Ponder These Things: A Sermon for Christmas Day

There is a flurry of anticipation, expectation, and activity that accompanies any birth, and our dear Savior’s birth is no exception. With all births there are so many things to learn and no small measure of fear and trepidation for new parents.

When our eldest was born, he was born to two oldest children. And he came two weeks early. Everyone had told us not to anticipate this; that firstborns always come a bit late. So we thought we had weeks to go. I will not bore you with the details here, but thirty-five years later I remember it all like it happened yesterday. People arriving in Connecticut from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, calls being placed at a time before we had cell phones. It’s a boy! No small measure of chaos after all that waiting time.

Ready or not, we began our vocation as parents in September 1990. It continued about three years later when James joined our family, but while no less important, welcoming our second son was different. We had a clearer sense of what we were getting into.

The Birth we have gathered here to celebrate today is unique, for sure. But in other ways it is no different from the ways all of us have come into the world. We just spent four weeks of waiting and getting ready, or not. But this day comes regardless of whether we patiently lit the candles on our Advent wreaths. And when Christmas finally arrrives, it’s a little chaotic. No room in the inn, so a make-shift bed in the barn. Cattle lowing Smelly shepherds arriving in the midst of it all. Mary asking Joseph one more time, “I thought you said you’d reserved an Airbnb for us?” And who thought it was a good idea to invite that little drummer boy? Parumpapumpum!

And yet, after it all, there is finally a quiet moment when all really is calm and bright.  This holy infant – this mother and child. A moment to take it all in, in all of its glory.  In the Gospel we heard today, after a whirlwind of activity Luke gives us this phrase that Mary “pondered all these things in her heart.” We didn’t read that far last night. If you were here then you will remember we stopped reading after the angels sang: Gloria in excelsis deo!

This morning, though, we continued the story. The angels leave and go back to heaven. The shepherds arrive, tell their story, experience amazement and then get back to work. And Mary finally has a moment to herself, and she treasures all these words and pondered them in her heart.

I think that Christmas Eve services are wonderful and last night was great. It’s festive and Christmas is a festive season. It was joyful and Christmas is a time of great joy. But it was important to me to be with you this morning and to see these two celebrations as complementary. Christmas Day services are much quieter. After fifteen months of shared ministry, today is a day to ponder so many things in our hearts.

What does this birth mean? It means that the Word has become flesh to dwell among us. Literally this birth changes us, as all births change us. But this one changes the whole world. The birth of Jesus invites us to see ourselves and the world in new ways.

Early church fathers, especially from the eastern side of Christianity, speak of divinization. This is still a very central idea for Orthodox Christians that can sound a little heretical to western ears: God became human, so that humans might become divine. We in the western part of the Jesus’ Movement have been too shaped by Calvin and Luther to let this roll off our tongues. We tend to focus more on sin and grace by way of Good Friday and Easter.

But in the eastern wing of Christianity, it is not that they go easy on sin. It is that they embrace more fully the theological insights of John’s Prologue. The Word has become flesh. We have beheld his glory, full of grace and truth. This world and even the whole cosmos, has been changed because the gap between heaven and earth has become extremely thin. Ponder that in your hearts over these twelve days of Christmas.

Because of this birth, we are invited to become more radiant, more glowing, more light in a world of darkness. To live more and more and more into our vocation to be light, and salt, and yeast, not just individually but as the Church. To be fully alive, one day at a time. Not to waste our lives or postpone our living until some future date. To live our best lives right now, the lives for which God made us and to which Christ calls us, one day at a time.

The new and abundant life to which God calls us in Christ doesn’t happen all at once. But very often it begins in quiet moments like this one, because in this new life we recognize once more all that is possible, with God’s help.

So this is it, friends. This is literally the end. And as with all ends, there will be new beginnings. For me and for you all. It’s been a wonderful ride and I am grateful for the party earlier this month. And for the festival tone of last night and for the quiet tone of this morning. All to the glory of God and both very legitimate ways to celebrate our dear Savior’s birth.

But in this liturgy, on this celebration of Jesus’ birth, let us ponder all these things in our hearts as Mary did. Let’s just pause, and take it all in, before we move along to the next chapter here at St Michael’s and for me the next chapter of retirement. Both include some knowns and some unknowns; that’s life. But we know this: that God is with us, every step of the way. That’s the name of Jesus we take from this day: Emmanuel. God with us, in the flesh, in Jesus. Ponder that over the next twelve days and beyond.

And then, do the work God has given you to do. Do the work of Christmas. The late Howard Thurman, who was for many years Chaplain at Boston University, put it this way:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among the nations,
To make music in the heart.

Grace Has Appeared: A Christmas Eve Sermon

The familiar gospel reading appointed for this holy night takes us on a journey to the hills of first-century Palestine and that little town of Bethlehem. You all know that story: it’s visualized in the crèche in front of the altar and on Christmas cards and in our hymns. It would seem logical tonight to preach a sermon on the birth, the parents, the shepherds, the star, the singing angels. Even the innkeeper who does show up in pageants but not in the gospel itself.

But I’m going to do something that perhaps hasn’t been done here in over three hundred years of celebrating Christmas at the corner of Church and Hope. I want to call your attention not to the hills of first-century Palestine, but to the Island of Crete, a lovely spot in the Mediterranean just off the coast of Greece. I wonder what it would be like to celebrate Christmas Eve there tonight? Different, I imagine, from winter in New England. My weather app says it’s 65 degrees and sunny…

Tonight’s epistle reading does in fact take us to the early Christian community on Crete. At the time the letter of Titus was written, Crete had quite the reputation as a rough place. In fact, one of the locals said “Cretans are liars and evil beasts and lazy gluttons.” To which the writer of the Epistle of Titus simply responds, “well, yeah…” 

I say “the writer” intentionally; while the epistle claims to be from St. Paul to his dear friend Titus, most scholars think it was written later, by somebody else claiming Pauline authority. No worries and we don’t need to go down that rabbit hole tonight. (I just want you to know I did my research!)

The point is that it is to this early Christian community in Crete that Titus is called to serve as bishop. That title is a bit misleading, though, because the role of bishop was not yet very clearly defined in the first century. Titus isn’t expecting a cathedra to sit on or a miter for his head. Even so, he is called to oversee the flock there; to serve as an episcopos to a flock taken from a bunch of liars and beasts and gluttons.

