The Small Things: Newtown, The Hobbit, and the Manger

Text: Isaiah 61:1-11

            “I’ve found it is the small things that keep the darkness at bay.” That’s Gandalf speaking to Galadriel in the Hobbit movie that just came out this weekend, and I haven’t been able to shake the words from my mind. In fact, the full quote is even better, so if you’ll indulge me for a moment, Gandalf says, “Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why [did I choose] Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.”

             I saw The Hobbit on Friday about an hour after I first heard the news about the school shooting in Connecticut. And I don’t even really know what to say about it since it’s all so horrible and familiar. This shooting may have affected us more because of the innocence of the victims and the number of dead, but the narrative is something we’ve heard before. We live in a small world. We know about things that happen across the country and the world in the blink of an eye, and this is most certainly good and bad. There are seven billion people in the world, and with so many people in so small a place there’s plenty of shocking events to go around. When something happens the media eats it up. We are told in subtle ways how to feel, what should shock us, and who or what is the enemy. Quickly, every tragedy becomes an issue of debate about what could or can be done to avoid it: power against power. “Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check,” says Gandalf, “but that is not what I have found. It’s the small things that keep the darkness at bay.”

The Sad Odyssey of the Discovery Channel

I have long been a fan of the Discovery Channel. I have even written about it before on this blog (as in right here), but I think those days are sadly at an end. It's been a long, slow and tedious fall from grace for the channel that was once about the only thing I would watch on television, and I wonder how it's gotten this far. I guess, as a mid-twenties male, this is one of the first things I will someday look back upon as the good ol' days, wondering all the while why they would leave behind what was so good for what is now so contrived and superficial. But before we get there it behooves me to start at the beginning--when things were good and Survivorman marathons frequent.

It was 2006 when the Discovery Channel and I began our close relationship, and oh, the good times we had! Those were simpler days. There was Cash Cab, a lightning-fast, if slightly dumbed-down, game show that took place in a New York City taxi cab; Deadliest Catch, the fascinating real-life story of crab fishing in the Bering Sea; Dirty Jobs, hosted by the always entertaining Mike Rowe; Man vs Wild, a fun, though definitely contrived and not at all realistic portrayal of survival in the wild; Planet Earth, the series that redefined how "nature" video was shot; Survivorman, which was basically a more realistic and far more interesting version of Man vs Wild; and, of course, Mythbusters, the crowning jewel of the Discovery lineup.

The Spirit and the Messiness of Worship

Text: Joel 2:12-13, 28-29

            Last Wednesday the Nativity Scene at Grace blew over. It was so perfectly poetic I had to take a picture of it lying there flat on the ground. Jesus is not in the manger yet; we still have a few weeks of Advent. So I’m OK with subtle divine hints that maybe that nativity scene can wait. And besides, it was particularly appropriate that it was the wind that knocked it over, since the Hebrew word for “wind” (ruach) also means “spirit.” It was as if the Holy Spirit were saying, “No. Not yet. Slow down. Wait.”
             Lo and behold, now we have the prophet Joel this Sunday, again preaching on the Spirit. Joel is probably one of the least familiar books in the Bible, so I’ll forgive you if you aren’t Joel experts. Still, some of what we read today should be familiar. There’s that Lenten refrain: “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” Lent and Advent share some commonalities. They are both about reflection, they both involve turning or returning to God, and they are both times awaiting God’s in-breaking into the world. We understand that this is the season where we are anticipating Jesus, but God's in-breaking into our daily lives requires also the Holy Spirit. We don’t really talk about it much—because honestly we don’t talk about the Spirit much ever—but in this time of the year when we’re completely fine with angels and heavenly choruses it's astounding that we still manage to ignore the Holy Spirit.

Jovan Belcher, Bob Costas and the Oversimplification of Complex Issues

This is a tough subject. I should start with that--if nothing else to remind myself that this is shifting sand on which I blog. It's much easier to come across as heartless than it is to be thoughtful, especially when the reality you are broaching is shocking and surreal. I acknowledge that. I think anybody who wants to be faithful to real-life stories of pain and loss has to acknowledge that their opinions cannot encapsulate the issue, and that is--in fact--the very point of today's blog.

