Fourth Sunday of Advent: What is the right thing to do? (12.21.25)

Matthew 1:18-25

A couple of weeks ago I told you about my nativity set and how it does not have a John the Baptist figurine.  It turns out that today’s starring bible character in our gospel reading also has a problem in the little manger set in my living room: In the scene, we’ve got the baby Jesus and the animals.  Mary is fabulous with this bright blue flashy dress with gold trim, and then there’s Joseph…wait. Which one is Joseph--?  

Hm. There’s the one guy with the sparkling gold trim on his suit, he seems like a good guess—that is, if he’s not one of the three kings. (Everyone is wearing robes in this manger town it’s hard to tell.)  There’s another guy in the group that could be Jospeh, but he’s holding a staff...maybe he’s actually a shepherd? I thought Jospeh was a carpenter—did he have a staff?Which one is Joseph!?  Of all the characters in the nativity, you’d think the adoptive father of our Lord would be important, but the poor guy has been relegated to the B-list of supporting actors. 

 

In today’s gospel reading, Joseph does get a few minutes in the spotlight. I just read you the version of St. Matthew’s nativity story. I admit, it doesn’t quite have the same sparkle as the “shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night” version from the gospel of St. Luke. (there’s a reason I’m not reading version I just read to you on Christmas Eve.  One theologian mused, "can you imagine a Christmas pageant about a man who has a dream that helps him decide what to do about a woman in his life?" Hallmark might have better luck with that story line.)  But Joseph does get his moment here in this scripture reading today.

Maybe there’s a reason they give us Matthew’s version of the Christmas story now. St. Matthew’s gospel bumps us into a different room of the Nativity a room where things are uncertain and all is not yet calm and bright.  And that’s exactly where many of us live right now.  

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In this part of the story, we get the camera angle that amplifies Joseph’s stress or worry.  He and Mary have a big problem on their hands with this whole immaculate conception thing. I do wish Mary had some lines in this version. She doesn’t. Maybe she has already rushed off to her cousin Elizabeth’s house searching for support. 

We don't have much from Mary but we do have a very pensive Joseph and what is pretty clear is that he wants to do the right thing. The story says that Joesph is “righteous” which doesn’t mean he’s high and mighty or sanctimonious. It means that he wanted to do the right thing before God. I think most of us here today do—that’s how God built us. We want to take care of the ones we love, we want people to be taken care of, for life to flourish abundantly. we don’t want to do harm. We want to do the right thing.

Joseph seems like a pretty ordinary, probably good person.  Yes, he does to have a very religious fiancé—she sure quotes a lot of ancient scripture off the top of her head in that Magnificat she sang when the angel gave her the pregnancy news.  And most likely, Joseph is just as seeped in religious teaching as she is.  The conundrum for Joseph is: What is the right thing to do in this situation? 

This camera angle on the scene takes us through Joseph’s thinking: first he decides to end his engagement to Mary but as “quietly” as possible, scripture says. Today, engagements can be called off with relative ease. But in Joseph and Mary’s situation, it’s complicated. It’s possible that land or animals have been exchanged and that the families have officially opened a metaphorical investment account together. Most likely, it’s going to require legal action to annul this thing. How Joseph can do this while shielding them both from all the small-town eyes that are watching (from “disgrace”)? It’s a lot to think through.  What is the right thing to do?

As an aside, too many of us have heard sermons about Joseph trying to save Mary from being stoned to death but, if we are going to take the bible seriously, David and Bathsheba were accused of the same sin that modern people are holding Mary to in this story and they weren’t stoned to death. We don’t need to diminish Mary and Joseph’s Jewish culture in order to make the Christian story look good. I think the good people of Nazareth would have taken care of Mary and Jesus had Joseph split from her.  In truth, we don’t need to add drama like that to this story. Joseph already has enough and doesn’t have easy options here.  Finally, in a dream, God shows Joseph what is in store and it helps Joseph decide the right thing to do.  He stays with Mary and names Jesus. I’m sure it was more complicated than the five bible verses we have about it.  

As theologian Matt Skinner put it, “the angel Gabriel doesn’t give him some token (of assurance) or notarized document from God to prove to the people that everything is fine. All he gets (from that angel) is a promise. Which is evidently enough for him.” 

Which leads me to our contemporary world, today. Tonight, the night of, Dec. 21st, is the longest night of 2025. Night after night has gotten longer and longer as the sun has set earlier and risen later. I am all for a little Christmas coziness in the evenings but by this point, I’m about done with the long night.  In my head, I know that the astronomical balance will tilt back and the days will get longer, but at the moment, it feels like that will never happen. Joseph’s uncertainty echos even now; and these long, cold nights resonate in this cultural moment we’re living in.  

Many of us are carrying this underground sense of strain these days.  It’s not necessarily fear but uncertainty and maybe some pressure. Chicago is a big, complicated city.  We all regularly encounter people who are pretty different from us—who have different experiences, and opinions. We are seeing power exercised on our streets, we are reading a variety of headlines, and we are thinking of actual faces of people connected to these storylines.  Some of us are worried about it. Some of us are angry or fed up. There’s strain around what’s happening: Pressure to have the right opinion. A push to respond quickly. 

I think, in moments like this, the hardest thing isn’t knowing what we oppose, it’s knowing what faithfulness is. What is the right thing to do right here now and in our own lives? And that question doesn’t just belong to the headlines—it shows up at our kitchen tables, in our friendships and in all those little decisions we’re holding on a given day. Joseph  wants to do the right thing, but whatever that is isn’t obvious to him and all of the options are risky. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have clairvoyant dreams like Joseph did that help me make decisions every time things get rough. How do we figure it out?

