Category: Advent Unbound

I received my first pair of eyeglasses in the third grade. There’s something magical about receiving that first pair of glasses, that first adjustment of vision that you didn’t realize was all that bad. I remember leaving the eye doctor’s office and looking up at trees in the distance (it was southern Oklahoma, so trees were typically at a distance). It was in those trees that I really noticed the amazing clarity of my new vision. I could actually see the leaves, the individual leaves, in those trees for the first time. It was a new world. 

Every year it happened again. I would revisit the eye doctor and my world renewed. Of course, nothing at all was happening to the world; it was my eyes that kept getting more and more near-sighted. It’s a testament to the plasticity of our brains. They get accustomed to the declining capabilities of our senses, so that their reduced sensitivities become normal.

In this way I came to understand that the world has a clarity that I could not see. Even though I could not see it, I knew that clarity was there, because every year it would reappear the moment I stepped out of that office and looked at the trees. In a larger sense, we humans know this truth all too well, and we have created many tools that let us see things that we cannot see with our native senses, ranging from telescopes that let us observe fantastically distant galaxies to microscopes that let us glimpse individual atoms. There are so many other examples of machines and gizmos we have made that can see, hear, or otherwise detect phenomena that would otherwise go completely unnoticed.

If we think even more broadly, this penchant for seeing things that cannot be seen is something humans have been doing for a very long time. In life, it is a greatly prized skill, this ability to envision things that do not yet exist, to imagine things that are now only possibilities but that could become real and visible. How else is there progress? It’s not only Henry Ford imagining an assembly line or Steve Jobs imagining an iPhone, it’s every person who’s ever had a dream or a goal or simply a desire that they then pursue until they have acquired it. When you think about it, this ability to see that which cannot be seen is part of the very essence of being “alive”, sentient, and fully human.

The other side of this story is that such imaginative thinking is often considered impractical, or at worst, a waste of time. It is very easy for us to become comfortable with what we know, with what is here now, so that any discussion of something new becomes a distraction, or even a threat. Our vision slowly degenerates without us realizing it, and our brains adjust to this reduced clarity, and it becomes a comfort.

Now that Christmas is past, it is tempting and even natural to let the sounds of the carols fade, to let the glow of the candles recede in our memories, to disassemble the singularity of the Nativity and return its pieces to their little places in the box in the attic until we remember them next year. Our brains will adjust to the dimness of the everyday world, to the regularity of our normal lives with all the things we have already seen so many times. Soon Christmas may completely vanish from our thoughts and conversations, shoved aside by the concerns of the new year.

But here’s the good news: Christmas changed the world, but not in a way that we can easily see. The Kingdom is here, but not visible unless we bring it into being. We have been given a gift: a vision of the Kingdom, of what is possible, lying just beyond our present reality.

It’s fitting that Matthew’s account of Christmas features that most sight-giving element: the Star. Isn’t it intriguing that no one else in the vicinity of Bethlehem seemed to notice the star? If it was such a bright and spectacular object, you would expect people to be coming from miles around and lining up for blocks in front of Mary and Joseph’s house to get a glimpse of the child. But no—no one notices it except three strange, foreign astronomers who journey from far in the east. King Herod and his own astronomers are completely without a clue. It is these foreign wise men who can see what cannot be seen, who notice the thing that God is doing that escapes the attention of everyone else. This is, of course, the Epiphany we celebrate twelve days after Christmas, that flash of insight that reveals the answer to that all-important question for the evangelists: who Jesus is.

So who was Matthew? Like we’ve already discussed for Luke and Mark, we will never know for sure. Early tradition holds that the author was the apostle Matthew; however, the text is anonymous and most scholars find that the authorship of this gospel is unclear. What is quite clear is that the author was Jewish, knew Hebrew well, and was very concerned about establishing Jesus’s identity as the Jewish Messiah. Also, like Paul, the author was not from the environs of Jerusalem (he wrote very good Greek), but more likely was from Syria. Another central concern of the author is the struggle within Judaism in the late 1^st century over the identity of Jesus and the active expulsion of Christians from synagogues. Given this perspective, perhaps it is not surprising that from the very beginning of his gospel, Matthew portrays the true identity of Jesus as something hidden, something unseen that we must learn to see, something that almost everyone, including the religious authorities, will miss. 

In short, Christianity as Matthew presents it is a puzzle that we each need to solve. Being the most Jewish of the gospels, Matthew is full of parables, that ancient method of Jewish teaching that wraps truths in metaphorical stories with no clear answers or interpretations, and requires the listener to discover those truths through sustained reflection. The great Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-8 is a set of puzzles within puzzles that seem to overturn Jewish law but that leave the details of this disruption as an exercise for the listener to disentangle. Indeed, says Jesus, “The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’” Of course, Jesus was not saying anything new here, but simply quoting Isaiah (6:9), as any good Jew would know. Jesus, as Matthew presents him, does not provide answers. Instead, he provides, if you will, eyeglasses. He asks us to learn how to see.

Does the Star not remind you of the pillar of fire that led the escaped Hebrew slaves through the wilderness? That strange light that led them to the mountain, and the Law, and the promised land of Canaan? Did it not remind Matthew’s listeners that, like the wise men, they were all foreigners to God, estranged from God but seeking God’s presence and the coming Messiah? Does it not remind us that we likewise are all foreigners seeking the same things: God’s presence and God’s revelation? So the Star is a guide, a beacon, and a pointer. If you read Matthew closely, I think many of our Nativity scenes may provide quite a distorted image of the nature of that Star, depicting it as a fixed point of light high in the sky over the manger. No! The Star moves! It is active, leading us ever onward. In my mind’s eye I see it more like a will-o’-the-wisp, flickering and flitting through the air just above the ground, beckoning us ever toward the Christ.

