Flickers entrusted with His Light and Love . . .

     We have come to that wonderful time in the season we call Advent IV.  It’s that time when the world around us is full into Christmas mode.  Heck, who are we kidding, even the men among us have decided it’s almost, almost time to get serious about buying presents.  I learned this week from some colleagues in non-liturgical churches that this is actually Christmas Sunday.  Some churches celebrate Christmas today so that folks can spend time with family on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  I know.  It seems to miss the point for me, too.  As a December child and the father of a December child, it smacks a bit of “hey, Jesus, here’s your combined birthday and Christmas gift.”  But it works for them.

     We, on the other hand, have one more opportunity, before the families descend or we travel, to remind ourselves of our calling as Adventers, before we dive full into the “remembering His coming among us in great humility.”  So what is going on?

      One of the chief takeaway’s we should have as a result of the season is that God is at work in the world around us making old things new, that He is using the common and ordinary to reach us, to instruct us, to woo us.  We argued a bit about this Thursday night at Wrestling with Faith.  Some think God should do more impressive miracles to catch our attention; others, of course, think we should get rid of the miracles in the Bible, a la Marcion, because God is bound by the systems He set up.  Among the various problems with that argument, of course, are the anecdotal experiences of those who have witnessed or been blessed by miracles but notice the world continues on without being destroyed.  But that is a sermon for another day.

     Today, we are focusing on our unique perspectives as Adventers.  Nothing is as it was, and nothing is as it’s going to be.  To use the language of Carola when she was your preacher and teacher, we are living in that tension between the already and the not yet.  I see some nods.  You remember her teaching!  I’ll tell her.  It might help her heal more quickly!  How do we know things have changed?  The Incarnation of our Lord Christ!  God came down as a fully human baby, born of a virgin in an outward province of the super power of the day.  He lived among us, taught among us, worked signs of power among us that testified to Who He was, He suffered and died among us, and gloriously He was raised among us.  Nothing is as it was before that magnificent and glorious event.

     And yet, we understand that the re-creation begun in the work and person of our Lord Christ is not yet completed.  We live in a world that is still not the way it will be.  Death still stalks us.  The consequence of sin still plays out in the world around us and in our lives.  Nature itself testifies to the collective sin and the weight of its guilt in the world around us.  Even as we gather to begin to turn our focus to the Incarnation, our brothers and sisters in Australia live in a modern Gehenna, of sorts, where wildfire rage and air quality is horrible, our brothers and sisters in California are bracing for a rainy season that will likely become mudslide season because of the burn scars from the late summer and early fall, droughts are still happening, tornados are still happening – pick your natural disaster.  In short, nothing is as it will be.

     But it falls to Christians, and especially to Adventers who are called to be looking back at the Incarnation even as they are looking forward to the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus, to see the impact of grace in the world around us.  You and I as Adventers, but as Christians in particular, are tasked with pointing out to the world how God is using the ordinary and everyday and re-purposing them for His glory.

     Our chief example this day, of course, is Joseph.  The story of Joseph is an amazing story, borderline heroic, yet he kind of fades from the story as a nondescript figure.  As we learn today, Joseph got the ultimate “dear John” “I think this will be better for us in the long run” confession from his betrothed.  Those of us who have had a spouse or prospective mate cheat on us understand all too well the emotional baggage that comes with such revelations.  John’s version is just a bit less common.  Uh, John, uh, this angel appeared to me and greeted me and asked if I was willing to bear God’s Son.  I said yes.  So, guess what.  I’m pregnant. 

     Those of us who have had to deal with cheating spouses and the corresponding implosions that come from such revelations understand all too well how this story should have played out.  Reality television and various blogs, as well as morning television shows, demonstrate to us the human response to such revelations all the time.  Matthew himself points out that Joseph, because he was a righteous man, determined to handle this quietly.  It would have been well within his rights to demand the trial of adultery as revealed in the torah and had young Mary stoned to death.  That we could all understand.  That is getting even with a cheater.  But Joseph determines to handle this quietly.

     It’s then that the angel appears to Joseph.  The angel appears to Joseph and tells him to believe Mary’s story.  Gentlemen, I want us to think about this for just a second.  Which would be more mind-blowing, finding out your fiancé had cheated on you and gotten pregnant or that you were going to be raising the Son of God?  I mean, on the one hand there is the emotional hurt and baggage that comes from betrayal, and on the other hand we get tasked with the ultimate responsibility of raising our Lord’s only begotten Son.  If ever there were a Scylla and Charybdis . . .

     Joseph, as we would expect of a righteous man, a man who depends upon God for teaching him how to live in right relationship with God through the torah, accepts the angel’s reassurance and honors the decision to marry and the responsibility to raise our Lord Jesus.

     In one sense, it’s an unremarkable story.  We have reality shows that speak to teen pregnancy and adulterers.  Heck, there’s a couple popular social media sites that make good money by showing how betrayed partners and spouses get even for the cheating.  This story, on the one hand, is rather trite, so far as the details are concerned.  Yet it was the Lord who used the common to begin to demonstrate His love of the world and all those in it, to tell a new story, to begin to remake those things that had grown old.

     So many of our biblical heroes have all kinds of fatal flaws.  Abraham and Sarah. Not to mention Adam and Eve, have some trust issues.  Jacob trusts a bit too much in his own conniving and strength.  David, well, among David’s faults is that he never met a woman he did not want “to know,” if you take my meaning.  Elijah is a bit to whiny to be considered heroic by most standards.  Peter takes us on a rollercoaster ride of faith, right?  Poor Thomas becomes the “doubter” when he was the one who encouraged the other Apostles and disciples to go with Jesus to Jerusalem to die with Jesus.  My list could go on and on.  No doubt you have your favorites.  Those stories exist to remind us, though, that God works through men and women and boys and girls just like us, flaws and weaknesses and other bits not to be esteemed or valued by others.  What makes them and us special is not something internal to them or to us.  What makes them and us special is that the Lord God chooses to work through us, that our Lord God calls us into relationship and then sends us out to point others to Him!  And it’s Him using us, Him dwelling in us, that gives us eyes to see and ears to ear how the old is being renewed and re-purposed.

     And because we know He has conquered the world, because we KNOW He was raised from the dead, we are fit heralds in a world whose cacophony seeks to drown out our voices, we little candles in a dark world pointing others to the Light who gives Life to the world!

     How does that play out in our lives?  There are as many different stories as there are Adventers in this congregation.  This week, I was reminded of two great stories.  One was from a woman we served through Body & Soul.  She lives in our neighborhood but lost her job.  Companies being companies and the compassionate places to work they are renowned to be, she did not get her last check.  Fortunately, she was overpaid for her work and had tons in savings, right?  Think about her plight for a second.  What if your employers ceased operations mid-December?  What would be its impact on you and yours?  Do you have enough saved to cover the mortgage?  To cover medical expenses?  To make you car and insurance payment?  To buy Christmas gifts for your loved one?  To pay your utilities?  To buy food?

