The Epiphany of Our Lord 2025 - "Not For Quitters"

Saint Matthew 2:1-14

I had experienced the phenomenon many times in my life but up until this year I didn’t know it had a name.

At the beginning of each new year new faces would begin to appear at any health to which I belonged.  One could spot them a mile away by their outfits.  Some looked like they were left over from high school or, at best, college phys ed. classes.  A little tattered and torn and much the worse for wear.  Other outfits looked brand new, like they just emerged from a sporting goods store bag. 

The owners always appeared a little lost looking at the weight machines as if they were creations from outer space.  Some gave up trying to figure them out and just used them for benches.

In the comic “The Duplex,” one guy observes “I hate in January when the gym fills up with all the newbies who hog the machines. Look at that bozo sitting on the leg press. He’s been texting for ten minutes.”  Then he turns to his girlfriend and says, “That’s where I like to take my selfies.”1

Seasoned veterans of the health club scene always knew we could wait the new people out and before long they would find other things to do with their mornings.

What we didn’t know that there was an actual date assigned to the day they would disappear until an Apple watch commercial that has been playing on almost every sporting event I watched over New Year’s told us that the second Friday in January, this year January 10, was known as “Quitters Day.”  

The premise of the commercial was obviously if you purchased one of these Apple watches, it would motivate you to the point that you would not be a quitter.

The history of this very pejorative term dates back to “2019, {when} extensive research was conducted by Strava — a social network for athletes —  found that approximately 80% of people who made New Year’s resolutions have tapped out by the second week of January. {By} Making deductions from the available 800 million user-logged activities in that year, Strava even went on to predict that the second Friday of January was the fateful day when the motivations of most quitters begin to decline. 

An accompanying article stated the obvious.  “The key to not quitting something you started is to not just decide to do something but to be totally devoted to doing it.”2

The main characters in today’s Gospel were not checking their watches but checking the stars and when they found that one star that seemed to them to be specially special and totally devoted themselves to finding out what was behind this celestial phenomenon, they decided that they would not quit even though there were countless obstacles in their way.

The first may have been their families.  I’ve always wondered how their spouses and children reacted.

Did their children stare at their fathers with stunned expressions on their faces until they yelled: “Mom!  Dad’s looking at the stars again!”

Did their wives reply? “I’ll show him stars.  Where’s my rolling pin?”

Still the three astrologers were not going to give up.  They closed up their storefront tarot card reading businesses, put away their crystal balls, and began their search until they found what their were looking for.  They were determined not to quit.

Even the weather and conditions of travel did not slow them down.  As W.H. Auden wrote in his poem, “The Adoration of the Magi.”

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.’

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

A hard time we had of it.

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.3

Still they didn’t quit.

Even when they found themselves in the wrong place face-to-face with evil incarnate in one person they didn’t quit.  Face to face with Herod, they simply, naively ask:  “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”4

As my former pastor Shannon Kershner observed: 

I cannot even imagine the way his blood pressure must have risen when the magi asked him where was the child who had been born King of the Jews. “King of the Jews?!,” he must have thought. He was King of the Jews. That is what Rome declared, and that was the way it would forever be.

Following the normal way power works in our world, the king responded to his own fear not with a spirit of openness and courage, but by holding on to his power even more tightly and deciding to do whatever was necessary to keep it.5

That’s the way power works observed another pastor friend Shawn Fiedler:

Fear is a powerful, haunting thing. Fear grabs hold of the powerful; a false reality is created, and using their resources of plenty, they protect themselves at any cost.”6

Up against this kind of power they could have quit but they didn’t. Even when Herod lies right to their faces with an unctuous: “Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.”7

They don’t quit or even cower before Herod and his kind. They see through Herod like a cheap suit. They know that Herod and his kind always lie.  They are good at it.  They’ve spent their whole lives saying the most outrageous things and puffing themselves up with their own self-delusions so that lying comes as easy to them as breathing. 

The intrepid seekers have come to far to quit now.  With their newfound information and the correct coordinates they head off until they find what they have been looking for. 

And now the star, which they had seen in the east, went in front of them as they travelled until at last it shone immediately above the place where the little child lay. The sight of the star filled them with indescribable joy.

So, they went into the house and saw the little child with his mother Mary. And they fell on their knees and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts—gold, incense and myrrh.8

At this point they could have called it quits but, and don’t miss this, after they had completed their mission and done what they set out to do their lives were in the greatest danger.  Disobeying Herod put these outsiders outside the law and who knows what Herod would have done to them.  Still, “they left for their own country by another road.”9

T

he image of the Three Kings, and really, who cares if there were three or not or whether their names were Casper, Balthazar and Melchior or something else entirely.  Who cares if they came from the Orient or more likely  Persia  the very region were so many conflicts rage today? 

This image reminds us that life is more than a moment from a Christmas pageant but is about people who did not quit.  It is about people who looked evil in the eye and turned their backs to go another way.

It is about people who never quit making choices for good and that is where we fit in.  

There are, there will always be, temptations to give in and give up. We will always face temptations to quit and throw up up our hands and say, “What can we do in the face of the Herod’s of our day?” 

But we know, deep down in our heart of hearts we know, that to put our faith in some earthly leaders is folly.  To trust some is pure foolishness.  And to believe their words are dangerous.