Here, I think, we discover one of Matthew’s core teachings: to contrast a minimalist and a proactive approach to faith, the difference between “just getting by” and a passionate pursuit of a true calling. We all can identify areas of our lives when we tend to ask this: “Just tell me what I have to do to get by.” Our heart is not really in the project, we really don’t want to do it, and we just want it to go away. Probable examples are doing our taxes, renewing our driver’s license, or getting that bloodwork done at the lab. We know we need to do it, but we really would rather not be bothered. Contrast these with projects that you can’t wait to start, that you’ve been eagerly anticipating for months, that make you feel truly alive. Maybe it’s performing a service project in your favorite national park, or singing in a concert, or visiting grandchildren. Whatever it is, you have a big, red circle around that date on your calendar and you count down the days until it happens. In other words, it’s just like how a child anticipates Christmas Day.

Now consider how this contrast applies to Christianity as Matthew presents it. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus utters these famous statements: You have heard it said…but I say to you… For example, in brief, you have heard it said, do not murder, but I say to you, do not be angry. The first clause is the minimalist approach, the easy path, the “do just enough to get by” option. Don’t kill people. For most of us, that’s a pretty easy box to check, and we may not even need to change anything about how we live. We can meet that target, thank you very much, and get on with the rest of our lives that we enjoy more and where our passions lie. But the latter clause is profoundly different: it describes a person whose passion it is to improve their relationships with others, to actively identify and eradicate anything that will damage their networks, and become more loving in doing so. It requires constant involvement and awareness along with a continual openness to change. 

The minimalist approach lets us relax into a simple, legalistic, and ultimately selfish version of faith: just tell me what to do so God and I can be on good terms and so that I can get into heaven or whatever other reward I get at the end of the game of life. It focuses on what I will receive, as opposed to what I can give. This is so clearly evident in this story in Matthew 19:

Then someone came to him and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
—Matthew 19:16-22

Just tell me what to do to get by. Just tell me what boxes I need to check. This is not faith; this is merely following rules. (For those keeping score at home, this is why Paul was so passionate about salvation being a free gift of grace that we accept through faith and not by keeping the works of the law.)

That is our Jesus, the teacher in that story, as Matthew presents him. Jesus never says “Yep, that’s good enough. You can stop now.” Or “Well, I suppose that’s all we can expect. It is what it is.” No! Jesus, the Star of Christmas, calls us ever onward, ever deeper into a life of passionate, loving ministry. There is always more to do, more people to love, more oppressed to set free.

I would also offer that when you read the story above, do not be fixated on the idea that you need to give up wealth. Maybe. But that is simply what the rich young ruler needed to give up, because that was where his passions were misdirected. This is the puzzle you need to solve: how well directed are your passions in life? What do you need to give up so that you can pursue Christ as a true passion? Where is the Star leading you? What epiphany awaits you when you ponder that shining singularity of the Nativity, full of infinite possibilities for growth and renewal?

This is Matthew’s great and good news. Christianity—and I’ll say it—real Christianity is a life-giving, joy-bringing, passionate pursuit that you anticipate every day as if you were a child anticipating Christmas. Indeed, you are a child of God, not anticipating but actively experiencing Immanuel, God with us, every day. So for us, the good news is that Christmas is not a one-time event, but a state of being. As Christians, God’s gift to us at Christmas is the opportunity to experience Christmas every day. 

So how do we make this real in our lives? Consider the messages of these three great evangelists: Luke’s vision of the radical openness of God, always seeking out the outsiders, those who most need to hear about God’s love for them; Mark’s plea that we see that the Kingdom is available now, that a new life is open to us now; and Matthew’s guiding Star, always seeking us to lead us onward into deeper and more meaningful ministries. What are the activities that bring you the most joy? What are those pursuits that make you feel most like yourself, your true self? Where are those dark places where your light can shine? Now, as you make your list, if you have any questions about whether an activity can truly be a Christian ministry, use Paul’s simple test: does it build up the body of Christ? In other words, does it increase and deepen loving relationships between people? Does it care for and uplift those in need? Does it make God’s presence more known, and usher in a bit more of the Kingdom?

So this Christmas, and in this new year, imagine that God’s gift to you is a new pair of spiritual eyeglasses that bring a new clarity to the world. What is that vision that you can see but that remains unseen? What steps can you take to bring it into the world? For Christ, our Immanuel, stands at the very doorstep, waiting to lend a hand.

Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. —Matthew 7:7

That is perhaps one of the most dangerous prayers ever conceived. And when you open that door and let Christ in, then there will be the true Christmas, your eternal Christmas, one that returns each and every day.

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It’s almost here! This is the big week, the week we’ve all been waiting for, the week and the day that is the target of all the hustle and bustle, the endgame of all the cheer and excitement. For many of us, particularly if you’re a parent of young children (or have ever been), these are the days before the Christmas Pageants, our annual reenactments of the Nativity, with their barely controlled rehearsals and frantic directors just hoping that at least a few of the angels will stay healthy. After the rehearsals have ended and the Pageant crowds disperse into the night, we’re left with that eager anticipation of that magical morning with all of its treasure and delights. After all, as Ralphie famously exclaims in A Christmas Story: “Christmas was on its way. Lovely, glorious, beautiful Christmas, upon which the entire kid year revolved.” 

But as we grow up and move beyond kiddom, as we take on the responsibilities and burdens of adulthood, as we experience those parts of life that don’t make it into the animated Christmas specials, we may begin to wonder about what it all means. Every Christmas we inevitably think about the nature of belief as we encounter the person of Santa Claus, and wonder if we can still hear that sleigh bell, that first gift of Christmas from The Polar Express. Do we believe in Santa? What does that mean? Does the Nativity scene have anything to say to us now? We just survived Thanksgiving, and now we’re approaching more family gatherings where we may encounter many flavors of “truth”. Is Christmas really just for kids? I mean, Santa is great, and shepherds and angels and lambs are cute, but I have to go to work on Monday and deal with that. 