     Fortunately, she heard about our work through my wife.  I know, crazy, isn’t it?  My wife, who is a huge introvert, heard her need and reached out.  The lady, of course, worried about whether she was in the right zip code, or needed an id to make sure she was not using us too much, or needed to be Episcopalian, or how she’d ever repay the help.  I heard the story, of course, from her perspective.  One of her rude discoveries is that people treat unemployment around here like a moral failing.  When asking for help, she felt judged.  Are you sure you really need this? Your car is only a couple years old.  Have you been here before and taken food?  She asked me why we don’t run our pantry like others?  I told her Hilary and Nancy and those most involved with it were trying to be intentional in mirroring or reflecting the grace that God had shown to us.  She asked if I was worried we’d get ripped off?  I told her not at all.  I lead people in the worship of the Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.  Everything is His; we are simply stewards.  What kind of God would I be following if I thought He could not provide something as simple as food?  She asked if there were people who abused our offer?  I told her I thought there were a few, but that I did not know the full story of those I thought might be abusing our pantry.  She asked how I justified that to my church.  And I told her that I did not need to.  We all knew ourselves to be sinners saved by grace and that we knew we had abused God’s grace in our own lives.  Make no mistake, I told her, I point out the spiritual danger of such attitudes toward cheap grace, but I was an equal opportunity teacher or offender or whatever she wanted to call me.

     Our conversation ended with her commenting that, if she were going to attend a church and worship God, this was that kind of church where she would want to go.  I smiled and apologized.  She asked why.  I told her that we were a terrible bunch of hypocrites, beginning with the pastor, and that if she strolled in here expecting us to be supermen or superwomen of faith, she was going to be sorely disappointed.  But if she wanted to join us on this faith journey, if she wanted to begin to plumb the depths of God’s love for her and those whom she loves in Christ’s work, we’d love for her to join us.  Y’all know she is not here as I am using her story.  SO much for humans lapping up God’s grace in a fairy tale way, huh?!

     My other illustration was far more grand and far more oppressive.  A colleague who left the Episcopal church and Anglican Communion and I were having a spirited discussion about politics.  Our discussion was about which party tries to be the party of God.  Now, I get that some liberals have no use for God and want no association with Christianity, I get it; but I also understand that there are many Christians drawn to some of the platform of the Democratic Party, or at least the platform that defined the Democratic Party two or three decades ago.  Living wages, accessible healthcare, a safety net for those on the margins – those are just a couple of easy touchstones to the Gospel, in my estimation.  But, some Democratic party leaders do try to blur political and religious theater to pander to voters.

      My colleague and I had a spirited discussion until one of the members of his congregation chimed in.  He decided to chastise me for being an apologist for Trump supporters and for comparing the sins of Democratic leaders with the sins of Republican leaders.  He was exceptional in his lecturing.  He knew who I was without needing to ask any questions.  I learned I was a stooge of the Republican party, which might amuse those Adventers who preferred Trump to Hilary in the last election, as they have wondered if I am a secret liberal.  I learned that it’s my job to judge the salvation of peoples’ souls based upon how they voted, and NOT leave that tough decision to the Man who died for all of us.  Heck, I even learned that calls to vote consciences, to really demand our Christian politicians govern as God would have them govern was naïve and stupid and part of the problem of letting so many people in small towns vote.

     In short, his lecturing testified to me and those in that thread that the Two-Party system had done precisely what it intended to do.  It had effectively divided a group of people called to testify to unity.  From many one used to be a description of America.  A melting pot.  Now we are effectively divided.  Here was a seemingly serious Christian publicly declaring that a priest was clearly not a good Christian because I dared to point out the moral flaws of those whom he followed.  When I reminded him later that God had reminded us repeatedly not to put our trust in other human beings, He was enraged.  What kind of moron claims we should trust God and think that things will improve?  It made folks uncomfortable on that thread.  The pm’s were illustrative of his temperament AND the sense of hopelessness some folks have about our divided state.

     But you and I have ultimate hope.  Which is harder, reforming a political system or raising someone from the dead?  If we believe He was raised from the dead, why should we not expect our politicians who claim the same faith to govern to live as if Jesus was serious about those things He taught, serious enough that He was willing to die for us and be raised, that we might know He was and is Who He claims to be!  That does not mean we agree on every jot and tittle of the laws passed to govern us, those are our creation and not God’s, after all.  But what if we allowed that people of the other parties, and yes there are more than two among us at Advent, were, indeed, making decisions based on their faith?  What if we allowed that countries had a right to protect their borders AND had an obligation to help those less fortunate than themselves?  What if we allowed that citizens were entitled to specific rights such as education, medical care, and living wages AND that people who made fortunes through hard work or great inventions or the luck of the lottery were not evil and entrusted to use their funds as they saw fit?

     And the benefit to public discourse?  Can you imagine?  I have a hard time watching what passes for news today.  I will listen to CNN yell about how stupid and evil Republicans are and to FOX yell about all the vast liberal conspiracies to empower deep state for about ten minutes before I have had too much.  How about the benefit to the Christian testimony to the world?  One of our Lord’s last prayers before His Passion and Death was that we would all be One even as He and the Father are One.  How are we doing living into that prayer of His?  How well are we modeling the relationship revealed in the Trinity?  And I’m not talking about the sycophants who claim the mantle of Christianity to be near the halls of power, I’m talking about our neighbors down the street, who attend whatever other normal Tennessee church and who should differ, really, only in the form of worship used.  How well do we relate with our Baptist neighbors, our Church of Christ neighbors, our Roman neighbors, or our Presbyterian neighbors?  How well do they relate with us?  The world watches and sees, even if we do not.

     The great news, the Gospel news, of course, is two-fold.  These injustices, these divisions—they are things about which God cares deeply.  He has revealed those cares and concerns to us over and over in His written word.  Better still, He demonstrated that care and concern in His work among us.  We do not have to guess what He thinks about the “other;” He has already told us!  And even when that other is an enemy, one truly committed to working against God and His purposes, we are instructed what?  That’s right, to pray for them and us.  That’s not exactly divisive activity, is it?  It’s not the ad hominem attack demanded by our current political discourse.  It’s an intentional conversation with God.  And if we use our two ears a bit more than our one mouth, we might learn something from God about our “enemy.”  We may learn that our enemy is not His enemy.

