Home By Another Road
One of the benefits of growing up in a particular setting is that you tend to have a pretty good grasp of the ins and outs of that time and place. For those who grew up Methodist, or in Methodist churches, the Covenant Prayer that I read this morning may have sounded familiar. Or it might not have. While Methodist services can vary drastically from place to place, hopefully there are some things that feel familiar. And surely there are rituals and general feelings that resonate across Christian traditions, things that aren’t unique to the United Methodist Church. Although, that can also be a trap, like how the eucharistic liturgy that they use in Catholic Mass is almost the same as our liturgy but not quite. So the first time I went to Mass with my fiancee, Anna, who grew up Catholic, the priest started the Great Thanksgiving by saying, “The Lord be with you,” and the congregation responded with “And with your spirit.” And I thought, ok, a little different but I think I know how this goes. And the priest said, “Lift up your hearts,” which was met with “we lift them up to the Lord.” And I thought, alright, I definitely know how this goes. So when the priest came back with, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” I hit him with the most confident “It is right to give our thanks and praise” while everyone around me shared in the “It is right and just” line. To be fair, that’s what we Methodists used to say, too, so really we’re the odd ones. But either way, it was a good lesson for me in cultural humility.
There are parts of other cultures that aren’t always as accessible as a mostly common communion liturgy. I’ve lived in Western New York for just over six months now, and I’m still not really any closer to understanding the Wegmans hype. And that’s ok. We can’t expect those from other places to have the same relationship with rituals, stores, or stories that we have had opportunities to encounter our entire lives. Which is why it’s understandable when these non-Jewish astrologers arrive at the court of a Jewish ruler having read the wrong Jewish prophecy. They arrive reflecting the words of the prophet Isaiah, the words that we heard read this morning, about the gathering of the nation back and the increase of wealth. This is a prophecy about the restoration of the Jewish people following their exile to Babylon. This section of the Book of Isaiah was written after the Jewish people had returned from their exile, and sought to convey a message of hope for some sort of renewal following the traumatic experience of having their most important city, Jerusalem, levelled. The author of this portion of the prophecy was envisioning a time when Jerusalem would be rebuilt to its former glory, when its population would bounce back and the economy would see investment from all sorts of outside backers. People from all over the world would go to Jerusalem to spend their money, and the city would be as big, as powerful, and as wealthy as it had been before—and more so.
The magi, the central figures in today’s gospel reading, observed the signs of the times, signs they took to reveal the birth of a Jewish messiah, and read those signs through the lens of the restoration of power. That’s what makes sense. Even for outsiders, it only makes sense that the one who is prophesied to lead a people group out of oppression and into a new kingdom would seek to restore the political and economic prestige of the most important city for that people group. There were many insiders, many of the Jewish people, who would have agreed that this was the leader they were waiting for: the one who would restore the wealth and power they had once known. That’s what made sense, that was their idea of success and security. And today, this remains the prevailing vision we cast for ourselves of wealth and prosperity. We seek out leaders and rulers who are strong, who preach guarantees of the return of the old economy, the old patterns of influence. We rest in the comfort of hoping for a turn around, a shift in the ways things have been. Even when the same old patterns of despair come creeping into the corners of our vision. Even when the rulers who make these promises turn around and invade other nations, violating sovereignty and risking escalation. Even when the economic leaders seek to build wealth on shaky ground, risking economic collapse.
The magi arrive on the scene having travelled this road, the road of Isaiah 60. The road of power and might, the road of wealth and economic restoration, the road of traditional, institutional, normal power. But this is not the road they will take back home. The road they first travelled, the one that led them to Herod, to the imperial puppet, to the one profiting from the occupation of his own people, to the seat of political and religious power—that road did not lead them to the Christ child. Because the Christ child doesn’t live on that road. Instead, they had to reorient themselves, looking not to the leader described in Isaiah, but to the one pictured in Micah chapter 5.
“But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be the one of peace.”
This is the road down which they find the messiah. The road that leads to Bethlehem, a city nine miles from Jerusalem. Bethlehem was not a capital city in any sense. It is not where the king or governor ruled from, not where the high priest prayed, not where the markets were most bustling. Not the home of the scholarly elites or the wealthiest merchants. It was average, plain, somewhat rural. It was a city in the same way that places like Batavia and Canandaigua are technically cities. No shade on Batavia and Canandaigua, I’m sure they are lovely places and have a lot going for them. But they’re not the kinds of places where multitudes of camels would be found carrying heaps of gold and expensive incense. The road that the prophet Micah maps out for us takes us away from all that. It takes us away from the center—the center of power, the center of wealth, the center of religion. And it leads us towards the margins, towards the people and places where power is not. This is the road travelled by the shepherds, the outcasts barely getting by, and by the magi, the foreigners seeking an encounter with the messiah for reasons honestly unknown.
This is the road we are called to travel. This is the road on which we will encounter the Christ, as we seek to match our step with his. It’s a wide road—not wide so as to accommodate another lane of traffic or more street parking. But wide enough for all of us to travel together, finding strength, finding community, and finding hope along the way. As this season of Christmas comes to an end, as we continue down this road once more, of telling the story of the way that Christ walked, let this be our call: to travel home by another road. Not by the road of power, that bars the stranger and the poor. Not the road of kings and elites and pulpits and princes. Let us travel home together down the road of the shepherd, the one who feeds the flock, distributing justice and leading in peace. Let us travel this road, finding our home along the way, not in the center of it all, but at the margins. This is the work of Christmas. May it begin. Amen.
Amidst Forces of Empire
Some of you know that I spent my junior year of college in Madrid. Over the course of that year, many of you asked my parents some version of “How’s Kathryn’s time in Spain?” To which they replied, honestly, “Kathryn’s having a good time, but it’s hard too.”
I don’t think a lot of people studying abroad use “hard” to describe their time, but living in another country for any significant length of time is hard.
I spoke Spanish the majority of my time abroad, and it was hard. And yet I purposefully chose a full immersion program. Many immigrants and refugees living in a new country don’t have that choice, and some come with less knowledge of the local language than I did.
I had to get a student visa before going abroad, which was a frustrating process. Even more difficult was applying for a foreigner identity card while in Spain. Even with the help of my program, in the best of circumstances, dealing with government bureaucracy in a foreign language is overwhelming. Going through a process like that without extensive support – like many immigrants and refugees do – would be exponentially harder.
During my time abroad I lived in an unfamiliar place, in a different culture. It was hard for me to live in a city, in a different climate, with cultural norms I didn’t always understand, and that was even with a comfortable home and a host family to help guide me. I also knew that I would move back to the United States at the end of the school year. Many immigrants and refugees may not have any of these privileges as they adjust to living in a new place.
Today’s gospel reading doesn’t tell us the specifics of Jesus’ family’s experience as refugees in Egypt, but I imagine it was hard. For one thing, they left Israel because of a threat to their child. But what’s interesting about this Bible passage is that in a book with almost no details about Jesus’ childhood, eleven verses are devoted to telling the story of how Jesus became a refugee. This is a story that resonates not only with Jewish history throughout the Hebrew Bible but also with many other people groups who have their own histories of immigration. It’s hard to see how Christianity could be used to justify acts of racism, xenophobia, or colonialism by those in power when Jesus himself lived as a refugee because of the threat of state sanctioned violence against him.