We also know there is another way.  We know that there must be another way.  There must be someone else to follow, to put our faith in, to trust. There must be another leader whose way is not built on lies and deceit but whose ways are always justice and peace.  There is another one whom we can’t quit on.  There is another one whom we must be totally devoted to finding and then holding on to.

We cannot give up on his ways.  The Wise Men met Jesus once and it changed their lives.  We’ve met him countless times in story and song and so we do not quit on following his way, holding on to his promises, and finding in him the one true light of our lives.

Like the magi we have found the one, been touched by the one, who came among us to rule not with power or might but the power of love.

Following his ways and never quitting. Never quitting on his promises we’ll be found once again by Jesus Christ, who at the beginning of each new year, at the beginning of each new day, never quits showing us a better way.

Christ’s way! The way that never quits.  The way that never gives up!  

________________

1. Glenn McCoy, “The Duplex,” The Beacon-News, January 3, 2025, sec. Section 1, p. 11

2. Tamkeen Kiani, “Quitters Day,” National Today, August 23, 2023, https://nationaltoday.com/quitters-day/.

3. W. H. Auden, “The Adoration of the Maji” in “Poems about the Three Kings: A Majestic Journey,” PoemVerse, May 27, 2024, https://poemverse.org/poems-about-the-three-kings/.

4. St. Matthew 2:2. (NIV) [NIV= New International Version (Colorado Springs, CO International Bible Society, 1984).

5. Shannon J. Kershner, “Lessons Learned.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. January 4, 2016.

6. Shawn Fiedler, “By Another Road.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. January 6, 2019.

7. St. Matthew 2:8. (NKJV) [NKJV= The New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Incorporated, 2014).

8. St. Matthew 2:10-12. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).

9.    St. Matthew 2:12. (NRSV) [NRSV= The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

 

Christmas 2024 - "In the Midst of the Muddle"

 

Saint John 1:1-14

I am always amazed when somebody remembers what I said once in a sermon.  Particularly because I can’t even remember what I said from one week to the next.  I have a hard time remembering what I have said in conversation from one day to the next.

Sometimes I ask my friends what I said, and their usual reply is, “You know, I really wasn’t listening.” I come away with the feeling that they haven’t heard a word I have said in years.

That is why a few weeks ago I was stunned when a good friend remembered over drinks that last Christmas Day I talked about the musical Mame and how one day she was one of New York City’s highest rollers with a gaudy wardrobe and a lifestyle is as outrageous as her behaviour.  

She was the personification of the roaring twenties right until October of 1929. If Auntie Mame was the representative of the glory days, she is also a symbol of the gloom.  One by one we see her garish treasures being removed from her apartment.  No longer able to live on her investments, which are all gone, she has to find a real job.  When she discovers that she is such a failure at this thing called work that she is even unable to sell shoes and her cupboards contains only shredded wheat, she pauses for a moment and announces.

“We need a little Christmas; right this very minute

Candles in the window; carols at the spinet

We need a little Christmas now!”

That conversation got me to wondering what the song for this Christmas might be and then, at a concert I attended, a friend sang “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

It comes from the musical Meet Me in Saint Louis and it comes again to a family who is distraught over their father’s decision to move from Saint Louis to New York. In the movie, on Christmas Eve, Judy Garland sings the song to cheer up her little sister.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Let your heart be light

Someday soon we all will be together

If the fates allow

Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

This year, and perhaps it is me, what stood out from that classic was the promise that “next year all our troubles will be miles away” and the realization that “until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

The simple dictionary defination of “muddle” is to be “in a messy or confused state.”

And sometimes that is exactly where we are and not because we have consumed too many drinks last night that have been “muddled” but in a good way.

In his column last week in “The Dispatch” Jonah Goldberg reminded me of the scene in the movie Parenthood where Steve Martin is a stressed-out dad complaining about the burdens of life to his wife, played by Mary Steenburgen. She says, “What do you want me to do? Give you guarantees? Life is messy.” 

Martin replies, “I hate messy. It’s so … messy.”

Life is messy and the good news of today’s gospel is that we don’t have to muddle through it alone.

I always like to think of John the Evangelist, philosopher and theologian, staring up at the night sky and perhaps trying to make some sense of this Jesus story,

Yes, he had heard all about Mary and Joseph. Yes, he had heard the story of the shepherds and the angels. Yes, he had heard the story about the wisemen from the east.  But more than that he had heard the story of the life, death and resurrection of this man Jesus whom it seemed to him that the plot of the entire universe was caught up with.

You see, he’s studied the scrolls and the Torah and the words of the prophets. He’s studied the  works of Greek philosophy and has read all the poetry he can find trying to explain this Jesus but he just couldn’t find the words to describe him and what he meant.

Then it hits him.  How can he explain what happened? This is it! “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ... full of grace and truth.”  

I love the way, Dr. Eugene Peterson paraphrased this in The Message. “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. (John 1:14)

Flesh and blood, living next door.  That means that Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us is in the messies we do not like helping us as we try our best to muddle through.  He is the light shining in the darkness helping us to find our way.

But, as Madeline E’Engle wrote in her book, A Ring of Endless Light.” “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”

But we don’t want that. 

As Dr. Scott Black Johnson observed once in a sermon.

I want the light to arrive and to win, and I want it to win big. I want the light to deal with the darkness in a way that is so overwhelming, so completely devastating, that I can switch channels at half-time because there is no way, no possible way, that the darkness is going to come out of the locker room to start the third quarter. 

