Wisdom, Folly, and the Word Made Flesh

Readings: Second Sunday in Christmas, Year B

It's difficult to date Jeremiah's writings with precision, but it appears that he wrote our Old Testament reading shortly before, or perhaps during the exile of Israel's elites into captivity in Babylon. "Hear the word of the LORD, O nations... He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd a flock." Israel was not being gathered in, it was being scattered. Those living at the time might have said that Israel was more likely to be "taken in" by Jeremiah than gathered in by the LORD.

We now know that Israel was gathered in, twice. Once from Babylon, and again after the Holocaust. Our Catholic readings speak of Wisdom. Would it seem like wisdom to keep the LORD's commandments? That path has brought destruction. On the other hand, that path has also brought survival. Without the LORD's commandments, the Jews would have assimilated and ceased to be Jews long ago. If survival is the goal, then keeping the commandments is not just wisdom, but the only wisdom that counts. Only if ease, not survival, is the goal does keeping the commandments seem like folly.

Yet, as Christians, we proclaim what cannot seem like wisdom to the world. We proclaim the birth of Jesus as the birth of Almighty God into human form. Don't look to your army for rescue, don't look to wealth for ransom, look to this baby.

We know the stories of the nativity — the humble birth in a manger known only to the Magi and to the shepherds startled by a Heavenly chorus of angels. We sing of them in Christmas carols, and recite them in our traditional Christmas readings. They are similar to the infancy stories of the heroes of many cultures. The early Church celebrated Easter, not Christmas, which was a later invention by more than a hundred years.

Nevertheless, we celebrate these twelve days and justly so! But let us remember that without Easter's Good News — the resurrection of Christ, and in him, of us all — the Good News of Christmas is just another birthday.

And what a birthday! God goes completely underground, becoming one of us. And not by materializing full grown out of nowhere, but by being born dumb and helpless, just like the rest of us. God would experience what it is like to be in only one place at one time, with only the finite store of knowledge gained by growing up, and no greater power than that of heart, hand, and voice. God would never have been able to reach us by that path, if someone hadn't loved him, fed him, and changed his diapers.

Imagine the magnitude and terror, not of the Crucifixion, but of the Incarnation. One second God is Omnipotent and Omniscient, and the next God is a baby, who will never amount to anything if someone doesn't teach him his manners. That God did not abandon the Universe for 33 years do this, that God could still be God and also be Jesus, and that there could be the same separation between Jesus and God that we feel between ourselves and God — remember that Jesus often needed to go off by himself to pray — is expressed in the terminology "Son of God," which non-Christians find so unfortunate. But there it is, God going from the Power behind the Universe to having a short, rough life, with no special treatment or advantages, and having to communicate with his larger self the same way we do — through prayer. A fearsome thing to face, when you consider how hard life is. A sacrifice on our behalf, just to live, let alone to die.

All because God wants to be with us, not as a stranger, but as one of us. Which means that God puts on a human face, a persona, a personality. In particular, the personality of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. And the Word was made Flesh in secret. The writers of Mark and John didn't know the infancy stories surrounding Jesus — their accounts start with his baptism by John the Baptiser.

John, however, delays his narrative to meditate on the Logos, the Word, as if that concept meant something to his Greek-speaking Gentile audience. Today, that concept might be more familiar to a Muslim than to a Christian. In Islam, God says to a thing, "Be!" and it is. It springs into existence out of love for its Creator. The power of God's Word is such that it creates things out of nothing.

And that is John's obscure point. When God said, "Let there be light," that creative speech (or thought) was the core identity of the person Jesus. Just as spirit and breath are the same word in Biblical Hebrew, so the Divine speech is breath/spirit. In ancient thinking the spirit/breath was the essence of the speaker/breather. When a person breathed out his last breath, his breath/spirit/essence was gone.

So the Word of God is the breath/spirit/essence of God, breathed into God's creative command. Breathed into Jesus at the moment of creation, breathed through Jesus into all creation. "All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being."

In the entire Bible, this is the most radical, over-the-top statement about Jesus. In his earthly lifetime, during his public ministry, he probably wouldn't have believed it himself. Only the second most radical, over-the-top thing about Jesus would have made this statement clear to him and his disciples — his Resurrection.