Jesus’ refugee experience ends well. It would have been an untimely end to the gospels, after all, if he had successfully been murdered by Herod in his childhood or if he had died from violence while in a foreign land. And yet, even as Jesus’ family successfully flees persecution, Herod kills every other child under 2 in Bethlehem. We don’t see the large-scale destruction that must have resulted. Instead, we get a deeply personal image of Rachel crying out in grief for her children.
This is a deeply troubling text. It certainly doesn’t feel to me like God is present. How could God have let this kind of destruction happen? In fact, it crossed my mind as I read the text that it feels a little like God fled to Egypt alongside his son.
I don’t have answers to the discomfort this text brings. I actually think finding a way to explain the discomfort away would be a mistake. The response to a story of this nature, whether a biblical story from long ago or a news story in our world today, should not be a detached “oh, that’s sad.” The passage itself gives us this image of Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be consoled. That’s a perfectly normal response to tragedy, one that doesn’t – and perhaps can’t – happen in a world with overexposure to horrific news stories on top of personal loss.
Setting aside the question of God’s presence, I think we can all agree that this destruction was Herod’s fault. God may be a force for justice in the world, but unjust rulers have always existed in spite of God. In Herod’s case, he appears to be so afraid of any threat to his power that he’s willing to kill not just Jesus but any and all other children as well. Just a few verses before our gospel reading this morning is the story of the magi, in which Herod learns that a child has been born King of the Jews, one who will be worshiped. He’s not happy about it. Perhaps he knows that Jesus will grow up to disrupt the status quo – in fact, he already has by being born to a teenage, unwed mother. Perhaps Herod’s afraid of any dissent to his rule. Perhaps he’s terrified of what Rome will do if they find out about this so-called King of the Jews. Whatever the reason, he targets a whole group of people for fear of any challenge to his power.
This is, unfortunately, a story that has been repeated throughout history.
Enslaved African Americans were punished for speaking their native languages and for learning to read because slave holders feared a rebellion.
Native American boarding schools were established to forcefully assimilate Native American children into white norms, including many abusive practices to stop Native children from practicing their culture or speaking their language.This attempt to undermine Native American sovereignty and wipe out diversity continued into recent history, with the last federally funded residential school for Native Americans in the United States closing in 1996.
In 1964, Black Rochestarians protesting discrimination were met with police dogs, police gunfire, and, eventually, close to a thousand National Guardsmen. Restoring peace through violence was more important to white leaders than meeting demands for justice, although some change did eventually result from the protest.
In the early 20th century, Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans were deported regardless of citizenship status in the southwestern U.S. after being blamed for the Great Depression.
This sounds remarkably similar to the arrests, detentions, and deportations regardless of citizenship status that has been happening in the United States recently as ICE and Border Patrol target people of color out of fear and prejudice.
Transgender Americans are currently being targeted because some in power fear that any challenge to the gender binary might cause the whole patriarchy to collapse. The United States ranks third in the world for transgender people who have been violently killed, and LGBTQ+ young people are 4x more likely to attempt suicide than their peers, with even higher rates for transgender and nonbinary youth, due to the discrimination they face.
When I thought about this gospel story and the similar persecution that has taken place across history by unjust rulers, I began to wonder about the lectionary pairing. I don't know about you, but this gospel text doesn't feel like a praise God kind of theme like we see in today’s text from Isaiah. However, when I read the verses around the lectionary excerpt, I was left with even more questions about why the lectionary is excerpted the way it is. Because as it turns out, these verses of praise come in the context of praising God for wiping out the Israelites' adversaries. That image of a God who enacts justice through vengeance doesn’t sit better with me than a God who leads his son to safety while Herod kills every child in Bethlehem.
But this lectionary pairing should make us pause. It’s such a stark pairing of praise and destruction that it makes me think it could only be purposeful. When we consider that both texts are in the context of destruction, it seems logical to conclude that perhaps the lectionary pairing is a warning about praising God for destruction. After all, those only concerned with Jesus’ safety might see this gospel story as a happily ever after and praise God for his role in saving Jesus from Herod’s destruction. But although the circumstances are different than in Isaiah, should we really be praising God if it means we’re complicit in or even glorifying violence?
Rachel’s response to destruction in our gospel text is very different. Out in Scripture, a collection of LGBTQ+ inclusive lectionary commentary by scholars and pastors compiled by the Human Rights Campaign, highlights the importance of her weeping, noting how it can resist oppression and call the community to action. Certainly, I think we should be grieving, calling attention to injustice, refusing to be easily consoled. But especially for those of us who aren’t directly affected by discrimination, unjust policy, and targeted attacks, I think we need to take it a step further with action.
I have often felt, especially this year, like I don't know what to do. I've been grappling with history, grappling with the present, and wondering how to act for justice. I imagine that many of you are also wondering what you can do.
For those of you who don't know, I'm getting my masters to teach English for Speakers of Other Languages, meaning I'm learning how to work with immigrants and refugees. I'm also an LGBTQ+ young person. I want to use what I'm learning in my classes and my personal experience as a starting point to offer a few suggestions.
Protesting, calling representatives, advocating for more just policy, and voting are all important action steps. For some of us, it might be easier to learn a language or brush up on one we learned when we were younger. This can help disrupt racist English-only views that devalue other languages and their speakers. For those of you who are not language people, you might take the time to learn about local and national histories of racism and resistance, histories that many of us never learned in school. As a starting place, Shane Weigand, a SUNY Geneseo professor, has a one hour YouTube video on Racist Policy and Resistance in Rochester, New York. Or maybe you could show the LGBTQ+ people in your life that they are loved by practicing inclusive language, using their pronouns correctly, sharing your own pronouns, and challenging anti-LGBTQ+ remarks.
If all of these action steps seem like overwhelming places to start, remember that there are already organizations taking action for justice that you can support by donating or volunteering. One way to support immigrants and refugees here in Fairport is through Learning Links, an organization that offers free tutoring for K-12 students, including many students who are low-income and some who are learning English. They also offer English and citizenship classes for adults. I can speak from experience when I say that tutoring with them is fun and rewarding, but if that’s not your thing, there’s other ways to support Learning Links, including school supply drives.
The Asbury First Community Outreach Center in the city of Rochester is another local ministry that offers hot meals, medical care, showers, laundry, computer access, a storehouse of clothes and home goods, and more to those who need them. I volunteered with the breakfast ministry at Asbury First UMC before their community outreach center opened and it was clear that those who came really appreciated getting a hot meal. They are largely volunteer run, and they also have a list of needs on their website, making it easy to donate to support their work.
No one needs to – or should – do everything. But any action towards justice, no matter how small, is better than nothing. Maybe you can’t stop Herod’s raging, but saving a child is still one more child saved. And if every person in this congregation took one action, imagine the change we could make together.
Whatever we do, we must not ignore the injustice around us while praising God. We must stop and see the destruction, grieve for those harmed, and declare that there is still work to be done in the name of justice.
May we engage in that work, in God’s name. Amen.
God With Us
Christmas Eve
Throughout most of the year, I’m a lectionary preacher, and that means that I would typically only end up preaching from the same text one every three years. But Christmas Eve just has to be different. And by different, I mean that it has to be the same each year. Which means trying to place the same story in the midst of a world that, year after year, does not seem to grasp the message of hope, peace, joy, and love that we year, year after year. How do we reconcile this idea that God, in God’s infinite compassion and love for us mortals, came to dwell among us—even as wars continue to claim the lives of children. Even as the very children that Christ tells us are closer to God have their lives upended by a violent immigration system. Even as the children born today are made to reckon with the devastation wrought by climate change, economic uncertainty, and a growing disregard for others. This is the world that seeks to welcome, once again, the Christ child, the Prince of Peace, the messiah in our midst.