The letter is written as advice from a friend to a friend on how to be a good bishop to a bunch of Cretans. Here is a paraphrase of what the writer tells Titus:  

Good luck, because you have your work cut out for you! You are going to need to be tough on these people: their minds are easily corrupted and while they say they know God, they really aren’t living in a way that would make anybody notice. Their actions and their deeds deny the very God they profess to believe in. (See Titus 1:1-16) 

So that, in a nutshell, is the background for tonight’s epistle reading. Ministry in a context like this isn’t about nuance. One has to cut to the chase, speak clearly and concisely, not mince words. Basically what we get is a pretty clear and concise summary of the gospel and a mission statement for this bishop and the young church he is called to serve. While it may not be as familiar to us as Luke’s telling of the Christmas story, in truth I believe that it has everything to do with celebrating our dear Savior's birth:

...the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds. 

Grace has appeared. It’s an interesting way to put it. Most of us tend to think of grace as an abstract concept or a doctrine to be affirmed or debated. But the claim being made here is that grace is experienced as a person: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have beheld his glory, full of grace and truth. When we see Jesus we see grace, and out of that encounter "Cretans" of every time and place are invited to leave our old lying and gluttonous ways behind in order to become a people after God’s own heart, a people called to live more self-controlled, upright, and godly lives; a people zealous for good deeds.

It’s become rather popular for people to claim that they are “spiritual, but not religious.” I get that. As I hear it, this is a claim made by those who wish to distance themselves from the institutional Church and Lord knows there are plenty of reasons people may wish to do that! There are many days when I feel the very same way, and I'm enmeshed in it. Next month I’ll start drawing a pension from this institutional Church so I don’t want to bite the hand that has fed me for my whole working life and I hope for many years to come. But if forced to choose between religion and spirituality I’d go with spirituality every time.

Spirituality grows out of the awareness that we are more than our physical bodies, even if we only get in touch with those feelings on a dark winter night or walking along the beach collecting shells on a lazy summer day. Spirituality suggests something that unites rather than divides Buddhist and Hindu and Muslim and Christian and Jew. I love spirituality.

I appreciate the fact that for far too many people, religion signifies something close-minded and bigoted and out-of-touch. It sounds politicized and dogmatic, suggesting that you are either “in” or “out” of a club. But tonight is one of the two times each year when there may be a higher percentage of folks in the room who feel exactly that way than on a normal Sunday morning. So let’s talk…

The Church needs to own the fact that we have contributed to the situation in which “religion” has become a dirty word. But on this holy night I want to try to reclaim this word “religion,” not as an end in itself but so that people don't have to choose.

While the ultimate origins of the Latin word religio are a bit obscure, Joseph Campbell and others have made the case that the derivation comes from a word that means “to bind or connect;" or more precisely, "to reconnect."  The work that God gives us to do is about making connections: about reconnecting and binding things back together with their Source. In spite of the commercialization and trivialization and sentimentalization of Christmas, God keeps breaking into our world and into our lives and calling us to true religion by giving us a mission and a vocation. We who come to adore him on this night are changed by this encounter because in seeing grace, we glimpse what is yet possible for our own lives and families and beyond, for this fragile island home. That vision changes us, or at least it is meant to change us. When we see grace, the work of Christmas begins as we begin to participate in this work of binding up a broken world.

Our previous Presiding Bishop was famous for saying, “if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” I hope, my friends, that in the fifteen months I’ve served at St. Michael’s that you’ve heard that consistently from me as well. But Bishop Curry also had another famous line that I want to remind you of tonight. He said that we, the Episcopal Church, are a branch of the Jesus Movement – out to change this world from the nightmare it is for so many into the Dream that God has for us.

I want to make the case for being Spiritual and religious, which I think is about a call to be disciples. Followers of Jesus. Part of a movement. Spiritual and religious brings us into community, because we can’t do it alone.

This work is not very different from what Titus was up to back in Crete two thousand years ago. To behold grace is in some measure to be invited to become grace for others. Or as this epistle reading puts it: “the appearance of grace, which brings salvation to all” not only redeems us  but trains us, forms us, uses us to continue that work of healing and renewing the world around us. The birth we celebrate tonight is about forming a people after God’s own heart to share in this work of making things new again. Let me say that one more time because if for any reason the sugar plums dancing in our heads tonight have kept you from following along with the preacher, here is the whole thing in a nutshell: The birth we celebrate tonight is about forming a people after God’s own heart to share in this work of making things new again.

The good news we remember and reorient our lives around on this holy night is that God has come into the world—this world as it is, this world of Cretans. God seeks us as we are, not waiting around for some sanitized version of what we hope we might become with our New Year’s resolutions. God has come into this world in all of its pain and all of its glory to overcome separation and estrangement and to repair all that has been rent asunder; to bind all things together again. 

Sometimes the biggest estrangement we need to overcome is an internal one, the inward spiritual journey toward integration and wholeness. Until we are healed from within it may be impossible for us to become true agents of reconciliation. But ultimately we are called beyond ourselves and into the world, this world that God that God loved so much as to be born into it as one of us.

Do religious institutions need to be changed and redeemed and revitalized and reoriented around God’s mission? Yes, always! But on this night above all other nights I am proud to call myself spiritual and religious because it suggests to me that Christmas is more than sentimentality or nostalgia for a distant past: it is a clarion call to share in God's mission. Tonight. And tomorrow. We then need to develop spiritual practices and disciplines that build up the Body of Christ so that together we can do that work, for the sake of this unsteady and confusing world.

To say it another way: we don’t become more "spiritual” by avoiding all of the challenges of life in community. Rather, we discover a more authentic spirituality when we become religious enough to embrace it all, for the love of God in Jesus Christ. Our neighbors have been given to us to be companions along the way. Not just the ones we agree with or even like. But the ones who annoy and hurt us. We are invited (even commanded) to love one another as God has loved us. This binding and re-binding changes us for good. As that great mystery unfolds, we really do find ourselves in a place where we can see grace and truth, and where we see grace and truth we see this child, Jesus.

Merry Christmas, St. Michael’s. God is definitely not finished with you yet!

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

There are times in our lives when it is very clear what we need to do, even though it may be difficult to find the courage and fortitude to do it. It is hard to act in accordance with our stated convictions and core values, but we can do hard things, with God’s help.

