An Advent of Biblical Proportions

I had been in Jerusalem for two days. The adrenaline that had been powering me through the jet lag was beginning to wear off. But I was determined to keep up my schedule. Just before I went to bed at the hotel I looked at the map to plan a morning run. Our hotel was on the west side of the Old City and I saw that if I ran around to the east side of the city and crossed the bridge across the Kidron Valley I would find myself in Gethsemane - the place where Jesus prayed on the night of his betrayal. Our schedule was full so if I was going to do this I had to get up at 5 am for a 5:30 run. But when the alarm went off at 5 am I groaned. I hit the button and briefly considered skipping the run and going to sleep. But then I heard Jesus' voice. That happened a lot in Jerusalem. I kept hearing Jesus say things. Like when I was running up the Via Dolorosa, the route Jesus had taken to the cross, and it was steeper than anything I had run on the Eastern Shore, and I was considering walking a little bit, and I heard a voice saying, "What would Jesus do?" But this was not the Via Dolorosa; it was the Garden of Gethsemane I wanted to go to. And what did Jesus say to Peter, James & John when he came back from praying there and found them sleeping? "Why are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?" That's what I heard. So I got my lazy self out of bed and went running. It was dark at 5:30. The street lamps put splotches of fluorescent light on the sidewalks and pavement. Dogs barked. A rooster crowed down in the valley. Along the street in front of the south walls of the Old City Hassidic Jews lined up to catch buses to work. Around the east side Muslim workers did the same thing. Bells rang in the Christian quarter to call people to prayer. A recorded voice sang out the call to prayer from the minarets. In some ways it was like every other city in the world. In other ways it was like no other place. When I got to southeast corner of the walls the sun was just starting to peek over the Mount of Olives. The first morning I went running it shocked me to get to this point because I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by graves. Along the walls was a large Arab cemetery with graves right up to the walls below the Temple of the Rock. They even covered the entrance to the Golden Gate - an ancient gate that has been closed up for centuries now. Down below me in the Kidron Valley was a Christian cemetery and across the valley, all along the southern base of the Mount of Olives was a huge Jewish cemetery. Now why are all these people buried in the same area? The prophet Zechariah, in chapter 14, tells of a time when the Lord would come to vindicate the people against all their enemies. And Zechariah clearly says that God's feet will be on the Mount of Olives and the mountain will split in half to create a valley through which the people besieged in Jerusalem will escape (Zech 14:4). So the Jewish Messianic belief has centered on this notion that when the Messiah comes he will appear first on the Mount of Olives and that closed up gate, the Golden Gate, will open. To be buried on the Mount of Olives is to be in the front row for the day of the Lord's salvation. Muslim beliefs about the end of times also have a role for Jerusalem as a place of judgment. But as I heard the story, there is a defensive reason for the graves. No Jewish messiah would dare to touch dead bodies and to risk becoming unclean, so the graves are meant to block the Golden Gate. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but there are lots of stories in Jerusalem. Then there are the Christians. And what is it that we expect? Christians have traditionally looked to the east as the direction from which Jesus will return in the clouds to claim the chosen people. Most old churches are oriented toward the east. And if you're in Jerusalem, the sun comes up in the east over the Mount of Olives. So to be buried near the Mount of Olives, again, is to be in the front rows for the return of our Messiah. Why am I telling you this story on the first day of Advent? Because this is that strange season of the year. Time gets muddled. Expectations are all mixed up. Music in the malls has been proclaiming a baby in a manger since the day after Halloween. Thanksgiving disappeared in a Black Friday avalanche. The ABC Family TV network is proclaiming the 25 days of Christmas ending on December 25 instead of the traditional 12 days of Christmas beginning on Christmas Day. Santa Claus is already getting overexposed. Our credit cards are already maxed out. Cats living with dogs. It's all mixed up. Even in our scripture readings it's all mixed up. We come expecting angel choirs and shepherds in the fields and Isaiah tells us about dried up leaves and broken pottery. We want to sing 'joy to the world' and 'peace on earth,' but Jesus tells us to stay awake because the heavens are going to shake and the earth is going to quake and something dreadful is going to happen before the coming Day of the Lord. There will be wars and rumors of wars, famines, persecutions, family divisions. Happy holidays! Advent must