Much was the same in Jesus’ time. Jesus’ people were enduring a brutal occupation. They were held captive by the Roman authorities, subject to the economic, cultural, and military domination of an imperial government. They were not a free people, and so they longed for freedom. There were those who looked for the coming of the messiah, of God’s chosen one. There were those who expected a military leader, a warlord who could challenge the power of Rome. Some cried out for an uprising, for an armed overthrow of the Roman authorities in the occupied territories. Out of the desperation of the people grew a desperate desire to see a restoration of their autonomy. And, of course, the prophet Isaiah famously wrote about nation taking up sword against nation, about the people arming themselves with farm implements, and God’s vision for a never-ending war, right?
Of course not. The vision that the prophet relays is one that doesn’t make sense. It’s an end to the wars that are meant to set us free and keep us free. It’s an end to the human mindset that we can achieve a positive end by violent means. It’s an assertion that love will only prevail, that justice will only prevail, when faced with the unarmed truth. The truth that each of us needs to eat. The truth that each of us carries inherent worth as bearers of the image of God, of the Imago Dei. The truth that God’s vision for us is that of the Good Life, lived in the community of the City of God. Truths that are embodied in the infant in the manger—truths that we can see echoing outward in the lives of each child we encounter. And truth doesn’t come much more unarmed than in an infant, who must depend fully on others in order to survive.
This is the truth that Mary sings about in her Magnificat, when she proclaims that her soul magnifies the Lord, the Lord who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty. The Lord who stands with the poor, with the vulnerable, with the weak, with the brokenhearted. The one born into the roughest of conditions, into this impoverished, unconventional family doing their best to get by in a world not fit for their survival. This is the child whom we are to trust will lead us to freedom. Not with swords and great armies that guarantee victory by some human definition.
As we commence this Christmas season, may we be called to see the Christ child in the face of each child born to that same poverty. May we hear the call to see Christ in the children on food stamps, in the migrant children torn from the arms of their parents. In the queer and trans children, who struggle each day for the right to be seen. Each of these is the Christ Child, born again and again into this hurting and broken world. May we hear this call this night, to cherish this love. Amen.
Love Will Not Fail
You’ve got to hand it to Matthew: next to the birth narrative that Luke gives us, this one is pretty succinct. Matthew starts by giving us a list of some of Jesus’ ancestors, shows us this brief interaction between Joseph and this angel, and then boom—there’s a baby. Just like how it happens in real life. The version of Jesus’ birth that we see in Matthew doesn’t really stand out. Unlike Luke’s account, Matthew’s doesn’t really make for good pageant material—there are no shepherds and no angels singing, there’s no pilgrimage to Bethlehem, no census. There’s no song of praise from Mary, no prophecy from Zechariah. Matthew’s version doesn’t match the brevity of John’s “In the beginning was the Word” and “the Word made flesh” riddles that begin his account of Jesus’ life. Of course, Matthew has more to say about Jesus’ birth than good ole Mark, who doesn’t have time for all that baby nonsense and just says, “so there was this guy, Jesus, who’s a fully-grown adult and always has been.” But when compared to the whole drawn-out tale that Luke gives us, the one that we break out every year on Christmas Eve because it makes the best story, Matthew’s version is underwhelming. And what’s more, Matthew went out of his way to tell us about the fact that Jesus was born, only to write Mary out of most of the story. We don’t see an interaction between Mary and an angel, we don’t hear any of Mary’s thoughts or words, and we don’t even really see Mary as a character in this story—especially not an active one.
Indeed, Mary isn’t really seen to be doing much of the acting in this account. The text doesn’t even say that she tells Joseph that she’s pregnant, only that she was “found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit.” I’m not even really sure what that means exactly. I’m not sure how you could intuit or infer or find evidence that someone had become pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Surely that knowledge has to come from testimony, right? Does Mary know in this account how she got pregnant? Joseph clearly doesn’t know, or didn’t believe Mary when she told him, if she did. Joseph is the only one we see in this account who is visited by a divine messenger, the only one who is seen trying to decide what to do next. Obviously, because Joseph is described as a righteous man, deciding what to do next means following the law, and that would mean leaving Mary. The correct action for Joseph, the righteous thing for him to do from a socio-cultural and legal standpoint, is to distance himself from the woman who must surely have committed adultery. We’re told that Joseph has resolved to do this. He has made up his mind to follow the law, to consider the engagement void, and move on with his life. I suppose we’re supposed to admire the fact that he decided not to make a big deal about it, even though Mary would have had to reckon with being a single mother whom everyone would know had once been engaged to Joseph. Maybe he was more conflict-averse than righteous.
While centering the role of Joseph might make those of us who love the vocal and empowered version of Mary uncomfortable or even angry, I do think that there is some value in this account of Jesus’ birth. And I do think that there is assurance in this passage that love will not fail. To see this value and know this assurance, we need to begin by challenging the characterization of Joseph in this passage. Even if Joseph, and the writer of Matthew’s gospel, characterize Joseph’s planned actions as “righteous,” there is no getting around the fact that they are, ultimately, self-serving. Joseph doesn’t want the embarrassment of marrying an alleged adulteress, doesn’t want the burden of raising someone else’s child, and doesn’t want the legal question of whether or not he should go through with marrying Mary. Joseph is acting out of a desire to conform, to save face. He’s making it all about him. That’s his initial response, his reflex, and also the course of action he settles on after considering his options for a little while. There’s no sign that Joseph seeks to uncover the truth about Mary’s situation, or that he talks things over with her before making his decision. His decision which, again, benefits him more than it benefits Mary. Do we know for sure that Joseph didn’t wrestle with this decision, that he didn’t lie awake at night wondering and praying about what he should do, how he could handle this situation in a way that would be acceptable to both him and Mary? No. But, even if he did, he still settles on a solution that results in less hassle for him, and more burden on Mary.
Before anyone thinks that I just have it out for Joseph, his motivation is called out by the angel in his dream, who tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife. Joseph is afraid. Afraid of the consequences, afraid of the public perception, afraid of what his family and friends might think. He’s afraid, perhaps, to go against tradition and the law. These fears should all sound familiar, not only because they may resonate with many of us today, but because they are themes that echo throughout the ministry of Jesus. Jesus is constantly challenging social customs and the ways in which the law is understood. He challenges readings of the Sabbath that put strict obedience above ensuring that rest can actually be practiced, even by those whose labor is exploited. He talks to single women alone, and to those deemed untouchable due to their gender, ethnicity, illness, or disability. He calls disciples to follow him, leaving behind their livelihoods and their families. He strikes down our concepts of family and neighbor, defining each not by geographic or genetic proximity, but by lived relationships. Not by legal status, but by love. Love, which is the measure of all that Jesus teaches. Love, which is the lens through which we are to examine the law and how we move through the world.
