"The Power of Christmas" by Michael Gerson

I normally am REALLY, REALLY disagreeable to this guy's politics but I think this is one of the better things I've ever read.

Rather than being a timeless Other, God somehow assumed the constraints of poverty and mortality. He was dependent on human care and vulnerable to human violence. The manger implied the beams and the nails. To many in the Roman world — and to many since — this seemed absurd, even blasphemous. Through eyes of faith, it appears differently. Novelist and minister Frederick Buechner sees the “ludicrous depths of self-humiliation [God] will descend in his wild pursuit of mankind.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-christmas-and-the-argument-about-power/2013/12/23/1bcc7c6e-6c04-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html?hpid=z2

The Divine Collision

Fourth Sunday of Advent Year A RCL

Romans 1:1-7 (NRSV)

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,

To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Divine Collision:
Why We All Hate the Gospel (and Should)

With a blinding flash and a booming shock wave, a meteor blazed across the western Siberian sky Friday and exploded with the force of 20 atomic bombs, injuring more than 1,000 people as it blasted out windows and spread panic in a city of 1 million.

While NASA estimated the meteor was only about the size of a bus and weighed an estimated 7,000 tons, the fireball it produced was dramatic. Video shot by startled residents of the city of Chelyabinsk showed its streaming contrails as it arced toward the horizon just after sunrise, looking like something from a world-ending science-fiction movie.

Exploding meteor over Russia injures more than 1,100

If you thought that was a dramatic collision, wait until you hear about the birth, in a stable in Roman occupied Palestine, of an impoverished and persecuted Jewish baby named Jesus, later called the Christ.

About fifty years after that baby’s birth and about twenty years after the man’s crucifixion, Paul of Tarsus, a Hellenistic Jewish evangelist who, in the fullness of time, became a Hellenistic, Jewish, Christian evangelist, writes a letter of introduction to a Jewish Christian community whom he has not yet met – the Jewish Christian house churches in Rome.

A lot of liberal folks – including liberal Christian folks - hate Paul. He has, in their minds, hijacked the simple purity of the religion of Jesus to make it the religion about Jesus.

But, I’m sorry. I like him.

Oh, nice Jesus stories of forgiveness, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, advocacy for the poor, forgiving the sinner and all that other namby-pamby sentimental nonsense are fine if you’re into that sort of thing, but – as a professionally-trained amateur theologian – I’ll choose a butt-kicking dialectic over Hallmark-card Jesus every time. J

In the brief space of his opening paragraphs, he declares Jesus to be God’s promised Messiah with himself a slave of the Messiah and divinely authorized to speak God’s message on the meaning of that for humanity and the world – indeed, as being “set apart” from other men to do just that.

And then, the meaning of that message… the collision of the divine and the human, God and Nature.

He says, “the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead,”

Lastly, Paul gives fills out the details as to the purpose of his slavery, his being separated from other people, and his authorization to preach: “to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.”

The word “Gentile” is a Latin form of the Hebrew word  “Goy” whose meaning changed over time from “nation” to “nations that are not Jewish” and, even in New Testament times, it could be used pejoratively.

So Paul is basically saying to this Jewish Christian fellowship or community, God has divinely authorized and set me apart to tell “the other” that they, too, can share God’s gift of salvation that had heretofore been promised only to the Jews.

He is saying, in effect, God has ordered him to invite these folks to crash their little party, which caused him – at an earlier venue - to get stoned on at least one occasion, and not in a good way.J

Paul says a great deal of very important things in a few short words. (My own gifts tend to run in another direction.)

What is Paul saying, in a nutshell?

Jesus’ earthly life as a poor man in an occupied country who had a reputation for open fellowship with the undesirable and immoral, healing people and casting out devils – this Jesus who was crushed and who perished in shame and agony has another, parallel life hidden in God until the two lives come into collision at his death and resurrection.

A collision that challenges our own lives and the lives of nations as we recognize that as God’s life and ability to save inhabited Jesus’ life, though cloaked within the humble circumstances of that life, so too are our own broken, inadequate lives fully capable of the divine life and salvation.

It may come as a surprise that the world hates that message.

It may come as a greater surprise that Christians hate that message more than the world – unless they fail to understand it.

Because if the good news is that we have salvation through our participation with God in Christ, the bad news is we must abandon all our other, more tangible, more controllable forms of salvation.

God will prod us and provoke us until we let go of money or drugs or promiscuity or pride or relationships or mindless entertainments or distractions or accomplishments or whatever security blankets and teddy bears we keep to get us through the days and long, dark nights of the soul.

God will continually challenge us to live lives whose security is vouchsafed by damn all or – in the Christian tradition – the unmerited grace and mercy of God rather than by our own efforts.

The collision of God in Christ and the world at the focal point of history is an invitation and a very aggressive challenge to let go of those idols that hold us hostage and freely and boldly choose to live in a universe where – if we can handle the anxiety of death – we are free.

God is just about ready to knock us off our rocker – and that’s a good thing. Karl Barth said something to the effect that God is a tangent that intersects our world at just one point – the Cross.