(I don’t know this for sure but Dr. Johnson is a native of Duluth, Minnesota and a graduate of St. Olaf college so he’s probably a Vikings fan and, unlike Bears fans, doesn’t know the kind of darkness we endure.)

Instead of total victory, we get something painfully modest. The light came into the world, and the darkness did not extinguish it. The darkness was not able (at least, not immediately) to reach over and pinch out the flickering wick of the light.

What John is telling us in his Gospel is that most of all, Jesus is with us when we go through the darkness.  

As Dr. Tom Are said once, “This light does not destroy the darkness, but it is a word strong enough to keep you human in a world of inhumanity.”

That is what we need to know everyday when we are muddling through the mess and need a little Christmas.

We need to know that Jesus is our light in our darkness. In him we find someone who is with us in our deepest depths as well as our highest heights.

And John helps us to discover that he has been there all along, “at work in your life ... bringing creative hope in every dark moment.”

Not just our lives but our world. John wants us to know that Jesus story is not limited to “the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee...” or “those days when a decree went out from Ceasar Agustus” but goes back all the way to the beginning of time and will continue to be with us until the end.  

Jesus story is present in the midst of it all.  In the midst of the mayorship of Brandon Johnson of Chicago and J.D. Pritzger’s governor ship of Illinois.  Jesus is with us when transition from one president to another.  In the midst days of wars and rumors of wars and days of blessed sweet peace, Jesus is with us.

So, if you remember only one thing, I have said this Christmas remember this:  From the very beginning says John in his gospel Jesus has been with us in the midst of the muddle and the mess.  

In the midst of our messy and muddled life the message of Christmas is  Jesus is with us.  

There is no place where we’ve been that he hasn’t been. There is no place that we will go where he will not be. Jesus will be with us, “always and everywhere as near to us as our own breath.”

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Advent 3C - "Have You Heard John Preach?"

Saint Luke 3:7-18

In his classic book Whatever Became of Sin Psychologist Karl Menninger gave us this scene.

On a sunny day in September 1972, a stern-faced, plainly dressed man could be seen standing still on a street comer in the busy Chicago Loop. As pedestrians hurried by on their way to lunch or business, he would solemnly lift his right arm, and pointing to the person nearest him, intone loudly the single word “GUILTY!”  Then, without any change of expression, he would resume his stiff stance for a few moments before repeating the gesture. Then, again, the inexorable raising of his arm, the pointing, and the solemn pronouncing of the one word “GUILTY!”

The effect of this strange faccuse pantomime on the passing strangers was extraordinary, almost eerie. They would stare at him, hesitate, look away, look at each other, and then at him again; then hurriedly continue on their ways. One man, turning to another who was my informant, exclaimed: “But how did he know?”1

Those of us who live in cities can spot street preachers from blocks away.  They are easy to identify with their big megaphones and even bigger bibles.  Their message is almost always the same.  Those who pass by are “guilty as sin” and they need to repent or face the dire consequences.  Most times we can avoid them but there are other occasions where they insert themselves wherever we are.

James Thurber in his essay “The Get Ready Man” remembered that once the “Get Ready Man” interrupted a production of “King Lear” at the local theatre.

The theatre was in absolute darkness and there were rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightening offstage {when} the Get Ready Man added his bawlings to the ranting of the King and the mouthing of the Fool. Right in the middle of the play from the balcony there came the shouts “Get Ready!  Get Ready!  The World is coming to an end!” 

They found him finally, and ejected him, still shouting. Neither father nor I, {Thurber wrote} completely got over the scene... The theatre in our time, {he speculated} has known few such moments.”2

I’ll bet not.  It takes a while to get over any encounter with those who remind us of our shortcomings which is why I tried to deftly avoid John the Baptist last week by talking about his parents,  Zachariah and Elizabeth, in the hopes of giving him a wide enough berth to avoid him entirely.  But apparently, I didn’t swerve far enough because John the Baptist is still here.

It seems that we are not going to able to get to Christmas without hearing John preach.

Long ago in another place in time I quoted a sermon by the late, great, preacher of preachers, Dr. Fred B. Craddock when he let his imagination run wild over the figure of John the Baptist.

He was an oddity. He had long hair, and when I say he had long hair, I don’t mean he just had long hair. It wasn’t like the young businessmen in Atlanta with a little ponytail. He never cut his hair. I mean, he never cut his hair. He had a long beard, not a neat beard like some of you have. I mean, he had never trimmed his beard. He ... was strange. And dressed in an unusual way – camel’s hair and a leather band around the waist. And his food – he never went home with anybody for lunch, and I’m sure no one accepted his invitation. 

 I loved the imagery until after church when a really nice woman who we had spent weeks actively courting for membership came up to me and said, “What do you mean he never cut his hair?  What do you mean he never trimmed his beard? What do you mean he never took a bath?” and stormed out. 

I wanted to run after her myself shouting: “Hey! Hey! Hey!  Don’t blame me! Blame Fred Craddock!” But she was gone, never to be seen at our church again.

While we might try to avoid hearing John and his kind preach I’m with Dr. Peter Marty, who wrote:

What fascinates me about John is that our first-century friends made the decision to go out and hear him in the wilderness. They took the initiative. He didn’t come to them to dwell in their midst and inhabit their lives, as Jesus did. They had to go to him, leaving behind their comforts, conveniences, and suburban cul-de-sacs.3

At the risk of getting in trouble again let me tap into Dr. Craddock’s overactive imagination:

Plows were left in the furrows, bread was left in the oven, shops were left unattended, school was let our early because the crowds were moving into the desert to hear this extraordinary preacher.