Have you ever been in an eye exam they ask you, “this lens or this one?”  With each answer and adjustment of the dial, you edge closer to the right prescription? The right thing to do is not always the loudest response, knee-jerk response. It’s not always the speedy reaction or the morally safe-looking behavior.  The right thing is what participates in God’s life-giving activity around us.   What amplifies God’s love in the world?  We can’t see the whole picture of what God is doing so faithfulness shows up as a next right step and not necessarily as a full map. 

We see characters in the bible beyond Joseph who wrestle with their next steps all over the place in scripture. We watch Queen Esther wrestle with whether or not to defy the evil King Hammond. We watch Jacob wrestle with whether he should reconcile with his brother.  We watch the Apostle Philip question with whether or not to baptize the Ethiopian man in the desert. We watch them edge toward the right thing to do—like the eye doctor asking “this lens or this one,” edging them closer to the answer. (1)

Instead of adjustments to the lens, our wrestling deals with questions like: Does this step I could take preserve human dignity?  Does this thing I could do (or not do) widen or shrink Love in the world?  In this situation I’m in what else might be true here?

These questions aren’t going to illuminate the instant answer, instead they guide us. Faith is not applying rules to a situation.  Yes, we do ground our responses into some ancient, wise pilars of our faith-- Like the knowledge that we are called to act with neighborliness and that all people are created in precious God’s image, even the ones we don’t like--ugh. 

Joseph faces his conundrum and wants to do the right thing. Then, with a little help from the angel in a dream, he figures out what that right thing is, And then, finally, Joseph has got to follow through and do it. And we have arrived at our final step.

Josph has got to act. It’s a turning point. He doesn’t just sit there watching or thinking about it. He’s got to find the courage to do it.  Joseph has a decision to make when he wakes up from that dream. 

If he doesn’t act swiftly, he might question himself as the dream fades. But, Joseph chooses to trust the angel’s voice.  I admit that if I had a dream like this, I would have a more questions for the angel Gabe: (ie. How exactly does one parent a kid who is descended from God?) Joseph doesn’t seem worried. In fact he seems okay to move ahead even though it’s not totally clear how things will work out. 

And, maybe this is what it looks like to follow God, I’m not sure how this is going to shake out. or if the journey will be hard,  or what it will cost me, but I’m going to walk it.  

On any given day, we’re faced with problems that ask for faithful answers—some of them downright courageous answers. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit moves among us. Building a new world takes thoughtfulness and heart.  Taking care of people—especially when things are strained--takes faithfulness and courage.  Doing the right thing isn’t always the flashiest option. Joseph isn’t the flashiest character in the nativity scene. But Joseph wakes up from his dream and he walks. And sometimes, that is faith: trusting God enough to take ordinary grace-filled steps of love that give shape to the Holy Light already present around us.

(1) Not all bible characters are positive moral examples.  Joseph from the Hebrew Bible (the one with the amazing technicolor coat) is thrown into a pit and left for dead after his brothers wrestle with their jealousy about him.  Their actions do not widen God's love in the world. 

2nd Sunday of Advent: Here's why J.B. doesn't make it into the Nativity Set on your mantel (12.7.25)

 Matt 3:1-12

Every year during Advent—this season leading up to Christmas—John the Baptist makes an appearance in our assigned readings.   In my house we have a little nativity set made of carved wooden figurines that we bring out each Christmas season.  The set has lots of characters: there are the pious Mary and Joseph. We put them on either side of the manger. There are some humble looking shepherds holding their staffs with their wooly sheep.  We’ve got the three fancy magi holding their snazzy gifts and with their fancy camels, and there is a cherubic little angel who flutters above the stable.  But we have no John the Baptist… In fact, have multiple nativity sets in our house—made of clay, straw, wood, stone--I checked them all. Nope. No J.B. in any of them.

Just for fun, let’s think about what he would look like if he were part of the carved little set: For starters, instead of a pretty, flowing robe, he’d be wearing a furry animal skin. Then, instead gold, frankincense and myrrh in his arms, He would be holding a jar of Christmas locusts in one hand—maybe chocolate covered locusts?--And…a pitchfork! in the other—or an axe? (maybe they could put a bow on the pitchfork to take the edge off a little). and then, I think he would also have some sort of softly glowing…(let’s say) bull horn at his feet.   when the children would ask about this sweet character, we would tell them: "Ah, this is humble John who prepared the way for Jesus!" And then, when the children ask what that means, we could tell them that he roared at the people and called them a pack of snakes that needed to repent and then yelled about hellfire. 

Nah…! No one wants a pitchfork at the nativity! If we did include him, it would mess up our whole little serene scene…which I suppose would be something, wouldn’t it?

Gotta love John the Baptist—it’s true, he doesn’t totally fit with the—ah--Christmas spirit.   Funny thing is, although he’s not so popular now, people apparently flocked to the desert to hear him back in the day—quite possibly Jesus being one of these people.  He’s a little fringy, but everyone’s very into it.   Part of the thing with John is that he’s always railing about repentance! And God’s judgement!  And, let’s be honest…God’s judgement is not top of the list for festive conversation topics for holiday parties.  Repentance is not our go-to conversation starter for “the most wonderful time of the year.”  and really, is it our go-to—any time of the year?

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Judgement is a hard one. I know there are a lot of people out there who have experienced judgement from Christianity.  To some, it can seem like “Christians” (in the big sense) have some sort of license to decide what’s sinful and who deserves condemnation. And for some of us—many of us--that is cringy. we want to distance ourselves from this kind of intolerance or hypocrisy (like preferably distance ourselves with a 100 foot pole) and…we tend to gravitate towards the bible stories that describe God’s love and acceptance and generosity and bypass the ones that talk about judgement and repentance. Or, if we’re going to talk about judgement, maybe God could use a bit more gentle parenting?