Now you look around the world and you don't see much Resurrection going on. People who die stay dead. What you see is a whole lot of Crucifixion. Not in the literal sense (except that Hamas has made it legal again in parts of the Holy Land for the first time since the days of the Roman Emperor Constantine), but in the figurative sense that people do a lot of awful things to each other. The Christmas story, the birth of Jesus, the Word made Flesh, looks like we are being "taken in," (deceived, fooled) rather than gathered in, for the Day of the Lord.

We can go on, attempting to explain ourselves to the world with fancy theology, but talk is cheap. That's why so much of the Bible, and especially Mark's Gospel, consists of actions. I suppose that we had better get out there and act like Christians, if we can figure out what that would be like. History shows us to have been a mixed bag so far in that regard. But we have at least one example.

So take these days and celebrate with family and friends. Or even with strangers. And then, be what you are called to be.

What is that, you might ask, and when were you so called? The writer of Ephesians (who may have been the Apostle Paul, or one of his followers) claims that you were called "from before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love." That's probably the most radical, over-the-top thing the Bible says about you. Well, you're not holy, and you're not blameless. But you can love and be loved. That's a start. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to do the rest.

Merry Christmas!

Leia Mais…

All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name

Readings: The Holy Name, Year B

In the ancient Middle East, one's name had special significance. Pharoahs of Egypt had their names carved everywhere, because the preservation of their name was part of insuring their immortality. Putting your name on something was a way of making it your own. Giving someone your true name was the equivalent of giving them your special confidence or trust.

The God of the Hebrew Bible was not promiscuous with His Name. After using several aliases, like El Shaddai, God reveals His Name to Moses, speaking out of a "burning" bush near a place called YHU (probably pronounced "Yahoo," later re-named Midian). The Name, of which we have only the consonants YHWH may have been pronounced "Yahweh." No one knows. The ancient Israelites did not pronounce the Name out of reverence for it. They did not "take the Name in vain."

But it probably was pronounced on the occasion narrated in Numbers 6:22-27, in which YHWH (which we render as the Lord) puts his name upon Israel in the form of the now familiar Aaronic Blessing. They are indeed His people, and he will be their God.

A majestic name, indeed, as our Psalmist proclaims, especially in its power to preserve God's people. In spite of two thousand years of diaspora, including more than one attempt to annihilate the Jews, Judaism is the oldest continuously practiced living ethical monotheistic religion. Apparently, it is God's will that his Law be kept as an unbroken, living tradition until He comes.

And now, for us Christians, God takes on another name, Yehoshua. It means "YHWH helps." The Latinized form of the Greek rendering of the name is Jesus. Another rendering, closer to the Aramaic, Y'shua, is Joshua. The Christ-child was named after Joshua, the general who commanded the Israelites' conquest of the Promised Land after the death of Moses. Clearly a name with great expectations attached to it.

The names of his earthly father, mother, and four brothers (James, Joses, Jude and Simon) all "hark back to the glorious days of the patriarchs, the exodus, and the conquest of the Promised Land," according to Fr. John P. Meier, in the first volume of his opus on the historical Jesus, A Marginal Jew. Meier concludes that these names indicate that Jesus' family may have been involved in the first century reawakening of Jewish national and religious identity, and the growing popular sentiment to re-establish the Kingdom of Israel free of Roman domination. And so they named their first-born son after Joshua, as commanded by the angel. A name with great expectations, the name of a conqueror.

Yet this conquering name is bestowed upon a tiny, vulnerable baby. A baby who cried, as all male Jewish babies cry, at his circumcision, when he was officially given his name. As the writer of Philippians states, God "emptied himself" of his Glory, taking human form, humbling himself even to public humiliation, scourging, and crucifixion. Theologians call it kenosis.

To honor/shame cultures, like those of the Middle East both then and now, kenosis is a scandal. A god who would do such a thing just can't be God - it's too dishonorable! There is nothing like it in any other religion on earth. There are traditions of gods becoming incarnated as humans. But all of them were high-born, nobles, kings, somebodies. No other religion claims its god was born a peasant, grew up as a laborer, and was executed as a criminal. A seditious, peasant, laborer named, in seeming irony, after a conquering hero.

Now the Roman Empire is dead and gone. Ironically, its language, Latin, is only remembered because it was preserved by the Christian Church, the church founded by the followers of this peasant who was executed by the Roman Empire. After all, Christianity eventually became the official state religion of the Roman Empire, with a liturgy in the language of the common people, Latin. In that way Jesus, the crucified one, did indeed conquer the world of his day.