The greater challenge, sometimes, is when we are genuinely unclear about the way forward. About what the right thing to do is. In those times, what we really need is help in figuring out what the right thing is. To ask that kind of question we need wisdom and insight and the spiritual practice of discernment.

We may have a friend whose addiction problems are out of control: do we err on the side of not rocking the boat too much (so at least they will know they are not alone and that we do care about them) or on the side of “tough love” that sets clear boundaries and holds them accountable for their bad choices? So much depends on the circumstances, on context, and a whole lot of factors that may be beyond our understanding or control.

At such times, before we can “do the right thing,” we need to figure out what the right thing is.

Joseph, we are told in today’s gospel reading, was, “a righteous man.” In Greek the word is “dikaios.” It’s translated into English as “just” or as “justified” as often as “righteous” and it is a fairly common word in the New Testament, especially in St. Paul’s writings.

So what exactly does it mean to be a “just” or “righteous” person? I suspect that if you asked most Christians, across generational and denominational lines, they would say that it is basically about trying to do our best to follow God’s commandments as they are revealed in the Scriptures. It’s about acting with integrity, in accordance with our core values. But in the case of Joseph, there is a text in the Torah that is quite explicit, given the situation in which he finds himself. It seems pretty clear what he is supposed to do, if he is in fact a “righteous man.”

Mary and Joseph were engaged, although something gets lost in translation here when we move into English and our twenty-first century context. In first-century Palestine, to be “betrothed” was a legally binding arrangement that could be dissolved only by death or divorce. In other words, Mary and Joseph were already as good as married. And so if Mary has been “sleeping around” (and all the evidence Joseph has seems to suggest she has) then she has committed adultery. So what is the right thing to do here?  How would a righteous man act? The Bible says that adultery is punishable by death. 

If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones.  (Deuteronomy 22:23-24)

Now we must be very clear here and fair to our Jewish cousins. In the first century, Jews were not going around stoning adulterers. The rabbis were not Biblical literalists. They had interpreted the text as belonging to another time and place and softened the blow quite a bit. Still, adultery was considered a serious sin and those who committed it were publicly humiliated and shamed, even if not stoned. The practice, in other words, was to make public what had happened in private. A scarlet letter worked as well as stoning to ostracize a person from “polite” society and make her as good as dead to the community.

Keep in mind that Joseph still believes at this point in the story that this is what has happened, that Mary has been unfaithful. As he discerns he has no reason to doubt that. His honor has been violated. He must have felt incredibly hurt, humiliated, and angry. One could certainly understand his desire to lash out. But beyond that he can, as a religious person, justify his desire for retaliation by quoting Scripture! He can say not only that he has every “right” to expose Mary to public humiliation and that it’s a form of “tough love,” but that it’s his “religious duty.” He can say that is the “will of God” and that these aren’t his rules, but God’s, because it says so, right in the Bible! In spite of how the rabbis were interpreting Deuteronomy 22 in Joseph’s day, he could have pushed for a return to “that old time religion” and gotten a bumper sticker for his car that said: “Bring back stoning: God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

But of course Joseph didn’t do that.  He could have listened to the conventional interpretations being given by the rabbis of his day and exposed Mary to public disgrace. This decision would had the advantage of being “in the mainstream.” With the full backing of the religious authorities, Joseph could have claimed the moral high ground by publically divorcing Mary, so that everyone in town would know that he had been wronged. He had every right to do that, even if it wasn’t the right thing to do.

But of course he didn’t do that either. Even before he has this dream, Joseph discerns a higher calling than following the letter of the law, even a law already mitigated by the rabbis. Joseph decides that he is “unwilling to expose Mary to public disgrace.” He decides that the “right thing” here is to dismiss her quietly. And Matthew declares that the reason he did this, the reason he went against the conventional wisdom, was because he was a “righteous man.” He was a good man.

How can it be that a person makes a decision that is counter to the Torah and that he is still considered to be a just person? Matthew seems to be suggesting here that it is. That doesn’t mean that he is dismissing the Torah entirely. In fact, more than any of the four gospel writers, Matthew writes as a Jew, to Jews, with the utmost respect for Torah. In Matthew’s telling of the story, Jesus comes not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. Jesus will remind his disciples what is spelled out in the Old Testament itself: that the whole of the Torah can be summed up in the command to love God and to love neighbor. If we want to “do the right thing,” we can’t just pick one text and stick with it. We have to engage in prayer and discernment with a living, holy, merciful, loving God. We have to learn how to trust the Holy Spirit to form and guide our conscience and to guide us into all truth. We also have to be self-aware, because the potential for self-deception is always great. Only then can we begin to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest holy Scripture.

And so today we light that fourth candle: love.  Joseph seems to believe that a “respect for the dignity of every human being” includes even the woman he feels has betrayed and deceived him and hurt him. His “righteousness” is tied to preserving her dignity.  Joseph chose mercy and love over public humiliation, because he was a righteous man…

But there’s more. No sooner has he made up his mind than it all becomes moot: his decision has been made when out of nowhere the whole story shifts, and an angel appears to Joseph in a dream. (Poor Joseph; unlike Mary and the shepherds and even George Bailey, he doesn’t get a real angel—with or without wings; just a dream of an angel!) What he learns from this dream is huge, however: he has it all wrong. He thought he had the facts right and his decision seemed compassionate based on a logical reading of the evidence. After all, Mary is pregnant and he knows he’s not the father. But then the angel tells him that this pregnancy is the work of the Holy Spirit and not of an adulterous affair at all. Mary has in fact not betrayed him. And that changes everything.

This, too, is a part of the moral life, is it not? We make ethical choices not as people who are omniscient, but as people who come to decisions based on the best information we have available to us at the time, information that at best we see through a glass darkly. And sometimes we are just plain wrong. Sometimes we leap to the wrong conclusions. Often when we do (and especially if we feel hurt or vulnerable or angry) we act less nobly than Joseph was about to act. But now Joseph changes his plans based on a dream.

And here, too, he had choices. After waking up he very easily could have said, “I’m never eating stuffed peppers for dinner again!” He could have told himself: “it was just a dream, and what a bizarre one at that. I can’t wait to tell it to my therapist!” But that, of course, isn’t what he does. Joseph acts and does the two things his dream angel tells him to do: he takes Mary as his wife and then he names the child Yeshua—Jesus—Savior. In so doing, Joseph is claiming the child as his very own son.  