The Gospel feels like death but is actually an invitation to freedom and life.

REFERENCES

“Karl Barth’s Conception of God

” Romans 1:1-17: The Introduction, Salutation, and Theme of Paul’s Letter to the Romans

The Power of Christmas by Michael Gerson

Son of God (Historical Context)

A Table of Christological Titles in Early Christian Writings by Peter Kirby

Gentile

Goy

Knowing How To Die

"He taught me how to die. If you know how to die you know how to live."
-Jim Ziolkowski (On Morning Joe)

All right, my skeptical friends.

THIS IS THE GOSPEL.

Sorry us Christians require all the other stuff to get to this point but this is the point all of us - Christian or not - need to get to, to live as free people.

http://www.amazon.com/Walk-Their-Shoes-Person-Change/dp/1451683553

Two Degrees of Separation from Robert Goulet!

Listening to Robert Goulet singing "Winter Wonderland" on Music Choice and remembered my late mother once "met" Robert Goulet.

It was in the eight year period between her husband (and my father's) death and her own death in 1981.

She struggled with anxiety and depression and had a very hard time dealing with the aftermath of my father's wholly unanticipated death.

But she up and bought tickets to hear Robert Goulet at the Westbury Music Hall on Long Island.

This, if I remember correctly, was a "theater in the round" type venue.

I don't remember the performance but I think it was some form of Camelot.

My mother had taken a water pill and at a particular point in the performance she had the urgent need to visit the Ladies Room.

Of course, she put this off as long as possible as she didn't want to appear rude - like she was walking out or something.

At the last possible moment, she propelled herself out into the aisle - and blocked Robert Goulet as he was attempting to get to his mark.

She looked at him and he looked at her. The eyes of everyone in the theater was on both of them.

Mortified beyond words, my mother turned and fled to the Ladies' Room.

"Leaving so soon?", Robert Goulet deadpanned as she left.   

http://venue.thetheatreatwestbury.com/

Brief

In Creation, God in Christ created the world.

In the Incarnation, God's presence abides in the world.

In Good Friday and Easter, God disarms that which enslaves the world.

The rest of it, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is on us.

2013 Winter Solstice

Christmas and pagan Solstice celebrations are joined at the hip. And Christianity has been nothing but enriched by the influence of earth-centered Divinity.

At times the Latin church and the protestants have forgotten this, but the Celtic Christians and the Eastern Orthodox never did.

Joyous Solstice, folks! The sun begins it's return.

"Hearkening back to a time when the church was one, and having resonance with Eastern Orthodox theology, the Celtic Christian tradition is at ease with proclamations from the early church, such as this from Maximus Confessor: : “The Word of God, who is God, wills always and in all things to work the mystery of his embodiment.” The Celtic Christian tradition would agree with C. S. Lewis when he writes, “God loves matter; he invented it.” George McLeod, who founded the modern Iona Community in Scotland, said “Matter matters.”"

http://www.explorefaith.org/celtic/christmas.html

A Call to Suffering and Patience

Third Sunday of Advent Year A RCL

James 5:7-10 (NRSV)

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors! As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

A Call to Suffering and Patience:
THAT’S the Good News?!

The last time I saw my brother alive - which is to say the last time I saw him at all as there was no viewing - was about 53 weeks ago. A year and a week.

His health situation was dire and while we both hoped for a miracle, I think when we shook hands as I left for the airport we both knew it was “good-bye” and not “until we meet again.” At least, not in any ordinary meaning of that phrase.

He lived another five weeks or so, going to hospice at the very end when it really became impossible to care for him at home in any sort of safe way because of his frequent falls.

His kidneys were failing and, while he insisted to the end that he was in no pain, between having to have his bathroom needs attended to and being assisted in everything he did when he wasn’t actually in his bed he patiently suffered a great deal of indignity.

Now, “patiently suffered” is not a phrase that rolls easily off my tongue or the tongue of my brother or, for that matter, the tongues of any within the Bekkenhuis family. He had been hospitalized a number of times in the last twenty years of his life and his reputation as a difficult patient – to understate it – was the stuff of family lore.

He was a control-freak who attempted to run the entire hospital from his hospital bed.

But in the last weeks of his life he graciously submitted to the indignities of a failing body and always did everything he could to ease the burdens of those who cared for him and raise the spirits of all who interacted with him.

He was patient regarding the coming of the Lord, patient as the farmer is patient for the rain to grow their crops. He did, in fact, model the patience of the prophets in the face of suffering though I believe the writer of James got it wrong – I suspect my brother indulged in grumbling, which was more the example set by Jeremiah than by Isaiah. J

The Christian lives in the shadow of the Cross and in the hope of the Resurrection and therefore is called to a life best exemplified by realism and hope. And one who has received the gifts of realism and hope is sufficiently freed from their own anxiety and insecurities that they are capable of loving others as they love themselves.

Realism purged of hope leads to despair and cynicism. Hope purged of realism leads to psychosis.