But there is something about that Nativity scene. Ever since St. Francis of Assisi first staged a live reenactment in 1223, people around the world, in various cultures and languages, with a variety of characters, colors, cloths, animals, and decorations, have created and recreated the scene again and again. The uncountable number of figurine sets are like the constellation of chess sets: figures of every type and description, but all immediately recognizable as Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and wise men (added from Matthew), the Creche, the site of the Birth, the Incarnation, and no explanation is needed.

This is just a tiny testament to the magnificence of the gift that Luke bequeathed to the church when he wrote the opening of his gospel, perhaps the greatest Christmas ornament ever conceived, a multifaceted literary jewel that commands our attention and that can as easily communicate to a three-year-old child as to a seasoned bishop or theologian.

So as you go to your various Pageants, Recitals, Cantatas, and Celebrations this season, I offer a few thoughts to take with you. For I have no doubt that there is a Word waiting for you there, a Word that can reach into any situation or chapter of life, a Word that is thunderous, revolutionary, life-changing, and full of Love and Grace.

Let’s start with the problem of Truth. We humans have been wrestling with this for a long time (not just in the present climate), probably since the very beginning. Remember Pilate’s famous line, “What is truth?” The problem is that most great truths, the truths worth knowing, are very hard to describe directly. We can come to understand them, but they’re hard to explain. So we often will wrap them in a pithy saying. Consider phrases like “less is more.” Three simple words that speak paragraphs. Or these: “You must fail in order to succeed.” “You must give in order to receive.” You can likely think of many others. If asked what they mean, almost always we will answer not with a definition, but by telling a story, a story that exemplifies the truth. It is not the story that matters, but the truth that the story illuminates. Notably, many of these little sayings are paradoxes: they juxtapose two seemingly contradictory statements. So we tell the story and wait for that “Oh, I get it!” moment in our listener. Now, I’d like to introduce you to an entire library of literature that does little else but tell such stories: the Bible. 

It should not surprise us that Luke is a master at such storytelling. If we now consider his Nativity, let’s remember the context. Remember his program, the radical openness of God, a God offering grace to all people. Remember that an infancy narrative was not necessary (as we discussed last time with Mark, who didn’t include one), and so Luke had an opening to craft a story from what little was known about the early life of Jesus into a literary jewel that would accomplish one of his greatest goals that he shared with the other evangelists: to proclaim who Jesus is. Finally, remember his audience: the intelligentsia and cultural elites of the Roman Empire, along with other Gentiles and outsiders. 

With all that in mind, let’s turn to the story. At first, it all goes according to plan. Luke’s audience would immediately recognize the story as that of the birth of a Roman Emperor, who proclaimed himself to be the “son of god”. We have the astronomical portents (the star), the choirs of angels (divine proclamation), and the proclamations of peace, goodwill, and a “golden age” for everyone. This is exactly what the Cult of the Roman Emperor demanded, a cult that Luke’s elite audience actively supported (at least publicly) and through which they received much of their status and influence. But soon the story starts to drift sideways, and then goes horribly wrong. First, it happens at night, in the cover of darkness, where no one can see the majestic parades, armies, and festivities. Second, it happens not in Rome or in any great imperial city or even a mid-sized town. It happens in a field, in the middle of nowhere. Third, there’s no one there. No one can hear the great proclamation or see the parades! Well, there are some sheep, and a few shepherds: in other words, no one is there. Shepherds were the lowest of the low, barely more than the animals they protected. They were castoffs, unmentionable to Greeks and unclean to Jews. What’s more, there is no parade. There are neither armies nor flashing spears nor unfurled flags nor a single banner to be found. The angels simply disappear into absolute silence. (By the way, it’s just glorious how Handel ends the chorus “Glory to God” in the Messiah. Have a close listen.)

It just keeps getting worse. Already a marketing and publicity disaster, with apparently everyone involved in making the parade floats and brass bands either sick, overslept in bed, or otherwise delinquent, we now move to the site of the glorious birth. It does not take place, as mentioned above, in a capital city or palace of any kind, but in a barn, with the precious baby laid in a feed trough! And the parents are not from the aristocracy, but mere peasants, and they’re not even at home! They’re off on some bureaucratic misadventure to answer a census, of all things. Their families are absent, they have no servants or staff attending the mother or infant, and no one in the pathetic little village where they find themselves seems to be aware of what’s happening. Not even the innkeeper who let them in. Once again, it is the shepherds who show up! Amazingly, the shepherds, those nobodies, actually listened to the angels, believed what they heard, and showed up at the barn. They did not run away in terror like nobodies do. No. These lowest of the low acted like Roman citizens and came to pay the newborn King their respects. They go to Mary and Joseph, and at that point, since Christ is there with them and these shepherds, there you have the first Christian church service, right at the Nativity. And everyone else is asleep. This was the first Christian community. It should not be lost of us that to those shepherds, a barn was very much their place. The animals and nomadic peasants were their people.

At this point, many of Luke’s readers may well have thrown the scroll out the window in frustration, or more likely, fear. They likely should have, because this story was not only offensive and insane, but it was a frontal assault on the Imperial Cult, a proclamation that not only was the Emperor not the true king, but that the true king was something unimaginable. The story made an utter mockery of everything the Cult held dear, and offered a vision of and an invitation into a very different kind of kingdom. The story was dangerous, and Luke was not hiding it, but putting it right there for anyone to see. It was such an act of bravery to write this gospel to that audience. And remember, this is the just the opening salvo of his two-part work.

I would make one more observation. Strange things happen to ordinary mathematics when Infinity becomes involved. We have a name for it: calculus. Disastrous things happen when both infinity and its reciprocal, zero, are involved. The classic example is when you try to divide any number by zero. The result is described either as infinite or “undefined”, and if that happens in any computer program, it will cause an immediate crash. It is a bane of every software developer. When such an event happens in an unsuspecting mathematics equation, practitioners will simply say that the equation “blows up”. Everything stops. The math breaks down in a singularity. No further progress can be made. Such things should be prevented at all costs. Even more fun are forms that are known as “indeterminate forms”, such as when zero and infinity combine together. Such forms have an unknowable number of possible values and cannot be defined without knowing more about the context in which they occur.

