Think And Let Think

Today we assume we know where Jesus is or, at the very least, where Jesus should be. We elevate particular politicians because we think they are on Jesus’ side, or we dismiss entire populations of people because we think Jesus is on our side. We relegate the incarnate Lord to our perfect manger scenes only to pack him away in a few days. But the story of Christmas is that God cannot, and will not, be stopped.

Hear the Good News! Jesus’ arrival both from the womb and from the tomb means that he will not let us remain as we are. He is the judged Judge who stands in our place. He is, in himself, the Good News.

John the Baptist’s words and ministry upset the status quo of our complacency. The kingdom earthquake is shaking all the old expectations of what we should say and what we should do. The fault lines of change are running through the middle of history and God is announcing a new order that carries with it a whole new way of seeing the world.

Advent is the season we celebrate new life - Jesus’, our own, and the new reality made possible by our God. We live in a time and among those who wish to see the world fizzle out in a tiny smoldering fire, but the Lord promises to return to us in a glorious way and is already bringing us signs of new life and peace.

Jesus would be a terrible president. Can you imagine? He’d always disappear in the middle of something important just so that he could pray with his heavenly father in private. He’d ditch the secret service to go hang out with the homeless around the Whitehouse. And he’d probably wear a dirty robe when he gave speeches from the Rose Garden. Jesus would be a terrible president. But he makes a pretty good King…

No matter who you are, and no matter what you going through in your life right now, hear these frighteningly and faithfully apocalyptic words and know that they are meant for you: “This is not the end.”

Many things about today feel terrible. There is political chaos as we wrestle with the “meaning” behind the midterms and wonder about what will happen to our country. The “national leadership” continues to bicker about everything on a two-week cycle such that we regularly forget what we’re talking about. And this week marked the 307th mass shooting in our country this year. For the sake of context: today is the 314th day. And it’s against that same kind of frightening and turbulent domestic scale, that we get the story of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz...

There are lots of liturgical moves that can be made on this day, but All Saints also raises a lot of questions, in fact some of our most profound questions: Who and what are we really? Is there anything permanent in the universe? Do our lives have any meaning? And those questions can be far more spooky and frightening than anything we might’ve encountered on Halloween.

Where is the hope in the middle of such terrible suffering? What does it mean for us to live in a world where the blind wait by the roadsides for help? Is this all life has to offer?

Jesus’ rebuke of the thunder brothers might sound harsh to our modern and prejudiced ears, but it’s actually a promise. Jesus promises that we need not live in fear, we need not wake up every morning worrying about our security, we need not scheme to accrue as much power as possible. But Jesus doesn’t promise our protection, or our safety, or even our power - Jesus promises us the cross!

The uncomfortable comfort and the impossible possibility of our salvation is that we worship a God who, in spite of our best and worst intentions, desires our salvation even when we cling to the things we know we should not.

In the US there is one divorce every 36 seconds. That’s nearly 2,400 per day, 16,800 per week, and 876,000 per year. Divorce is one of the most remarkably prevalent occurrences in our culture and society to the degree that most of us have become numb to it, and we almost never talk about it in church. We don’t take it very seriously.

Food is important! And yet here, in America, our connection with and to our food is one that has altogether lost its sacredness. 20% of all American meals are eaten in car. And the overwhelming majority of those meals are consumed alone. 1 out of every 5 children will go hungry, multiple days without eating, at least once a year. And among Black and Latino children the rate is 1 in 3. And somehow (!) we throw away more than 40% of our food every year - a waste of $165 billion annually. We are what we eat (or don't, apparently).

Prayer is at the heart of the Christian life. It is something Jesus consistently did throughout the gospels, it is something we do here every single week, and I would venture to guess that most of us here, in a variety of ways, pray every day. But prayer, with all of its prevalence in the church, is something we don’t really talk about. Sure, we might do it, but what is the it we are doing?

For many of us The American Dream has become The American Nightmare when it comes to money and finances. So many of us are unwilling to delay gratification and we use tomorrow’s money to finance today’s lifestyle. Few us us save money appropriately because we keep thinking that tomorrow won’t come. But then it does. Over and over again.

In the United States there are more self-storage facilities than Starbucks and McDonalds combined! With the crazy and ridiculous ways that we are accumulating more items than we could ever possibility need, far too many us us are are focusing on earthly things instead of heavenly things.

Time is a harsh mistress.

Being a Christian isn’t popular, and it certainly isn’t easy. Paul calls for us to put on the armor of God because we’re going to need it!

When we, the church, are out of touch with our vocation it’s as if we’re stumbling around in the darkness like drunken fools. We might feel a welcome reprieve from the mundanity of life, we might get the hit we need to forget our frivolity, but without our call we cease to be the church.

We are an angry people, we Christians, and that's okay. We worship a Messiah who spent most of his earthly ministry being angry. But our anger, like Christ's, should not send us into despair or violence. Our anger, like Christ's, should send us to an even stranger place: truth.