For those of you who do not know, Jovan Belcher was a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs football team who killed his girlfriend and himself last Saturday morning. Were this an anonymous individual committing this crime we would not have heard about it or cared; that's just the harsh reality; but in this case it has stuck in the public consciousness because of the celebrity. I don't think this is a bad thing. What is a bad thing is that instances of domestic abuse and murder don't always hit us like this. That is troubling. But it's also a little off subject.

Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images 

Just Hope- King Darius' long night

Text: Daniel 6:6-27

           Some of you might be disappointed with the book of Daniel on the first Sunday in Advent. No hints of a baby in a manger in Bethlehem, nothing about a Messiah, no Mary or Elizabeth or John the Baptist; nothing much in the Christmas spirit at all. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess none of you make little nativity scenes of Daniel in the lions’ den. This has nothing to do with Christmas, which makes it perfectly appropriate for the first Sunday of Advent. You all are getting plenty of Christmas out there; let’s keep Jesus out of the manger until he’s good and ready. However, I am doing the story of Daniel a bit of a disservice if I suggest that any story—so long as it’s not directly about Jesus—is appropriate for the first Sunday of Advent. Some stories are better than others, and Daniel is actually a very appropriate Advent story.

Sit Down, Shut Up, Advent

It's that season again! My favorite time of the year; when advertisers convince us with ever louder and more important-sounding soundbites to spend, spend, spend like the future of our children depends on it; when consumerism runs amok. It's the time of the year for light displays and blaring Christmas music. It's the time of the year for busy malls, busier malls and malls so insanely busy no sane person would ever enter. All in the name of the holidays.

Give me a break.

No, seriously, I need a break. I am desperate for reprieve--a retreat from all that is hectic.

Recently, I've been going up to Winnipeg every Tuesday night to play in a chess tournament. Six Tuesday nights... three hours driving in all. Well worth it. At first I thought I was heading up because I missed the competition. There is some truth in that; I do like challenging myself; but lately I've realized it's more complicated than that. There is something about playing chess--and even the drive--that has centered me during a time in the year when everything else is moving far too fast. I realized, finally, that it's the silence.

There may be no state of being so consistently undervalued as silence. I used to think that there were people who enjoyed moving slow, for whom silence was a virtue, and people who had to be doing things, and I was the latter. However, I now realize that there are people who are able to contemplate in the stillness, and people, like myself, who have to find more innovative ways to exist in silence but who need it just the same. In fact, those of us who are, by our nature, moving from thing to thing as fast as humanly possible seem to need it more.

I never realized before why chess has been so important to me. It's meditative. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm purging my mind of thoughts while playing chess. Rather, I am concentrating fully on one thing and embracing the silence around me. It's prayer of a rather primitive sort and it satisfies a need. A chess tournament hall is silent. There is a reason that cell phones ringing carry a near death sentence to the serious chess player; silence is a virtue and causing noise is sin.

We have few of these chess tournament halls in our daily lives. Most of what we do is consumed with noise. Today, my office has been more or less obliterated as some dedicated workers put in new windows. I appreciate what they are doing--they are, after all, providing me with a tremendous service--but it means I am stuck out in the open in the midst of chaos and constant, punctuated noise. It's no place to work, and I dare say that if this were the only situation in which I ever worked my stress level would never recede. I miss silence.

My phone rings. Workers talk with me. A face pops in my office. The printers whir. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Advent is rough. It's rough because it is so countercultural. It's rough because it's not very convenient to our busy lives. It's rough because we think we know what to expect so how can we live in a time of waiting?

It's easier to skip it. It's easier to live out loud. That's the credo of my generation. Avoid silence at all costs. Silence is awkward. Sitting should be combined with television or video games. Silence is the enemy.

And so it goes. The stress levels rise. We find ourselves unable to contemplate, unable to relieve the immense burdens in our lives, and we begin to think that the world is going down the tubes. We enter negative feedback cycles. Soon the world out there is evil and out to get us. We are trapped by our own devices. There's never enough stuff or time or noise. The noise just gets louder even as it makes less and less sense.

But...

Maybe Advent isn't really so rough. Maybe it's that we never knew what Advent was in the first place. We gave up silence for noise, fellowship for goods, peace for the next big thing, and along the way we lost everything that made this season good and true. This is the season of quiet and stillness. It is the season to rest in wait. It is the season to turn off the computer and the television, extinguish the bright lights and leave the store-fronts behind. It's the time to sit still and watch the stars.