Look at what Luke has crafted in the barn. We have the almighty and infinite God of Gods, Lord of Lords, present before and beyond the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, now appearing in the person of a newborn human infant, an “absolute zero” human in a family with absolutely zero worth. Who could be more destitute than this family? They have no home, no friends, no wealth, no status, and are invisible to everyone. This immense juxtaposition is the shining nexus of Luke’s Christmas, a Singularity, an Impossibility yet an Indeterminate form of infinite possibilities, a rip in the fabric of spacetime, a point where the Christ tears through the ultimate barrier and enters our reality, and we cannot take our eyes away from it. 

The picture is exquisite and beautiful, but has the power to overturn Empires and blow away every barrier we humans attempt to put between ourselves. This a very new kind of kingdom: we bring nothing; God brings everything. As we stare at the Nativity, the questions arise: Who can be more destitute than us? Who is righteous before God? Who are we without our wealth, our families, our professions, and our nationalities? The answers are simple. We are God’s. We are God’s children gifted with unique spiritual gifts that become our ministries and our source of purpose and life.

Everyone can understand this story. Everyone can identify with that family. We stare into that Indeterminate form of the Nativity, into those infinite possibilities, and catch of glimpse of who God sees us becoming. That new baby has nowhere to go but up. He has and remembers no past and no hangups, but offers only growth. That is the gift of Christmas that God offers each of us. It is a call to rebirth, to leveling up, to leaving the past behind and to come and follow.

So, by all means, attend those Pageants, Plays, Cantatas, and Recitals. It is Christmas, after all. But as you watch, take a moment to see that Nativity as Luke presents it, a shining jewel of possibility, an Empire-shattering promise of new beginnings, and meditate, if only for a moment, on your next faithful step. Because maybe Ralphie was right. Christmas is on its way. Lovely, glorious, beautiful Christmas, a crazy, joyful Impossibility around which all of our lives revolve.

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Next up: Our Advent: Christmas Every Day

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I always welcome comments, thoughts, and questions. Please comment here or use my Contact page!

I love Kurt Vonnegut. It’s a silly thing to say because I have only scratched the surface of his writings, but I love what I have read and fondly remember videos of him being interviewed or moderating writing events. I’m thinking about Slaughterhouse V, and Billy Pilgrim becoming unstuck in time. It’s a beautiful device, exactly like we often find in Scripture, because it forces us to confront and envision a problem in a way we will not easily find in the world. To confront the horror and psychological trauma of an event like the firebombing of Dresden by depicting a person’s psyche as being so disrupted that it becomes disconnected from spacetime is to deploy a device that not only says volumes in just a few words, but also allows Vonnegut to construct a story freed from our normal expectations thereby allowing him to relate difficult concepts in surprising, fresh, and often hilarious ways. 

This brings us to the gospel of Mark. 

Mark doesn’t come up a lot at Advent or Christmas. The reason is simple: Mark has no infancy narrative. Not a word. Why? 

I hate to say it, but it’s simply because it wasn’t important. It didn’t matter. Now, before you pick out the variety of rotten vegetable you want to throw at me, let’s remember that Christmas was not even celebrated until the year 326, some 300 years after the Resurrection. Quite simply, in the 1st century, Christmas was not a thing. 

Now I love Christmas. I am not for a minute suggesting there is anything wrong about us celebrating Christmas or singing cantatas or performing Christmas pageants or hosting Christmas parties or any of the other uncountable ways we celebrate the season. Quite the opposite. What I am saying is that if we want to understand Mark and what he has to say about the coming of the Christ, we cannot expect to find the Christmas that we think we know. The mistake we should not make is to think that because Mark does not describe what we recognize as Christmas, he has nothing to say about it. 

Of course, if you keep reading Mark, it gets worse. There are no post-Resurrection appearances either. So it’s not just Christmas that Mark seems to ignore, but a big part of Easter also! This was such a problem for some in the early church that most scholars agree that not one but two endings were added later to clean that up a bit. It is quite likely that Mark ended at verse 8 in chapter 16; the remainder of the present text was added later to smooth all this out and make us all feel a bit more comfortable.

Oops.

Why would Mark leave all this out? What is wrong with Mark? Nothing at all. As is often the case, I suspect it’s more likely that there’s something wrong with us. Mark is the earliest gospel, one of the earliest Christian documents. It is closest in time to the events themselves, and by that fact alone may be a more faithful witness. It was clearly a revered document, as both Matthew and Luke used almost all of it in their own gospels. As the first gospel, it was a novel and completely original piece of literature. It is foundational, and may have been the founding document of Mark’s Gentile community. Wise mentors have advised me to look in Mark first, because if Mark doesn’t include it, it may not be that important. Mark wastes few words. 

So who was Mark? Again, we do not know for sure. Tradition ascribes the gospel to John Mark, a disciple of Peter and companion of Paul. What is more clear is that, like Luke, the audience was Gentile. Unlike Luke, Mark’s Greek is simpler and colloquial, with figures of speech found more in spoken Greek than formal prose. It’s interesting to note that it takes about 90 minutes to read Mark aloud in one setting, just the right length for a evening’s performance in a 1^st century amphitheater, market square, or family home. 

So how does Mark start his gospel? After a brief quote from Isaiah, Mark ushers us right to the Jordan River and the baptism of Jesus, the moment where Jesus begins his ministry. This makes complete sense when you think about it. We know very little about the life of Jesus of Nazareth before this moment when his ministry began. Besides the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew (again, not in Mark) and the story of Jesus in the Temple at age 12 (also not in Mark), there is no mention of what happened to Jesus as a teenager or as a twenty-something. Mark’s position is clear: nothing that happened before Jesus’ baptism is of any importance. 