be something we didn't expect. Advent must be more than just a rehearsal of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Advent must be about a day we didn't expect, but maybe we should. Advent on the Mount of Olives is about a time yet to come when even death is not the end of the story. There are thousands of dead people waiting at the Golden Gate for one more chapter in this story. So maybe we ought to be looking for more than just a good deal during this season. Maybe we ought to expect an advent of biblical proportions. The 13th chapter of Mark's gospel, which we read from this morning, has always troubled Christians. It comes near the end of the gospel as Jesus is preparing for his arrest and crucifixion. His disciples are trying to get a handle on how this all going to go down. They're in awe of Jerusalem and the Temple. In the opening verses of this chapter they sound like tourists. "Teacher, look at these buildings! Look at these stones!" Jesus is not impressed. "These will all be torn down," he tells the disciples. "Not one stone will be left upon another." Then he goes on to describe for them the tribulations that are to come. Disturbances of the earth and of the heavens. Persecutions for his followers. Conflicts that will lead to death and destruction. Horrible things. "Pray that it may not come in the winter," he said. Then Jesus concludes his warnings with this line that we have been puzzling over ever since. After saying that no one, not even Jesus, knows when the end will come, when he will appear over the Mount of Olives with his angels to gather the chosen from the ends of the earth, he says, "This generation will not pass away before these things come to pass." Now to hear this in 33 AD is one thing. And that generation did not pass away before many of those things did take place. The city was destroyed. The holy site of the Temple was desecrated with pagan worship. There were wars and rumors of wars. There was death and destruction and persecution. By 70 AD Jerusalem was a wasteland. But that generation did pass away and still Christians waited. And each new generation has waited. Maybe it will come when Rome falls. Maybe it will happen when we get to the year 1000. Maybe the year 2000. Maybe on in May of 2011. No, we miscalculated. Maybe it's October. Everyone who has ever made a prediction about the end of time in their lifetime has been wrong. Unless we missed something dramatic. So what could that mean? Well, maybe "this generation" doesn't mean a specific strata of time, but a kind of people. A kind of people who are less than holy, but who need a savior. A kind of people who know struggles and trials. A kind of people who thirst for a word from God. In God's time, maybe we are of the same generation of those disciples because we are the same kind of people. And what does Jesus tell such a people? To stay awake. To be ready. To be alert. How hard is that? Well, in chapter 13 Jesus tells the disciples to be alert and in chapter 14 he asks three of them, "Why are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?" It's harder than it looks to stay awake. Staying awake means living your life in expectation. It's an active expectation. We don't wait for Jesus by putting our lives on hold and neglecting the world around us because, really, what does it matter if Jesus is coming again? No, to have an Advent of biblical proportions means to be know that everything we do every day, every moment is invested with meaning and importance. You think you're living your life and yours alone? You think nobody else should care what you are doing because really, it's nobody's business? Your business is my business. I can't live your life for you, but I can tell you that it matters how you treat other people. It matters how you manage the resources that have been given to you - your time, your money, your talents and gifts. It matters how you direct your life and what you give yourself to. It matters because there is a time at the end of time when our lives are exposed for what they are - a day of judgment. But it also matters because if the message of Jesus has transformed our lives and we are expecting the coming kingdom, our lives in the here and now ought to be infused with glimpses of that kingdom - "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." This season is a hard one. It's hard to keep. It's hard to hold yourself in a creative tension between what is now and what is to come. It's also hard because so many of us have so many things going on within us during the holidays. It's not always soft lights and warm memories. In our minds and our hearts are memories of past hurts that grow more painful at the holidays. Ways we have been wronged or slighted or neglected or abused. Loved ones that we have lost and that we miss more acutely at the holidays. Rough places that feel rougher. Hard times that feel harder. But keep alert. Keep watch. Don't hit the snooze bar until Christmas. Because you are not alone in this season. God has things for you to do and things for you to receive. And we have things to do together as a people waiting for Christ to come. Thanks be to God.