Sometimes we have a hard time connecting to the people of the Bible.  But we should be clear that regardless of what we say about the peculiar nature of this particular birth, Joseph was neither the first nor the last man to ever find himself in a situation like this.  He is, I think in a real sense, a regular Joe: an ordinary, everyday hero who is just trying to do the right thing.

We do well to remember that this decision will almost certainly be costly to Joseph’s reputation and his standing in the community, and very few people beyond Mary and Jesus will ever be able to appreciate the sacrifice he has made in doing the right thing, the hard thing. It will win him no medals, and almost certainly the whispering will go on in that small town for decades. Mamzer—they will call Jesus, in spite of Joseph’s actions: illegitimate.

In hindsight, as followers of Jesus, it’s easy to see why Joseph deserves to be called a “righteous man.” But what truly amazes me is that Joseph was able to get it right the first time around, without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, even before he ever held that babe wrapped in swaddling clothes in his arms. Today we give thanks for St. Joseph. Let us pray:

O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light rises up in the darkness for the godly: Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what you would have us to do, that the Spirit of Wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in your light we may see light, and in your straight path may not stumble, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.                                                                       (The Book of Common Prayer, pg. 832)

The Third Sunday of Advent

Yesterday there was a yet another tragic mass shooting at Brown University. I learned after this sermon that there was also another mass killing in Australia. The Bishop of Rhode Island sent an email to clergy which is where we began our worship – his email was also before we learned of what happened in Australia. Here is what he sent and I read as we lit the third candle on our Advent wreaths.

As we gather today, following a mass shooting event in Providence late yesterday afternoon, I ask that we pray for all the victims of this violence, all those whose lives have been impacted and the first responders and medical personnel. I offer this prayer, written by Bishop Rob Hirschfeld:

Give us courage for the facing of this hour. Guide us by the bright vision of your Heavenly Realm where no weapon is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love. O Christ, show us your mercy as we put our trust in you.

+     +     +

The connection between these two texts, one from the Old Covenant and the other from the New Covenant seems pretty unmistakable, doesn’t it? It seems so nice and tidy! We hear a word from the prophet and then while his words are still ringing in our ears we hear it happening in the ministry of Jesus: the eyes of the blind are opened and the deaf hear. Who could miss it, right?

From the prophet, Isaiah the 35^th chapter:

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble (tottering) knees! Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance with terrible recompense. He will come and save you." Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

And then these words from the eleventh chapter of Matthew’s Gospel:

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."

Anybody who reads the Old Testament knows that when Messiah comes there is supposed to be peace on earth and goodwill to all people and the lion is supposed to lie down with the lamb and swords will be beaten into plowshares. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. All that good stuff we’ve been hearing about now for three weeks in Advent from Isaiah. So what went wrong?

Jesus is born and is baptized by John in the Jordan River and teaches people about the Kingdom of God. He heals the sick and he’s a great preacher. All good stuff. But then things start to unravel. First John, the one who baptized Jesus, is arrested and put into prison. You all remember how that ends, right? Certainly not with a stay of execution! And one can already see the writing on the wall for Jesus: he, too, will come into conflict with the religious and political authorities and be arrested and tried and executed.

Good Friday is less than four months away.

So John’s question is legitimate. There isn’t yet peace in Jerusalem, let alone on earth. Not when he asked the question and not today. We can’t even get good will in Washington, DC!  Most nations continue to spend way more on swords than plowshares in their national budgets, and lions still eat lambs for lunch. So if Messiah is supposed to do all those things, then who, John asks, are you? And what are you up to, Jesus? Why are kids getting killed at Brown?

It is a fair question, and it takes us on this third Sunday of Advent to the very heart of our faith. We are still waiting expectantly And that is what Advent is all about—not only waiting for the first coming of baby Jesus, but for the second coming of Christ the King. For new heavens and a new earth. For the New Jerusalem, and the new Providence and the new Bristol. For the new St. Michaels’ to shine as a light for all of the East Bay.

Waiting is hard. And it’s tempting in the meantime to ease our anxiety by spiritualizing the good news of Jesus Christ. This is not some temptation that comes from a so-called secular society; we do it to ourselves. We turn this holiday season into fuzzy sentimentality. Or we postpone all our hope until the day when Christ comes again.

But here is the thing: the prophets imagine God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven. And when Jesus sends word to John the Baptist in today’s gospel reading, notice that he isn’t talking in the future tense like Isaiah was. He now speaks of what is happening: the blind are receiving their sight, the lame are walking, the lepers are being cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

So Jesus is a great teacher, a healer, the kind of guy everybody wants to eat supper with because wherever he is, it’s a party and everyone keeps hoping he’ll do that thing again with the water and the wine. But how do we really know he is the One? That is John’s question today and it lingers in the air. John has been out there proclaiming that the One who comes after him is going to usher in that reign of God—justice and peace and all the rest. I imagine as he sits in that prison cell that John was as confused as anyone and maybe even a bit angry, because the One whose sandals he knew he wasn’t fit to carry is out there doing good work to be sure—important ministry. But in a macro-cosmic sense the world looks pretty much the same as it always has. When are the prisoners really going to go free? That’s an existential question for John who is sitting in a prison cell and hoping it happens soon and definitely before his head ends up on a platter.

So how do you know? If you are a good Jew waiting for Messiah to come or a good Christian waiting for Messiah to come again—if you live in the first century or the twenty-first—if you are sitting in a prison cell or in a church pew—how do you know when it is God at work and that Messiah has come?

“Go tell John what you see and what you hear,” Jesus says. It is such classic, vintage Jesus. Notice that he doesn’t directly answer the question. He never does! He just encourages people to open their eyes and ears. But the problem with that is always the same: when you see, can you see what I see? When you listen, do you hear what I hear? When you listen to the evening news: is the world being made new or is it coming unglued? Is the light shining in the darkness, or is it just getting darker.

It’s not just about whether we are constitutionally more optimists or pessimists as far as I can tell—although perhaps that’s a part of it.  It’s more than just “is that glass half-full or half-empty?”  We can look at the same thing—each of us, from one day to the next and see it differently. Is it an opportunity or a crisis? Is it something that will help us grow or will it be our undoing? Is God in the midst of it all or absent? One could ask all of these questions in a congregation that is going through a time of transition and people will see things differently, and do

So much has to do with where we are and that can change from day-to-day. If we are overtired or depressed or angry or confused—sometimes we just plain cannot see. I mean literally, we sometimes just cannot see what is right before our eyes. The optic nerves are working fine and delivering messages to the brain but we are blind. And sometimes it’s like those images where if you blink you see it one way and if you blink again you see something else: is that an old lady or a young girl?