     The other fold in this Gospel reminder is that God did, indeed, raise Jesus from the dead.  We have that inescapable proof of God’s redeeming power in the Resurrection of our Lord.  If He can raise the dead, what can our Lord not do?  As messy as our systemic injustices are, their mess pales in comparison to the mess of death.  As divided as our politics are today, they pale in comparison between the division between life and death.  As breathtakingly unjust some of our systems are, their complexity pales in comparison to raising the dead to new life!   As hopeless as the idea is that we can be fit vessels for speaking God’s truth, acting as God’s feet or hands or whatever else is needed, as impotent as we are before all the evil and hopelessness in our own pathetic spheres of influence, even that pales when we confront the sin of the world or hopelessness we discover when we mistakenly think redemption is up to us.  God raised Jesus, in part, as a display of His power, that we might know He can do anything He purposes, even when it involves ordinary, plain old, flawed, and sinful us.  All He asks is that we trust and follow.  He will take care of the heavy lifting.  He will give us what we need to do His work in the world around us.

     Advent is a wonderful re-set in the Church year.  You and I are intentionally called to look back on God’s Incarnation and expectantly to His Second Coming.  Those events ought to encourage and compel us to do the work He has given us to do each and every time we leave this building.  How much does He love us and those whom we serve in His Name?  Enough to come down and dwell among us and, ultimately, to redeem us.  When we begin to buy into the myth of the Enemy that this is all that there is or that the problems are too complex for lil old us to make a difference, we forget our purpose as Christians and, especially as Adventers.  The world, my brothers and sisters, is dark.  It is incredibly dark and full of vitriol and hopelessness.  But you and I and all those who pay attention to the rhythm of the Church year realize that we are the ones sent out like candles into that world as heralds of His grace.  Were the candles or even the flickers of light our own, we would quickly be extinguished, and we, and the world, would be forced to stumble in darkness.  But God has given the privilege and the responsibility, fit for sons and daughters, to be His vessels of His redeeming love.  And we are called to carry those flickers of hope, of peace, of joy, and of love into that world around us, trusting that our flickers will point those around us to the Light that came into the world and to the Life that He calls each one of those whom He created!

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†

Heralds of joy and life!

     I was at AT&T Thursday, my third level of hell on earth for those of you who follow Dante’s circle—Comcast is the bottom circle, of course—paying a bill for a woman who keeps four survivors’ phones on her plan.  Y’all have met Christi with United Against Slavery.  Some of you have given money to help pay some bills and support her research work that we need finished to get the con-celebrated eucharist done in Nashville.  Yes, that Christi.  She has been injured and unable to work.  Unsurprising to most of us, her hours have been cut by her employer, Wal Mart.  She tore the tendons or ligaments in her foot again and is unable to do all the work she is supposed.  Good news is that the surgery will be next week.  This will be the second or third for the same injury.  If you know anything about Wal Mart, though, you know what a benevolent corporation it really is.  Wal Mart seeks that wonderful balance between great employee benefits and cheap prices for consumers to make themselves billions of dollars annually.  Why are y’all chuckling?

      Anyway, they’ve drastically cut Christi’s hours, and she’s not making enough to support herself.  Thankfully, y’all give enough in Discretionary that I can help in your name.  Thank you for those gifts and that trust.  So I went to AT&T to pay the monthly bill.  The lady helping me was a young lady, I’m guessing Sarah or Amanda’s age.  She was smaller than me, blond hair and covered in tattoos.  I gave her Christ’s number and she was working to pull up the account.  I was studying her tattoos.  She caught me squinting at one.  What can I say?  I’ve not done the eye doctor yet this year, and I could not read what it said.

     She saw and I did not want her to think I was that kind of creep.  So I told her I was trying to read her tattoo.  She held her arm up higher and closer.  It read, “I have a song in my heart.”  I commented that was an interesting choice.  She said something about her blossoming faith.  Then, Christi’s account pulled up.  “Whoa, why is this bill so high and why are you paying it if it is not yours?”  I explained I was a pastor, that Christi was injured, that the bill was for her and four survivors, and that I was using discretionary funds to pay the bill.  It kept the survivors in contact with support and work and family, where necessary, and it helped Christi.

     That got the young lady really excited.  She’d heard a lot about sex trafficking.  Nashville was the number two site in the United States behind Atlanta.  That was work she really though magnificent.  She wondered if Christi ever made it from Morristown to Nashville because it would be great to meet someone active in that work, to hear the really nitty gritty details.  She was opining this as she was fighting her system to take the discretionary account card.

     She asked how I’d met Christi, and I shared.  All of a sudden her focus was me and not the computer.  She lost that . . . for lack of a better word, spunkiness that she had had.  She commented on my cross and then invited me to go ahead when she realized I was a real priest.

     Folks, I am here to tell you the deflation was real.  Her shoulders slumped.  Joy went out of her eyes.  She was clearly ready for an attack.

     So, I asked, “go ahead with what?”

     “My tattoos,” she answered.

     “You mean they look painful or beautiful or what?”

     She looked at me like I had lost my mind.  She told me to tell her she was like a cow who had branded herself and was going to hell or to tell her that she had marked herself with the sign of the Devil and that God could not love her.  I think she had another couple examples, but I’d quit listening by then.

     “Do people really come into AT&T to tell you that?”

     She responded they did.  Several times a week.

     I told her I was stunned.  And sorry that was her experience.  I shared with her I like AT&T better than Comcast, but few other companies, and the last thing I wanted to do was to come into companies I hate and tell them they were beyond salvation, except maybe Comcast.  No, not really.  Hell, really, I want to get in and out as quickly as possible.

     She got back to work on Christ’s account, but she was clearly waiting for me to pick on her or judge her.  So I took a risk.

     “Look.  I’m willing to give you a bit of knowledge, but I need you to be super judicious in your use of it.  Can you promise me you will use this wisely?”

     I had her attention.  “About what?”

     “Tattoos.”

     I got that hopeful but distrusting “OK.”

     So I warned her.  “If you use this wrongly, assholes who would judge your salvation against our Lord’s direct command will likely yell at your manager to fire you.  It’s like that Spiderman warning: with great power comes great responsibility.  Do you understand what I am saying?”

     Recognition and humor flashed across her face.  “I got you, but can you say asshole?”

     “I just did.”  We laughed.

     What followed was the discussion about the marks of the dead.  In some cultures it was the practice to try and spiritually channel the deceased by having their name or likeness or whatever drawn on one’s body.  It was a form of channeling.  Maybe like a premodern séance, if that makes sense.  God forbid its practice in the torah.  It makes sense.  We cannot cross that chasm.  After discussing that teaching and the suggestions that she ask winsomely of their church does not use the Old Testament or other likely sputtering causing questions to start that conversation, I also needed top reassure her.  So, as long as her marks were not of the dead in her life, and she was not trying to channel their spirits, I did not think God was too upset with her.  Better still, if she was, all she needed to do was repent and stop.  Jesus had dies for those sins, too.