So we start there, and what a beginning! Think about who shows up to this baptism: God the Father, whose voice we hear; Jesus, the Christ, being baptized; and the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus as a dove. Bingo! Mark wins the profound theology prize! In two brief verses Mark presents to us not just the baptism of Jesus, but the “birth” of the Trinity! Now, of course, it’s nonsensical to speak of the “birth” of the Trinity, when the Trinity is only a human-created model that attempts to explain the nature of a God that is both beyond our imaginations and that has existed and does exist beyond the known universe. What Mark is depicting here is the revelation of the Trinity, the “birth” of our understanding of it and, most importantly, of who Jesus is. There is no more important question for the gospel writers than that of who Jesus is. Mark gives us the answer right out of the gate, only a few dozen words into his gospel. This is Mark’s Christmas, the tearing of the heavens and the coming into the world of the Christ and the Holy Spirit in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is at this moment that all of these entities come together, and instead of shepherds watching in awe at night in their fields, we have John the Baptist and his gathered faithful watching in awe along the banks of the Jordan River. 

Other images should appear to us now. The scene Mark presents of Jesus’ baptism foreshadows the Transfiguration, where once again the three persons of the Trinity converge in almost identical fashion, now on a mountaintop joined by Moses and Elijah. It should not escape our notice that John the Baptist, who was killed before the Transfiguration, was widely considered a return of Elijah. So who really was on that mountaintop? Here’s another: Mark’s depiction of Jesus’ baptism also foreshadows Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descends in very much the same manner. Mark does not write about Pentecost, but Luke does, and there can be no doubt that Luke knew exactly what he was doing here. Do you see the pattern? What happens to Jesus happened to his disciples, and because we are also his disciples, these things will happen to us. Very quickly, the entire story becomes unstuck in time. 

Imagine being someone in the 1^st century listening for the first time to Mark’s gospel being read aloud. There were no other gospels. There was no Bible beyond the Hebrew scripture (our Old Testament). Paul’s letters were still just letters. You are almost certainly illiterate, as are the vast majority of the population, so reading is not an option. The speaker is reading the gospel to you as an invitation into a Christian community, and you hear all of the action and immediacy that infuses every scene, and come to know all too clearly that what happened to all of the disciples is open and available to you, and will happen to you! It’s not someone else’s story!

Think about this: when were Christians often baptized in the early church? On Easter! Why do you need to read about someone else’s post-Resurrection appearances when you’re about to have your very own on Easter? It’s all going to happen now. Not at some other time or place! Not to somebody else! The Kingdom is here now. A new life is ready for you now! Christ stands on the doorstep, knocking! Now!

I think perhaps this would have been one of Mark’s favorite Christmas songs:

For we need a little Christmas 
Right this very minute 
Candles in the window
Carols at the spinet
Yes, we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute
We need a little Christmas now!

Yes! Exactly! Mark is here to say, you’ve got it! Why do you think so many of Mark’s verbs are in the present tense? Too often I fear that we modern folk, so separated in time and culture from that of Mark, see the Bible as just a big book that needs to be studied, that is about other people’s lives long ago, and that is trapped in that faraway time and place. No! If we let Mark’s immediacy shatter this glass box in which we’ve imprisoned the texts and realize that there is no book, there is only Word and Spirit available to us now in our lives today, that it is not only about our ancestors in the faith but about us, if we can get to that place, then I truly believe the experience can be transformative. Then for us, the stories truly become unstuck in time, available to settle into ours.

Here’s a beautiful approach that some offer as a way to read the ending of Mark. Let’s assume that the gospel really does end in chapter 16, verse 8. Read that ending, then immediately start the gospel over with chapter 1 verse 1: The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. Do you see? The Resurrection is that beginning! It’s the answer to the hanging question at the end of the gospel, and you, the hearer, now become the evangelist! The speaker has passed the baton to you, and now you present the gospel to others. So the story becomes your own, and you’ve found yourself engaging in ministry.

In this way, it becomes doubly meaningful that Mark starts with baptism, because now we see that this baptism is also our baptism, the beginning of our own ministries. If you are baptized, think back to your baptism or confirmation. If you aren’t baptized, then consider it a possible future event. In the church baptism is that moment when we each publicly acknowledge the revelation of the Holy Spirit in our lives and make public commitments to ourselves, to God, and to the church. The promise is itself Trinitarian: it is a promise to ourselves, to God, and to our neighbors, mirroring the two great commandments to love God and neighbor as we love ourselves. Let’s be clear: we do not hold that baptism is either the first or only time this revelation of the Spirit happens; that can and does happen at any time. But baptism is our personal Pentecost, the public acknowledgment of this Advent of the Holy Spirit, and as such, is the beginning of our public ministries. 

This is the point where Mark might want to start telling our stories, because the most important story is the one we write through our ministries. We are all called to ministry, to go out and do work that fulfills promises made at our baptisms. That is why baptism must be public. It’s not just making a private commitment. We are called into relationships and called to build new relationships through the power of the Holy Spirit. In doing so we build up the church. We build the Kingdom. 

This is why baptism is so important. This is perhaps why Mark starts with it. Mark helps us keep our eye on the prize. Because when in ministry, when you’re at the soup kitchen, when you’re counseling a troubled teen, when you’re in a hospital room praying with a grieving family, the only thing that matters in that moment is the love that you bring into that space through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

In my youth the Holy Spirit was the hardest person of the Trinity to understand. God as Creator made sense, as did the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. But the Spirit seemed hard to nail down (little did I know!) But now, I find that the Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity that I understand best because it continually disrupts my life in marvelous ways! The more I see it the easier it is to see. It’s a continuous positive feedback loop. Honestly, a great deal of the Christian walk is simply learning to recognize the Holy Spirit in our ordinary day to day lives, and in doing so, we transform our lives into ministries. 

So this Advent, if you are baptized, remember your baptism, and be thankful. Hear Mark’s call to release your baptism so that it becomes unstuck in time, an event you experience once but renew continually. Hear Mark’s call to immediacy and urgency, not out of panic or fear, but from the simple fact that there is no time like the present because there is no time except the present. That is where we meet God, in the eternal present, in an eternal life that is here now and available now and always, completely free and unstuck in time. I leave you with the Carpenters: 

Christmas future is far away
Christmas past is past
Christmas present is here today
Bringing joy that will last

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas!