Go tell John what you see and hear.  Sometimes people whose lives seem (at least from where I stand) to be so incredibly blessed still struggle with doubt and uncertainty about whether God loves them or even exists. And sometimes people whose lives seem (at least from where I stand) to be so incredibly sad are able to find faith and love and joy and hope in the smallest of life’s gifts. The externals don’t always dictate how we will view even our own lives, let alone the world around us. We can have it all and feel empty and sometimes that is exactly where we are in December. And we can have very little and feel like our cup overflows. And sometimes that happens to us in December as well.

What you see depends on how you look and also where you look. What you hear depends a great deal on who you’re listening to.

So two people stand on the beach and watch the sun rise and one of them is overcome with awe and wonder and filled with an awareness of the goodness of life and the benevolence of God. The other sees a ball of fire sending harmful rays that need SPF 30 to avoid cancer. And oh yeah, that ball of fire is burning itself out and every day we’re one day closer to a universe where the lights will go out.

So what are you seeing this December? Do you see weak hands and tottering knees being strengthened? Because where you see those things happening, I think Jesus is saying, there you see God at work. There you see signs of Messiah’s presence. And if once you were blind but now you see in amazingly different ways—isn’t that good news?  

We have to be intentional about looking for signs of God’s presence in the world. If we can find ways to put ourselves in places where we can get glimpses at least, of new life and new possibilities, then it becomes food for the journey. And as we learn where to look and how to look with eyes that see and ears that hear, then our faith is truly strengthened because we see signs of God’s presence where we never before even thought to look. And if we are really brave we begin to join in, to participate in that holy work, to spread the good news.

Who knows where that may lead? We might even find God in a stable, of all places…

 

An Advent Evensong: Farewell Sermon

We have three things to cover here before we reconvene across the street for a little party tonight. 

• First, Advent. 
• Second, the Feast of St. Nicholas of Myra.
• Third, the end of a pastoral relationship.
  

Ready?

Advent. It’s probably my very favorite season. Although I admit that I'm a bit like Erma Bombeck who famously told each of her children they were her favorite. I sometimes feel a little bit that way about the liturgical seasons. But we are in Advent now and I love it best. I love the flickering candles in the darkness of December days and nights. They remind me and all of us that no matter how dark it may feel in the world, a little bit of light is enough to go on. I love Advent because those candles remind us of God’s dream for this world, and the promise of peace, and hope, and joy, and love. We do not need to be afraid of the dark and we should never curse the darkness. We are little lights and we can let them shine in the darkness.

I love Advent because it’s all about the preparation, about getting ready. I love Advent because of John the Baptist, fearlessly preparing the way in the wilderness. John points to the one who is coming after him and I can relate, since we have known from the time I arrived here fifteen months ago that this day would come and that our work was in preparation of the next chapter.

I love Advent because of Mary, fearlessly saying yes to God and telling out with her soul the greatness of the Lord. I grew up a United Methodist, and in that little church in Hawley Pennsylvania we didn’t talk about Mary very much. She seemed too “Catholic” for our tastes. But over the course of my ordained life I have come to appreciate holy Mary, the mother of our Lord and let’s face it, without her “yes” there is no Jesus and we aren’t even here tonight.

Oh, and one more thing: I love the hymns in Advent. I’m told that some clergy get pushed by their parishioners to sing Christmas Carols before it’s Christmas. I have never understood that and frankly I’ve never been pushed. I’ve been fortunate enough to serve in parishes that “get” Advent. I have nothing against Christmas carols. But the Advent hymns, including the ones we selected for this night, speak to a deep place in my soul. They are so beautiful.

So it all comes together - the waiting, the preparation, the flickering candles, John and Mary, the music – to create a mood of hopeful expectation. And Lord knows we can use some hopeful expectation these days.

Second, St. Nicholas. Let me just confess that today is actually the feast of Ambrose of Milan. We were originally going to do this last night, on December 6, which is actually St. Nicholas’ Feast Day. Then we realized that the closing of Hope Street for the illumination of the Christmas tree required us to adapt our schedule. But I was already committed to St. Nicholas in my mind (nothing against Ambrose!) so let’s just go with that.

Before he was brought to this country by Dutch settlers and became jolly old St. Nicholas, he was a fourth-century bishop who likely took part in the Council of Nicaea. He is the patron saint of sailors and children. Well, I know some of you are sailors, and even if this parish doesn’t have many children in this chapter of its long life, we are all children at Christmas, right? So he’s our guy: he encourages generosity and gift giving and helps us all feel young at heart, even if we happen to be of retirement age.

This leads me to number three. As most of you know, before arriving here, I spent nearly twelve years serving on the staff of Bishop Doug Fisher as his Canon the Ordinary in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. Prior to that, I’d been the Rector of St. Francis Church in Holden, Massachusetts, a suburb of Worcester, for fifteen years. We raised our kids in Holden and when they went off to college, the newly elected bishop asked me to join his staff and I said yes. That was in 2013.

It was a good run and I was a decent-enough Canon to the Ordinary. But I missed some parts of parish ministry a great deal. That never went away. In fact during the pandemic I did a lot of walking on the Wachusett Rail Trail and I thought a lot about how I might return to parish ministry before retiring.

Don’t misunderstand; being a Canon to the Ordinary is a great gig in many ways. Some say it’s the best job in the Church. But my analogy was always this: if you love being a classroom teacher and then get made assistant principal, there is an adjustment and some loss. Or if you prefer a sports analogy, if you love playing the game and then become the offensive coordinator, it’s different. Early on I read a book called “Leading from the Second Chair.” The book itself was “just ok.” But the title described what I was up to for nearly a dozen years, zig-zagging across central and western Massachusetts to support the ministry of the guy in the first chair.

I have no regrets. But I became a priest to preach and teach. To baptize. To be at the bedside to anoint people as they lay dying and then offer them a Christian burial. To officiate at weddings. And you, St. Michael’s, have given me the chance to finish my active ministry by doing all of these things again. Thank you for opening your lives to me, for welcoming me to Bristol. It’s been a great run!