     Now, I will say her countenance was greatly improved.  She’d gone from service person to kind of shrinking expecting a religious judgment and now to a bit of feistiness in fifteen or twenty minutes.  She quickly reassured me that her tattoos were not channeling the dead.  In fact, she started showing me the ones on her arms.  All reflected her life.  She shared how, as a youth, she’d made some bad choices.  But, then, along the way, she’d met people who had introduced her to God and Jesus.  Make no mistake, she said she had done things of which she was not proud.  But, over time, she found her way to God and claimed Jesus as Lord.  She described some of her covered tattoos.  I have to say, I think, if I understood her correctly, the tats on this side of her body were more that black or greenish black ink, but the one ending on her forearm proclaiming her song was in all kinds of color.

     So, I stopped her and told her to forget that Bible Study lesson I had just given her.  I said her artwork was the very opposite of channeling the dead.  It recounted her salvation story.  So, it was a celebration of her being lost and found, of her choosing life and the Lord.  It’s the very opposite of channeling the dead.  She should point that out rather than my Bible Study lesson to them.

     She beamed.  “you think so?”

     “I know so.  It’s YOUR testimony to His faithfulness and love and mercy and grace.  He knows the intricacies of your tats that you would never be able to explain to me.  Why that curve there?  Why that tat in that spot?  Why the red ink there and the blue there?  He knows all your art’s significance.”

     “You’re like the passage that teaches He knows every head on body and every sparrow.”

     “Well, to be fair, that was His teaching.  You can’t blame a pastor for believing, right?”

     We finished up paying Christi’s bill and I turned to head out, back to Karen waiting in the car.

     “I’m glad you came in, pastor, and we got to speak.  Thank you, too, for giving me a couple ways to argue with the judgmental ah . . . difficult customers.  But can I ask you a real question?”

     I laughed and told her sure.

     “Why are so many Christians jerks?”

     I told her the easy answer was that they were not worshiping at Episcopal churches here in Tennessee.

     She looked at me like I’d lost my mind.  But I explained that it’s easy to get stuck in places when we don’t take the full counsel of Scripture.  We might like to focus on the hard work we think it takes to follow Jesus.  We might like to focus on the cross-bearing to which He calls each of us.  There is, to be sure, lots of serious work to be done.  But we liturgical churches get forced along the church season and through more of the Scripture.  My mind, as a result, is focused this week on Gaudete Sunday.

     “Gaudete Sunday?”

     It’s the Sunday in the somber season of Advent when we remind ourselves that we are commanded by the Lord to Rejoice!  She knew the psalm and laughed that being commanded to rejoice was like being commanded to eat your brussell sprouts and like them or eat or broccoli and enjoy it or listen to music you can’t stand and tap your toes.

     I laughed with her and told her I understood.  But I reminded her our primary act as Christian believers is to give joyful thanks to God for the saving work He has done for all of us, for us individually, and through His Son, Jesus, our Lord.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the hard, dark work, work that seems never-ending and un-impacting, but that command reminds us that He has already won and that our work, by virtue of His victory, always has meaning.

     She laughed again.  She confessed she got a little worried when I started talking about marks of the dead.  In her tattoos, apparently, are the names of some of those who first reached out to her, who first taught her that God loved her.  Some of them, she had no real way to thank other than to, you  know, remember their names all her life.  They’d given her way more than thank you’s would ever cover; some may assume they failed in her life.  Some might even be dead now; hence her fear about the marks of the dead.

     So, I reminded her that is why He commands us to rejoice.  We need to be reminded, over and over and over and over again that He has won and that nothing He gives us to do is without meaning.  We may not understand it.  Heck we may think we do but totally miss the real purpose of His.  But He is glorified in our faithfulness just as we will be in His.

     “Kinda like you paying the cell phone bill?”

     “What?”

     “You came in to pay the cell phone bill for those ladies, but you met a lady with tattoos.  You helped me with my fears and taught me how to deal with judgmental jerks.  You listened to my story and reminded be we are supposed to be a joyful people.  Heck, maybe one of these other customers or guys I worked with needed to hear our conversation, too!”

     I’d say she got it.

     Our Gospel lesson today focuses on the John the Baptist and us.  John is in prison.  Things have gone dramatically wrong from his perspective.  He baptized his cousin Jesus, saw the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus like a dove, and heard the voice of God proclaiming Jesus His Son.  He was the herald!  He was the prophet to whom it had been given to fulfill the words of Isaiah.  He was tasked with the glorious responsibility of announcing the coming of Messiah!  But he was in prison.  Life had not worked out the way he expected.  No glory comes in prison.  The powers that be do not tremble and bow before the authority of God.  So, he questions whether he was right.  Did I hear what I thought I heard?  Did I see what I thought I saw?  Did I understand my role, and His role, correctly?

     He sends his disciples to ask Jesus if He is the One.  In a move that infuriates modern theologians and commentators, Jesus does not give the simple yes or no answer.  Jesus tells John’s disciples to go and tell John what they see and hear.  Demons submit to His commands, signifying His power over the supernatural.  Storms submit to His commands, Fish and loaves multiply, diseases are cured, the blind see, the lame leap for joy, signifying His power over nature and what you and I call the natural order.  He heals on the Sabbath and in synagogues.  And He proclaims the arrival of God’s kingdom.  But John, like you and I, must decide who He is for ourselves.  The signs point the way, but we must decide their interpretation.  Could any but one sent from God heal on a Sabbath?  In a sacred place?  Could any but God Himself cast out demons with barely a “by your leave.”  And what of the healings?  Can we regenerate nerves 2000 years later?  Can our optometrists and ophthalmologists restore sight to the blind even today?  Can our nerve experts tell the lame to leap for joy?  And interspersed among all those miracles is His message of forgiveness and assurance that faith has made us well.  That we might know He has power to forgive, He demonstrates these signs of power and authority.

     John, of course, realizes this.  He is in a dark moment of his life, doubting himself, but he knows that what his disciples report are the signs of the messiah.  We know he finds solace in this answer because he instructs his disciples to begin following Jesus, even as he faces his looming death thanks to Salome’s dancing, alone.

     After John’s disciples leave, we might expect Jesus to fuss about John’s lack of faith.  I mean, John heard the stories from his mother and father.  How the angel silenced dad for his unbelief during work in the temple.  How mom felt him leap for the first time at the voice of Cousin Mary.  All his life was dedicated for being a fit vessel to proclaim the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promises. 

     Outside the family, of course, he has heard the stories.  God has been silent for generations, since the time of the prophet Micah.  Now, God is speaking through the voice of John.  They recognize him as a prophet of old.  And Jesus points this out to them!  What did you go to see?  A guy in fancy robes in a palace?  The ordinary?  The everyday?  No!  They recognize John is a prophet of the Lord God.  His teaching is compelling.  He is filled with the Holy Spirit and teaching people, instructing people, calling people to repent and to return to the Lord!  Better still, Jesus affirms John’s place in God’s plan of salvation.  John IS the one about whom Isaiah wrote who would proclaim Messiah!  And among those born of women, none is greater than John.