But Christianity as a state religion is a contradiction in terms. The LORD's kenosis in becoming this peasant child, living the life he lived, dying the death he died, and being resurrected - all this turns all notions of status, honor, power, glory on their heads. It does more than just set Christianity apart. It sets Christianity against - against culture, all cultures of all peoples of all times and places. The Church may build culture, but the Church also critiques culture.

This separation of Divine from earthly power is very old in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It started with Moses the leader, and Aaron the high priest. It continued when God granted Israel a line of kings: beginning with David, there was always a king, a separate priesthood, and often one or more prophets who were separate from both. The king led, the priests kept the temple rituals, but the prophets spoke for God, often criticizing both priest and king.

Now the Church has become an institution, or a set of institutions, valuable institutions that in many cases have stood as counterweights to the governmental powers of nations and states. Institutions that have given help to the oppressed. And sometimes institutions that have done the oppressing. But Christianity itself is not an institution. It is a spiritual insurgency, constantly injecting itself into the world, like God injecting himself into the world almost clandestinely as the baby Jesus. The baby named, "God Helps."

And the Church is in institutional crisis. Roman Catholicism is beset with a dearth of priests, and scandals among the priests that it has. Mainline Protestant churches are losing members. In too many places, the Church is even persecuted, as in the Christmas attack on a church in Congo. Maybe the Church as an institution needs to team up with Christianity as a spiritual insurgency, and sponsor networks of home churches. To get small to become great, as did our LORD Jesus. To "have love one for another as I have loved you," if I may quote our Savior.

But then, that would risk the Church being taken over by its own spiritual insurgency. It risks the high being overtaken by the low. It risks having multiple centers and sources of power within the church. The upside is revival, the downside is dissension. And there are so many fires of internal church conflict burning in our day already. What can we do?

We can call on that lowly, ironic name that is above every name, the name that promises, "God Helps," the name of Yehoshua the Anointed One, Y'shua the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. The name of the one who conquers our sin and sets us free from it. The name that we value above every name because it raises us up on the Last Day to be with Him. And we can return to the world, like the shepherds, as ambassadors for what we experience.

Now may the LORD bless you and keep you,
May the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you,
May the LORD look upon you with favor, and give you peace.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who lifts high the lowly in spirit, amen.

Leia Mais…

A New Year, A Time for Justice

Readings: New Year's Day, Year B



I will be brief, because I have a life, and as our Old Testament reading concludes: "I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and to enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil." I will shortly go and take pleasure in mine, go thou and do likewise.

And why not? We are an insignificant speck in the great expanse of the universe, and but an eyeblink in the eons of cosmic time. In spite of all that, our Creator has made us special, for his own good pleasure. He pays attention to us. In the end, in the universe to come, he will do away with death, suffering and sadness. It is already done. We just haven't run into it yet.

So how long will it be? What time is it now? What is this season? Our Gospel reading, Matthew 25:31-46, tells us that from now until the Apocalypse it is always the same time. It is time for justice.

What we do to each other, including the least, we do to the Most High. We should live and act like we will be called to account for the justice and injustice we have done and enabled to be done, passively or actively.

A happy, prosperous, and just New Year to us all!

Leia Mais…

Robes of Righteousness

Readings: First Sunday after Christmas, Year B

I know what you do. You step out of the shower, face the mirror, and check your flaws. You cover them with clothes. Maybe you color your hair, or wear makeup. If you're young, you try to cover the acne, if you're older, the lines. That's human nature. That's biology.

But your inner flaws you can't see as easily, because they aren't reflected in mirrors. They're reflected in the lives and faces of the people you hurt. You cover them with denial. If you're young, you want sex, if you're older, money or power. You attend to the people who can give them to you, and, at best, you ignore the people who can't. But mostly, you just want to believe that you're a good person. So you steal the certainty of your goodness from whatever source you need to, even from God. That's human nature, too. That's psychology. Or, in church-talk, sin.

And yet, as Isaiah says, "You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God."

Isaiah, of course, was talking about the shame and humiliation the people Israel had suffered by being conquered and exiled as powerless captives. They regarded their recent captivity as shameful, like having their nakedness exposed for all to mock. Now the LORD has clothed them with garments of salvation, like bridegrooms and brides. In captivity they were naked, ugly, and dirty. Now they are clean and beautiful, to be admired by all the nations, not for themselves, but to show the redeeming power of the LORD. Isaiah just can't keep silent about this good news.