I’m sure that many of the people who went were just curious, curious about the way he looked and the way he talked. I’m sure some the young people went out there just out of curiosity, nothing to do, sat out on the hoods of their camels and just watched the crowd and listened to John, bored perhaps. But most of the people who went were very sincere. There was something persuasive about him.4

 Start a sermon like that and the congregation just might come to believe you have real anger issues.  Preacher friends and I can’t remember in all our years of preaching ever starting a sermon by calling our congregations a brood of vipers, a bunch of snakes. We’ve thought about it but thinking and doing are two different matters.

Besides, the people’s reaction to John was amazing.  They don’t announce in returned anger, “Well, I don’t believe it!”  They don’t storm back to their villages and farms. They don’t try to cut off his head. Sadly, that will come later but it will not be one of them but be by a leader who demands ultimate, unquestioning, loyalty from any in their kingdom or court.

Instead, the crowds ask: “Then what are we supposed to do?”6

Just as no preacher I know would start a sermon the way John did, no preacher I know would ever expect that kind of reaction.  Believe me when I tell you, “What do you want us to do?”7 is not a reaction most preachers are used to getting but it is what happens when we hear John preach.

I find it curious that John doesn’t tell the tax collectors to quit working for the Romans and their ... collaborators, nor are the soldiers called to quit serving Caesar and his empire. Both the despised tax collectors and the feared soldiers and called ... to respond to the advent of the Christ, right here and right now in their ordinary everyday lives.8

An encounter with Jesus, the baby in the manger, the full-grown adult who John is pointing us to, makes us different. When we have heard John preach our reaction is “what shall we do?”

And this doesn’t mean just to repeat pious phrases over and over.  This doesn’t mean to try to impress people with our knowledge of scripture or theology.  It doesn’t mean that we only care for our close relatives and friends.  But it does means that we broaden our scope, our horizons, and begin to live like the world really is coming to an end.

When we’ve really heard John preach we may just wind up like Ebenezer Scrooge.  He, and Dickens’ play, A Christmas Carol is playing almost everywhere about now.  

His main complaint about Christmas is that it costs him money.  Money is everything to him, it is his first love.  He has sacrificed everything for it including the love of another person.

is complaint with the poorly paid Bob Crachit is that he wants a day off with or without pay and that will cost Scrooge money in, if nothing else, lost business.

He throws the gentlemen asking for donations to the poor out of his office because he pays taxes, lots of taxes, don’t they know, and his taxes pay for poorhouses.  There is nothing more he wishes to do but be left alone.

After an evening meal and bed, alone as always, he is visited by three ghosts, past, present, and future, that frankly sum up his life in one word, “guilty.”  “How did they know?” might have been his response and it could have been his only response. 

But spoiler alert! Scrooge wakes up a changed man.  Maybe he had heard the three ghosts and they sounded a lot like John preaching.  And, as someone pointed out: “Scrooge’s first merry Christmas cost Scrooge a fortune.”9

Have you heard John preach?  Have you heard him bear witness to the light whose coming we will celebrate in just a few days?  

Have you heard John preach?  It may not cost you a fortune, but it will give you back your life. 

“Share now. Be merciful now. Do justice now. Inhabit your life, no matter how plain, how obscure, how unglamourous, how routine”10 now.

Hear John preach now, and you really will be ready for Christmas.

 

________________

1. Karl A. Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York, NY: Hawthorne Books, 1197), 1-2.

2. James Thurber, “The Car We Had to Push,” in My Life and Hard Times (Harper Collins, 1999), pp. 13-14.

3. Peter Marty, “The Eerie Call of John the Baptist,” The Christian Century, December 1, 2023, https://www.christiancentury.org/first-words/eerie-call-john-baptist

4. Fred B. Craddock, “Have You Heard John Preach?,” essay, in The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2011), 109–14.

5. William H. Willimon, “A Sermon About Sermons,” Pulpit Resource, Year B, 52, no. 4 (2024): 33–35.

6. St. Luke 3:10. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE:Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).]

7. St. Luke 3:10. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL:Tyndale House Publishers, 1971.)]

8. Willimon, loc. cit.

9. William Willimon, “How Much Does Christmas Cost?” Pulpit Resource, Year B, 46, no. 4 (2024): 33–35.

10. Debie Thomas, “What Then Should We Do?” Journey with Jesus, December 9, 2018, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2030-what-then-should-we-do.

 

Advent 2C - "Wait for It"

 

Saint Luke 1:5–23 & 57-80

On Friday, November 1, WLIT-FM which bills itself as “Chicago’s Christmas Music Station,” began playing Christmas music exclusively 24/7. In a press release, Mick Lee, program director and host said:

“93.9 LITE FM listeners have spoken year after year — once Halloween ends, they are ready for Christmas music on 93.9 LITE FM. We’re thrilled to celebrate our 24th year as Chicago’s Christmas station, spreading cheer, unity and warmth all season long!”1

 Now don’t get me wrong and don’t expect the usual harangue one gets from preachers who bemoan the fact that if you start Christmas music on November 1st it does seem that you are rushing headlong into Christmas without giving it a second thought.