In the final prayer we’ll offer after this sermon, we’ll list the names of those I have had the privilege to baptize, and marry, and bury over the fifteen months we have shared together. All of those things and the life of a congregation that unfolds in between big events is about relationships. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Thank you for sharing your lives with me. I wanted to “go out” doing the parts of this calling that I love the most and you invited me to do just that over the course of the past fifteen months. Tonight my heart is full of gratitude.

You enthusiastically welcomed me and we worked together to get things back on track. You’ve done amazing work in the search process and you’ve called a wise and capable priest to walk with you in the next chapter of your life together. Well done. I know I’ve helped, and I’m proud of that. But I did not and could not do that alone. I’m so grateful for the staff – Alexander and Loretta and Steve and Betty. I’m so grateful for the officers of the vestry: Allison and Maryanne and Deb and Geoff, and for the others who serve on vestry, and outreach, and stewardship, and in worship. Even driving up and down 146 between here and Worcester has not dampened my spirit of joy at getting to be with you for this season in your long history.

The end of a pastoral relationship sounds very ominous. But it’s important to call things by their right name. It’s important to say goodbye and not just slip out the back door. Being a priest is an incredible gift. But always, and throughout this journey I’ve had, being a husband and a dad and a grandpa has taken precedence over my work in the Church. If you get to talk with Hathy and Graham and James, with Cara and Lindsay and Julian, tonight, you will understand very quickly why this is. I am the luckiest man on earth.

Until I ran into Bishop Kniseley at General Convention in Louisville in June 2024 I didn’t know anything at all about St. Michael’s or Bristol. I did not know about the oldest continuous Fourth of July parade in the country. Now I will never forget that. And I won’t forget you all.

When we turn the calendar to 2026, I will no longer be your pastor. You will have a new priest heading this way, driving up from North Carolina with her wife. I pray that you will welcome Ginny and Barbie as you have welcomed me and Hathy. I pray that you will open your hearts to them as you have to us.

In my previous job it drove me crazy when clergy would retire or leave and throw the diocese under the bus by saying, “I can’t talk to you any more because of the diocese.” So I’d walk into the parish a week later and get asked, “why do you have these stupid rules?”

The best practice is that we are here tonight to say goodbye so that you are fully engaged in saying hello to your next rector. We have a couple of weeks left, but we make it clear tonight that my time is very short. Saying goodbye and ending a pastoral relationship is not because of Bishop Knisley or Canon Dena. It is because endings lead to new beginnings, and because you will have a new priest and your energy and focus needs to be on cultivating that relationship. Please allow space for her to become your pastor. 

This does not mean I will forget you, and I hope you don’t soon forget me. But it does mean that things are about to change, and we don’t need to be afraid of change. Through it all, God is with us.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel – be with us all.

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

Tonight at 5 pm we’ll celebrate an Advent Evensong, followed by a little party across the street. I hope that many of you are able to come back for that, when we will begin to say our goodbyes as priest and congregation and get ready for what comes next here at St. Michael’s and in my own retirement from full-time ministry.

But this morning there is work to be done on this Second Sunday of Advent. I suspect that across this diocese and even nation, most sermons today in Episcopal congregations and beyond will focus on John the Baptist. I like John a lot and I’ve preached many of those sermons over the years. But I feel like we know John, and he’ll be back again next Sunday when he’ll send a word to Jesus from prison. So this year I’m going to let John the Baptist be.  

For those who don’t focus on John the Baptist today, Isaiah seems like the logical place to land. Someone said in our Revelation Bible Study a week or so ago that they felt a gap in their theological formation when it comes to the prophets. It’s not because that person wasn’t paying attention! It’s because we Christians have historically not done a great job with teaching the prophets, even though you can’t really get what Jesus is up to without understanding what Isaiah and Amos and Micah and Jeremiah were up to. Keep in mind the prophets were not fortune-tellers. They were not looking into a crystal ball and predicting the future. Rather, they were more like social critics. They looked at the world around them and invited a closer look, from the bottom up. They judged the politics and economic policies of their day based on how they impacted on the lives of those struggling, not those who were thriving. They take us by the hand and ask us to see and hear things we would prefer to ignore.

Like all the prophets, Isaiah uses his imagination – can you imagine a peaceable kingdom where the lion and the lamb lie down together? It can sound like a children’s story but Isaiah is quite serious: that peace on earth can never be limited to our hearts, even if it begins there. Rather, the peace of God that passes all understanding changes the neighborhood and ultimately the world. So I commend Isaiah to your prayers this week and beyond, as you find your way through these December weeks.

I want, instead, to do something you’ve probably realized by now after we’ve spent fourteen and a half months together that I don’t do often, and that is to preach on the epistle. The reason I’m going to the epistle today is that it feels like it’s the most relevant to our situation right now. I’ve been reflecting on this for a while now and hope you’ll hang in there with me. So that we don’t lose our way, let me repeat that last sentence we heard today once more: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

Romans was probably written from Corinth, but it’s addressed to people that Paul has not yet met, although he does tell them he would like to get there someday and that he thinks about doing so often. Clearly, Paul knew something about the Church in Rome and they knew something about him. Even so, Romans is a kind of letter of introduction. Some scholars have even described chapters 1-8 as Paul’s “theological last will and testament.” Paul is telling them how the gospel has changed his life and changed the way he sees the world; and he is suggesting some ways that it might change them also. 

Enough, for now, about Paul. Let’s talk a bit about the people at the receiving end of this letter, living in first-century Rome: the imperial, administrative, and economic capital of the world. Think Washington, DC and New York City wrapped up into one. The people who came to be followers of Jesus there, setting up small house churches that included both Jewish and Gentile Christians, still lived and worked and were educated in this Roman context. They were shaped by Rome—not Tarsus, not Bristol.

The Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians there coexisted in a rather uneasy relationship that often involved misunderstanding and stereotyping of the other group. First-century Jews had been taught to divide the world into basically two groups: Israel, i.e. God’s chosen people, and everybody else—the nations, the goyim. Usually the “everybody else” tended to be bigger and stronger nations like Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and most recently, Rome. When you tend to divide the world into “us” and “them” and when you are weak and they are strong, that brings with it a whole worldview that is hard to let go of.