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Next up – God’s Advent: An Imperial Upheaval

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It’s Advent, and so we start with Luke. Why? Because it’s what we do. Luke wrote the infancy narratives that everyone knows. Luke wrote the monologue that Linus so eloquently delivers in the Peanuts Christmas special. Luke’s story is the backbone of almost every Christmas pageant ever presented in countless churches. But unlike Linus’ monologue, a direct quote from Luke, most pageants are mix of Luke, Matthew (the wise men), and sometimes extraneous elements like Christmas trees, Santa Claus, the Grinch, and maybe a snowman or two. So let’s do this. Let’s take Luke seriously this Advent and see where it leads us.

But if we’re going to take Luke seriously, then let’s start by considering Luke’s program: his purpose and motivations for writing his two great works that we know as Luke-Acts. Let’s be clear: seriously does mean boring, studious, or complex. It’s closer to taking the safeties off and letting the majesty of this literature range free. It means addressing this literature as people experiencing real problems that are complex, and we need that literature to measure up to the task of speaking into these difficult places. Good News! I bring you tidings of great joy, because not only is this literature up to the task, but the unleashing of the Spirit as part of approaching the literature this way will exceed your expectations of what is possible. There is no end to the depth of this literature, nor to the Spirit that empowers it. If you think you have figured it out, you will return to find it surprisingly new, a multifaceted Christmas jewel that reflects your current life situations. So expect, and pray for, this Advent of joy!

A serious, joyful, extravagant Advent is a path to radical spiritual upheaval and growth, a path toward a new year and new possibilities, and a path toward seeing God more clearly. There is a reason the church does Advent every year: we all need it every year as a discipline, like having your annual “spiritual” physical. Luke was likely a physician, after all! Luke was incredibly serious, incredibly joyful, and incredibly smart about his evangelical program. We should be no less.

So, who was Luke? He was the author of a two-volume set: Luke-Acts. We’ll never know for sure exactly who he was, but we can get a useful picture of him from the available clues. From the way he writes, he was clearly a highly educated Gentile, and was almost certainly a young man accompanying Paul on his famous missionary journeys. Notably, Luke is the only gospel writer to mention Paul, and he does much more than that: he devotes half of Acts to a full history of Paul’s journeys, the most complete history we have. (What a gift to the church!) Paul also mentions Luke in Philemon, and there are mentions of Luke in Colossians and II Timothy. 

Now, let’s consider the timing. Paul was already a Pharisee at the time of Stephen’s martyrdom in 36 CE (Acts 7), so he was at least in his 20s or 30s then. So Paul was likely in his 50s when he started his missionary journeys in the early 50s CE. If we imagine Luke as a young man in his 20s during the height of Paul’s ministry in 50-60 CE, then Paul was likely a generation older than Luke. If true, then when Luke wrote Luke-Acts in 80-90 CE, he would have been in his 50s-60s, a mature writer in his prime looking back at the momentous events that gave birth to Christianity and, in his writing, passing this history on to the church. So in summary, all of this makes it easy to picture Luke as a Gentile born around the time of the Resurrection and who as a young man became Paul’s disciple, or at the very least, a devoted companion whom Paul trusted. So it is no surprise that we find extensive overlap between the gospels of Luke and Paul.

Who was Luke’s audience? The evidence and Luke’s own statements strongly suggest that Luke was not writing to a single community, but rather to whole strata of society. His most obvious audience is the intelligentsia and elite of the Roman Empire as evidenced by the overall artistry of his language and his stylized opening addressing the work to “Theophilus” (Lover of God), but he also addresses the wider church, seekers, and outsiders. Luke wrote with the intelligence, sophistication, and complex use of ancient Greek that would be read and studied by serious scholars and leaders at the time. Luke was making the case that Christianity can and should be taken as seriously as any other philosophical school. But what is crystal clear is that his primary audience was Gentile and not Jewish. Here we have strong alignment with Paul, who always considered himself, perhaps more than anything else, an apostle to the Gentiles. We remember that Paul was from Tarsus, far north of Jerusalem in Gentile country. Paul grew up a Jew in a Gentile world. For Paul, the question of how to be a good Jew in a Gentile world was his constant companion. By the way, if you substitute in that question “Christian” for “Jew” and “secular” for “Gentile”, you get one of the central problems for the modern church. This is why the gospels of Paul and Luke can resonate so strongly with us, if we let them. 

But here is the great problem: this mission to the Gentiles was incredibly controversial in the 1st century, and for good reason. Jews were an oppressed minority in a Gentile empire. At the beginning of Christianity, Christians were overwhelmingly Jewish. Why invite the enemy in? Throughout their history Jews have struggled to keep their people from worshipping other gods. Remember the Baals and the sacred poles and fertility cults that the Old Testament prophets railed against? And the 1^st century Gentile world of Rome was full of gods! (If you need reminding, consider the Odyssey or any Percy Jackson book or movie). Why let Gentiles in to corrupt and dilute our loyalty to God? Remember the Ezra narratives, the entire Deuteronomistic history of Joshua through II Kings and basically all of the prophets: the Exile to Babylon happened because of Israel’s idolatry, social injustice, and disobedience. Why, as Jews, would we make the same mistakes again? Think of how much worse this would have been when Luke was writing, 10-20 years after the fateful year of 70 CE when a new Babylon, Rome, had destroyed the Temple! The Gentiles are our enemy! They are not a theoretical threat! The Temple, once again, lay in rubble. Paul’s evangelism to the Gentiles was already radically open before Rome destroyed the Temple. Imagine how much more so it was afterwards. 