There is nothing like a little Christmas music to get you in the spirit but honestly how many times can one listen to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” or Burl Ives’ classic rendition of “Frosty the Snow Man” or even a wonderful choral rendition of “Jesse’s Carol” which, the first couple of times can make me tear up, but after that I just dry my eyes and get on with my day.

For, as my friend and Scotsman, Callum MacLeod, said in a sermon once: “It really seems that a sane person can only listen to ‘Feliz Navidad’ so many times before taking a hammer to the appliance.”2

months worth of Christmas music if it didn’t result in exceptionally high ratings.  But I do have my doubts about politicians who promise that if they get elected we’ll be able to say “Merry Christmas” once again to everybody, even our beloved friends of other faiths and traditions, that makes them feel not quite so beloved.

Or, Nicholas Maduro, the Venesuelian dictator, who decided to hide behind a stolen election, political unrest, and lawless gangs causing countless to flee his country for fear of their lives to decree:

“It’s September, and it already smells like Christmas,” Maduro said Monday night during his weekly television show. “That’s why this year, as a way of paying tribute to you all, and in gratitude to you all, I’m going to decree an early Christmas for October 1.”3

 If you can’t give your people peace and prosperity, at least give them “bread and circuses” or in this case, tinsel and garland, and the promise that they will be able to say “Merry Christmas” to anybody they want whenever they want.

The season of Advent that liturgical churches celebrate so well reminds us in the words of the poet Edwina Gateley:

Advent means we are waiting for something; we are to expect something good and up-lifting to make us feel better. And why not? We struggle so, and we only want peace, security and even a little happiness. We dream of it—like a lost treasure in an empty desert. Then, in the very dying of the Autumn Season, along comes Advent with candles, prayers, songs and promises of new possibilities. And, all tingling with excitement and expectancy, we are seduced into hoping once again.”4

 There are two people, glossed over in the Christmas story by all the surrounding hoopla, who were seduced into hoping once again but before this hope became a reality they had to wait.  And their waiting began in a very strange place – at worship.

There is a name hidden deep in our Gospel reading this morning. It is the name of John the Baptist’s father, Zachariah. 

We know a lot about John.  He may be one of the noisiest characters in all of scripture preaching a message of repentance at the top of his lungs out in the wilderness to any and all who will listen.

But his dad, his father, Zachariah is another matter.  He’s an elderly man, the kind of guy with whom I am having a greater and greater affinity.  His wife is getting up there too and she suffers the ignominy of bearing the cruelest title of all, she is called “barren.”

They are an old couple, a faithful couple, who have long since given up on the idea that they will ever be called mom and dad by a child of their own.  That is until one night at worship something happens.  

Zachariah is a priest and it falls to him, entirely by chance, to go into the temple and be the one to burn incense.  It is to be, as my Episcopal friends call it, “a smoking service” which is something that we here at Saint Luke can relate to.

I can see the old priest, perhaps with a smile on his face, putting the coals in the incense pot, loading spoonful upon spoonful of incense in the censer, and swinging that baby around until the temple bore a striking resemblance to St. Luke on a Pentecost Sunday.

Then, from within the smoke, of all things, an angel appears striking terror into the old guy who may have then wondered, “What’s in this incense anyway? One too many, ‘nose hits’ perhaps?”  

“But the angel spoke to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zacharias; your prayers have been heard. Elisabeth your wife will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. This will be joy and delight to you and many more will be glad because he is born.’”5

 Now one would think the Zachariah would be overjoyed at the news but instead of listening to the angel and rejoicing over the message he snaps back at the angel. “Do you expect me to believe this? I’m an old man and my wife is an old woman.”6

Stop and think about this for a second.  He’s spent years of praying.  He’s spent years of hoping perhaps followed by years of sad resignation that he and his wife would never be parents and an angel shows up, in the temple no less, right in the middle of worship, and tells him that his prayers have been answered and Zachariah is acting like somebody who has either spent too much time in seminary or too much time around other old priests.

He wants to talk about it. Discuss the offer the angel is making. Determine the biological probabilities.

But the angel Gabriel has better, more important things to do.  So instead of listening to the old boy hem and haw and go on and on, the angels just takes away his power to speak.  

A priest who can’t speak! How long have many of you been praying for exactly that?  You may even be praying for that now.

Kathleen Norris, in her book Amazing Grace, writes: 

When the angel strikes Zachariah dumb he is given a pregnancy of his own. I read Zachariah’s punishment as a grace in that he couldn’t say anything to compound his initial arrogance when confronted with mystery. When he does speak again it is to praise God.  It’s just that he needed nine months to think it over.7

When the baby is born his pondering is over and everybody gathered around the mother and the child thinks the little guy should be named after his father. However, Elizabeth and Zechariah make a stunning announcement. They are going to name their son John.

“What?” [the relatives, neighbours, and friends] exclaimed. “There is no one in all your family by that name.”  To affirm his wife’s decision the happy father motions for “a piece of paper and to everyone’s surprise writes, ‘His name is John!’ Instantly Zacharias could speak again, and he began praising God.”8

As Dr. John Buchanan reminded us in a sermon when “old Zechariah finds his voice ... the first words out of his mouth are a kind of joyful poem; the birth of a child turns fathers into poets. Whatever he said, Luke arranges it in a canticle, which the church has loved for twenty centuries, the Benedictus: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people.”

[Then,] “as new fathers are inclined to do, Zechariah can’t resist a little boasting: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High.”