     A new age, of course, is upon them.  Some in the audience will understand the implications of Jesus’ teachings and of His miracles.  If John is the messenger ahead of the Messiah, Whom must Jesus be?  That’s right!  The Messiah!  The Savior.  His works testify to that truth, as does the teaching and preaching of John and, even the teaching and preaching of the entirety of what we call the Old Testament!  It is a time to rejoice!  Messiah has come among us!  Generations longed to see this day, and those there that day had the confirmation they needed, just as you and I today!

     And here’s the better news: all of us who belong to the kingdom of heaven, every one of us who proclaims Christ as Lord and lives as if we believe that to be true, are greater than John!  You and I have the testimony of the Empty Tomb and Ascension!  We can point people in our own lives to Jesus, the Messiah!  And just when we think we should be bursting with great news, we are reminded of the mercy and love and understanding of our Lord!

     Though some “experts” might want to condemn John for his seeming lack of faith, Jesus is uninterested in condemning him.  True, He makes John’s disciples report and testify and leaves the decision up to John, but He understands life does not go the way we want or expect.  When you and I leave the relative safety of this sanctuary to go back out into the world, sin and darkness are waging a terrible war against us and the Light we proclaim.  We may feel little better than apes on a treadmill, ministering and ministering and ministering in our plots where God has planted us, with little or nothing to show for it.  We may be impacted by the sins of our past.  We may feel the consequences of the sins of others.  We will be given tons of reason to doubt.  And Jesus accepts the doubt, understands the doubt, and gives us precisely what we need to combat the doubt.  What have you seen?  What have you heard?

     We gather as a congregation to hear the big stories of salvation and my exposition of them, but we also gather as a community of faith to share the little stories of salvation.  As cool as my illustration was from Thursday at AT&T, many of you have your own witness to share this week.  You have your own story of God’s faithfulness in your life, of God’s redemptive power in your life, and to others of us here gathered, it’s far more important than that of a stranger.  We know your struggles.  We know your faith.  We value your input or witness far more than that of a stranger.

     And what is the result?  You and I are part of a community that is not only called to rejoice, commanded to rejoice, but should be inspired to rejoice!  We are a people who experience God’s healing, God’s provision, and God’s care!  And when we feel the weight of the world, when we feel our work is worthless or nutty or not glorious, we have brothers and sisters in Christ to remind us of those things we have seen, those things we have heard, those things we have experienced.  And, if the absolute worst from the world’s perspective, death, happens to us or our loved one who loves Christ, we have the glorious remind of the Empty Tomb and Jesus’ promise that they and we will be with Him to end of the ages.  We can stare at our own graves or the graves of another and say that Alleluia like we mean it!  Like John in his prison, we get to evaluate those experiences and lessons in our lives and in the loves of those with whom we go to church and decide again for ourselves who He is, and recommit ourselves to the work He has given us to do, perhaps re-shoulder the cross He has given us to bear, and remind ourselves of a heralds job, that we proclaim His coming with heartfelt joy and wonder!  And on His behalf, and on His dime, we invite others to that Marriage Feast.  That is our job!  That is our privilege!

     As we speed past the halfway point of our patronal season and are commanded to rejoice, we have a great opportunity to self-respect.  Are we a rejoicing people?  Am I a rejoicing person?  Put in easier language, do I live and speak as if I believe Jesus was and is Messiah, as if He lived and died for the sins of all those in the world, and as if God raised Him on that glorious third morning to demonstrate to us and the world the truth of His identity and the truth of His words?  Make no mistake, it is a self-reflection that all Christians should undertake, but rejoicing is part of our identity as liturgical Adventers.  Yes, it is a somber season.  Yes, there are other lessons to be found in the readings during each three-year cycle.  But every year, God reminds us that we are to rejoice!  We are, as much as we are called to be heralds of His grace or heralds of His mercy or heralds of His first coming or heralds of His second Coming, called to be heralds of joy!  Heralds who know themselves to have been redeemed at ultimate cost!  Heralds who can truly and loving and all those other adverbs thank God for the saving work He has done, not only in their own lives, but in the lives of all those around them!  Like the lady’s tattoo whom I referenced at the beginning of this sermon, we should be heralds whose hearts and faces and minds are exploding with song, the joyful song of the redeemed!

In His Peace,

Brian†

Christ is King! And we will be, too!?

     If you are visiting today and feeling a bit out of sorts, do not worry.  Everyone attending today is out of sorts!  It is the observed tradition of this parish right now that we celebrate a “special” service the first Sunday of the month, rotating among a sung Eucharist, Morning Prayer ante Communion, and a Healing Service.  As we all do that calendar check in our heads, you are realizing that “hey, wait a minute, this is still November.”  You would be correct.  Next week, the first Sunday of December, is also the first Sunday of Advent and means the bishop is coming!  So, to keep the folks who love Morning Prayer ante Communion happy, we moved that worship service back a week.  Next week, we will still be out of sorts as we will be celebrating a baptism, a confirmation, and a reception.  So please join us as we struggle to remember how to use parts of that BCP we do not use very often!

     Morning Prayer ante Communion was, of course, the style of worship observed by many of those who grew up in the Episcopal Church prior to 1979.  The focus of services in those days were meant to be on the songs and canticles and on the prayers.  But then, in 1979 with the switch to the new Prayer Book, we had an influx of fantastic preachers and the focus of our services switched from prayers and music to the ever-present great preaching!  Why are y’all chuckling?  Whoa.  Are y’all saying the preaching is not great around here? 

     I say that, in part as reminder and in part as instruction.  Today, I expect your chances of meeting God will be better in the music and in the Sacrament than in my preaching.  That is not to say it cannot happen, but today will be more homily than sermon on my part, and that is intentional, given the service liturgy.

     The other reason for the “out of sorts” feeling will be the color.  We have been green for nearly five full months.  We were red for Pentecost, white for the Sunday after which we call Trinity Sunday, and then green for twenty-three straight weeks!  That shakes us up a bit, right?  And now you have been reminded that Advent starts next week.  So, liturgically, we are jumbling things up after a long season of no change.  And we all know how Episcopalians respond to change!

     We are white today in observance of Christ the King Sunday.  I included notes in the Order of Worship about the feast, and you are welcome to read those if I bore you.  Suffice it to say, though, we spend this Sunday intentionally reminding ourselves that Christ is King, that He is the One to Whom all things have been given.  And, although the intentional feast is relatively new in the life of the Church, it is of no less importance today than in the centuries past.  Chaos and darkness often seem more powerful than God.  Our politicians, much like the rulers of old, seem far more concerned with their own self-aggrandizement and the tearing down of their rivals, than in governing in light of justice and mercy as revealed by God in Christ.  Systems in the world seem beyond our control, sort of like Skynet’s in different parts of our lives.  The healthcare system is all about us getting and staying healthy, right?  Well, at least our retirement systems are all about us being able to enjoy our golden years without fears about provision, right?  Well, at least we all know what the cloud is and what it does for us?  Hmm.  At least we all understand the role of Oak Hill in city government, why it exists within the city limits of what we call Nashville, right?