Joseph’s call, through this dream of his, is to reject fear and embrace love. It is to be a part of the birthing of love into the world, a part of raising that love to fulfill the call that is placed on the life of this love incarnate. His call is to cast off the fear that leads him to wonder “what will they think of me…of us?” His call is to measure what is right not by the law or by social convention, but by love. This, too, is our call. When we see queer love threatened by laws and by violence, God’s unfailing love demands that we abandon our fear and stand with those who are threatened. When the love of migrants and refugees is threatened by ICE and by the violence wrought by white supremacists and Christian nationalists, God’s unfailing love demands that we abandon our fear of the other and stand with those who are vulnerable. Whenever love is forgotten, neglected, made to feel underserved, seen as an abomination—God’s unfailing love calls us not to be afraid, but to walk in solidarity with those left hated and hopeless by the world. Our call is Joseph’s. Not to make it all about us, not to simply do what’s easiest or most beneficial for ourselves, not to make decisions out of fear—but to be compelled by the love that does not measure worth by our social standing, and that sacrifices what’s normal for what is right. Love that supplies support, that holds hands and breathes through the pain. Love that is God’s solidarity with the suffering made known.
As we come to the end of our Advent journey, remember that it is still Advent. Even as we hear stories of the birth of the Christchild, we are still preparing for his arrival. So let us prepare, and let us heed this call, to cast aside our fears and embrace the love that comes down at Christmas. Let us live this love, each day, as those who seek to walk as Christ walked before us. Amen.
Joy Will Not Fail
In early March of 2025, Palestinian-American organizer, refugee, and Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, was detained by ICE at his home in New York City. There was no warrant, only an order from the State Department that called for the revocation of Khalil’s legal status and his deportation from the United States. Khalil was taken not to the nearby ICE facility in New Jersey, where his wife, Abdalla, would begin searching for him, but to a detention facility in Louisiana. He was detained for three months before being released. While he was detained, Khalil missed the birth of his son, a reality he would describe as a profound heartbreak. Khalil was taken from his family and locked away for months, not for having caused harm to anyone else, but for disruptively taking the stance against the violence carried out in Gaza. In July of 2025, Khalil was invited to a comedy show by comedian Ramy Youssef. At the end of the performance, after having laughed and enjoyed himself despite all he had been through, Khalil was invited up on stage. From there he shared a phrase that did not originate from him, but has been shared widely across the internet and beyond: “joy is an act of resistance.”
This is the week of Advent when we talk about joy, in the midst of a season which focuses on joy. In case anyone was in danger of forgetting that this season is all about joy, we have a large reminder off to my left. We go to parties, give and receive gifts, eat way too many cookies, listen to cheerful songs about babies and just how quiet and peaceful newborns are. We’re supposed to feel joy, we’re supposed to feel happy. Our children are home. We get to visit our grandchildren. The semester is finally over, and we have a few weeks to rest. And what better way of encapsulating that sense of joy that comes with the season than Mary’s song of praise. She has found out that she is going to bear a child who is supposed to be a leader of his people, she has just gone and visited her relative, Elizabeth, who is carrying her own child who will be a leader among his people. As the two of them are sharing their excitement, they just can’t contain their joy and suddenly…Mary starts to sing. And of course she starts singing about how cute and quiet babies are, right? No. She sings about how God has brought down the powerful and raised up the lowly. She sings about how God has filled the hungry poor and sent the rich away with nothing. She sings a song not about counting her own blessings, not talking about how grateful she is to have what she needs and to be alive and living in such a great empire. Not about her nuclear family or having some idyllic life. She sings a song about a total reversal of the world she has always known, the world as those in power insist it needs to be. She sings a song about the kingdom of God.
Back in July, there was a piece on NPR’s program Code Switch about this idea of joy as resistance. One of the NPR staff people, Leah Donnella, who self-identifies as a curmudgeon, keeps expressing her skepticism about this idea. She can see how joy can be a means of resistance for people like Mahmoud Khalil, queer folks at Pride events or nightclubs, or immigrants who dance to music from their homelands despite the reality that doing so could turn them into targets for deportation. But surely there must be a line somewhere. Surely not all joy can be considered resistance. Is it resistance to any system of inequality for any of us to find joy in a decadent meal now and then or in a family vacation? Donnella comes across in this interview as little more than a contrarian, which of course I can relate to, but the question that she puts forward is an important one: whose joy is resistance? Our joy is resistance, I would say. Anything we do to not fall into despair, anything we do to remain true to who we are and to what God is calling us. But I think the most profoundly resistant joy is found in people like Mary, the people with their backs against the wall. The deepest joy, that resists the despair that drowns out all other hope, that cuts through the mourning and misery that occupy each moment of each day. Joy that cannot be contained in the lungs of an unwed teenager who has just found out that she is part of the story of salvation that God is telling. The story that sweeps past the wealthy and the powerful, and rests incarnate in the bodies of the poor and the occupied.
Mary’s joy is not simply an attitude that she puts on. For us to truly understand how meaningful her joy is, we have to think about where and when Mary is. She’s a young woman, still unmarried, part of a peripheral people living in a land occupied by one of the most powerful empires the world has seen. She is nobody. Her people have tried and failed to rise up and overthrow the Romans. She would have known city streets and highways adorned with Roman soldiers keeping an eye out for rebels who looked like her. And then there’s her betrothed. Joseph, the worker, who had steady pay but no evidence of titles. They were poor, working class, occupied—nothing. Even so, Mary sings her song of joy, her song of hope. She sings a song of a God at work in the world, whose solidarity lies not with those in power, but with the oppressed. She calls on the psalms of her people, referencing God’s faithfulness in words that would have been passed down from generation to generation. She’s taking part in a culture that was controlled, that was demonized by those in power. She shares this joy with her foremothers, but most importantly, she shares this joy with Elizabeth. Because part of how joy becomes resistance is through sharing it with others. The writer Audre Lorde once said that “The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers.” Mary does not keep her joy to herself—she shares it. She builds that bridge between her and her co-conspirator.
To display joy, and to share joy with another, especially as a part of an occupied people, is to resist hopelessness. It’s to resist despair. The sharing of our joy becomes a magnifier of God’s promised reign, of the coming of the kin-dom. To express our joy, to cling to it with all that we have, and to share it with others, is to proclaim that the powers of this world have no power over us, for our joy is in the revolutionary world we see through God’s eyes. So listen to the joy of the poor. Make space for those who are most in danger to find and share their joy. Find the things that bring you joy—and share those things.
Our call is to embody this joy. Our call is to magnify this joy by our very souls. By the way we live and the way we die, we are called to practice joy, to practice this alternative way of being. In practicing joy, the profound joy that causes our very selves to vibrate, we do so deliberately. Practicing joy, refusing to let joy fail even in the face of mourning and misery, is a sign that nothing can take away our joy. In the midst of a world that crushes hopes, that disturbs peace, and that delights in taking away our joy, sharing in joy together is how we endure. Sharing in our joy together, building bridges between us and our neighbors, is how we carry on through difficult times. It’s how we resist losing ourselves and our communities. So embrace the joy of the season! Embrace the joy that arises from hearing the Good News of the world that is about to turn. Embrace the joys of the everyday—the music, the dancing, the art, the games, the family and friends. And share this joy with one another. Not so that we will never be sad, not because we’re not allowed to grieve or lament. But so that no one is allowed to fall too deeply into their despair. Joy will not fail. Not if we don’t let it. May it be so. Amen.
