day on another road.

Come to the Table on this first Sunday of the New Year. Everyone hopes for, prays for, longs for a new year, a different year, a better year in 2021. But here at this Table, you and I, taste and see, not the hopes and dreams of coming year, but the hope and promise of another road.

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Psalm 8 & John 1
Mark Edwards
December 27, 2020

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It is the last Sunday of 2020.  What a year. At least for many of us.  I won’t insult the many who have experienced far worse, far more frequently, by calling this, as Time magazine did, “the worst year ever.”^[1]  But it has thrown many challenges at many people, many of whom have lived otherwise quite protected lives.  More sadly it has thrown many challenges to many people who already face far too many challenges. 2020.

“Pandemic” is Miriam Webster’s Word of the Year^[2]

“Exhausting” was the top pick from the Washington Post. “Lost” “Chaotic” and “Perseverance” were their other top picks.^[3]

And while the phrases “I can’t breathe,” “You are on mute,” and “Please maintain social distancing” have become cemented into our linguistic foundations, perhaps you saw that a phrase from 9-year old Clarke Smith from Beverly Hill, Michigan took top awards for the best summation:

“Like looking both ways before crossing the street and then getting hit by a submarine.”  “Because,” says Clarke, “it’s been the craziest year ever.”^[4]

So yes, 2020 has had many surprises. It has held many difficulties. But also many joys.  Though parenting and schooling from home also bring their own challenges, many of us have been so grateful to have more time with our kids. More meals at a table. Less laps on Route 1. And can we praise God with a loud AMEN that 2020 saw none of the horrific, demonic, and near weekly mass-shootings at high schools around the country? Amen.

2020. Thanks are due to so many who have gotten us through. And while we all want a reset. While we all want a better 2021, while we all hope for health, peace, and prosperity, let us remember a truth far more foundational, far more important, far more comforting.

 

This is Jesus Christ’s world.

We can say this in faith but we can say this in confidence.

This world does not belong to another God.

This world is not ruled by another man, or woman.

This world is not lost to chance, chaos, or pandemic.

This is Jesus Christ’s world.

 

This world is Jesus Christ’s world, of course, in the sense that this is the world into which Jesus, the child of Mary, was born.  If there are other worlds out there, other planets, other peoples, other histories, other time-lines, then this is the one into which Jesus, was born. Our planet, we the people (and no, not just we the Americans), Israel’s history, God’s time-line.  This is the world into which Jesus son of Mary, was born.

Certainly if one scrolls through the many of images returned from the Hubble Space Telescope one sees wondrous galaxies, nebulae, and systems beyond imagination, beauty, and mystery. And we may well feel overcome by how small and apart we all are. “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;” I myself am weak with awe at their beauty.  And amidst them, is this Pale Blue Dot, this Planet Earth, Our Planet, this strange, intricate, Blue Planet which we call home.   This is Jesus Christ’s world because the galactic forces working in the deep history of the Universe put humans here, amidst our Blue Origins.

But why? Why this world? Of all the many worlds, why us? “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”  Why should God care so deeply for this world?

Why too, should God care for a world in which immigrants are imprisoned, where the nomads are exiled, where the poor are persecuted, where the children are hunted? Of the many worlds of beauty, Jesus Christ’s world is also one of terrible ugliness.  Yes there are Gulags, Killing Fields, Empires, and King Herods in this world.  Yes, this world into which Jesus was born hunted him, exiled him, persecuted him, imprisoned him. “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities” (Is.53:5).

The tragic, sick, violent, confused, clashing forces of this world turned their sights upon him. The child wrapped in swaddling clothes, surrounded by livestock and farm animals. This poor world of desperate struggle  clutched, tore, thrashed, against this child, this boy, this peace-maker. This world feared and hated him.

This beautiful miserable, wonderful disaster is Jesus Christ’s world. He was born in it. He lived among it. He struggled with it. He waited through it.  He died in it.

This is Jesus Christ’s world. But many live and die in this world. Many are born. Many are killed. Many wait. Many struggle.  Just as many love, teach, and make a difference. And again we may well ask, Why?