Over the next year, starting now in the season of Advent, we will be working our way through the gospel of Matthew. And let me tell you: John the Baptist is tone setting here here in his opening act for his whole gospel story. This John-the-Baptist-story is going to shape Matthew’s version of the Jesus story.

A couple of months ago, I told someone Matthew was my favorite gospel.  Yeah, I changed my mind about that a few days ago. There’s some anger running through the chapters of Matthew.  And with it, some harsh language. People who question or challenge Jesus—like religious leaders?--are painted in a pretty unflattering way.  Which has given Christians ammunition for antisemitic hatred over the centuries.  Jesus threatens judgement and punishment all over Matthew.   What do we do with gospel texts that talk about “casting people into eternal fire” when we know God is love?  

As I was thinking about this this week, a phrase kept echoing through my mind by James Baldwin’s—an American author and civil rights voice known for his fierce honesty. he once wrote: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  

Believe me, I didn’t expect to connect Baldwin to the Baptist but they both seem to get how we’d much rather avoid the truth.  And—ugh—they’re both very good at dragging what is hiding out into view. I searched through my files and sermon to see where I had quoted this—yes several times for you—and specifically multiple time on…Ash Wednesday, which is the day that I refer to as, “the most honest day of the year.” 

Baldwin and the Baptist are both painfully honest. Baldwin’s original article, called “As Much Truth as One Can Bear” was published in the NYT in 1962. Nothing can change, he says, without facing it.  And we want change And it is terribly hard to take a hard look at things. He writes that “people cannot bear much reality; most of us do not dare to look directly at our lives.”    Baldwin wrote that telling the truth is key and that it would,

“illuminate that darkness, 
blaze roads through that vast forest, 
so that we will not, in all our doing,
 lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, 
to make the world a more human dwelling place.”  

Blaze roads through that vast forest.  John the Baptist bursts into the gospel story insists, fiercely, that there is brokenness in the world that must be repaired. 

In the whole cycle of confession, accountability, repentance we want to jump over the part where we admit wrong-doing to the part of grace and forgiveness and mercy.  We want to get to that place of restoration that we heard about in Isaiah. A place where:

They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
 as the waters cover the sea.

But we can’t skip over the truth telling on our way to wholeness. We have to admit it.  We have to shine a light on the places where things are cracking in our own lives and around us. 

Our old liturgy would say  “that we are in bondage to sin and we cannot free ourselves.”   We have to turn and look at the sting we cause, the suffering we turn away from, the way we participate in harm without meaning to, the ways things are not what God intends. John has some anger about the truth of the way things are. So does Jesus. (so does Baldwin!) (I think it’s because they all love ferociously). John sounds like someone who is at the end of his rope.  Who is sick of the way things are—“utterly sick of injustice and wickedness.” He wants people to face the truth. 

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One of the hard things in this is that it can be paralyzing to face what’s wrong in ourselves and in the world.  How do we get from where we are (here) to a place of growth (there). This has always been a hard question.  Leave it to John to ask the hard questions.  (Hello, this is why we don’t want him with his pitchfork in our nativity scene). Getting from here to there (otherwise known as growing) has always been a process. It’s learning from our mis-steps, discovering that it actually matters when we act mercifully.  Then, actually doing something about it--Changing, transforming, and growing. This is God’s creative energy moving and working in us. It is asking where does the question of “What can I do” meet the question of “what needs to be done?”  A lot might need to be done to repar our world and lives, but what can I do? We know it is God who redeems the world.  But what is also true is that God acts through us.  

Redemption is a series of small steps.  Of small acts. Day after day.  

Each step mends a crack in our world.  John doesn’t quite use worlds like mend. He’s more of the “take an axe and cut off the branch that isn’t bearing fruit” variety. Isaiah has a chopped tree image today too and he reminds us that a shoot shall break forth out of the stump, a branch shall grow forth from its’ roots.  

We’re called to prune our lives into the shape of “the one who is coming”  as John puts it. Into the shape of Jesus. John shows up in the beginning but then Jesus takes the baton and he will have more pointed teaching for us, some of them fiery, all of them motivated by passionate love for people.

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John the Baptist.  John is not a seasonal interruption.  There is a hallmark version of Christmas ( hot coco and all.) But our story is not that.  It’s not even just loving a sweet little bland babe in a manger. 

This is a story of tyrant kings and brave young parents, It’s a story where God’s angels singing out among the stars herald the promise of a new day.  In this story of Christmas, God breaks into our broken world to be with us to mend us.  And God does it in the most upside down and confounding way—as this baby.

At Christmas, we celebrate that this is astonishing. And we open our hearts to this stunning aliveness of God’s presence which will change us—for the better! A life of faith demands that we pause and listen and evaluate our lives.  Judgement and repentance aren’t the extra, take it or leave it parts of our faith—they’re the everyday, honest way we stay open to grace. 

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John isn’t asking for a dramatic overhaul. He’s inviting us into the pattern of faith: That we face what is real. That we prune off what needs to go. (John would recommend an axe instead of pruning sheers—meh. God works with either). And, then that we begin again.

John the Baptist would have known that a journey from here to there takes time, that transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It took 40 years for the Israelites to journey through the wilderness for pete’s sake. But we’re called to a life shaped by transformation. A life suffused with the love of God. This love repairs. This Grace heals. This Accountability rights wrongs. 

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You know, Maybe John never makes it into our little nativity sets, maybe he’s too loud, too honest, too wild for the little wooden stable.  But, doesn’t mean he’s not there on the edge of the scene, ruffling feathers, pruning branches and even encouraging us in his brusque, direct way to look at life squarely, release what must go and repair what needs mending. To open our hearts to a God who comes close and shimmies into the cracks to face what we fear and heal where we hurt. 

Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let every heart prepare him room, for the kingdom of God is near.

At our band-led service, we finished with this song.  This kind of transformation and change doesn't happen overnight. It's not easy. And we are sustained, undone and redone by God's gracious presence who sees us through. 

First Sunday of Advent: when peace asks something of you (11.30.25)

Isaiah 2:1-5

Matthew 24:36-44

We’ve had Omar’s brother and sister in town the last few days which we have loved.   I’ve known my in-laws for a long time—we met in what sometimes feels like it was another life time when I lived in Honduras.  Now, we all live in the US and things are different.   Today, Honduras will hold national elections for president.  Since the coup de’etat 16 years ago, tension has been very fraught and a few days ago, on the eve of these very important national elections, it was announced that a corrupt former president serving time in the US may be pardoned which will have grave ramifications for today’s elections.  There is such a painful of history in Honduras coupled with so much tension and desperation it’s difficult to understand how could this be?

As we make a turn to Advent where we’ll soon sing those words from Mary’s Magnificat at evening vespers, “you have cast the mighty down from their thrones, you have filled the hungry with wondrous things…”  the headlines in the world make me ask, Have you, God?

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Do you find yourself reaching for hope these days? I also stumbled over our verses in the book of Isaiah this week too, maybe you recognize these verses: 

“they shall beat their swords into plowshares 
and their spears into pruning hooks; 
nation shall not lift up sword against nation; 
neither shall they learn war any more.”  

Those words sound hollow as Ukrainian flags still fly in my neighborhood, as I hear stories about war and destruction in the middle east including tens of thousands of children who have been killed in Gaza, and as we hear of acts of violence here in our city of Chicago.

They shall beat their swords into plowshares…Right. So, exactly when was that part going to begin…?

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We can’t always see the world as Isaiah saw it.  Our attention is constantly called to weapons of war and acts of violence.  The idea of peace would have been provocative in the time of Isaiah and Amos, too, just like it is now.  On one hand, it was a prosperous time where the government was building a strong army but on the other hand, Isaiah cries out in judgement about the sinfulness of the people. His world was thick with problems. And apparently, even in the midst of that chaos and all those problems there was still a vision of peace. 

This image of swords being beaten into plowshares has come up in recent decades. We love the poetry. Many of our presidents, from FDR, to Nixon, to Reagan, and Carter have all given a shout out to Isaiah 2.   In 1959, the USSR gave the US an iconic statue based on this verse which sits in front of the UN. Given the state of the world these days, it is mind-boggling to me that a statue of this vision still sits there on the sidewalk with these unresolved conflicts raging around it.  Loving this imagery is one thing—everybody wants the poetry—but living it? Well, that’s another thing. 

For starters, I’m quite conscious that, for all we talk of peace, religions have been a source of conflict.  In the verses from Isaiah we have an image of peace where God is supreme and all the nations are streaming towards this holy mountain where God is. 

There is this cosmic uniformity in these verses.  It sounds a little like, “if everyone would just turn towards God who looks like this, we would have peace.”   But we are not all the same and neither is our understanding of God. On closer look,  We find these same verses—almost exactly the same—Are also recorded in the book of Micah—another prophet who was writing around the same time. But after the prophet Micah explains that everyone will stream in unison to God’s holy mountain, he adds that 

[everyone] shall all sit under their own vines 
and under their own fig trees,
    and no one shall make them afraid,
    for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.
For all the peoples walk,
    each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God

As Micah explains it, there is space for religious diversity here.  Rabbi Johnathan Sacks pointed this out.  Peace does not require sameness but requires making space for real difference and this is hard.  If you think about it, war is more emotionally satisfying than peace.  When we’re at war on a great or small scale, we get to dig our heels in, grip our opinions fiercely.  We like fighting. Peace threatens our identity.

We don’t want to compromise and we don’t want our leaders to compromise.  Sacks wrote, 

“those who show courage in the heat of battle are often celebrated. Those who take risks for peace are all too often assassinated, among them Lincoln, Ghandi, MLK, Anwar Sadat…the pursuit of peace can come to seem like a kind of betrayal. It involves compromise. It means settling for less than one would like. It has none of the purity and clarity of war in which the issues—national honour, patriotism, pride  are unambiguous and compelling.” 

If we actually want peace, we have to be willing to cede, to give a little—we have to be able to let go a little even if it’s something we feel very passionately about—we have to be okay with being a little dissatisfied.  We have to advance the ball a little, a few yards, even if imperfectly. This is why peace can feel like betrayal because we have to be uncomfortable, or lose a little. It costs something. This can challenge our pride, our identity, our need to be right.  Peace can destabilize the way we imagine ourselves.  It asks us to make space for the ones who are different from us.  It calls for restraint and humility. (Not exactly the most celebrated cultural values at the moment.)  Peace is both provocative and evocative. It pulls us magnetically toward God’s vision and, at the same time, it exposes these parts of ourselves that resist it (resist God’s vision)—Peace exposes our pride, our certainty, our ego. This is one reason the poetry of peace is more compelling than the practice.  No wonder we find war emotionally satisfying and peace emotionally costly… 

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The challenge of practicing peace isn’t only out there in global conflicts—it lives in the moral vocabulary and habits we carry every day too.  If peace is costly, then it needs a vocabulary that acknowledges that we belong to each other. One that acknowledges our duty to one another, but that vocabulary has been thinning…

Consider this: In the last 50-70 years, there has been a decline in the English phrase (American English phrase, that is) “I ought.”  It’s much more common to hear “I want,” “I choose,” or “I feel.”  Or even “you do you.”  There’s been a shift in recent decades away from language of moral obligation and towards language of personal desire and autonomy.