Gentiles also tended to divide the world into “us” and “them” but the lines were drawn very differently. For Gentiles, the world was divided into civilized people, who were cultured and educated, and barbarians (which literally means ‘bearded’) who were not. These civilized folks tended to be more privileged with all that comes with that. The “them” included, but was not limited to, Jews.

So imagine for just a moment what it would be like to be a member of one of those first-century house churches in Rome: a congregation consisting of people shaped by each of these competing worldviews. Imagine Darius, a “civilized” Gentile- Christian who has been raised to look down his Roman nose at those uncultured barbarians, sitting at a brown-bag lunch and eating his totally un-kosher prosciutto on ciabbata bread sandwich. Next to him sits Moshe, whose grandmother would be turning over in her grave if she knew he was sitting next to a goyim. Imagine them and their family members trying to plan the menu for the annual parish picnic, make decisions together on vestry, or choose music for worship, and you are quickly relieved of any naïve sense that the early Church was free of conflict where everyone sat around holding hands and singing “kumbaya!

Diversity (in the first and twenty-first centuries) holds within it the seeds of radical transformation, to be sure. But working through old prejudices is difficult and challenging work and we should never underestimate the very real challenges that these Christians in Rome faced. When Paul tells the Church in Rome that there is no longer Jew or Greek, he means it; but he’s talking to people who know just how hard it is to live into that reality. Paul’s theology is not the abstract systematic theology of a tenured religion professor—not that there is anything wrong with that! Paul’s theology is always contextual: scripture, reason and tradition intersect with a particular context, in this case those house churches in first-century Rome. He is a pastoral theologian; his theology is rooted in the everyday challenges of congregational life, of trying to live into the call to be “in Christ.”

“Romans was written to be heard by an actual congregation made up of particular people with specific problems.”  If you sit down and read Romans from beginning to end you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about. The gist of it is that Paul reminds them of the love of God and that nothing in all of creation can separate us from that love. He challenged them to confess that “Jesus is Lord” and then to live that way.

On my commute from Worcester to Bristol, Route 146 becomes more tolerable when I listen to music or podcasts. Lately I’ve been doing more podcasts and one of my favorites is Freakonomics. Last week I listened to a podcast entitled: “how can we break our addiction to contempt?” (You can listen to that episode here.)

The scholar being interviewed distinguished between anger, a hot emotion, and contempt, a cold emotion. He said we can deal with anger, but contempt is much more challenging because we dismiss the other, we roll our eyes, we treat them with disdain. He says that social media and cable news move us all toward contempt even more than anger. They encourage us to divide the world into “us” and “them” and the problems we see are all because of “them.” I got thinking about Moshe and Darius in first-century Rome and how hard it was for them to break through contempt to love. And, I got to thinking about the persons here who get their news from Fox and those who get their news from MSNBC and how contempt “sells” but also keeps us from living the second commandment to love our neighbors. 

The scholar in that podcast was compelling. His name is Arthur Brooks and he teaches at Harvard, both the  Kennedy School and the Business School. You may surmise from that that he’s a liberal but in fact he was the eleventh president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. So he’s complicated. An economist by training, but before that a professional French horn player. (Did I tell you how much I love Freakonomics?)

Brooks says we don’t change people’s minds or hearts with logical rational arguments that try to convince them how misguided they are. He says that we change ourselves and others and the neighborhood with love. He says we need to make space for authentic relationships. If I could have invited him to be here today to preach this sermon I would have done so. I want to simply hold him next to St. Paul today and encourage you to check out the podcast. Hold the first-century Church in Rome side by side with the twenty-first century Church here in Bristol, and take in these two little candles we’ve lit in the midst of a world that teaches contempt, and then pray that God will change all of our hearts, and through that transformation the neighborhood and the world.

This isn’t wishful thinking or denial. It takes us to our core values as followers of Jesus: abounding in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit gives us the will and the courage to love God and love our neighbor as if the world depends on that. Because it does.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

The Second Sunday of Advent

Please note that I've done something relatively rare for me. This sermon was written and "queued up" here on Thursday morning. It is ok, I think, even if a little academic in the beginning. But it didn't sit right and it didn't feel like the "right sermon" for this December Sunday. The nice thing about blogging is that I can still share it here and maybe there is a word of good news for readers of this blog. But early this Saturday morning I started over and the sermon I'll preach tomorrow at St. Michael's is totally different, and focused on Romans. I'll try to get the time early next week to upload that one here - but there's lots going on today and tomorrow at St. Michael's so I won't get to it on Sunday afternoon. You can ponder this one in the meantime. 

I hope that many of you are able to come back tonight when I can reflect a bit on what my time among you has meant. Like George Washington sings in Hamilton at the end of his second term, we’ll teach them how to say goodbye!

But for this liturgy on this morning of the Second Sunday of Advent I want to stay focused on the work of the day as we light that second candle on our wreath.

There is a common Christian misperception that has been repeated so many times that people sometimes assume it must be true. In fact, when a second-century theologian named Marcion began saying it, the Church rightly declared him to be a heretic (which is simply to say, wrong. You don’t need to burn heretics at the stake to simply say they got it wrong!)

Marcion believed that the God of the Old Testament was a god of judgment and the God of the New Testament was a god of mercy. If he had had his way, we would not claim the Old Testament to be “the Word of God.” Yet the core testimony of ancient Israel, in what we call the Old Testament, is that YHWH is the maker of heaven and earth and that creation is good. We are created of the earth and God says we are very good. That very same God is a God of steadfast love and mercy, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. These claims are repeated over and over again in the prophets and in the psalms, because over and over again it is Israel’s experience that that when they fall short of the mark and fail to hold up their end of the bargain, God responds with amazing grace.

I’m not saying that there isn’t violence and judgment in the Old Testament or that God isn’t sometimes portrayed anthropomorphically as getting impatient, hurt, and even angry. I think we do drive God to vertigo sometimes. I simply want to say that these things are in the New Testament as well, and the reason for that is that both Testaments are not about a fantasy world, but real life.

The core testimony of both Old and New Testaments is of one God who is steadfast and merciful: the one whom Israel called Creator of heaven and earth and that Jesus called Abba. The Nicene Creed gets this right, of course, and sets the contours of orthodoxy over and against our Marcionite tendencies: We believe in one God…We believe that the Abba, the Father Almighty, is the maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen; which is to simply to say that we believe the Creator we meet in Genesis 1 is the very same God who is “with the Word” in the first chapter of John’s Gospel.  