This semester I’ve been teaching philosophy of religion and somewhat like Jacob in Genesis 32, the students have been wrestling with God. Does God exist? How can we speak of the ineffable God?  Why is there evil?  Does science disprove religion? Why is there something, rather than nothing? Why is there this world? Why are we here?  From what have we erupted?  Into what shall we dissolve? Why? Why can’t I figure out the answers? Why can’t I just be God and make the world the place I want it to be? Why?   So I ask, whose world is this?

The dominant traditional answer is that this world has a first cause, a Prime Mover, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” which stands at the world’s source. “And that being we all call God,” says Thomas Aquinas.  God the Creator, God the Father the Creator, “I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth” as the ancient Apostles’ Creed puts it. From this all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, infinite and perfect singular being has come this world.  And once proclaimed, the great task of most theology has been to describe and reconcile how this good and perfect being, could be human and incarnate; how this omnipotent and infinite God could be weak and limited as a child; how this omniscient and singular being could be historically situated and yet also triune and eternal.

To skip over the footnotes of intellectual history, too many for far too long have simply articulated understandings of creation that, even if they were based on Genesis, were deeply unbiblical. The creator was a God we couldn’t see. A Word we couldn’t say. A creator we couldn’t confront. And to save you four months of reading, let me just say of the great deniers such as Hume, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Marx, even as there is much to learn from them, they too cannot overcome one final truth.

This is Jesus Christ’s world. He, the child, the one born to Mary, that infant is the one who made it and breathed it into being.

Let us not miss the many words, from the very home-turf sources our own Christian theologians often overlooked, which tell us exactly whose world this is.

John 1: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a] and the life was the light of all people. (All people = pan demos = pandemic)

Colossians 1: in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in[i] him all things hold together.

Beverly Gaventa, my teacher of Pauline theology, used to say of Paul’s theology and with great emphasis: “For Paul, all means all.”

Hebrews 1: in these last days God has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.

Proverbs 8 tells us: When there were no depths I [wisdom] was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. When he established the heavens…when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, I was there.

What is this wisdom? Whose is this wisdom:

Paul tells in 1 Corinthians 1: Christ Jesus, became for us wisdom from God. Somehow, in someway, the wisdom in which the world is created is Jesus Christ’s wisdom. And somehow, in someway, the wisdom of Christ, the wisdom in which time itself is created, is the very eternal wisdom of God born in Bethlehem.

“Glory to God in the highest heaven” say the Angels. For the glory of God’s highest heaven is Emmanuel, God with us.  God the Child. Christ the King. Jesus the Creator.

2020 has been a rough year for many. What will 2021 hold? What will the rest of our lives hold? Who will guide us? Who can save us? Who will love us?      This is Jesus Christ’s world.

Let us bring our questions, our confusions, our frustrations, our anger to him. These will be our gifts, more valuable than those of the magi. For our questions, our histories, our sadnesses, our shortcomings. They are us. Our doubts. Our fears. Our struggles. Our confusions. Our humanity.  We do not have to answer these ourselves.

We bring them to him. Our frustrations, our fears, our failings; we do not have to overcome these ourselves. We lay them down as offerings at the foot of the manger.

We bring them to a Child. We bring them to our Creator, Christ the Child.

What child is this?

Of the Father’s love begotten

ere the worlds began to be,

He (Jesus!) is Alpha and Omega,

he the Source, the Ending he,

of the things that are, that have been,

and that future years shall see,

evermore and evermore!

The word’s of the year: May exhausting turn to exhilarating. May chaos turn to chorus. May lost become found. May Christ’s light be pan demic.

Joy to the world!
Glory to God!

Hark, the herald angels sing!

This is Jesus Christ’s world.

 

 

^[1] https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/year-in-review/time-magazine-calls-2020-worst-year-ever-in-latest-edition/95-b7821757-2ab3-4710-bb29-d8637a0998ce

^[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year/pandemic

^[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/lifestyle/2020-in-one-word/

^[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/lifestyle/2020-in-one-word/

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