Imagine also how this must have affected a young Luke hearing Paul preach for the first time. Here was an impassioned Jew, preaching about a Jesus from some nowhere district of the Empire, a Jesus his own people had rejected and executed. For the young Luke, Paul showed him Christ and offered that to him freely, while the Jews at the time would have excluded Luke as unclean. For Luke, the gospel of radical openness was not theoretical; it was his personal journey of faith. 

From this perspective we can now approach Acts 10, a famous and thunderous chapter where Luke constructs a story starring Peter, the Rock of the church, confronting this very controversy, both within himself, within his community of Jewish Christians, and within the entire context of the Empire. (There are so many multi-layered metaphors in this story that unpacking it is an essay in itself.) The other major character Luke places in this story is Cornelius, a Gentile, but not just any Gentile: he is a Roman centurion, the very kind of Roman warrior that led troops into Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple! It is really impossible to overstate how devastatingly shocking the juxtaposition of these two characters would have been to Luke’s readers. Think of an SS officer or one of Darth Vader’s storm troopers being invited into your church. 

After Luke sets up this crazy juxtaposition, it gets worse. Peter has a vision. It’s a vision of a picnic blanket full of all kinds of unclean animals that the Law forbids Peter, a good Jew, to eat. But God tells him to eat anyway. Suffice it to say that in this vision God proclaims to Peter that nothing is unclean that God made. This is an astounding and radical statement that eradicates human tribalism while upholding the central message of Genesis 1: after each act of creation, God saw that the creation was good. By the way, we should not miss the fact that Peter, who denied Christ three times, sees this vision three times. Right after seeing this vision, it gets even worse, again. Cornelius’ servants appear and invite Peter to Cornelius’ house where the Holy Spirit Itself commits the high heresy of falling on Cornelius’ family, repeating Pentecost but on an unclean and ungodly representative of the Roman Imperial State. This blows Peter’s mind in a very good way. It should blow ours if we let it. Who is your Cornelius? Who is mine? We all have not just one, but many. Luke’s message was and is a clarion call to the church: there is no one unclean who God made. In case you missed it, this multifaceted jewel of a vision within a story is how a smart and artistic 1st century writer makes a sledgehammer of a point.

In a testament to how challenging this teaching was and is, Luke next describes in Acts 11 how the leaders of the church in Jerusalem hauled Peter before them when they heard about this little incident and demanded an explanation. Into that space Peter preaches, a sermon that is simply a witness to what happened, and his words silence them. This leads directly to the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 where the overwhelmingly Jewish church hotly debated the question of evangelizing to Gentiles. James, the brother of Jesus, brokered a compromise that let it happen, and It should not be lost on us that the reason any of us Gentiles are Christian today is largely because of the decision at that council. In this way, Luke’s personal journey of faith becomes our journey of faith. We become Luke’s audience and Luke’s people. Luke’s story becomes timeless.

As an aside, let’s take a moment to address a common question that often arises at this point: why would God change God’s mind? Why would God give laws to the ancient Hebrews in the time of Moses and then cast them aside in the 1^st century? That’s a question a bit beyond the scope of this essay, but I’ll offer a few thoughts. First, God didn’t change. God has always welcomed the alien and immigrant, because even the chosen people fleeing from Egypt were only ragtag aliens in the beginning. Remember Moses’ warning in Deuteronomy 6 that comes immediately after the great Shema, in case you doubt its importance:

When the Lord your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. —Deuteronomy 6:10-12

The point is that we are all immigrants. We are all aliens. None of us are worthy to stand before God blameless. We err profoundly if we dare to think so.

Think about the problem of the Exodus: if you were to take a ragtag assortment of barely civilized, impoverished, uneducated, desperate people whose only common experience is that they’ve lived through centuries of Egyptian imperial trauma and then bring them into a desert (no choice about that, the Nile delta is surrounded by desert), they would need bright fluorescent name tags just to remember who they are and keep from killing each other. God called Moses to form a nation out of raw human chaos (does this remind you of Genesis 1?). The Law kept the people holy, or separate, from all of the surrounding cultures that constantly threatened to overwhelm them (and very nearly did on many occasions). The Law was what they needed at the time, and was likely about all they could handle. Some examples may be helpful. if you’re a beginning piano student, would your teacher put a Rachmaninoff concerto in front of you at your first lesson? No, you would get “Hot Cross Buns” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. If you’re learning to cook, would your instructor assign you to handle a New York celebrity wedding with 500 guests and six courses sampling the regions of Southeast Asia? No, she would show you how to chop an onion and heat oil in a pan without burning the kitchen down. If you’ve never worked out before and sat for way too many hours at desk jobs, would your trainer give you a 53 lb kettlebell, a Bosu, a loaded trap bar and set you a 60-minute circuit of 15 exercises followed by running around the outside of the building five times? No, you would die. He would do an evaluation of your fitness level before letting you near any equipment. 

God does not change. God teaches. And the lessons change as we progress. 

The second thing I would offer is that radical openness is hard. Very hard. People resisted it in Moses’ time (if they could even hear it), they resisted during the reign of David and the following kings, they resisted during the 1^st century, and we continue to resist it today. Humans are by nature tribal and we easily succomb to fear when threatened, leading to the building of walls and excluding outsiders. Consider the many ways that modern churches reject people, whether based on race, creed, nationality, sexuality, wealth, status, profession, or musical preference. Too often our churches are tainted by our broader culture’s eternal penchant for being a Baskin Robbin’s store full of many flavors of rejection and multicolored toppings of bias. 

God’s radical openness is hard for us. Very hard. It is easy to say that God created all people, loves all people, and accepts all people. It is easy to say, but much harder to accept. Too often, we don’t want it to be true. We like to think that people we like will also like people like us, and will despise people we despise. Nonsense. Even more ridiculous is when we pretend this applies to God. God loves lots of people we despise. Even worse: God calls us to love them also. Who are those people for you, the people hopelessly beyond God’s grace? That cannot be accepted? That have no place “in the tent”? What is today’s Jerusalem Council?