     I could, of course, go on and on.  We could talk about the systems of for profit prisons or student loan enslavement . . . err. Debt.  We could wax eloquently about the justice system, food insecurity, or our education.  You get the idea.  These systems, which we created, much like Skynet in the Terminator series, seem to have taken on a life of their own and sought to, at best, not help us and, at worst, hurt us.

     If we add a dollop of natural disasters and a couple helpings of armed conflicts, you and I can better understand the world in which this Sunday was created and why it is so needed today.

      If you add those effects on your life that work to convince you that your faith or trust in God is crazy, those whispers of the Enemy which work to convince us that God cannot love us if He allows disease or injury to plague us or death to stalk us, we can see the need for this day that much more!

     Christ is King!

     It is good for us, more than once a year but especially once a year, to remind ourselves that He wins, He rules, in the end!  The fully human/fully divine Jesus, who descended from heaven, lived and ministered among us, died for our sins, and was raised from the dead, rules!  It should be a comforting thought!  A hopeful promise!

     As Americans, we know, probably far too intimately and cynically now, that our politicians don’t give a you-know-what about us.  They are working on their own power, their own security, their own provision.  It’s evidenced in the way they rule themselves, excluding themselves far too often from the laws they create for us, by the way they use us and others to keep themselves in power.

     But Jesus of Nazareth had only one single concern: He wanted us to understand just how much God loved us.  He wanted us to know that our Lord wanted only what was best for us.  Even when we taunted Him If You are the Son of God, come down.  You saved others, now save Yourself.  He willed Himself to stay on the Cross.  Even though He knew, absolutely knew, you and I would fail Him, you and I would sin grievously against Him and the Father and the Holy Spirit, still He willed Himself—He loved us in spite of our sins and failures—to stay and die on that Cross.  We know what love is because of His life, His witness, His ministry, and even His dying.  And that we might know He was Who He claimed to be, and that we might know God had the power to redeem all things in our lives, even our deaths, God raised Him on that wonderful Easter morning!

     And one glorious day, at least for those of us who call Him Lord, He will return to judge the heavens and the earth.  That will be the focus of at least two weeks of our Advent readings.  We will remind ourselves that His not returning is more evidence of His grace, that when He returns, His patience has run out.  And those who have rejected His love, those who have rejected His Kingship, will find themselves separated from His loving presence for all eternity.

     But this day, this day we call Christ the King Sunday, we remind ourselves that He is King, that all things are subject to His Will.  And we give joyful thanks!  I know, we Americans have a thing against kings and queens, sort of.  Try to subject us and we will revolt.  Show us some good pomp and circumstance, like a wedding or a coronation, and we get all I’ll give up sleep to watch THAT!  Y’all are laughing only because you watched the Royal Wedding, didn’t you?

     We give joyful thanks this morning that Christ is King for at least two reasons.  One, we should be overjoyed that the One figure in human history Who demonstrated true love is the One proclaimed by the Church to be THE King of King and Lord of Lords.  But the other reasons is a bit more selfish.  Because we have bound ourselves to Him and asked Him to bind Himself to us, you and I are heirs.  To use the language of the Old Testament, we are like first born sons, promised a double portion of inheritance.  To use the language of the New Testament and modern world, though, we are princes and princesses in His Kingdom.  That’s right!  What do we call the heirs of kings?  By virtue of Christ’s authority and power, one day, THAT glorious day, you and I will be shown to be princes and princesses in His Kingdom, where we will reign with Him for all eternity.

     I know.  It’s a difficult concept to comprehend.  How can there be so many kings and queens?  How can He be King if we are kings and queens?  Isn’t that a kind of democracy?  In truth, I do not dwell on it too much.  God always exceeds what I can ask or imagine.  As cool as I think being a king might be, I know it will pale by orders of magnitude with what God intends for His children.  Plus, I know that in the Age to come, He will have given me a new heart and a new mind.  I will not even be tempted to govern in accordance with my will, but always and only governing in accordance with His.  So, I just trust that on THAT day it will make sense to me.  For now, though, as He patiently waits to establish His kingdom in its entirety, it falls to you and to me and to all who call Him Lord to invite others to accept His offer of salvation, to accept His discipline where we sin and crosses where we are His hands and feet, and to accept that He would make all of us, every single man, woman, and child we encounter in our daily life and work, heirs in Christ, and princes and princesses in that Kingdom to com, world without end!

In that promise and His peace!

Brian†

Adventers--God's Malachis in the modern world . . .

     Sometimes, you have to smile at God’s providence during the course of church work.  First, I managed to have way too many conversations on the idea that shame was nailed to the cross and left in that tomb during the week, that there is no way I should have been able to finish the administrative work of the parish AND still get my first day off so I could surprise Robbie and watch him in a play at college.  Then, on a week we are reading about the eschaton or end times, we get our wonderful Collect for the second time this church year AND I get a sign of the end times.  I mean, Robbie played a middle aged Jamaican bartender.  If you have never met my second oldest son, he is as Scandinavian as they come.  Blond hair, pale skin—the very picture of a Jamaican bartender in your minds, right?  Of course, the Collect is way more important because it inoculates us against a temptation we have when we speak of the eschaton.

     There is always the danger to try and figure out the “when,” when it comes to end times discussions, right?  Some of the most crazy conversations I have had with people over the years that I have been a priest have been over their interpretation, and insistence of their correctness, regarding the date of the eschaton.  You’d think, given what Jesus says in red letters about not knowing the mind of the Father and in teachings like today from Luke.  “Don’t follow the people who say they know!”  But what happens?  Somebody, usually a guy because we are more stupid, comes up with a date.  And when that date passes and Jesus has not returned, they mine the Scriptures again looking for the error of their calculations, as if they forgot to carry the one or dropped the negative sign by accident.  Then they have a new date and are just as certain as they were about the last one, and they are single-minded unable to understand why I won’t support their math or scare my people with their prediction.

     Apparently, our spiritual forebears, and Anglican ones especially, understood our tendency to place ourselves above Scripture rather than below it.  Twice a year we have the Collect of learning and inwardly digesting Scripture, reminding us that we sit UNDER Scripture and are in no way wise or powerful enough to cherry pick.  God caused it to be written; God caused it to be edited; God caused it to be collected.  The collection we call Scripture, then, is the Church acknowledging what God wanted us to know about Him, about life, about Truth, and about His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  So it is good when we talk about end times today that, before we begin, you and I sit under God’s teaching.  He is authoritative to us, not the other way around.  And, please, don’t come in next week telling me you’ve figured out the date after this sermon.  If that’s your takeaway from this sermon, you were not listening to me, let alone God.  In fact, you were doing the very opposite of what I said and He constantly says.  Yes, you have a puncher’s chance of getting the right date in the future by picking one.  But I sure would not bet money on it.