And then the most beautiful images I know: “By the tender mercy of our God the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”9

Our temptation is to rush headlong into Christmas.  To, by our own power and might, make rough places smooth and paths straight.  Our temptation may be to crank up the carols as soon as we can even though we know that it won’t be long before we tire of hearing them over and over.

Our temptation may even be to use Christmas as a tool to fool people into believing that everything is okay and if they just rush around a little more, or buy a little more, or pretend a little more that everything will be alright. 

But not so cleverly hidden in the Advent celebration are real people like Elizabeth and Zachariah, John’s parents, and Mary and Joseph, who simply had to wait.

And you and I, here and now, wait for that moment when we can celebrate the birth him whose coming marks the day when the dawn from on high will appear once again the and tender mercies of the one for whom we wait will break upon us.

Wait for it!  For it is something worth waiting for.

________________

1. Kelly Bauer, “Nonstop Christmas Music Is Back on 93.9 Lite FM Starting Friday,” Block Club Chicago, October 30, 2024, https://blockclubchicago.org/2024/10/30/nonstop-christmas-music-is-back-on-93-9-lite-fm-starting-friday/.

2. Calum I. MacLeod, “A Christmas Eve Sermon.” Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, December 24, 2012.

3. Jorge Rueda, “Christmas in Venezuela Kicks off in October, President Maduro Has Declared,” AP News, September 4, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-christmas-october-maduro-elections-tensions-2889fbab6a6a063d1f3bfe9d0afd33ba.

4. Edwina Gately, “Advent.” https://www.journeywithjesus.net/poemsandprayers/3776-advent

5. St. Luke 1:5-17. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).]

6. St. Luke 1:18. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE:Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).

7. Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York, NY: Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc, 2003).

8. St. John 1:61-63. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL:Tyndale House Publishers, 1971.)]

9. John M. Buchanan, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. December 6, 2009

Pentecost 27B - "No Cliche" {Christ the King/Reign of Christ}

Saint John 18:33-37

Every cliche has more than a little truth to it.

We’ve all felt trapped “between a rock and a hard place.”

We’ve all felt like we are living between “the devil and the deep blue sea.”

We have all found ourselves in “Catch 22" situations where there doesn’t seem to be any good option between two choices both of which may yield equally bad results.

We have all faced moments in our lives when we have faced a Hobson’s “take it or leave it” choice between two alternatives when neither is a particularly good one.

Moments like this may make us wish we had a “mind palace” – a place where we could go where we might discover whether there might be another option, another way out.

If you watched the most recent version of Sherlock Holmes on PBS you know that Holmes had a “mind palace” where he would withdraw to get away from the noise that surrounded him and retreat into a world of his own where he could see things more clearly.

While Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never used “mind palace” as a literary device I discovered recently while cleaning out mine that it was an concept employed by the ancient Greeks and Roman philosophers to organize thoughts and remember things that were really important while throwing out ideas that were not.

According to Smithsonian Magazine: 

Given the technique’s power and history, it’s a little surprising that Arthur Conan Doyle never mentioned such a thing in his stories. Instead, he attributed his creation’s prodigious memory to an exceptionally well-organized, well-stocked “brain attic.”

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose,” Holmes tells John Watson in A Study in Scarlet, the first of Conan Doyle’s tales about the detective. Holmes is careful to fill his brain attic with only memories that may be useful.1

 I am willing to bet that Pontius Pilot would have given everything he had to have a “mind palace” where he could go to help him sort out what was before him in today’s Gospel.

Every cliche in the history of literature – maybe even the history of the world! – is standing before Pilate in the person who has been brought before him.

“It’s early morning and the air in the room is laced with lamp oil and irony.”3

Pilot has been roused from sleep by a bunch of rabble who, in Pilot’s eyes, could have rivalled the mob who stormed the laboratory in Mel Brook’s movie “Young Frankenstein.” He also has before him an unlikely suspect on a even more unlikely charge.

Getting him out of bed must have made him angry enough but when he looked over the faces of the crowd he may have become even more angry.

His relationship with the people standing before him has been tumultuous from the start when he, full of himself, insulted “their religious sensibilities ... [by hanging] worship images of the emperor throughout Jerusalem and had coins bearing pagan religious symbols minted.”2

They were not his supporters, and Pilate was afraid that it is possible to lose control of this angry mob very quickly.  If word of a revolt got back to Rome it would call his leadership abilities into question.  It might cost him his job, his pension, his security, even his life.

He is investigating the only charge that interests a Roman prefect. Pretension to kingship in this restive province on a festal weekend is an annoyance and requires his attention. But the man before him would never have caught the notice of imperial profilers, and Pilate is a little incredulous: “Are you the King of the Jews?”4

We must understand that matters of religion do not matter to Pilate.  He has only one legitimate concern, and that is whether Jesus poses a threat to Rome.  If Jesus is assuming the role of king, that is treason—punishable by death.   If not, call it a day and everybody can go back to bed.

Pilate can hardly imagine that this ordinary looking man would be trying to pass himself off as a king.  His question to Jesus is really a mocking question of the crowd: “Are you the king of the Jews?”  He is baiting them and appealing to their sense of tribalism.

We know all about that.  

A leader who may be afraid keeps showing us his anger.  A leader who is afraid may exploit divisions that may already exist and make them deeper.  He may play to the people’s fears.

The people in front of Pilate were exhibiting their fears in their anger as well.  They too were afraid that they were going to lose everything.  