Peace Will Not Fail
Like many good cradle Methodists, I grew up attending a United Methodist summer camp. Skye Farm Camp and Retreat Center in Warrensburg, New York, not far from Lake George. It was the same camp my dad grew up going to, the place my parents worked together as counselors, and where they volunteered as camp directors—even while juggling two small children. They stopped directing once my sister came along, which is fair. I spent a week at Skye Farm each Summer, from the time I started walking to the summer before I started high school. It was a special place for me, and I carry many of the memories and relationships from Skye Farm that shaped my faith and sense of call—common meals shared in the big old dining hall, always served family-style; sleeping out in the lean-to right by the lake; morning worship at the outdoor chapel; the Wednesday night dance party. I remember the challenge of stepping into the wilderness each year for just a week at a time and needing to jump right into being part of a community. There was no choice in it, no option to keep to yourself or do your own thing. You worshiped together, ate together, did activities together, shared bunk beds in small cabins that didn’t even have electric lights in them when I was there—things have changed some since I was a kid. Being dropped off in the wilderness on a Sunday afternoon meant that by the following Saturday you’d have formed a new community, most of whom you’d probably never see again—unless they happened to be your sibling or a member of your church.
We often give the term “wilderness” a less-than-desirable meaning. Wilderness is a place to be feared, it’s a place where you get lost. Wilderness is a place of exile, a place of isolation. When Sarah decides she can no longer stand to keep Hagar around, she casts her and her son into the wilderness. When the Israelites are led out of captivity, they are led into the wilderness—not directly into a place of safety and comfort. Wilderness, as we tend to use the word, is not something to be desired. It’s a place to be endured. It’s a place many of us and many in our world are intimately familiar with. The wilderness is a place on the margins. It’s not the center of culture or power or civilization. It’s a state of being inhabited by migrants in a new and unfamiliar place. It’s a place of exile for queer and trans folks who are forced to flee before the bread rises. It’s a place of liminality for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, for those struggling with addiction and mental health challenges; for bodies and brains that don’t work with the ways the world is designed. It’s easy to get swept away in the tumult of the wilderness, to be overwhelmed by need and loss and the fear of isolation. But it’s important to remember that it is in the midst of the wilderness that God encounters their people. It’s in the wilderness, not in the presence of Abraham, that Hagar meets a divine messenger. It’s in the wilderness that the Israelites forge a more direct connection to God through the mishkan, the portable place of worship built from materials donated by those who had nothing.
For some, the wilderness is a transitional space. It is the barren road that hosts the exodus from slavery to a new way of being. It is a place to be endured, to be survived on the way to something else, something normative. For others, though, liberation is found in the wilderness. Because in the wilderness we find fellow travellers, fellow exiles. We might even encounter the spirit that chased Jesus into the wilderness right after his baptism. With time in the wilderness comes an opportunity to create. Not the kind of wilderness creation that brings bulldozers, parking lots, and pipelines. But the creation of community. Womanist theologian Delores Williams describes the wilderness setting not as a barren place, but as one that is pregnant with possibility. After all, the wilderness is, at times, a next step on the path to liberation. For Hagar, the wilderness became not a death sentence, but a refuge from a system of violence. She was able to find safety for herself and her son, free from the abuse and ownership she had endured. Likewise, the Israelites’ escape from captivity led them into the wilderness, and though they suffered at first, they would come to embody a community shaped by radical generosity and devotion to one another. Community formed in the wilderness can be a means of liberation. New ways of being shaped, by experiences of exile and compassion for others. In the wilderness, there is often no choice but to be transformed, to live differently, to live authentically. In a place by which we’re supposed to be frightened—beacuse it’s too disorderly, too dirty, doesn’t fit our standards, has too many plants and wild animals—God calls us through prophets not to be afraid, but to be amazed by what is possible.
There’s a colon in the third verse of this gospel passage, in the NRSVUE, at least. Other versions use quotation marks to distinguish one part of the verse from another. Either way, this verse is typically read as “this is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said ‘the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.” This prophetic call that echoes through the generations insists that we listen to those in the wilderness, even and especially when we are not there ourselves. It directs us to pay attention to the exiles and the wanderers, those we forget to listen to. But there’s another way to read this, which is the way it is written in the book of Isaiah: move the colon. Rather than saying that there is a “voice crying out in the wilderness ‘prepare the way of the Lord,’” this verse could, and maybe should, say “the voice of one crying out: ‘in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.’” It’s a subtle difference, but I think it is one of vital importance. It does not excuse us from our call to listen to those in the wilderness, but it does call us to go there ourselves. The preparation of the way of the Lord, the making of paths straight (though straightness is not the end all be all of liberation), and the coming of the kingdom of heaven are not tasks and prophecies centering the pre-existing structures of power and the high places of privilege. These are words spoken to the least of these, words that those with privilege were lucky enough to overhear.
But when those with privilege heed the call to the wilderness, how do we go? Do we go like the Pharisees and Sadducees, assured of our righteousness because of our lineage or the ways in which we believe? Do we go feeling self-righteous, patting ourselves on the back for taking the time to step outside and get close to those already in the wilderness? When we heed the call to the wilderness, we must go earnestly, seeking to listen and to become the community of Christ made real. We must go, not only to be baptized and to undergo a ritualistic change, but to undergo a circumcision of the heart, to be radically transformed as people of the wilderness. We must go seeking to bear the fruits of our repentance, showing signs of our verbal commitment to be a part of the community, to “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.” This is a call to leave behind the old ways of doing things, the ways that perpetuate harm and that prevent justice, and therefore peace, from flourishing. This is a call to abandon the old ways of retribution, of vengeance and violence, and embrace the peace that comes when all are fed, when all have purpose, and when all belong in the Good Community. This is the vision of the prophet Isaiah, the vision of the Good Community not only free from violence, but free from hunger, as Creation grazes together.
The fruit of this wilderness call is this Good Community. The fruit is peace prevailing, new ways of being in the world. The fruit is the humility to be led by the young, by a little child. As we move through this Advent season, as we seek to prepare for the coming of the Christchild and the kingdom, we have already been called to the edge. We have been called to look out with eyes wide open at the world as it is and the world as it can be. Now we are called to step out into the wilderness, into the margins. Not to save, but to be saved. Peace will not fail—not in the wilderness and not in the kingdom. Peace will prevail—through the fruit borne out of repentance, reconciliation, and humility. This is the call of Advent. Let us step out together. Amen.
Hope Will Not Fail
Welcome to Advent! It feels like I’ve been teasing it for a few weeks now—not that it should really be a surprise when Advent comes. It tends to happen at the same time each year. We generally think of Advent as a time of preparation, the season to decorate and clean, to shop and to prepare for guests. We may even think about it as the season in which we prepare for the season of Christmas, the time when we remember that God is present in the world, and that we are not forgotten. While it is certainly true that Advent is a time of preparation, we too-often think of it simply as a path to something else, as a transitional time. That’s if we’re lucky. For many, Advent is simply pre-Christmas, an extension of the Christmas season that we forget, only begins on December 25. I’m not going to pretend that Anna and I didn’t spend part of this week helping my parents set up their Christmas tree or bring bins full of decorations down from their attic. That’s part of preparation. But it’s easy to forget, amid all the shopping malls and secular Christmas-themed events, that Advent is its own thing—a distinct season with a particular call placed on our lives and in the midst of our community. This distinction, the thing that makes Advent special, makes it powerful, and that demands our attention and consideration, is that it is all about the apocalypse.