     The book of Malachi is an interesting book.  For those of you who like to pretend to be holy, it’s a great book to read for Lent and impress your friends and family who are not in church here today.  What are you doing for Lent?  I’m reading the book of the prophet Malachi.  Whoa!  I’ve never even heard of that book!  You must be serious about your faith.  You can strike your most impressive pose and assure them you are.  Why the laughter?  Tell me none of you ever tried to impress friends or clergy like that?  Ouch!  Too sharp?  It’s going to get worse.

     Malachi, whose name means “My messenger,” wrote sometime around 500 years before the birth of Jesus in Nazareth.  Experts argue about the dating.  For our purposes, it is enough to know he wrote sometime after the return from Exile and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple by Ezra and Nehemiah, but four centuries before the Advent of John the Baptist.  His book, which is only four chapters long, deals a lot with justice.

     You’d think, given the peoples’ recent return from the Exile, that folks would be serious about their faith, right?  After all, the foreign king has decided to pay for the rebuilding of the Temple and for the wall of the city.  It is, to put it mildly, odd.  Babylon and Assyria showed their gods’ power was superior to the God of Israel by conquering both Israel and Judah and carrying the survivors off into Exile.  The Jews heard another story.  Earlier prophets reminded them that they caused their Exile.  God promised if they kept His torah, He would bless them; if they failed to keep His torah, He would cause the Land to disgorge them.  Their Exile, according to the prophets, was the outward and visible sign of their covenant disloyalty.

     Now they are back!  Things are as they should be!  Except the Temple is a pale imitation of the one built by Solomon, and some of the luster is off the newly re-founded city of Jerusalem.  Those who rebuilt them mourn over the glory that has been lost.  Surely their kids and grandkids would keep the torah to make sure no Exile is ever experienced again, right?  Wrong!  Injustice reigns again.  The rich are grinding up the poor.  Widows and orphans are neglected.  In short, nothing has changed for the people . . .  or for the professional clergy.  In fact, for the latter, things may be even worse.  God accuses the clergy of sacrificing blind animals and animals with skin diseases and other blemishes and selling the unblemished animals out the back door!  Are they behaving as if they understand the reason behind the Exile and the grace behind the return?  Of course, not, they are just like their ancestors who crossed the Red Sea, witnessed God destroying Egypt, and decided to hold an orgy and make a molten calf, as a result.  And they are just like their descendants, you and me, who, although we live on this side of the Passion, Crucifixion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord Jesus, still sin, who still practice injustice, even though our Lord is justice.

     Speaking of which, that sure served as a spiritual wedgie for some folks last week.  Apparently, during the sermon, I made the comment that God was just, holy, and other adjectives every bit as much as was love.  That unsettled a few folks, as it probably should.  We would not know that God was that had He not chosen to reveal it to us.  Be He did, so we do.  We just forget.  Heck, we don’t even know what the terms mean anymore. 

     What is justice?  That’s not a rhetorical question.  What is it?  Most of us, if we were awake, would come up with a definition that was more in line with fairness rather than justice, truth be told.  To move things along this morning, somebody pull it up on a dictionary site.  Administering or judging between right and wrong or good and evil.  Great.  How do we know what is right or wrong or good or evil?  That’s right!  God!  God instructs us what is good and evil or right and wrong.  It makes sense.  He’s the Creator; He knows.  He knows what’s best for us.  To put it in the terms of Wrestling with Faith, there is no way that you or I could reason to the ideas of good and evil.  Oh, we might think we can.  We might align with God’s teaching sometimes accidentally, but it would only be at those times when our interests happened to align with His.  No, He is the arbiter of what is just and what is unjust because He has revealed to us that He is just.  He can no more act unjustly than you and I can cease to breathe or we can cease to blink or we can cause our hearts not to beat.  Anthropomorphically speaking, that is, speaking about God as if He was a human being, by nature, He destroys sin and evil and unjustness, what we call sin, whenever He comes into contact with it.  Part of the problem our sin creates for us is how we can come into His presence without Him destroying us.  The sacrificial system allowed human beings to be righteous . . . for a short time.  If you or I lived in the days of the OT, we could make appropriate sacrifices and be righteous, until we sinned again.  The problem, of course, was that we sinned again and again and again.  Our hearts, to use the language of Scripture, were turned away from those things He loves and, often, toward those sinful things He hates.

     Malachi gives several examples, chief among them are the perversions of justice.  But Malachi also recognizes that there is still unjust suffering present in the world.  Those doing Psalm 44 on Monday’s can really speak to this, but there is this problem where God’s faithful suffer through no fault of their own.  Does God see?  Does God know?  Does God care?

     Our reading today carries the resounding answer of “YES!” from God.  Better still, Malachi is teaching God’s people that one day, one glorious day in the future, God will act definitively to judge the earth.  Those who rejected God will be burned away like chaff; those who claimed God’s mercy will feel that heat as a healing, restoring, wind.  Put more simply, God cannot let evil stand forever.  At some point, He will act to judge.  Those who reject Christ as Savior will be cast from His presence; those who accept Christ as Lord will be completely, totally restored or redeemed.  It’s His nature, to use that anthropomorphic language.  He will not allow injustice to exist forever.

     I was watching one of those geeky science shows about space I like to watch—it always makes for great conversations at Wrestling with Faith when we begin to consider the transcendent claims of God.  Anyway, scientists were going on and on about how relatively few, given the numbers of planets now discovered, that live in the so-called “Goldilocks Zone,” the range where they think life might be possible.  That scarcity had caused the scientists to ponder whether life would be possible in other worlds and moons—the real point of the show.  Suns are tough because they are basically big, bright nuclear reactions.  Too close and not enough atmosphere and magnetic field, and life is burned away or irradiated.  Too far and there’s not enough warmth.

     As they droned on about other places that might support life, I was, as you might imagine, drawn to the prominence of the image of the sun in the ANE.  In many cultures it was a god.  In some cultures, the rulers were viewed as descendants or favored of the sun.  Not unsurprisingly, the Scriptures use the sun to describe God.  God’s glory is brighter than the sun, but the image helps us understand.  Too close and lacking the proper protection, we get burned.  But clothed in the righteousness of Christ, we can see God face to face.  It’s an appropriate image in light of God’s consistent revelation to His people, especially as described by Malachi today.

     The question left hanging of Malachi’s audience and us is how?  How will this be accomplished?  Malachi, as you should but probably do not know, ends his book with the promise that the Lord will send Elijah!  Malachi’s prophesy ends with this warning and promise: “Be mindful of the Teaching of My servant Moses, whom I charged at Horeb with laws and rules for all Israel.  Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord.  He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents, so that, when I come, I do not strike the whole Land with utter destruction.  Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord.”  What is the answer to the problem of justice and sin?  Jesus!  How is God able to bring us back into His presence, back into full communion with Him as we were in the Garden without utterly destroying us because of our sin?  Jesus!  God can no more overlook our sin than you and I can overlook our need to breathe or blink.