When I speak Spanish, as we do at home, I use words like deber or hay que much more frequently than words like must or ought in English. (I kind of never us the word ought.) We do use the word should, in English some (I use it), but we’ve taught ourselves to be suspicious of it.  Could be because we are suspicious of moral authority? 

As your institutional spokesperson for morality this morning, I want to emphasize that I’m not here to rail on you about the sins of dancing, cussing and living with your boyfriend.   Sure, I’ll talk about any of it, but, I am asking us this morning to trace a moral line and consider how our language leads us to think about the duty we have to one another. Peace requires a moral imagination that is bigger that just me. Sometimes, this means peace asks for restraint. Sometimes, it asks us to think of a common good over our individual good.

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So how do we, as ordinary people hold onto this costly, dazzling vision of peace? When I think of the vision of peace that Isaiah describes, I think of it like a lighthouse. Isaiah wasn’t describing a moment of peace; he was describing a direction like a horizon line of God’s longing for the world that we row our boat towards, that we walk towards, move towards. If peace is the lighthouse, what are the lanterns of peace that light our way as we walk in the shadows toward it? 

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Lanterns don’t illuminate miles ahead, They light the next few steps. They don’t solve world conflict but they orient us and  help us walk differently in our own lives.  They are lanterns of choosing curiosity over victory in a hard conversations. They are the lanterns of allowing someone else to be different without needing them to be wrong.  They are the lanterns of pausing instead of pouncing on someone, of asking a question instead of preparing our accusation. They are these small plowshares that we fashion instead of the swords of snap judgements or cutting anger. And here is where it gets even cooler: lanterns accumulate.

One small act of restraint, one word that is softened, one attempt at humility, one generous moment of giving someone the benefit of the doubt, all of them together, they glow. They gather into a path and they begin to change how we show up in the world. They begin to change the air around us. These small, simple, unglamorous lanterns do not look like geopolitical peace. They look like human peace—the kind that begins in us. We love the poetry of peace—but the lanterns are its practice where peace begins to come into view.  

Advent teaches us that God’s great light arrives not all at once but in flickers and glimmers in the shadows.  In one small  but sacred candle that lights the next, and the next, and the next until the path glows with more light than we first imagined possible. 

Making sense of the crucifixion (11.23.25)

Luke 23:33-43

Deep in the heart of Cologne, Germany there is an enormous gothic cathedral. In it, there is a side chapel with a large crucifix carved out of a single oak block that is about six feet tall.  The crucifix is surrounded with an oval of gold with sun rays shimmering outward.  In the center, Jesus hangs on the cross, his head lifeless, eyes closed.  The crucifix is estimated to have been carved around the year 970. I was struck that this tree was carved out of oak—and by who felled those oaks. In the years around 750-800, King Charlemagne, waged a brutal war in the expansion of the Frankish territory into northeast into Saxony.  The city of Cologne sits in the heart of Saxony and history tells us that Charlemagne was terrorizing and cruel in this area--thousands were massacred.  In his war tactics, Charlemagne forced people into baptism by the sword. He outlawed pagan rights, destroyed sacred groves of trees—many of them oak trees. The crucifix in the chapel, called the Gero Cross was carved out of oak and is the oldest surviving image of a dead Jesus on the cross.  As far as historians can tell, It took about 1,000 years of Christianity for Jesus to show up dead on the cross.  

We could talk for hours, (for days) about the first 1,000 years of Christianity and the images of paradise that permeated the early church:  Instead of suffering, these were images of shepherds and green pastures, starry night skies and the garden of Eden. But today, on Christ the King Sunday, we are assigned this bible reading of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus.  

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There is something about this Gero cross that I can’t shake. Christianity emerged and then grew in societies where there was a lot of economic disparity, slavery and war. This happened across the centuries and continents. People who received Christianity in the harshest ways somehow reshaped it into a source of dignity, survival and liberation. On one hand, as the religion spread in Europe, people were baptized by the sword but underneath it, a dying Jesus was hewn for a heartbroken people out of an ancient oak.

In the Americas, Native people were evangelized under the crown of Spain but later the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to beaten-down indigenous Mexicans with brown skin, speaking their native language and offering tenderness. 

These communities and peoples reinterpreted the faith forced on them.  God broke through the awful stories with this startling presence and connection.

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The whole point of crucifixion was to destroy people, to terrify them to silence the truth and suffocate their ability to tell the story of what happened.  But somewhere along the way, crucifixion began to witness to the worst a community can endure.  The story of the crucifixion said:“this awful thing happened."  The horror was palpable and yet, with fierce mercy, "God was still somehow there.”

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The good news is that God meets us exactly in the places meant to undo us.  Don’t ask me how—God’s grace is found at the end of our rope. God brings us life where none should be possible.  Through Christ, who enters the depths with us, we survive.  God’s presence enters the worst a community or a person can endure, bears it with us, mends what is broken and then ushers us into new life in an astonishing act of grace. Life is found through God’s simple presence. 

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These stories of oaks and stumps and felled trees aren’t just stories from long ago, they also echo today in our own landscape. The weather is changing and I happen to have two oak trees in my tiny yard.   We’ve planted both of them and they are growing but as the days get colder, I see them begin to lose their leaves and prepare for the winter.  My trees are young and thin, many of the branches are thinner than my wrist. In thinking about that Gero cross carved of oak in old saxony, I know that Oak trees can live to be over 1,000 years old some say even 2,000 years old.  That crucifix that was carved may have been from a tree that was quite old.  It may have come from a grove that Charlemange destroyed.  Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what I think of this: that from a felled tree came the image of a Christ who refuses to be cut down with us.