When I say the word apocalypse, I don’t want us to think about zombies (at least not the literal kind), and I especially don’t want us to think about the rapture. I know that may be difficult, since ideas about the rapture continue to permeate our society. And it may be especially difficult since our gospel text this morning includes a couple of the few supporting verses for rapture theology. But since the rapture is not a part of United Methodist doctrine, and is a modern invention that does far more harm than good, we’re not really going to justify it with a response today. Maybe that can be a study for another time. Even without the rapture, though, this idea that “one will be taken, and one will be left” still has apocalyptic significance. This is because the word apocalypse doesn’t refer strictly to our science fiction understanding of the end of the world, or the end of society. Literally, it means an unveiling or an uncovering. It’s about envisioning something, either by having the divine reveal something or by revealing something in community. It’s why the final book of the Bible is interchangeably referred to as Revelation and The Apocalypse of John of Patmos. Apocalypse is a vision, it’s an awareness, it’s seeing what is happening in the present time and looking beyond at what’s coming down the line. I took two classes in seminary on the book of Revelation and apocalypse in the Christian and Jewish traditions (because I just couldn’t get enough). The professor in one of these classes referred to apocalypse as standing on the edge and looking out at what might be. Advent is this edge, and this text invites us to look out.
When reading texts, one of the things I like to do is look at what the text isn’t saying. We see in this gospel passage that Jesus is referring back to the story of Noah and the flood, when most of the world is said to have ignored the warnings of Noah and just gone about their lives. The people who ignored Noah are ridiculed, seen as imprudent and as having rejected God by rejecting God’s prophet. In using this story as an illustration, Jesus is adding emphasis to his message of paying attention, of staying awake to the moment. That’s something that the text says, or at least that it implies. When Jesus gets to the part of the story about one being taken and one being left behind, after referring to himself in the third person for the second time, the details quickly run dry. We don’t know how one will be taken, who’s doing the taking, whether being taken is actually a good thing, or if either of the two workers saw it coming. We don’t know anything, really. We could assume based on the Noah reference that those taken are the safe ones, the worthy ones. But this passage also comes just a chapter before Matthew has Jesus talk about separating the sheep from the goats and the righteous from the unrighteous, so this could just be more sorting—and the categories are unclear. Are those who are taken the ones on the ark? Are they the ones swept away by the flood? We don’t know. We also don’t know whether those left behind noticed when the others were taken. There’s no indication that they did, no sign that they were alarmed or concerned. Jesus doesn’t tell us that they sent out search parties or that they alerted anyone. Jesus doesn’t even tell us if they glanced over and raised an eyebrow.
We don’t know if those taken were dragged off kicking and screaming. We don’t know if the ones taking them were in plain clothes or uniforms. We don’t know if their papers were checked, if their families were notified, or if they were sent to their country of origin or a place they had never been. All we know is that one day they were in the field or working in the food processing plant, and suddenly they were gone. Did the others know? Did they care? Did they keep their heads down for fear that they would be taken, too? Perhaps they were fired, put out of work for not grinding enough meal. Perhaps they were found to be queer in the wrong place, and sent off for conversion therapy. Perhaps they were taken to the hospital, or to prison. We know as much as their partner in the field or at the mill. We know as much as their neighbors, who may or may have noticed their absence. Christ’s command in this moment to stay awake is a call to apocalypse, a plea to see one another, to know one another, and to care for one another. It’s a call to an apocalypse of the community, to become aware of the struggles and needs of those who live and work right next door. It’s a reminder that the New Heaven and the New Earth don’t come to be with spears and swords and great armies commanded by the Son of Man, but through connection, through community, and through resistance to structures that seek to tear communities apart.
Our theme for throughout Advent comes from a song by David Bjorlin called “Hope Will Not Fail.” It has four verses that take us through each week of Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. I’ll spare you my singing voice, but the first verse goes “Hope will not fail/No, hope will not fail/Though anguish and apathy seem to prevail/No, hope will not fail/Hope, hope will prevail.” Even in the face of anguish and apathy, even when we occupy ourselves with our own lives, our own busyness, our own preoccupations. Even so, hope will not fail. If we wake to the moment. If we unveil the world as it is now and see the plight and the beauty in our neighbors throughout all of Creation. If we step towards the edge and dare to behold the world that might be. Hope will prevail, when we overcome our apathy, when we come to know our neighbors, to concern ourselves with their wellbeing, to see when they’re not here. We begin this Advent, as we have each year before, with Hope. Hope that does not place us in a dream land where we can ignore all the problems of the world. Hope that does not allow us to keep to our own lives, to disconnect ourselves from the concerns of others, and get lost in the constant flood of everything Christmas. Hope born not out of violence or clamouring for power, but to unwed, unsettled, unlikely parents, and laid in a manger. The hope that is God entering the world in the form of the tired, the sick, the marginalized, the imprisoned, the refugee, the unhoused, and the overworked. The hope that arises when we awaken ourselves to the moment, to one another, and to the Christchild, and the promise that all things are being made new. This is the hope that will not fail. This, siblings in Christ, is the hope that will prevail. Amen.
Reign of Christ
It’s always weird to me when we have these special Sundays in the liturgical calendar, like Reign of Christ Sunday, and the narrative skips way ahead. I think it kinda spoils the mood for the whole season to jump to the part of the gospels when Jesus is actively suffering and dying. Isn’t this week Thanksgiving? Aren’t we getting ready for Christmas? Would it be too much to ask to get a family-friendly scripture about giving thanks or the importance of seeing your parents around the holidays? Rather than a story of Jesus going to a feast or a party, we’re reminded of his death, just as we’re starting to prepare for his birth. As much of a bummer as this can be, I want us to take the time to really encounter this story, and to hear it apart from the rest of the passion story—especially since I know that not all of us attend the Good Friday services when we would usually hear this part of the story. When I was a ministry intern at the Saratoga Springs United Methodist Church, the Christian Education Director there was never shy about the fact that she skipped Good Friday each year because she “doesn’t do death.” I suspect she’s not alone in feeling that way, though I think you miss some important context if you just go right from Palm Sunday to Easter.
Besides taking the opportunity to read the story of the crucifixion on a Sunday rather than a Friday, I also want to take a moment on this Reign of Christ Sunday to make the claim that trying to remove any conversation of politics from the gospel, doesn’t leave you with very much gospel. The statement that Christ is Lord is a political position. The titles we gladly use for him such as King of Kings, Prince of Peace, and Lord of Lords are all political titles. In fact, the Greek word that is translated as “lord” in the New Testament, is kyrios, which can refer to heads of households, minor nobles, and also the emperor of Rome, who was said to be the highest of lords, the greatest kyrios. If we take the position that Jesus is Lord of Lords, then we are saying that no one else is, and that Jesus is above the other powers and principalities of our world, as they exist. A kingdom is a political structure, and a reign is a political administration. The gospel message, and this is made abundantly clear throughout the season of Advent, is about upending the ways in which power is currently exercised and distributed. Any talk of a New Heaven and a New Earth, any rhetoric about filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty, any apocalyptic vision of what the Kingdom will look like one day—those are all political conversations.
So, while we are not called to uphold partisan power structures, we are called to engage in conversations about how power is structured. We’re called to examine critically and speak openly about who holds power, how power is being exercised in our communities and our country, and whether our power structures reflect the vision that God has for the Kingdom. And that’s the key to having conversations about politics as people of faith: keeping those Kingdom dreams at the forefront of our minds.