At this point some of you may be feeling vindicated and very happy about what I’m saying, and that you sorely wish everyone else thought this way, and that this call to openness is what you’ve been trying to say all along. But friends, and I say this with all love, we must be careful. If we ever say, regardless of what side we’re on, “We are righteous and they are not”, we fall into the trap. In my view, no one says this better than Luke’s mentor. You really need to read Romans 2-3 in their entirety, but I’ll start with the opening of chapter 2. Here we go. Buckled seatbelts are strongly advised, and take small children by the hand:

Therefore you are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others, for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.  —Romans 2:1

Especially in this time and climate, you need to put that statement on your refrigerator and read it every day. It is so easy to slide into this. Why else do you think Paul opens Romans this way? It plagued his ministry continually. And it’s just the beginning of his discussion of the nature of human Sin.

Here’s one more exercise to try. This may be a hard ask, but it is useful. If you’re a Christian, then in this passage substitute “Christian” for “Jew”, because here Paul is talking to “insiders” who think that the fact that they are insiders makes them righteous. Then substitute “the unchurched” for “gentiles”, because in our context, it is the unchurched who are our outsiders. Or, substitute for “gentiles” any group with which you vehemently disagree and question the validity of their views. Then reread.

But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of your relation to God and know his will and determine what really matters because you are instructed in the law, and if you are sure that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you, then, who teach others, will you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by your transgression of the law? For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you.” —Romans 2:17-24

Yes, this is Paul grabbing us by the lapels and shaking. Hard. But Paul does it is because this is so important and so dangerous. But here’s the good news! Do you also see that Paul is simultaneously showing us the way beyond this divisive time? (Keep reading Romans if you want details.) Do you see that Paul is lighting the way forward? How? It’s simply the reverse of his rhetorical questions: build up your communities by creating and strengthening loving relationships. Very simply, get to know someone who disagrees with you. Take them to lunch. Don’t discuss the thorny issue. Just get to know them as another person, and discover how to love them. Who is your Cornelius? Talk to them. Discover what they need and provide it to them. Build the bridge. Repair the breach. Because watch out, the Holy Spirit might just commit a high heresy before your very eyes. This is radical openness in practice.

Yes, it is hard. It always has been. But the good news is that your measure of success is not whether you change another person’s mind. Your success is simply that you reached out in love, that you lowered your own weapons and turned them into plowshares to build a field where love and understanding can grow and flourish.

Look at Paul’s example. Paul is basically saying to the Jews, don’t feel righteous because you think you’re better than the liberal Gentiles that want to throw away your traditions. And he’s saying to the Gentiles, don’t feel righteous because you’re better than the conservative Jews that won’t accept you. None are righteous! Paul makes everyone mad at him, and he’s just fine with that. Every pastor knows this dynamic all too well. In many ways our prejudices, our causes, and our held positions often become part of our wealth, our mammon, and logs in our eyes that blind us to the gospel. Again Paul shows us the way forward, because if our actions are not infused with and informed by love, then they are at best worthless, and at worst, deadly.

Do you see why he had to write I Corinthians 13? Do you see how misleading and silly it is to limit this to wedding Scripture? This text is meant to stop wars and the dissolution of human communities, including the church! It is one of Paul’s largest sledgehammers, and while we all love to quote it, if we’re honest, we don’t want to hear it. The best among us have moved beyond wanting mere wealth and power, but we do want angelic speech and knowledge and faith and generosity and self-sacrifice and all the rest. But adding love to all that? It’s hard. Very hard, but very necessary, because without love, it’s so easy for us to become people who see those who do not agree with our cause as not being welcome in the church.

Even when we know we are right (be careful), we are called to love first. Even when we can see the way that others cannot, we are called to love first. The only “right” thing is love, and this Love, this Grace, is God’s radical openness. This Love is the refiner’s fire that will burn away any walls we try to put up. 

Picture Luke, now fully mature, a respected and well-known figure in Christianity, 20-30 years after Paul’s death amid Nero’s persecutions, 10-20 years after the destruction of the Temple. Picture him as he looks back in astonishment at what has happened to the church. What was once a tiny, demoralized, fringe movement in Judea is now sweeping the Empire like wildfire. The Jewish leadership in Jerusalem tried to stamp it out, and it kept spreading. Nero and all of his Roman might tried to stamp it out, and it kept spreading. New Emperors are now increasing the pressure, executing more and more Christians, but it is still spreading through poor, rich, slave, and free, in spite of all kinds of internal divisions and strife, through every sector of society, further and deeper into Europe, and Luke can clearly see that it is transforming, that he is transforming, that he who was once a rejected outsider has become an insider, that the entire Christian movement is no longer a Jewish movement, no, it is far bigger than that now. There are no longer any outsiders for this God, this mighty, surprising, and overwhelmingly loving Holy Spirit. 

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. —Isaiah 49:6

How can Luke (or any of us!) read the prophets and entire Hebrew literature about this God and not be silenced in awe and amazement at something no human hand could accomplish, this literal transformation of the known world? 

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like washers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.
—Malachi 3:1-3

This is the true Advent: the fire of the Spirit unleashed, uncontrolled, blowing where it will. This is the radical openness of God. Read Malachi carefully and take care. Beware delighting in this Jesus. More often than not, the Jesus that comes will not delight you, but will burn through you, cleansing you, freeing you, transforming you. But so often we will throw up our hands and resist. We don’t want to change. We don’t want to let go of the past and our comfortable prejudices and things we think we know. We’re scared of taking the leap into an unknown and unfamiliar landscape where we may not be right, or even know what right is. But we must if we are to grow and take the next faithful step. This is the laying down of our burdens at the foot of the Cross and watching the wrath of God burn them away. For the Spirit has no patience for crosses, or tombs, or anything else we try to put in its way. For this wrath of God is a wrath of Love and purifying fire, the mortal enemy of Sin and Death and every source of darkness. This is the Christ, the Light of the World, and indeed, the darkness cannot overcome it.

Next up – Our Advent: Our Baptisms

View the entire series.

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