Anger born of fear can lead us to terrible places.  Anger born of fear can lead us to do terrible things.

It can lead some people to define truth as anything they want it to be.  

It can lead some to seek to destroy any who oppose them or, at least, threaten to lock them up.

It can lead some to want to separate families lest they, while searching for a better life, take jobs that few are willing to do anyway.  

Anger born of fear can cause us to call out the military to “protect” us from a group of men, women, and children who are fleeing their home counties for the lives.

 Anger born of fear can cause any who have a heart, or fear for their mortal souls, to look back at what they have done and be very, very sorry.

And today’s gospel tells us that anger born of fear can lead to the death of an innocent man.

Yet this innocent seems to be the only one in this little tableau to not be fearful or even angry.  Instead, he seems to be the only one who is in control.

Instead of referring to Jesus’ trial and crucifixion as a Passion Narrative Father Raymond Brown in his book The Death of the Messiah calls it “The Book of Glory” in which Jesus comes to do what he ultimately came to do.

He came to do what he is recorded as doing today: Challenging the powerful. 

Pilate, who may see himself as the most powerful man in the city, is ultimately the one Jesus puts on trial here. 

When Pilate asks him sarcastically here, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus replies in effect, “Who told you that?”

At this point Pilate has to admit that he is just listening to the cries of a fearful, angry crowd.  He is not his own person.  He is not thinking for himself.  He is just parroting what others have told him.

What they have told him is kill this guy and we’ll have nothing to fear.  Kill Jesus and we will have one less thing to be angry about.  Kill this rabble rouser and maybe his crowds will go home and our nation will be safe.  Kill Jesus and maybe, just maybe, everything will be great again.

It is not as Pilate asks, “What have you done?” but a matter of what Jesus about to do.  He is about to do that for which he was born and for which he came into the world.

He is about to show us that his Kingdom is not of this world because it is a kingdom built on something else.

Jesus' way out of our cliched choices is another way.  His way is to follow him.  His way is to do what he did and act as he acted.

There will always be those who live in a perpetual state of anger.  There will always be those who live in a perpetual state of fear.  Jesus is showing us another way that is above politics and power but it is about “peace making instead of war mongering, liberation not exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy and not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, humility rather than hubris, and inclusion rather than exclusion.”4

In the midst of all the cliches that divide.  In the midst of all the cliches that induce anger and fear we can choose to follow Jesus.  

It’s not a once and for all choice, it’s a daily choice, that continually turns us back to him. For to live as Jesus would have us live doesn’t present us with one grand victory but little victories that ultimately point to him and his kingdom.

For as Walter Bruggemann reminds us:

Like Jesus and all the ancient prophets, we are sent back into the world to do the good work entrusted us.  It is the work of peace-making.  It is the work of truth-telling. It is the work of justice-doing. It is good work, but it requires our resolve to stay at it, even in the face of the forces to the contrary that are sure to prevail for a season” but in the end will not ultimately triumph.

That is not a cliche. That is not something that exists only in some room in our “mind palace.” That is our hope, and it is to that hope we must ultimately cling even on those days when we feel ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place because our rock, our leader, is Jesus Christ our Lord whose kingdom, whose reign and rule, has lasted to this very day and will last “to infinity and beyond.”

And that’s no cliche.  That is a promise.

________________

1.  Sarah Zielinski, “The Secrets of Sherlock’s Mind Palace,” Smithsonian.com February 3, 2014, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets-sherlocks-mind-palace-180949567/.

2. Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. "Pontius Pilate: Govenor of Judea," accessed November 21, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pontius-Pilate.

3. Leonard Beechy, “A New Kind of King: John 18:33-37,” The Christian Century, November 17, 2009, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2009-11/new-kind-king?code=4GITJI3cX0u9i3UFWJBw&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter

4. ibid.

5. Dan Clendenin, “King Jesus,” Journey with Jesus, November 17, 2024, https://journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay.

 

 

Pentecost 26B - "When the End is the Beginning"

 Saint Mark 13:1-13

So I was driving home one day, westbound on Belmont Avenue, when I pulled up next to one of those plastic wrapped busses that are giant, moving, advertisements from stem to stern.  Usually I pay little or no attention, but this one caught my eye because written in bold letters on the side were the words: “Judgement Day is here.”

“Yipes!” I thought to myself. “I wish somebody had told me I would have warned my people.”

Pulling back my gaze just a bit I saw a very stern looking woman staring down from window level on the side of the bus.  She didn’t look at all happy.  Clearly judgement day was coming, and all was not going to go well for any who were subject to her glowering scowl.  

I recognized that face.  It was no other than, Judith Susan Sheindlin, better known to most of us as Judge Judy who for twenty-five years mediated disputes big and small between parties who were willing to have their courtroom arguments heard in public. For her efforts her program was consistently rated among the top programs on daytime television and also made her an incredibly wealthy woman.  

Not unbelievably, in 2013 “ABC's ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ took to the streets of Los Angeles ... to ask people what they thought of President Obama nominating Judge Judy to the Supreme Court. Of course, Obama did no such thing”1 but that didn’t stop many who were interviewed from voicing their support.  At this point in time, it wouldn’t surprise me that a majority of the even more gullible American people believe she is on the supreme court. 

She is not, but she does apparently have a new show “Judy Justice.” Same format, same kinds of cases, but for some reason she has exchanged her black judicial robe for a more telegenic red one.