As I look at the trees in my yard I watch them shiver and transition into a colder season. In these gloomy months where the sun is dim, the branches will stop reaching. They will simply endure and wait in the winter silence. I know that all of us have lived through chilly seasons:  seasons where our emotional reserves are thin, days where the leaves fall, bark thickens, and the months of winter tic slowly by.  Some of us have tension at home or work, or we’ve received pain of crushing news. Some of us have loved ones who struggling. and some of us are simply depleted.  God doesn’t wait for the perfect conditions to show up.  God doesn’t wait for us to do our part and exert the right amount of effort. God doesn’t scan the landscape for the perfect grove of flourishing trees and decide that is the most comfortable place to be revealed.  

God arrives in the felled woods, Babe in a manger, among the stumps and jagged edges, the rings of our own histories.  In today’s reading Jeremiah speaks of a righteous branch. Isaiah also mentions a  “shoot that comes out of the stump of Jesse.”  God shows up among the toppled trees. Don’t ask me how, but God brings life from what looks like dead wood.  “Today,” Jesus says to the man on the cross next to him, “you will be with me in paradise.”  God brings relief, connection and life out of the most desolate places.  Always has.

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The story of the cross is many things.  Interestingly, the church never made some grand, over aching dogmatic declaration about what the cross means. Over the centuries, no one ever called an ecumenical council to explain the cross for us. It means a lot of things, but today, I see that it is a witness to God’s enduring presence even in the mist of the total worst a person or a people can go through.  

We’re on the cusp of Advent where we come back to this truth that God is with us. Sometimes, we need to hear the story. We need to hear the witness of where people are crucified in our world; and sometimes we need to tell it out of our own lived experiences.

As we step into Advent, (this season that is so very honest about the darkness that is around us) What are the candles that you light in the shadows--small beacons of connection that the world needs?  How do you tell the story of God with us even in the worst of times?

Maybe it’s a way you’ve shown up for someone or something.  Some of you families are managing the free little pantry—and believe me, it’s getting a lot of traction these days!  with people leaving things and taking what they need.  Each visit is a spark of life. Sometimes, the stories of God showing up are more personal: It’s the story you share about the loneliness you don’t talk about, the fear creeping under the surface that worries if everything will be okay, the anxiety around money or the future, the pressure to preform. “Today,” Jesus says to the man on the cross next to him, “you will be with me in paradise.”

Paradise doesn’t mean life without struggle, or a life free from problems where we don’t have to wrestle with injustice, suffering and evil.  One theologian writes, “Histories of harm are all around us. Forces of evil operate within and among us. And yet, bushes are on fire all around us. The risen Christ is with us on the road. The spirit rises on the wind. Rivers of paradise circle the earth… We don’t have to retrieve paradise or construct it, we have to perceive it and bring our lives and cultures into accord with it.”

“Today you will be with me in paradise” is connection with one another, it’s feeling seen, advocating for change, it’s belonging, its justice. It is that mysterious Communion of Saints that  surrounds us and God’s light present among us. 

So as Advent dawns, bring your places of weight—your weariness, your longing, your worries, your winters. God meets you there.  God holds it with you and speaks into the places meant to undo you.  God refuses to abandon you. And then open out, lift your eyes, take the anchors off your lungs because Christ is waiting for us in those crucified places in our world: Where people are cut down, pushed aside and suffering. God finds us where we are breaking, we find God where the world is breaking. And as we find each other, God connects us, mends us, enlivens us and today, even for a moment, we are with God in paradise. 

A message for Confirmands about a girl, a bull, and the church (11.16.25)

 Luke 19:1-10

Last weekend, I was downtown for a protest. The crowd was vast and in my persistent attempt to hook up with the group we were trying to meet, I climbed a light post in the middle of the sea of people to have a look around. Up on the concrete base, I was about four feet above everyone else, and finally from this vantage point, I gained perspective.  All around me people called out asking what I could see from up there and I told them that the crowd was on the move. 

When Zacchaeus climbed up that tree in our bible story today, he was also trying to see everything from a different vantage point. Something had gotten ahold of Zacchaeus, made an impact on him and motivated him to climb up to get a better look. 

Zacchaeus was, the story tells us, a ruler/chief tax collector.  We’ve been conditioned enough by scripture to be suspicious of both rulers and tax collectors so as soon as the story starts, we already don’t have the best feeling about this guy.  As we hear in the bible story Zacchaeus has tricked people: He has been selfish and careless and people don’t like him. But for some reason, he’s taken a step away from his work as a tax-collector and towards Jesus.  Why?  Why is this corrupt man determined to see Jesus?  Did he look in the mirror that morning and not like who he saw? Was he tired of being excluded, disillusioned with his choices, guilty about the lifestyle he was living? 

We’re not exactly sure why he is so determined to see Jesus, but something deep and desperate is going on inside of Zacchaeus and it’s so strong that he casts dignity to the winds and climbs the tree.

I’m sure Zacchaeus had heard stories about Jesus: The mysterious Rabbi who healed all of these people, he had fed the 5,000 people with two loaves of bread and five fish. Maybe it was the stories that had shifted something in him. Maybe it was his teachings or even his simple presence that had caused him to look differently at his own life.

People shift, like Zacchaeus did. So do cultures. When Zacchaeus climbed a tree his perspective changed.  And perspective can change through so many ways. 

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Have any of you been to New York City? Omar and I lived there when I went to divinity school.  In the heart of the financial district, in a park off Broadway Avenue, there is a bronze sculpture called Charging Bull. Perhaps you’ve seen it. The bull is muscular with big brass horns. It looks like it has just seen something and it is pivoting and about to charge. Italian sculptor, Arturo Di Modica unloaded it in the dead of night in December of 1989 and left it near a Christmas tree in front of the new York Stock Exchange. 