When the King Has Got Your Back

Paul was a pain in the rear end. Yes, I'm talking about the Apostle Paul. Yes, I'm talking about the Paul who is credited as the author of the book of Ephesians which we read this morning. Yes, I'm talking about the Paul who was knocked off his donkey by a blinding revelation of Jesus, who started churches all over Asia Minor and Greece, who wrote the letters that formed the nucleus of our New Testament. That Paul was a pain in the rear end. If you don't believe me just ask the other disciples. I mean, they had been with Jesus. They had travelled with Jesus. They had seen the arrest and the trial and the death and the resurrection. If anybody knew Jesus, they knew Jesus. Paul had not been there. In fact, Paul had been trained as a Pharisee. Paul had been standing by when Stephen, a deacon in the new Church, was stoned to death. Paul was holding the cloaks of the people throwing the stones. He was a coat clerk at the first Christian martyrdom. He persecuted Christians. Then he got converted and you know that there is nothing more annoying than a new convert. They think they know it all. They think nobody ever had an experience like theirs. And they want to tell you how you've got it wrong. Even if you're one of the original twelve disciples! That's what it was like with Paul. He was not from Jerusalem. He had been born up in what is now Turkey. A tentmaker by trade, but trained in the traditions of the Jewish law. Then he had that conversion experience on the Damascus Road and he suddenly saw something that the original group of disciples was having difficulty acknowledging. Paul could see that Jesus of Nazareth was not just a Jewish Messiah but the Savior of the whole world. If it was good news for the Jews it was also good news for the Greeks, the Romans, the Cretes, and the Gauls. It was a hard thing for good Jews to hear. Peter had to have a vision from heaven to tell him that it was OK to go baptize a Roman centurian named Cornelius and his family. But it was just obvious to Paul. So they finally had a conference in Jerusalem somewhere around 50 AD, some 17 years after Jesus' crucifixion. Paul met with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, who had become a leader of the Jerusalem church. You can read about it in Acts chapter 15. The Jerusalem Council was tense. There were many Christians in Jerusalem who still believed that Jewish rites like circumcision would be required even for new converts. But Paul was convinced that God would not burden new Christians with unnecessary rules. In the end they agreed to endorse Paul's mission and they sent him out with some representatives from their group. Things were still tense though and about 8 years later Paul had to come back. Simon Montefiore describes the scene in his new book, Jerusalem: A Biography: By now James and the elders in Jerusalem disapproved of Paul. They had known the real Jesus, yet Paul insisted: "I have been crucified with Christ. The life I live now is not my life but the life Christ lives in me." He claimed, "I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body." James, that respected holy man, accused him of rejecting Judaism. Even Paul could not ignore Jesus' own brother.* So he came back to Jerusalem and went to the Temple with James to pray as a Jew. In the process he created such an uproar that he was arrested. When he demanded a trial as a Roman citizen he was shipped off to Rome. There, according to tradition, he was executed. But what he did before dying was to open the door for all of us to follow. The Church that was born at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon all those Jews gathered from all those nations would now go to all those nations with good news for everyone. I think it's kind of comforting to know that the early Church had its fights and conflicts, too. And I think it's kind of comforting to know that God can work through people like Paul, who was a pain in the rear end for the people around him. Paul could see what others had a hard time seeing - that Jesus was the King and that changed everything. We live with so many flawed kings and queens these days. We have always lived with so many flawed rulers. They are vulnerable to corruption, hopelessly weak or dangerously dictatorial, too enslaved to public opinion or too unmoved by it. We need our leaders to be the best we have to offer but they always turn out to be...human. So what was so compelling about Paul's vision of Jesus that made him such a pain? The passage from Ephesians gives us a glimpse. Verse 15 of chapter 1 says, and I'm reading from the New English translation here, "For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you when I remember you in my prayers." Paul is writing to a community that has caught the vision, that has seen Jesus for who he was. Paul is giving thanks as he starts and he is encouraging this community. The next verse he starts laying out what he is praying for on behalf of these new Christians, "I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you spiritual wisdom and revelation in your growing knowledge of him, – since the eyes of your heart have been enlightened – so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe, as displayed in the exercise of his immense strength." So what is he saying here? He wants them to burn like he is burning. He wants them to get the big picture because it is so easy to get swallowed up in the day to day. He wants them to see with the "eyes of their heart" and not just with their physical eyes. Because you know what you see when you just look with your physical eyes? You see a world that is falling apart. You see life as a slow progression of loss and disintegration. You see disease winning. You see poverty winning. You see injustice winning. You see the powers and principalities getting a chokehold on our institutions. You see your bad habits and your addictions and your wounds and your failures and your sin beginning to define your life. And that is not the truth. What do we sing in that praise song, "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, I want to see you." That's the prayer Paul has here for the Ephesians. He wants them to see a greater reality breaking into this one. There's more though. He goes on...and I hate to say it but Paul, in addition to being a pain is also a difficult writer to comprehend...he gets too excited and just starts piling on the clauses...but he goes on to say that he wants them to know "the hope of Jesus' calling" - that he wants them to know that their reality starts in Jesus' calling them to be a set apart people. They have a particular mission on earth and that is to be witnesses to hope. They are to be hope. So that's one thing he wants to remind them of. Secondly, he wants them to know "the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints." Christians aren't known for their great wealth in this world. Joel Osteen not withstanding, the primary witness to Christ is the message of sacrifice and service. Right living is the mark of the Christian. The wealth Paul is talking about is in the people - the saints - who have responded to Jesus' call and who are now living in the wealth of God's kingdom. The Crystal Cathedral in California, this great marvel of glass and architecture, was sold this week because the ministry that built it failed. This week we sent 127 shoeboxes with the good news of Jesus around the world and we distributed 267 bags of food to people in our community. I believe God appreciates beauty but when it is disconnected from the needs of the world, where is our true wealth. Paul wants us to see it ahead of us. Finally, Paul wants the Ephesians to know "the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe." They may be poor and persecuted. They may be on the margins of the society. But the Christians Paul was talking to, like us, should never believe that they have no power. If God could raise Jesus from the dead in this world, God can do greater things yet. So when we believe that all our good efforts have come to naught. When we believe that bad things will always happen to good people. When we believe that we can't make a difference or that things have always been this way and always will be. When we believe these things we make the mistake of believing we have no power. But God knows that King has got our back. Paul has talked about the past, present and future. He has talked about our calling in the past that has set us on a different journey. He has talked about the riches of the saints in glory who tell us about our destiny. And he has talked about the power that God exhibits in the here and now to be what God knows we can be. One thing great kings and queens can do is to inspire us to be like them. How else do you explain the thousands of Elvis impersonators in this world? Everybody wants to be the King. But King Jesus came to us in a very particular way. His life revealed that the way of kingship was through humility. The way of glory came through suffering. The way of community was through love. And only through death with a crown made of thorns on his head could he then take his place at the right hand of God. We are getting ready to enter a very special season of the year. In a lot of ways it's our season. The world is putting on bright lights and its shiny best because we have a message of light and life. The world is celebrating because we have told the world there is a reason to celebrate. But we will also be challenged. We will be challenged by the messages we hear to spend too much, to do too much, to eat too much, and to listen for God too little. Don't forget who you are. You were called by the King. You are meant for the King. And the King has got your back. Thanks be to God. *Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography, [Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2011], p. 212 (electronic edition)