Psalm 148 raises the level of praise to include all creation, from inanimate things to all people of the earth, even their kings, to the host of heaven. Everyone and everything everywhere dancing and singing together.

This is serious "feel-good" fellowship, here, and there seem to be no phrases of exclusion. Hey, celebrate! "You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God."

Inside and out, you shall feel good, you shall look good, you shall be good. Clothed in robes of righteousness.

And not second-hand righteousness, as if there were such a thing. As the apostle Paul writes to the Galatians, you shall receive adoption as children of God, sisters and brothers of Christ. The Spirit of Christ is sent into our hearts crying, "Abba!" Writing for a Greek-speaking audience, Paul translates this as "Father," but it was probably more like a nickname that a very young child would use like, "Daddy."

Now Paul is writing about whether the new Christian community, consisting of both Jews and Gentiles, should observe the whole of Jewish law and tradition, starting with the 613 laws in the Hebrew Bible. He is silent on whether Jewish Christians should continue observing the law, but he claims that forcing the Law on Gentile converts to Christianity just adds impediments to their new faith. He argues that we as Christians are not slaves but free with regard to the Law. That we are not God's slaves, but God's children. We may observe the halacha, Jewish ritual Law, if we feel called to do so, but we may not force it on new converts.

This is, mind you, a distinction between Christianity and and Islam in regard to the relationship of the believer to God. In Islam, a believer is God's "willing slave," whereas in Christianity, a person is God's child by adoption as Paul says. We are God's children to be clothed in robes of righteousness.

But the Law is not void. Jesus' earthly parents bring him to the temple, and offer sacrifice, according to the Law. Luke's text is a little vague on this, but he isn't fooling anyone who knows about Judaism. Jesus is there for his briss, his circumcision. While they are getting ready for it, his parents receive two prophecies, one from an old man, Simeon, and another from an old woman, Anna.

Jesus, they say, is God's salvation, the light for revelation to the nations and the glory of Israel. Jesus is like what Isaiah was talking about, only more so. Or maybe, since prophets speak more meaning than they can know, Jesus is indeed what Isaiah was talking about.

The light that will rescue you from yourself, that will clothe you in radiance, that will make glory shine from you.

Have you ever watched the television programs "What not to Wear" or "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style?" Have you noticed how the women become so much more alive, let so much more of their spirit shine, after they have their fashion makeover? How just looking good makes them so much happier?

Who would have thought? Change the outside, and it changes the inside. Look good, feel good. Well, we are all going to get a fashion makeover. We shall be clothed in robes of righteousness, which shall change us into who we were always meant to me, inside and out. "You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God."

And just as the outside is connected to the inside - change one, you change the other - the future is connected to the present. One fine day you will be clothed in righteousness. But who's to stop you from letting a little bit of your glorious future shine from you now? The most it could possibly do is to change the world.

Merry Christmas! It goes for twelve days, all the way to Epiphany! Jump, shout, dance! And let your light so shine...

Leia Mais…

Let Heaven and Nature Sing

Readings: Christmas Day, Proper III, Year B
Hymn: " Joy to the World"



"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."

The writer of our Old Testament reading gave expression to the gratitude of his people for a national liberation. The exultation that his people had returned from captivity in Babylon, and that they could now rebuild their ruined capital. Who had made this possible? The Lord! The Lord had returned with his people to Zion, most likely the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where the Lord's Sanctuary had stood. This was the salvation of God. Now God's people could live in peace.

Twenty-eight centuries later, we know it was not to be. The Second Temple was built, and then destroyed by the Romans. Now the Third and Fourth Temples are a pair of mosques, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa.

But a prophet speaks more than a prophet knows. A prophet speaks to a particular people at a particular time and place, but also to all people of all times and places. Isaiah's words thunder from age to age to us here and now, on Christmas Day. Isaiah speaks not only of salvation from captivity in Babylon, but of the great and glorious Day of the Lord, when, as our Psalmist says, the Lord is coming to judge the earth with righteousness. Not vengeance, mind you. Not "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," but all peoples before the equitable and righteous God. The God who proves his faithfulness to us and his love for us.

The God who becomes born to us as one of us. Who becomes a Son of Man. Who becomes a son to us, a brother, a friend.

As the writer of Hebrews explains, he is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's being. And yet he is one of us. Maybe that's what it means when the Book of Genesis says we are made in the image of God. We are such beings that any one of us can bear God's imprint. Yet we are also such beings that we can become captives to our own desires, to our own errors, to our own pride, to our own sin. God has become this child to set us free from our sin. All of us who have lived or will ever live in all the world.