The sculpture, Di Modica said represented prosperity and strength and was a gift to “bolster the spirits” of investors after the 1987 market crash.  (A very heavy gift. The thing weighs over 7,000 pounds and is 11 feet tall.) 

Twenty-eight years after the bull was installed, in 2017, another statue received a permit to be placed in Bowling Green park. It was a four-foot-tall sculpture of a little girl with her hands on her hips, her chin lifted, and her ponytail blowing in the wind.  In the way she was positioned, defiantly facing the bull about 10 feet away, it looked like the bull was charging her. Next to the bull’s three tons, she was tiny, a mere weighed 250 lbs. Artist, Kristen Visibal, named her Fearless Girl. There was a lot of buzz over Fearless Girl. You see, she changed how people saw the bull and Di Modicha was not okay with this.   Shortly after she was installed as a statue, They held a press conference which turned emotional and he said the Fearless Girl was “attacking” Charging Bull.   “She changed the meaning of the piece,” he said and “turned his proud bull into a villain.” He threatened to sue.

Visbal, the artist of the Girl, said that the Bull was “beautiful” and “a stunning piece of art,” but that “the world changes.” She held firm.

There was a lot of controversy around this: how much control can artists exercise over how their art is interpreted? Who is more powerful here?, The bull or the girl? but at the crux was a reality that art or whatever we call “good” art interprets the world around it.  

Hang two pieces of art next to each other and they’ll speak to each other.  Beyond that, art interprets the places where it shows up.  Play a certain song outside an immigration detention facility and it will speak. Paint a mural in a certain neighborhood and it will speak.  Art also gives us a lens on our own lives. My mom and I attended a concert by a famous pianist when she was sick with cancer and we wept through the entire thing—don’t ask me why, no one else did, but something about the music cracked us.   

Art or music or poetry stands in the world with this decentered power.  It makes us see things differently. The fearless girls powerfully shifts our perception and she seems to do it with her mere presence. Somehow, Jesus does this too.

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Pastor Scott Black Johnson has made an argument that churches are God’s art. Now, Some of us will say that a sunset is God’s art, or a baby’s laugh is God’s art. Yes, fine I agree.  But I’m talking about a different kind of art:  Black says, “You know the story: Christ came and taught and healed. He suffered and died and rose. He called the disciples, gave them the gospel, and charged them to love each other and go around preaching, casting out demons, and living the good news.  Jesus challenged this motley crew to become the church—to be God’s art.” God’s art that sits there at the side of power, and causes us to see our neighborhood, our workplace and our lives differently.

Now, I will be the first to say that the church is imperfect.  If you’ve spent any time in the church, you’ll know that people will disappoint you and frustrate you. This project called community can be really hard. Beyond that, if you’ve spent any time reading headlines about the church, you’ll know that the church has made and makes a lot of mistakes.  

And yet, the church sits to the side, just as Jesus stood to the side of the dominant Roman culture and leads the people to see the world around them differently. 

The Church’s very presence and commitment to neighborliness can even cause the wider world passing by to pause, catch it’s breath and see things differently. This decentered power of Jesus sure made Zacchaeus see his world in a new way. 

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You confirmands are stepping into a life of faith where you are going to ask questions about Why God? And then Why church?  

I don’t think I need to tell you that there are a lot of challenges in our world today. We’ve talked about them. You think about them.  You think about fairness and how you can take care of people.  You think about our environment and the problems with violence in our world.  You are big hearted, sensitive and deeply kind people and I love you all.  

Many years ago before many of us were born, the church provided a more obvious moral compass in our society. When economic philosophies were being written generations ago and then later during the civil rights movement, the magnetism of religious ethics held the moral line and helped keep a check on power and greed. That has changed. I am a clergy person and I don’t think I have to tell you that I don’t have near the authority in our society that the pastor who stood here 50-60 years ago did.  And yet, the church still wields power. The change is that now it is decentered, it is a power of presence, of authority that shifts the game from the sidelines. It may be different but it still pulls people back to moral alignment. That is profoundly important. And you are a part of this. 

Jesus was a humble man  who stood alongside of a big cultural machine of the Roman empire.  He was miniature compared to the 3-ton bull. And yet, somehow his very humble presence was shockingly transformative.  It transformed individuals like Zacchaeus who felt his influence like a force field. It transformed the wider culture, and it transforms us now.  

It is a presence that doesn’t seek the reins of power. It doesn’t charge in like a bull. It stands to the side and offers moral critique and love and grounding. It recalibrates our vision with a gravity that pulls us back to mercy, grace, compassion and justice. 

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I think Zacchaeus wanted something better in his life.  He wasn’t connected to his community, he was cheating people at work, nobody liked him. When he climbed the tree to see Jesus more clearly, he didn’t expect that Jesus would also see him and it changed him.

We don’t have Jesus’ physical person the way Zacchaeus did, but we do have the body of Christ here in the church. This is what happens when we draw near to this strange and beautiful thing called church. It changes us.

When the Fearless Girl stood beside Charging Bull, the whole story shifted. When a rag-tag early church filled with the holy spirit stood beside that ancient empire, history turned. And when you, yes you, confirmands, step into this church to stand next to the world, our perspective shifts, our hearts open, we see differently and, for a moment, the kingdom breaks in.

A message for All Saints about grief, mast years, and the grace of each other (11.2.25)

Luke 6:20-31

Several weeks ago, I attended a family reunion in Nebraska. We met on the farm where my aunt lives.  This farm, though hundreds of miles away, is the place I have had the longest-standing relationship with over the course of my life.  My Nana grew up at this farm, and then fell in love there with my Papa, a hired farm hand.  My grandparents raised their family on this farm. 