What We Shall Be

Last week was Halloween and if you came out to our Harvest Party at the church last Monday night you would have seen a great collection of costumes. I saw people dressed up as pirates and cowboys, a flower in a pot, Mario from the video games, and Sawyer came as a Northampton County Sheriff's Deputy. It was really great. But what I have been trying to figure out is why we are so fascinated these days with zombies.


In Norfolk they had a huge zombie night in Ghent where people came dressed as zombies and, I don't know, I guess they chased each other slowly around the city. It seems like everywhere you look these days there are movies and TV shows and events where zombies are the star of the show.
I'm sure there's some great cultural point to be made about all this. What is it about where we are as a society right now that makes zombies our favorite scary creatures? Is it because the economy is in such bad shape that we like to envision our fears as a slumping, lumbering zombie? Is it a sign of our guilt over things we have done in the past - a symbol for the debt crisis where the things we thought were long gone are coming back to haunt us because we still haven't paid for them? I don't know. Maybe some of us just like gory movies and there's plenty of gore in zombie movies.

Or maybe there's some image of us in those zombies. Maybe we feel like zombies. Maybe we're feeling a little disconnected from life. Not quite dead but not fully alive either. Maybe we're hungry for life, hungry for something we can't even name. And because we are so bad at imagining that that hunger could lead us to something beautiful and life-giving we imagine that the only future for us is ugly and disturbing. Maybe we're the zombies. Or maybe that's just me.

The first letter of John in the New Testament is a short little book. It was written to Christians near the end of the first century and it imagines a world of conflict - the children of light versus...zombies...no, actually the antichrists. Now, I need to be clear about who the antichrists were. These are not some strange, supernatural creatures. Antichrist is the term the letter-writer was using to describe the false teachers who had taken the gospel message and perverted it - teaching things that were contrary to what Christ taught - antichristian teachings. Chapter 2 verse 19 tells us that, "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us, because if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us." (NET). And who is an antichrist? Verse 22 tells us that the antichrist is "the person who denies the Father and the Son."