The Kingdom dream that’s presented to us in this gospel passage might seem more like a nightmare. It might seem a little doom and gloom, but I promise that there’s hope in there, too. That hope lies in a couple of places in which the gospel writer offers glimpses into what the Kingdom reality might look like. The first of these comes when the guard mockingly says to Jesus “if you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” For many of us, this might sound kind of reasonable. At this point in his life, Jesus has healed the sick, multiplied food, cast out demons, and even brought a man back from the dead. Would it really be so unreasonable to think that he could get himself out of this bind? For the guard, it only seemed right that anyone, but especially a person in a position of power, would only act in their own self-interest. Customary power, here, would be exercised through self-preservation. Power would be demonstrated by the ability to save oneself, to protect one’s own body. Because power, in Jesus’ day and in ours, means having control over the bodies of others. Rather than practice self-preservation, Jesus continues to practice solidarity, being incarcerated with those called criminals, and being executed alongside those found guilty of capital offenses.
Jesus’ relationship with his fellow victims of the death penalty tells us more about the Reign of Christ than just that it rejects self-preservation in favor of radical solidarity, though. It demonstrates that the Reign of Christ is about connection and community, especially in the darkest of times. The theologian Karl Barth used to preach regularly in a prison in Basel, Switzerland. One Good Friday, he was preaching from this text and described the three men crucified together at the first Christian community. The two other men “were certainly no believing converts, no saints,” Barth said. But even so, they were bound to Christ out of solidarity, out of a shared experience of incarceration, suffering, and execution. The Good Community, the vision that God has for us, is just that—a community. It’s not about power over, it’s not about the control of any body other than our own. It’s about connection. It’s about feeling for one another, allowing ourselves to be impacted by the suffering and the wholeness of others. In recognizing this connection and allowing it to impact us, the Kingdom where Christ is Lord becomes a place where none hunger, where all are clothed, and no one goes without shelter. It is a place where the Image of God present in Creation is what binds us together—not creed or dogma. That is where Christ leads us, if we are willing to follow.
All too often, this is not the model of leadership we see and experience in our communities. We hear Jeremiah’s cries of “woe” to the shepherds who divide their flocks, and it’s not difficult to see where those shepherds still reign today. There are those who would actively split up the flock, who thrive on division, on polarization, on deportation. Rhetoric of division, rejections of difference, overt quests for homogeneity in race, religion, sexual orientation, and political ideology split the flock and make it more difficult to seek out the reign of solidarity, and the Good Community that feels the joy and sorrow of others. There are those in power, those with authority, who actively seek to split up communities. But there are also those who passively allow the flock to wander, who have not attended to the flock. It becomes a shared responsibility to bring the flock together, to embrace connection and reject division, isolation, and individualism. The Kingdom of God where Christ is Lord is a community. It is a place of humility and solidarity, that lives out the South African concept of Ubuntu—I am because you are. A community that recognizes our common needs, and our common dreams. This is our call, to seek out the Good Community, to build a space in which Christ’s reign might become apparent, and where we can live out our call to be Christ’s people—citizens of no Kingdom but God’s.
This is the message of Advent, after all. It is a message of death—of the passing away of what once was. It is a message of suffering—of feeling the pain, the fear, the despair of others. It is a message of hope—an overturning of the way things are now, and the building of something new in their place. May this be the message that guides us through this season. May we seek out the Good Community together. May we hold one another accountable in love. May we live as Christ’s people above all else, in all that we do. Let our waiting commence. Amen.
Plant the Garden
Just a warning before I begin, today’s sermon does contain spoilers for the novel Candide, but since Candide was written over 260 years ago, I can’t be blamed if you haven’t read it yet. Candide was written by Voltaire in the mid-eighteenth century as a piece of satire and a direct response to the philosophy of optimism. The story follows Candide, a young man from Germany who doesn’t have much of a personality and who is described as being quite simple. He is accompanied through the story by his mentor and tutor, Pangloss, who is the main advocate for this philosophy of optimism. It is Pangloss who repeats throughout the novel that everything that happens is for the best, and that they live in the best of all possible worlds. This might seem reasonable at first, as when we first meet Candide and Pangloss they are living in a castle and leading very sheltered lives. Neither of them wants for anything, they have food and warmth and entertainment. But as the characters move through the plot, these ideas that everything that happens is for the best and that we live in the best of all possible worlds sound more and more ridiculous.
Pretty quickly, Candide loses his home and is captured and forced into military service. After fighting in a significant battle, he escapes the military and travels to the Netherlands where he finds his old tutor again. He learns that the castle he had lived in had been destroyed and many of the people he had known were dead—we later find out that some survived, only to wind up in other situations that were also pretty horrible. Candide forms a ragtag group of travellers, and they make their way down towards Portugal and, eventually, over to the Americas. All the while, they encounter earthquakes, shipwrecks, disease, slavery, poverty, and a slew of other issues. All the while, even as their friends and companions die or meet their ruins in other ways, Pangloss maintains his insistence that everything that happens is for the best and that we live in the best of all possible worlds. I won’t bore you all with every little detail, but the story ends with Candide and his companions purchasing a farm for themselves and planting a garden, in order to fend off the evils of boredom, vice, and poverty. As they set about their work, Pangloss maintains that everything did, in fact, work out for the best, and that this was the best of all possible worlds. A more skeptical Candide sort of brushes him off and says, “sure, Pangloss. But now we must cultivate our garden.”
Odds are, no one is here for a lesson on eighteenth-century French literature. To be fair, I’m not either, and that’s not really my specialty. But ever since I first read Candide years ago, I have been struck by this last line: “we must cultivate our garden.” I especially appreciated how it stood in contrast to the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and that everything that happens to us or around us eventually works out in our favor, just by happenstance. We live in a time, and have long lived in a time, in which nation rises up against nation. Earthquakes, illness, and famines abound. There is no shortage of pain and suffering, of despair, of loneliness. It doesn’t bring hope to my spirit if all the suffering in the world is just collateral damage in the midst of some larger scheme that would leave the world better just for the privileged survivors. Our suffering is not a necessity or a test. It is a reality to which we must respond.
This response to suffering and to tragedy is what I read in this part of the prophecy from Isaiah. Sure, this is an aspiration, a vision of the kingdom of God as it may look and function. But it is also a model of resilient community that is fundamentally different from what exists today. Last week we talked about what it means to rebuild, and what it means to build something new and radically different in the midst of destruction. This may as well be Isaiah’s pitch for what we can build in the place of the way that the world is now. And integral to this vision of a society in which babies don’t cry and people live for far too long, is the idea of planting. Sure, these could be metaphorical vineyards, an image that Jesus threw around a couple of times in describing his relationship to the disciples or in painting a picture of one who keeps trying, even when no fruit has been borne. But vineyards can also simply be vineyards, a place of organized growing that produces grapes—grapes that can be eaten or, perhaps more importantly, turned into wine. Vineyards provided nourishment, and still do. We’re not far, here, from the Finger Lakes, and it doesn’t take a local to know what goes on over there. Isaiah’s prophecy is a call to build a new community—and that new community cultivates a garden.
What I love about this stated need to cultivate our garden, both in Candide and in Isaiah, is that gardens don’t just happen. Gardens are intentional. I grew up around gardens, whether in the back yard of the parsonages I lived in or at the Smith Family farm over in Vermont. In seminary, I got my hands dirty helping out in our Theological Community Garden. It wasn’t until the seminary garden that I really understood all the planning that went into planting year after year. Different crops need different nutrients, prefer different amounts of sun, different levels of moisture. Rodents and white flies need to be thought of, and you also need to consider where the beans are going to grow and how the tomato plants will stay standing under the weight of their fruit. Timing is also important. You need to know when to harvest and when to plant, when to water and when to prune. There are few aspects of gardening that are passive. Most things don’t just happen, although potatoes and garlic both tend to be pretty low-maintenance in my experience. Cultivating gardens is a rejection of passivity, and an acknowledgement that, if we are to care for one another, build lasting communities, and truly transform the world, we need to take an active role in that change.