The farmhouse still has the same smell on the third floor where we slept—and the same wind that waved through the prairie grasses in my grandparent’s days still whistles through the trees.  When I walk the old roads, the same gravel still crunches under my feet and it feels a little like time collapses. It’s like our generations are all layered there on top of each other.

Most of us at the reunion were from my generation with a handful of our kids running around.  The couple of gray haired members present were the ones who had tucked me in at night years ago. 

In some senses, those of us gathered that October weekend, were different.  Some of us live close to that little praire town, others now live in rural Florida, and still other in urban Chicago.  And yet, the sense of connection that we share with each other--and with the place—is strong.  Also thick in the air was that grief that comes with aging, illness, the pain of missing those who weren’t there, and just knowing that loss is a pattern in life.

I arrived at the farm to see that the top had blown off the old maple tree in a storm months earlier.  As we walked around the grounds my cousin and I noticed how many trees had come down.  The old mulberry grove was gone. My aunt and uncle had planted new trees but many of them were still young and thin. Way down in the low corner lot a half a mile up the road was the black walnut grove my grandpa had planted many years ago.  He had once brought the walnuts back to the farm after visiting our family in Illinois and planted them to see what would take root. Some of the walnut trees had died—there had been a lot of drought in the last decade, and yet, as we walked through the grove, the ground was carpeted with round green nuts.

Our world is not an easy one—there are wars and deportations, catastrophic storms and poverty. There’re loneliness and wounded relationships. Bigotry and illness. Anna Blaedel wrote "it is a great gift in this life to survive to old age...It is also so hard, so brave, so tender: confronting death’s inevitability.” 

One afternoon, I walked down the hill from the farm house towards the pole barn and saw the elders sitting together in the big open doorway enjoying last lingering bit of dusky light.  I had brought a couple of walnuts back with me from my walk to show the kids. The walnut grove, I later learned may have had what is called a mast year.  Every few years, nut trees have a mast year where they produce an exceptional amount of nuts.  In such a year, the ground may be covered with walnuts and it’s a welcome treat for all the squirrels and chipmunks who store away the tasty nuts or plant them.  A mast year requires an extra push of energy from the tree.  It’s a lot of work to grow all those extra nuts!  

Anna Bladel reflected on trees and wrote: “It’s an intense labor [of the trees], growing possibilities, sowing seeds, imagining what is not yet but could be.  During mast years," she explained, "trees practice their laborious commitment to a future they may or may not live to see.”  Nut trees don’t lavishly bloom like this every year.  Some years, they rest. But, in a mast year, they give everything they have—it’s this act of reckless hope. 

It’s truly a mystery how trees are able to do this together in symphony. Scientists have said that they think trees communicate through their roots, through the soil and through fungi. Apparently, they are able to sense the same cues in the environment, think as one, and respond together. Just like an orchestra tunes to a first violin, the trees seem to hear the same notes and tune their beings into sync. And, in a mast year, they decide that this is the year, this is the moment to give it everything they've got!

In a perfect world, isn’t this what the Communion of Saints does, too? Sometimes we get it right. We listen for and share each other’s needs. We sense our community’s needs, we bear together, and we give when it matters most. 

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None of us knows how much time we have left.  Some of us are all too sharply aware of how fragile life is.  Our choir director, Derek, was recently telling me that his grandpa turns 100 next week. Each day is a gift. And, we do think about what kind of legacy we want to leave and what kind of future we want to plant.  Last week, Miriah spoke in church and reminded us that we have done so much as a congregation that we never could have done alone.  The Communion of Saints entrusted this building to us. The ancients entrusted this deep rooted faith to us that leads us to sense and listen for those who are hungry, those who those who weep, those who mourn.  The harvest we’ve shared and the new seeds we’ve planted as a church have been many. 

Over this last year, we’ve helped five migrant families achieve independent living.  We’ve buried the saints who have gone before us. We’ve baptized those who are growing up in our midst. We’ve raised more money for the crazy boiler than anyone else ever thought was possible. We’ve shown up for each other, sometimes just as a quiet presence down the pew. We’ve shown up for our neighborhood as a persistent steward of hope. We’ve held one another through grief and change. 

A grove is like a mini forest and is full of trees that have fallen and those just beginning to take root. It’s like a church: some of us in this grove here, are deeply rooted, others newly planted. Together, we weather storms and bear fruit, all in our seasons.  They say that trees in a forest are mysteriously connected through the roots that run through the soil.   This Communion of Saints also extends to what we can only sense: we are connected through time and space mysteriously to those who have come before us and to those who will come to be. 

We are a Communion of Saints.  Like pride of lions, an army of ants, a murmuration of starlings that soars in the air, we are a Communion of Saints: A mysterious Communion that stretches across time and space to connect and unite us. In the Communion, the stories of our ancestors, the faith of the ancients and the hope for the future crystalize with purpose around us. 

In just a bit, we’ll welcome our new members to the front of the sanctuary and welcome them into the life of the church. We join, we participate, we share in these struggles and joys of life here in the church because we know that we cannot save ourselves. Try as we might, we need each other. If this current moment we’re living through in society has shown us anything it is that we cannot save ourselves and need to lean on the Holy One: on God present in our midst; on Christ made alive among us.  

New members, we are so thankful to welcome you! Long-time members, we are so blessed by your presence in our midst!  May we, as a congregation--as a Communion--make this year that we are living through a kind of mast year: A year overflowing with love and grace for each other and those around us.  

May we give generously, and forgive heartily, may we hope extravagantly and commit tenaciously to this mysterious project of the church. Like my grandparent’s walnut grove, we may not see the full harvest of what we plant—but still we plant, still, we hope, we insist, we love.   For grace unfolds slowly over time, God works on us gradually through the seasons, hope takes root and takes ahold of us and bears fruit in astonishing, untamed grace.