The letter-writer reminds us that we should expect false teachings, especially as the second coming of Christ comes near. We should expect that there will be some who will try to present some other picture of God and Jesus. But what is the promise that we have been given that the antichrists want to deny? Verse 25 says: "Now this is the promise that he himself made to us: eternal life." (NET) It is eternal life that sets Christians apart.

And how do we hold on that promise? By remaining in Christ, remaining in the light, and by doing the things that Jesus told us to do. "The one who says he or she resides in God ought to walk just as Jesus walked" - verse 6 - loving their fellow Christians, trusting in the forgiveness of our sins, and expecting Christ's coming again.

When we talk about saints, as we do today on this All Saints Day, one of the things that marks them is the way that they are able to focus on exactly these things when it seems that all the world is coming apart around them. I think about my colleague in ministry, Kathleen Baskin-Ball, who I talk about in my new Advent book. Kathleen went into West Dallas, which was a difficult place, to begin a difficult ministry as pastor of a new church in an old, abandoned United Methodist Church. She was a single woman and she was determined to live in the neighborhood even though everybody around her told her that the toll would be too great. And it was hard but Kathleen said, “When it’s not convenient, when it costs us and we still take the time to listen to another’s heart and we love deeply, hope emerges.” So she did. And her church grew, mostly with young kids and poor folks.

Then she got a diagnosis of cancer at a very young age. Three years ago she died. But until her last week she was preaching at her new church, welcoming people at her home and asking them how they were.
People like Kathleen are remarkable because, when the world closes in on them and they are experiencing pain and discouragement, they keep their eyes focused on another place. The natural things, when we are experiencing illness or grief or loss is to let the horizon of our world shrink to the limits of our pain. We become captive to the thing that is happening to us. We define ourselves by what we can't do. But saints have a bigger vision.

The verses from 1 John that we actually read today tell us that the thing that defines Christians is not that they are better than the rest of the world. Not that they are immune from the pains of this world. The thing that defines them is that they know they are children of God. Their identity is secure. It doesn't flap around in the wind. It is secure. So as a Christian I know that whatever label others want to put on me - victim, outcast, old, weak, ugly, fat, scrawny, sick, loser, incapable, unable, unwanted - whatever label others want to put on me - none of those things define who I am. Because I am a child of God whose life is in Christ. And because of that I can love and look at the world with new eyes.

"See what sort of love the Father has given to us," 1 John chapter 3 says, "that we should be called God’s children – and indeed we are!...The world does not know us: because it did not know him. Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is." What we will be has not yet been revealed - but we know this - that we will not be zombies - we will be like Jesus. Seeing Jesus, just as he is, we will be like Jesus.

We've got a lot of things to celebrate as we remember today the names of those who have gone before us. The moments when grace pervaded the space between us and that other person. The hands we held. The prayers they prayed. The witness they gave in confronting the evil powers of this world. The tears they shed and the laughter. These things don't die because they grow out of love and, as Song of Songs tells us, "Love is stronger than death; passion fierce as the grave. Many waters cannot quench love."

But the saints don't die because they now have their eyes fixed on Jesus. Even in this life our eyes can be fixed on Jesus. It's one of the reasons Paul could call the Christians he wrote to "the saints assembled" in Rome or Ephesus or wherever they were. We are saints, not because we are holy in ourselves, but because we have our hope in the one who is holy and who can make us whole.

So what are you doing to get ready for the banquet table that God has prepared for us in heaven? Have you put your confidence in the one who shines in light? Or you lumbering and shuffling along in darkness and death? Are you focused on all that you have lost or are you trusting in the promise that what lies ahead makes all that we are going through now look like a dim shadow?

I don't put down this life. It is where we get a foretaste of what love is all about. It's where we get to live in love and fellowship with others. It's where we know the touch of our mother's lips on our forehead. It's where we know the smell of a meal at our grandmother's table. It's where we feel the strength of our fathers, the wisdom of our grandfathers, the thrill of a lover's kiss. It's where we experience the deep, warm rumble of a cat's purr, the eager, panting energy of a dog, and the soaring wonder of an eagle high above us. There is a lot that is good about this world. And the promise is better. It only gets better from here.

What shall we be? I don't know for sure, but we have a glimpse when we see what the saints see. So go out to love. Thanks be to God.