     So, to solve that problem, He sent His Son, who lived an unblemished life and who chose to die in our place, willingly chose.  I don’t think we truly understand that Jesus had to will to hang there and die for us, that His blood might cleanse us from our sins.  Had He, at any moment, changed His mind, we would have been utterly and irredeemably lost!  But He did not.  And so we give thanks and glory for what He did for us.  He made it possible for our hearts to be transformed.

     And we understand, of course, that He was the Elijah of whom God spoke in Malachi.  For God’s people, Elijah became the source of hope that would precede God’s Day of Judgment.  Now you know why the Elijah seat is empty at seders.  Now you know why, when Jesus asked the Apostles who people said He was, some said Elijah.  Now you understand the appearance of Elijah and Moses at our Lord’s Transfiguration a bit better.  He was and is the promised Figure; He was and is the perfect sacrifice for the whole world, not just for our own sins, as our Prayer Book reminds us!

     So, why did I spend so much time and energy explaining a couple short verses from a book nobody reads or knows?  We are Adventers.  It is our calling to proclaim Christ’s first coming, the Incarnation, and His Second Coming, the Day of the Lord or the Day of Judgement.  You and I are called to have an eye to the past and an eye to the future.  Our message is not unlike that given to Malachi.  In fact, we are His messengers, His heralds, every bit as much as Malachi was in his day.

     One tidbit of history I left out was the fact that Malachi was the last voice of God in the Old Testament.  Once Malachi speaks, God seems to go silent.  Israel will wonder as the years drag on whether the Covenant is still in place.  Are they still God’s chosen people?  Will salvation be made possible for the rest of the nations through them?  As the years turn to decades and the decades turn to centuries, those fears will grow.  That’s part of the reason when John the Baptist comes on the scene, to proclaim a baptism of repentance, that people flock to him.  The messenger who prepares the way for the Lord is the first prophet since Malachi!  John’s preaching and teaching gives hope to a people who fear God has forgotten them, who fear that God has abandoned them because of their stiff-necked, willful ways.

     You and I live in a world that bears all the signs of that coming day.  We see and hear of wars constantly.  Our leaders serve their own interests and not those of those who voted for them.  Disease runs amok.  Natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and whatever else ravage us and the earth.  The poor are chewed up and spit out by a bunch of our systems.  We live in the wealthiest land the world has ever known, and yet people hunger among us, struggle for health care among us, get a less than acceptable education, have no hope among us.  Even among the new Israel, the Church, things are run amok.  Theologians can confess publicly that their teaching is heretical, be called out by a faithful priest, go to a bishop and complain their feelings were hurt when they were chastised for teaching heresy, and have the bishop spend the first few minutes of the conversation with the priest chewing the priest out for denouncing heresy, until the priest got through to the bishop that such is ours and the jobs of bishops.  And, even after the bishop recognizes the truth of those words, still admonish the priest that we don’t want to make too big a deal about heresy, that it does not lead away from God and to eternal death, as if sin is not a big deal to God.

     Newsflash, folks: God takes sin so seriously that He sent His Son to deal with it!  And lucky for us, because only His Son could deal with it for our sakes.

     All that, of course, brings us back to the call of our patronal season.  We are Adventers.  We proclaim that the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, has come into the world.  How do we know this to be true?  All the Scriptures teach us about Him.  All of His disciples and Apostles testified to His Resurrection from the dead.  And those in His closest circle witnessed His Ascension into heaven after His promise to return again.  Our choice, like that of Israel, is simple.  Do we believe what God has taught and promised, or do we reject Him in lieu of whatever bauble catches our eye or whatever melodious song catches our ear?  That decision has consequences, eternal consequences.

     If you find yourself arguing with my words in the back of your mind, ask yourself if you are sitting under God’s Word or placing yourself above His Word.  What has He taught?  What has He revealed?  I know it’s unpopular.  I know the world is put off by the “exclusivity” of the Cross.  The world is full of good people is a popular lie.  No one, no one save Jesus of Nazareth, was good.  The rest of us sin.  And that sin has a consequence.  That sin separates us from the Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.  That He sent His Son to make it possible for us to get back is the greatest summary of His grace.  Guess what?  The world has always been put off by the Gospel, yet here we are!  You and I gathered here this day are a testimony to the power of God’s grace in the world!  His Gospel has survived emperors and despots and all sorts of anti-Christian rulers.  His Gospel has survived the indifference or outright rejection of the world.  His Gospel has survived even the death of countless martyrs.  So here we stand!

     And as a result, it falls to us, to Adventers and all Christians, but especially to Adventers, to remind ourselves and to teach the world that He will, one glorious day, return!  One day, He will come with healing and redemption and vindication for His people consequences for those who, in every generation, have rejected Him.  We live in an age that sees wars, sees natural disasters, sees and hears of martyrs for the faith daily, sees plagues, sees famines, and all the other signs of those things that will take place before His return.  Those signs, that so leave the world clucking their tongues about suffering and pain and death, ought to inspire in us a real passion to share the Gospel because, one day, time will be up!  Like the thief in the night He will return to claim what is and who are rightfully His.  Our work is of that kind of salvific importance.

     Is it a hard teaching to remind ourselves that God is love and just and righteous and holy and patient and whatever other adjective we most want or need Him to be?  Sure.  Is it fair that those who reject Him are burned away, leaving no root or branch?  Think of it like this: Is it fair that we get to dwell with Him eternally because Jesus died for my and your sins?  I know it was not for Jesus.  But that’s why it’s good news of great joy!  That’s why it’s Gospel!  God loves us!  God wants us to return to Him because one day He will return to us!  The question for us and for those whom we know and love is whether His presence will be the healing warmth of His love or the destructive fire of His wrath!  It really is that simple.  It really is that offensive.  It really is that wonderful!

     The people during Malachi’s time and certainly after wondered whether God cared, whether God would act, whether they would be vindicated for choosing Him, and whether evil would be punished.  Just as the people of our time, just as you and I do today.  Our Lord’s answer is far more glorious than we could ever have hoped or dreamed on our own.  Malachi prophesied, and so we proclaim, Elijah (Jesus) will come.  And on that day when He returns, those who reject God will no longer prosper; more important to us, though, those who claim His Son as Lord will receive healing and blessing and life beyond imagining!  And that promise, brothers and sisters, is why we, we who call ourselves Adventers, exist.  It falls to us to remind the world that love and mercy of God is every bit as real as He has promised, as is His promise to return and dwell with us, driving away all the consequences and servants of sin!  Christ has come!  Christ WILL come again!

In His peace,

Brian†