The ad on the bus clearly referred to the new show’s premier when, obviously, judgement day would come.  The disciples couldn’t see it but for Jesus the signs of the judgement for the people were written in the handwriting on the walls of the temple in Jerusalem.

For the disciples the temple was the biggest, boldest, and most unshakable symbol of the presence of the Holy One they could imagine but it was also the largest public works project of its day. 

It was built by King Herod who, Scripture and history tell us, was a despicable human being. He was a misogynist, a slanderer, and a destroyer of any enemy, real or perceived, that seemed to get in his way.  He was a leader without any moral compass. And, to make matters worse, because he surrounded himself with toadies who dared not say no to him his power was mostly unchecked.

The two things he had going for him was that he was a dealmaker and a builder.

So, the first thing he does is strike a deal with the religious leaders.  It was transactional. I’ll build you a centre for worship and you leave me alone to do whatever I please.  They would be free to practice whatever religion they wanted; in whatever way they wanted so long as they didn’t question Herod and his authority. He would build them a temple if they would give him peace.

And build them a temple he did.  It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  It was “twice as large as the Roman Forum and four times as large as the Athenian Acropolis with its Parthenon.”  The Roman Historian Josephus reported that “Herod used so much gold to cover the outside walls of the temple that, in the bright sunlight, it nearly blinded anyone who looked at it.”2

While the religious leaders saw the temple as the centre of their worship life Herod saw it as his way to make money and, in so doing, solidify his power.  He was a first century huckster.  “Let’s see if we can increase tourism just a little bit and give all those people coming to Jerusalem on pilgrimages something to see.” he might have said. But, make no mistake about it, it was clear that this was Herod’s temple, the only thing he didn’t do was place his name on the front of the building in 20-foot-high letters. 

That is what Jesus’ disciples were looking at on that fine day, and without a doubt, the temple, Herod’s temple, was one of the most spectacular things they had ever seen. But Jesus throws water on his friends’ slack-jawed amazement by announcing.  “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”3

You can imagine the disciples looking at him with puzzled looks on their faces. Maybe he had to repeat himself: “There’s not a stone in the whole works that is not going to end up in a heap of rubble.”4

When they catch their breath enough to respond all they can do is ask, in effect, “Where? When?  How?”

And all Jesus does is give them a warning for their day and for all time. 

So, Jesus began to tell them: “Be very careful that no one deceives you. Many are going to come in my name and say, ‘I am he’, and will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, don’t be alarmed. such things are bound to happen, but the end is not yet. Nation will take up arms against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in different places and terrible famines. But this is only the beginning”

And then he goes on to tell them one verse later in The Good Book: “You yourselves must keep your wits about you...”5

That may be the hardest, most difficult ask of all by Jesus.

When the world seems to be falling apart and the wrongs seem often strong we are not to follow after any charlatan, religious or political, who sees themselves or are seen by their followers as “the annointed one” who can solve any problem and make their people’s lives great again.  Do not follow after anyone who promises that “anything broken they can fix.”  

History is full of such “leaders” who have failed their flocks mightily in the words of the old commercial “promising them anything but giving them Arpege.”  And history is also full of fallen followers who “drank the Kool-Aid” and paid the price.

Jesus is only saying to us: “Be careful. Be very careful who in this life you choose to follow because you just may discover that your hero is really a Herod in disguise.

It dosn’t take a warning on the side of a city bus to bring us up short and remind us that the world just may be bringing about judgement on itself.  

Jesus was not a soothsayer.  He wasn’t about the business of predicting the future but he could read the signs of the times, and he knew that Herod’s of his day and ours don’t last.  Judgement day will come for them.

Just as the temple – built by Herod – would be destroyed less than a biblical generation after his disciples were caught up in admiration of its magnificent stones so too the proud emperors and empires of earth will pass away.  

We know that the only thing left of the temple after the revolt against Rome in 70A.D. is the Western Wall, the “wailing wall” still there but still fought over to this day.

So, it shouldn’t take a warning on the side of a city bus to remind us that some have chosen to follow the lesser gods of politics – power and prestige – will find out that those gods won’t last.

In this troubling context, it’s easy to despair.  Or to grow numb.  Or to let exhaustion win.  But it’s precisely now, now when the world around us feels like it may be coming to an end, that we have to respond by tethering ourselves more closely to Jesus and following his ways.

It’s precisely now, when systemic evil and age-old brokenness threatens to bring us to ruin that we have to “hold each other tight” and allow the walls that separate us one from another to fall and to reveal what is really happening.  What’s happening, Jesus promises at the end of this week’s Gospel reading, is not death, but a new beginning. 

A new beginning that will come, as the hymn writer reminds us, “not through swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but in deeds of love and mercy.” That’s how Christ’s kingdom, a reign and rule that has lasted through the ages, will come.

May that day of new beginnings and restoration come and come soon.

________________

1.     Sean Sullivan, “Jimmy Kimmel Asks: Judge Judy for the Supreme Court? (Video) - The Washington Post, thewashingtonpost.com, May 17, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/05/17/jimmy-kimmel-asks-judge-judy-for-the-supreme-court-video/.

2. Debie Thomas, “Not One Stone,” Journey with Jesus, November 11, 2018, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2010-not-one-stone.

3. St. Mark 13:2. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

4. St. Mark 13:2. (MESSAGE) [Message=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004)]

5. St. Mark 13:5-11. (PHILLIPS) [J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).