Are you with me so far?

Some of us here, especially those of us raised in more Protestant traditions, were taught to contrast the “law” of the Old Testament with the “grace” in the New Testament. We have some un-learning to do when we approach the Scriptures, because only in un-learning that false dichotomy can we begin to truly embrace the Old Testament in all of its richness. After all, what we call the Old Testament was the only Bible that Mary and Joseph and Jesus and the disciples and Paul ever knew. Jesus learned to call God “Abba” from the Law and the Prophets, the Psalms and the Writings, and it does us some good every now and again to be reminded that he did not carry around a leather-bound King James Bible that had all of his lines written out in red.

All of Holy Scripture was written for our learning, and both Testaments are meant to point us to the living Word—to Jesus the Christ.  The Bible is one drama, told in two acts. I don’t need to belabor this point, but Advent is as good a time to remember this as any because in Advent we seem to get readings intended to subvert our Marcionite tendencies. Two weeks in a row now, we have heard extraordinarily “good news” from the prophet Isaiah, which some Christian Biblical scholars have nicknamed “the fifth gospel.” And, as it happens, both weeks the gospel readings seem to have a sharper edge to them: winnowing forks and axes and judgment and wrath to come…

The vision given to the prophets, including Isaiah, is of God’s shalom: of a peace that passes all understanding. It’s not just an inward spiritual peace, but a yearning for the restoration of all creation and the healing of the nations. Last week we heard about how swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and I tried to suggest that this language inspires hope that unleashes energy that allows us to roll up our sleeves and to do the work God has given us to do. This week we hear once again from Isaiah, now speaking of the peaceable kingdom, of predators and prey living together in shalom.

If you want to look for differences between the two Testaments, that difference is not about the nature of God. God is one. But there is an important difference worth noting and it has everything to do with the readings before us today: it’s about verb tenses. It has to do with how we tell time. Isaiah lived in very difficult times: a time of war and rumors of war. In the eleventh chapter, he is looking toward the dawn of a new day. But he sees that future on a distant horizon. He looks to a day when the wolf will lie down with the lamb and the leopard with the kid. But all of his verbs, notice, are future tense and given the realities of his day that is understandable: it doesn’t seem like it will be anytime soon:

• A shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow;
• …by righteousness he shall judge the poor;
•   …the wolf shall live with the lamb;
• …the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
•  …a little child shall lead them;  
•  …they shall not hurt or destroy on all God’s holy mountain…

Someday. But not yet. It was the same with last weekend’s reading from Isaiah: “in days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established…” In those days, people will study war no more. (Isaiah 2:1-5) Someday. But not yet. In the meantime, we live in the “real” world that seems bent on destroying itself, sometimes even in the name of God.

Notice, however, what happens when John the Baptist arrives on the scene in the New Testament: he proclaims that a new day is about to dawn. John declares that “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” He insists that “the time is at hand.” No longer is it a distant future. There is a sense of urgency in John’s message, because the time is Now. And then notice what happens when Jesus comes on the scene. All the verbs become present tense: 

• Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, for theirs IS the kingdom of heaven; (Matthew 5:1-12)
• When Jesus walks into the synagogue one Sabbath day to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, about good news being brought to the poor and release to the captives, about recovery of sight to the blind and the oppressed going free his commentary is simple: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-21)
• St. Paul picks up this same theme in his letter to the Church in Corinth: he too quotes from Isaiah and then says, “NOW is the acceptable time; NOW is the day of salvation.” (II Corinthians 6:2)

What has happened? One might be tempted to think that the world somehow changed overnight when Jesus stepped on the world stage, that in first-century Rome all of a sudden there was a regime change and no more chariots were built; instead there was a lasting peace dividend and swords were beaten into plowshares. But of course we know better than that. The world was probably not much better or worse in the time of Jesus than it was in the time of Isaiah, and probably not much better or worse today than it was in either of those two times.

It’s tempting to make it all spiritual: since we can’t ever have peace on earth, we can have it in our hearts. Since we can’t have true community on earth, at least someday we’ll all die and go to heaven. But this, too, is in the spirit of Marcion. This is heresy. This too, discounts the entire witness of the Old Testament; not to mention the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray: thy Kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven. God’s shalom is cosmic and material; not merely spiritual.

Jesus teaches us to live today as if the Kingdom of God is already here. To live today into our calling as Baptized people by becoming salt and light and yeast that not only bear witness to the world but that begin to transform the world by making it saltier, lighter, and yeastier. We are called to become the change we yearn to see, to become the change that God yearns to see. As we light that candle for peace, the very next words on our lips, St. Francis taught us, need to be for today: “Lord, make us instruments of your peace…”  When we pray for peace on earth, we pray, “let it begin with me.” Let it begin now.

To be the Church means to be part of a community that dares to live against the grain of the dominant culture, right now in this moment. Not someday. It means that we live as if the time is Now; because we believe it is. It’s precisely because we live in the midst of warring madness, that we not only ask God to cure that warring madness, but that we also pray for the strength and courage to embrace our calling to make peace wherever we are. Not someday, but right Now.  

If we mean to follow Christ, we will do it Now. We can help move ourselves and others away from fear by building trust. We can begin to live more peacefully now as we faithfully use and claim our power, not as lions who eat lambs but as people ready to live and act as servant-ministers. We cannot afford to delay until someday; because it is this day that the Lord has made and it is on this day that God means for us to follow Jesus, and it is on this day that we are called to love God and neighbor.

In Greek there are two different words to capture these two different notions of time. Chronos, from which we get our word chronology, is about linear time. Something happened yesterday or it happens today or it will happen tomorrow. History is chronological, even when it repeats itself. Kairos captures a different aspect of time: sometimes we speak of the fullness of time, or of the moment arriving: it’s the right moment, the moment of fruition, the time when something significant happens. We live, of course, with both aspects of time, even when we only have one word for it in English. Advent unfolds chronologically, over the four weeks that lead up to Christmas. But at its core, Advent is about kairos time. Advent is about present-tense verbs: it’s not about hope and peace and joy and love “someday”—but about embracing these signs of the kingdom in our midst right now, proleptically, even if only as tiny mustard seeds or as four little lights shining in the darkness.