Clothe Yourselves With Love

A CLOTHESLINE IS AN ODD IMAGE for Advent spirituality, but it dances before my eyes, reminding me of the pleasure I had as a child helping my grandmother hang out our clothes to dry in the back garden. How fresh they smelled when we took them down! Those who have to use dryers may never know what they are missing.

After Christmas, we will be reading from Colossians about the new styles of being human that the Incarnation attracts us to try out for ourselves. After stripping ourselves to put on the baptismal self, each layer of our new outfit is “pegged out” on the line for us to admire and try on. “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience ... Above all clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (3:12, 14). This same passage goes on to invite us to take seriously that meditation on scripture is a foundational Christian practice, not an optional one. Each of us must find our way of internalizing scripture, celebrating and investigating it in the inner space and landscape of our unique selves. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (3:16). Advent is a visitation to us of “words of Christ” that we need to invite in and entertain. Words of Christ as the coming Human One, our New Self, the indwelling Presence with which we are pregnant, the young Christ growing into God’s call.

[ December 2 ]

God's Grace or Political Chaos?

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

IT IS HARD to find a foothold in the plethora of images of cosmic chaos with which Luke surrounds Jesus’ predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome. The firmest grip is offered by the central image found in a specific quotation from the Book of Daniel: “Then they will see ‘the Human One [often translated “Son of Man”] coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory” (Luke 21:27). The Human One in Daniel’s apocalypse is an artful symbol of God’s own chosen people, contrasting sharply with the monsters in the cosmic melodrama who represent the various pagan empires that have successively oppressed Israel. In Daniel the “coming in a cloud” of the Human One is definitely not a coming from heaven to earth. The movement is in the opposite direction; the coming is an upward movement to God in order to be claimed, blessed, and vindicated. “And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him” (Daniel 7:13). This symbolic coming to the divine throne is a coded expression of hope that in all the chaos of human politics and despite the suffering and powerlessness of those who remain faithfully in covenant with God, vindication is certain because God’s grace will ultimately triumph. The expectation of many Christians today that Jesus will “come back” from heaven to earth to rule the planet is not consistent with the original symbol at all. We have our work cut out for us to restore the original sense of the coming of the Human One.

[ December 9 ]

The Refiner’s Fire

Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 1:68-79; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6

IN A SERIES OF workshops a few years ago, I asked small groups to put together their own summaries of Jesus’ teaching. Often the disillusioning results hardly went beyond vague assertions that Jesus “replaced the Old Testament God of judgment with a God of love.” Liberal religious culture is so “judgment averse” (in reaction to fundamentalism) that many have difficulty grasping that the coming of God’s grace and truth exposes and calls to account everything false and toxic in human relations, politics, business—and religion.

Missing the importance of the judgment theme in Advent muffles the impact of Christmas. In this season, millions will hear Malachi’s words read or sung as part of Handel’s Messiah. How many will connect the prophet’s holding to account of a corrupt temple priesthood with current events such as the crisis in the Roman Catholic Church over institutional failure to protect its children from clerical sexual predators? “For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap ... and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver” (3:2-3). The treason of the clergy is no new thing. Time and again religious officials collectively betray the trust given to them, so Malachi makes God’s priority a thoroughgoing reform of the temple officials by sending a “messenger of the covenant.” John’s gospel will symbolize Jesus’ assumption of this role by transferring the shocking story of his disruption of the temple’s “business as usual” to the very beginning of his ministry.

[ December 16 ]

John the Drencher

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

“WITH JOY YOU will draw water from the wells of salvation,” we are promised in the poem of Isaiah (12:3). However far our technologies are taking many human beings from dependency on wells for survival, we can never dispense with this archetypal imagery. We must go again to the waters to replenish our sense of repentance. John the Drencher invites us there in the gospel passage. His baptism is not a discreet sprinkling but a sousing and drenching, to wash off the stink of forgetfulness, entitlement, indolence, and self-absorption so we can begin again our recognition of responsibility for one another.

Our first steps after taking the plunge will be to unblock the inner wellspring of compassion for our fellow human beings in need: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise” (3:11). Paul’s injunction to “rejoice in the Lord, always” (Philippians 4:4) is another reminder that joy is invariably the sign that we are actively drawing on the inner well of the heart where healing and wholeness continually bubble up from the indwelling Spirit. Joy snaps us out of our fascination with what is toxic, degrading, ugly, and divisive in the world around us and urges us to become witnesses to God’s tenderness, beauty, and intimacy: “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near” (4:5).

[ December 23 ]

Prophetic Cousins

Micah 5:2-5a; Psalm 80:1-7; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55

OVER THE YEARS those who act as spiritual guides acquire an extraordinary amount of data about the inner workings of grace in the heart. I can certainly vouch for this fact that many others report: When people pray seriously with scripture, sooner or later Mary, the mother of Jesus, unexpectedly makes an appearance, attracting and intriguing us as a powerful focus of God’s grace. It often takes those with a Protestant heritage by surprise.

Perhaps this Sunday’s gospel, recounting the pregnant Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, may help us be open to our own visitation. Who does Mary want to be for us now? Luke presents her as the supreme prophetic witness to the unwavering consistency of God’s tender regard for the forgotten and discounted. All generations will call her blessed as the ultimate proof that God’s “mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation” (Luke 1:50). In her song of praise, this tender regard is celebrated for its power to disrupt what seems fated and inevitable. Divine mercy has a cutting edge of judgment. Where God’s mercy strikes home, structures of privilege that seem permanent buckle and give way. “He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away” (1:53).

[ December 30 ]

A Child’s God

1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26; Psalm 148; Colossians 3:12-17; Luke 2:41-52

LUKE'S STORY OF the 12-year-old Jesus staying behind in the temple to discuss theology with the experts and teachers is quite poignant. Jesus is asserting his independence already and claiming the right to be in his “Father’s house” (Luke 2:49). His mother’s anxiety over three days of separation shows that “a sword” is piercing her own soul (2:35), as Simeon had predicted. Jesus’ increase in wisdom and years has a price. Self-differentiation inflicts pain. The reading from 1 Samuel evokes the image of the little boy Samuel living apart from his parents in service to the shrine of the Lord of Hosts at Shiloh.

I wonder how many readers resonate with these stories because they confirm our experience that the religious experience of children can be profound, authentic, rich. Does our preaching really take that into account? I remember as a young boy with a deep sense of calling from God—all the stranger because mine was a non-Christian household—often visiting the little art museum in my hometown after school to contemplate an oil painting of “the infant Samuel.” It’s not great art, but it was a powerful icon for me back then, telling me that grace can indeed take hold of our lives when we are very young—it’s not just a matter of being precocious.

“Preaching the Word,” Sojourners’ online resource for sermon preparation and Bible study, is available at sojo.net/ptw.