As we move closer to the season of Advent, the time of preparation for the arrival of the Christ-child once again, bear this apocalyptic message in your minds. The Christ who is coming will leave not a stone on stone. The song his mother sings praises the God of radical transformation, who fills the bellies of the poor and sends the rich away hungry. The season of Advent is not just a time of waiting passively for everything to work out for the best and for the best of all possible worlds to be realized. It is a time for us to remember our role in the story. It is a time for us to remember that we must cultivate our garden, so that all might be fed, so that the world might be transformed, and so that God’s kin-dom might be realized here on Earth.
Lost in the Details
During and after the second World War, there were two main schools of thought that emerged in Europe regarding how to rebuild the numerous cities that were being leveled. In some cities, such as Warsaw in Poland, city planners emerged from the destruction of the war bent on rebuilding the city, largely as it had been. They used paintings from the 1700s for reference, and reconstructed walls, churches, and castles as they would have existed prior to the war. Today, the “Old Town” portion of Warsaw, a city that has existed for hundreds of years, is really less than a century old. Elsewhere in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, there were city planners who welcomed the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. The city of Coventry in particular jumped at the chance to completely redesign their medieval layout, in favor of one that would be better suited to twentieth-century commercial interests. Whatever buildings were destroyed by bombs in the war merely saved the time and money it would later cost to tear them down.
In either case, these rebuilding efforts were just that: rebuilding. Each method sought to return to something familiar and comfortable, even if the architectural style was somewhat different. The designs still reinforced inequality, refused to become more accessible, and remained focused on efficiency and meeting basic human needs, regardless of how that impacted the rest of Creation. The only real innovation that was made, and that is shared by each of these methods, is that cars were factored into the plans, pushing pedestrians to the sides and making communities less walkable and, therefore, more disconnected. Each was praised for its vision, its architectural ingenuity, the ways in which they furthered European progress and revitalization following the war. But when the opportunity had presented itself for these numerous European cities, and indeed nations around the world, to fundamentally re-order themselves, to reimagine what their cities, their nations, the world could look like and what purposes they could serve—by and large they chose to maintain their flawed economic systems, their disjointed relationship with Creation, and their social hierarchies. They chose not to build something new, but to rebuild what was, even when it had a new facade.
The prophet Haggai was writing at the end of the period of Jewish history known as the “exilic period.” This was the period of time in which the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah, or at least the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem, were forcefully removed from the kingdom and made to live in Babylon. It was during this period that prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel addressed the Judeans. It was also in this period that the Temple of Solomon was destroyed in Jerusalem. For decades, Judeans were made to live in a place not of their choosing, cut off from their customs, from their people, and from the dwelling place of God. This period of exile is what prompted the prophet Jeremiah to advise the Judeans to make the best of their circumstances, to plant gardens and live their lives. It’s what prompted the writing of Psalms about sitting down and weeping by the rivers of Babylon. It was a period of despair, a time that caused the Judeans to question how they had ended up in such a situation. It was enough to make them examine how they must have angered God, for God to leave them to exile and ruin.
Haggai’s voice chimes in as the Judeans are returning to Jerusalem. After Babylon fell to Persia, the Judeans were allowed to return from their exile, though when they returned, they still had to contend with a city—and especially the Temple—laid to waste. It was a time of destruction, of despair, of hopelessness. There were those still alive who could remember the house of the Lord “in its former glory.” They could remember times of stability, of comfort, of peace. Times when wages were better suited to meeting needs, when benefits made retirement a guarantee, when home prices were more reasonable. They returned to their home, and the grief must have been overwhelming. Everything they had once known was gone. And what’s more, many of the wealthier Judeans had not returned with them, as there was more money to be made in exile than at home. So who would fund the restoration? How could the poor rebuild the Temple, the city, and the kingdom? There were no corporations or billionaires who could pitch in towards this construction project. Even so, the memory remains of the former glory, and the question remains: how do we get back to that?
Times of destruction, though, are also times of building. In the sorrow of grieving what was, there is an opportunity to build again—and to build something new. Oftentimes in situations such as these, we mortals are limited by what we know, or what we have known. We might fall into the same inclination as the Sadducees, whose argument against the resurrection is that it can’t be reconciled with the law—when the law is pushed to its logical extreme. They place the mystery of resurrection in the context of what they know, leaning on what’s familiar, what’s safe. Surely this Jesus, with his apocalyptic resurrection preaching, can explain how marriage laws might fit into this version of reality. That should be a simple enough question, and an important logistical concern for the son of man. Maybe there are no dumb questions, but sometimes—oftentimes—we ask the wrong questions. I had a seminary professor who was a psychologist, who would get quite frustrated at times when we would ask questions that weren’t going to get us the answers we needed. Dr. Pressley would be very disappointed with the Sadducees, I think.
Jesus turns this line of questioning on its head in just one sentence. “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.” Bad news for those of us who might be planning weddings at the moment. For Jesus, the Sadducees are asking the wrong questions. They are working within the framework, the institutions, the systems, the boundaries of the society they know. They carry this idea that what is now is what will be carried through the resurrection, as though resurrection is simply a matter of replacing what was. But resurrection inherently follows destruction, and times of destruction are times of building. Not all building is resurrection, though. Some building is just resuscitation or reanimation. There is no new life, no blazing phoenix spirit. Just the same oppressive institutions looking the same as they always have—or with a fresh coat of paint.
We live in a time of destruction. The bombs continue to fall in Ukraine. The ceasefire in Gaza was unsurprisingly brief. SNAP benefits continue to go unpaid as the billionaires—and soon-to-be trillionaires—certainly do not. Healthcare funding is being cut to many of the most vulnerable in our communities. Drought, hunger, illness, war, climate disasters, loneliness, inflation, despotism. We live in a time of destruction. That means we live in a time of building. That means that we have the opportunity to rebuild and to build differently. We live in a time of destruction. That means we have the opportunity to break free from the limitations of what we have known—the systems of marginalization and exploitation, the physical ways of building that are inaccessible and cause us to disengage from community, the ideologies of patriarchy and queerphobia and misogyny and ableism and white supremacy and Christian nationalism and dominion over Creation. We have the chance, the opportunity, the obligation to dream—and to live into a community that looks and loves differently. We live in a time of destruction. That means we live in a time of building, a time of co-laboring with God.
So take courage. Take courage, O Zerubbabel, take courage, O Joshua. Take courage, all you people of the land. Work, for God is with us, and God has plenty of work for us to do. That work begins with envisioning what can be. It begins with getting to know your neighbors, getting to know—really know—your fellow co-laborers beside you. So take courage, because it takes courage to have hope. As a community of faith, we are called to be a place of building amid times of destruction. Not to pray for destruction, to speed things along, or to trigger the end times. But to recognize that we live in a time of destruction, and to see that something comes after it all. This is the resurrection hope to which we are called. May we not be ensnared by what is familiar, by what serves our own interests, and by the urge to hedge our bets. May we build a household that reflects God’s abounding grace, just economics, and radical inversion of the hierarchies we have come to know. May we be bold in seeking justice, practicing mercy, and humbly walking with God into the resurrection. Amen.