This morning, over two thousand years ago. Let the seas roar, let the floods clap their hands. Joy to the World! Joy as long as the world lasts, and into the world to come!

The little baby Jesus is the creating and sustaining Word of God made flesh, claims John in his gospel - the light that lights everyone who comes into the world. The light that looks back from behind your eyes. Though you may deny it, though you may doubt it, though you are in some ways a stranger even to yourself, the miracle of God's Incarnation in the infant Jesus is part of the miracle of you.

So you are a miracle, praising and giving thanks for the miracle of the Incarnation of God in Jesus, our Messiah. So what?

Twenty-three years ago, I got my car stuck in mud while trying to find a shortcut to work one cold, wet winter morning. A big, red-haired guy stopped, roped his car to mine, and pulled it onto solid ground. He told me that only a few weeks earlier, he would have passed me by, but since then, he had a "Born Again" experience. He had to stop and help me now, because he was a Christian. I was a little offended, I guess, because I was an atheist at the time. But his help was physical sign of hope in a dark time in my life.

It would take another year before I went to church, but I still think about that guy. He did Gospel.

Merry Christmas! Happy birthday, Jesus!

Leia Mais…

A Stable Lamp is Lighted

Readings: The Nativity of our Lord, Proper 1, Year B, Christmas Eve
Hymn: "A Stable Lamp is Lighted"



Perhaps you can't hear the words of our Old Testament reading without Handel's Messiah running through your head. Surely, lofty music of some kind should accompany the mighty words of Isaiah, which promise the people Israel the end to their wars, and a son from among their own, given by God Himself to lead them in righteousness - in Peace, among themselves and with their neighbors.

Fast forward 800 years. Israel has been conquered by Babylon, the Lord's Temple destroyed, and the people deported. Then Babylon was conquered by Persia and the people are allowed to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. But Israel was not long to remain even semi-independent. Now it lies under the domination of the Roman Empire, with the destruction of the Second Temple just 70 years or so in its future. And what do we have to say about it?

There, in that cow's feed-trough. The words of Isaiah's prophecy are fulfilled in - just this baby.

Anybody from Isaiah's time, or even the baby's own time, would say, "Yeah, right."

"O sing to the Lord a new song," goes our Psalm. How about, The diapers they need a-changin'?

All this fuss over a newborn is just plain nutty. Sure, there are infancy stories of demi-gods, heroes, and incarnations of gods in other religions. But we Christians are the only people on earth who actually revere a mother and her baby. And we tell ourselves that this baby is Eloheinu Melech ha-Olam, the Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe!

"Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength," continues the Psalm. Babies are many things, but they are not strong. And we must add that this kid will never travel, write, or lead nations. Instead he will be executed as a common criminal for stirring up trouble against the Romans, and for impugning the right of Caesar to crown kings by claiming some sort of kingship for himself.

And yet, some shepherds (another classy occupation) who were stuck out in their fields watching their sheep get this spectacular and frightening vision. They were surrounded, enveloped by bright light. Then an angel says, "Don't be afraid, I'm here to make you this special offer. Go down to the town and find this baby lying in a cow's feed-trough. That's God come down to save you all." A few more fireworks, thousands of angels singing to them, and off they go.

They find the kid, all right. And they tell his mother what they have seen and heard. Not even she is sure she believes it.

And yet...

Here we are, back to the theme of God turning the usual cultural values on their heads. The low is high, the high are to be brought low. The first shall be last and the last first. And God is still God, but God has indeed come down among us as just this baby. "A barn shall harbor Heaven, a stall become a shrine!"

The newborn Jesus and the shepherds looking at him heard no songs of derision that night. They heard songs of the original love from which we learn our capacity to love. Lullabies. Mary sang him lullabies.

For God so loved the world that He endured the terror and shame of becoming limited and helpless for our sake, just to be with us as one of us. To be just this baby. So that he could grow up to do the Gospel, not just to proclaim it. To walk the walk, not just talk the talk. To put his hide on the line for us.

So now Peace be with you. There is war and conflict all around the world, there is a deepening financial crisis threatening to eat up your wealth, and you have other troubles. And yet Peace be with you. A deep peace filling your entire being for this one night. This Silent Night, this Holy Night.

Leia Mais…