But the One whom Christians await during Advent, the Judge who stands at the door, the one who will invade our world and our lives, comes in the very epitome of a realistic hope – a baby born in poverty, destined to cast out devils and heal the sick and feed the hungry and forgive the sinner and yet who will die destitute and friendless on a cross as the means of setting the world and its people free from both fantasy and hopelessness.

Even though the salvation of the world comes to us in an unanticipated way, It really IS the Good News we need even if it is not the good news we want.

Killing the Wicked

Second Sunday of Advent Year A RCL

Isaiah 11:1-4 NRSV

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,

and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,

the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

the spirit of counsel and might,

the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

or decide by what his ears hear;

but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,

and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,

and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Killing the Wicked
(and Other Joyous Thoughts Regarding the Coming Judgment)

For the ancient Jews, as well as for any of us moderns who were terrorized by the phrase, “You just wait until your father gets home!”, the coming of the Messiah was a downright scary thing.

As the prophet Amos put it…

“Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,

    and gloom with no brightness in it?”
-Amos 5:20 (NRSV)

There is a similar story from the American Civil War. Supposedly a young Confederate soldier committed a significantly serious offense that he was brought before General Robert E. Lee. The young man was shaking with fear and the general tried to set him at ease.

“You have nothing to fear, son. You will receive justice here.”

The young rebel swallowed hard and supposedly replied, “Yes, sir. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

In short, the arrival of God’s Messiah and the coming of the great and terrible Day of the Lord was no laughing matter as almost everyone was going to do downright badly on THAT final exam.

But not everyone.

In the lesson from Isaiah, the poor and the meek will see some good from it: the religious, economic, political and societal systems of injustice that afflicted them will be overthrown and they will receive from God what they've not received from the rulers of the world.

The Messiah will arrive and establish their just treatment.

And how will the Messiah do that?

Simply kill the wicked who perpetuate those unjust, oppressive, de-humanizing systems.

Sounds simple enough, if a bit untidy (See “Revelation, the Book of). And we've all seem enough vigilante movies to get a feel for what that would look like on a global scale.

When one writes a novel, there are three ways it can end.

You can give your readers what they expect. That works, but it’s a bit boring.

You can give your readers something they DON’T expect… but that risks losing them completely.

You know, boy meets girl. Boy falls out with girl. Boy begins to work out relationship with girl but then she is kidnapped by aliens.

Hard to pull off.

The most satisfying way to end a story is to give your readers what they expect – but NOT in the way they expected it.

In the Christian cosmic narrative, this is what God did in Jesus Christ.

Christ is God’s mighty warrior come to earth to slay the wicked, reverse their injustices and ensure the justice for the poor and meek.

But Christ is also the vulnerable baby born in poverty who, per the infancy stories – which are really the gospels-in-miniature – must be evacuated to safety by his parents.

He fulfills the expectation of Messiah, but in an unanticipated, even counter-intuitive way.

To get a grasp on that, one could do worse than meditate – on the occasion of his death – on the life of Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela worked throughout his life to lead South Africa out of apartheid and into responsible, representative, self-government.

His personal religious beliefs are somewhat mysterious and – at one point in the fight – he allowed for the resistance of force against the apartheid regime.

And yet, when finally freed after 27 years of incarceration and ascending to the presidency of South Africa, it was reconciliation, not vengeance, that guided his policies.

As the movie, “Invictus,” so dramatically portrays, Nelson Mandela did not see his white jailers or the white functionaries of the apartheid government he had helped overthrow as the enemy. He saw them as captives of the TRUE enemy – the fallen ideology of apartheid.

Despite his lack of explicit, religious expression, he may well have agreed the author of Ephesians who said, “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12 (NRSV)

He showed that there are two ways of killing the wicked.

By actually killing them which, at one point in his life, he was apparently prepared to do.

Or by disarming that which holds them captive to wickedness, as he did when he assumed power.

Nelson Mandela surprised both his friends and his enemies when he gave them exactly what they expected in a way they totally DID NOT expect.

And he is a fitting entry point into our Advent meditations regarding God’s judgment on the wicked during this time of preparation for God’s Messiah – no matter how unexpected a disguise that Messiah might present.

Living in the Shadow of the Second Front

First Sunday of Advent Year A RCL

Romans 13:11-14 NRSV

You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Living in the Shadow of the Second Front

Since 1940 citizens in France lived under the rule of their Nazi occupiers and the quisling government of Vichy France.

The occupation took their freedom, their economy, their food, their lives and their dignity.

During the last two years or so of that occupation, both the occupiers and the occupied lived in the shadow of the Second Front, the planned Allied invasion of northern France.

For the oppressed, the Second Front meant freedom.

For the Nazis and their collaborators, it meant defeat and judgment.

And no one knew exactly when or how or where it would happen or even if it would be successful.

It’s the story I remembered when I read the lectionary readings for today, the First Sunday in Advent.

Instead of the happy, happy, joy, joy of the secular Christmas season which has been ramping up since Labor Day, the texts speak of reflection, preparation and a hope for a new reality.

Advent, for Christians, is living in both anxiety and hope as we await God’s Second Front in our own lives and families and communities as well as in ancient Israel.