That's what the shepherds did.

Turning the "Do you know the Lord?" question upside-down.

Text: Jeremiah 31:31-34

            “I wish he knew the Lord.”

            Have you ever heard somebody say that? Or some variation on that? It usually comes with a hint of disdain. She doesn’t know the Lord… tsk-tsk. Often this is the kind of thing mourned at funerals: “It’s just too bad he didn’t know the Lord.” And OK, I get it. We are reassured when others believe as strongly as us in the same God as us, and that reassurance has a lot to do with our assurance about their salvation, but let’s not go crazy here. Do any of us really know the Lord?

            Well… no… and yes. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that we know the Lord. All of Israel knew the Lord, because they were His people and HHe was their God. This is the new covenant that God speaks through Jeremiah. Earlier in the Bible God gave Moses a covenant, but it had a teensy-weensy little problem which was that it required Israel to obey, and Israel was really awful at obeying. Seriously, it was about ten minutes after they were freed from Egypt when they started worshiping golden calves and asking to go back into slavery. The new covenant that Jeremiah brings, however, had nothing to do with the capability of the people to obey. God says, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me.” (Jer 31:33b).

            In the New Testament this covenant is expanded in Paul’s writings to include not just Jews but we-Gentiles as well, and so the promise for each and every one of you is that you will know the Lord. We are all a chosen people—not a choosing people. Maybe the most insidious evil in the Christian Church—and believe me, there are a few—is this whole dividing of in and out, deciding who is worthy of God’s kingdom and who is not. Guess what? You’re not worthy. Jeremiah makes the fretting over whether a person knows the Lord moot, because what matters is not that we know the Lord but that God knows us. Only in God knowing us will we know God in return, and that will have nothing to do with our faithfulness or godliness.

            Martin Luther got this. Some of you had to memorize the explanations to the Apostles’ Creed when you went through Confirmation—and for those of you who did, you might want to remind our Confirmation kids how lucky they are to not have to do that—but for those of you who did, you might even remember the explanation to the 3^rd article. OK, it might be expecting a bit much to remember something from thirty or forty or sixty years ago when you often don’t remember where you left your car keys, so I’ll refresh you. Martin Luther explains that the 3^rd Article of the Apostles’ Creed (the one that begins “I believe in the Holy Spirit”) means this: “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him…” He goes on to say that belief comes from the Holy Spirit; you cannot believe on your own. You cannot know the Lord and follow the law of your own will-power and strength. The nay-sayers who grumble about so-and-so not knowing the Lord are not only judging their neighbors; they are putting themselves in a place where only God can be.

            This is about more than judgment. There’s that little proverb we all know—“Judge not lest ye be judged” (Matthew 7:1). (You can tell it’s good because we still quote it in Old English) But Jeremiah’s message and Martin Luther’s explanation provoke a deeper question than whether we should judge; they ask us: Why should we not judge? Not only because God is the only judge that counts, but also because nobody comes to know the Lord by their own wisdom. Jeremiah wants to make this perfectly clear: this is not about you.

            This thread can be traced throughout the whole book of Jeremiah. In today’s other readings King Jehoiakim is burning the letters of the scroll from Jeremiah’s prophecy, which is a little surreal because we can only assume that he is burning the very book of Jeremiah from which we are reading, and if it is the book of Jeremiah that the king is burning then we can understand why he doesn’t care for the prophecy, because so much of it is judgment. Of the fifty-two chapters in the book of Jeremiah only four (ch. 30-33) talk primarily about hope for the future. Jeremiah’s primary message is judgment against the kingdom that has abandoned God’s laws.

            So, this is a strange juxtaposition. Jeremiah brought a message of judgment because the people forgot God, but he also came with this fantastic message of a new covenant that does not depend on our godliness. Either Jeremiah is schizophrenic, which you realize--if you read all of Jeremiah--may be a possibility, or God’s rules simply do not look like human rules.

            Personally, I think Jeremiah is a pretty darn good prophet for our era in history, because our world is obsessed with knowing God. In religious circles, we have people who want to know when you were saved—like literally the moment—as if we convert from sinfulness to sainthood in a blink. There is this train of thought among some Christians that if you cannot give an exact date and time of your salvation then how will you know that it happened at all? They parse who knows God and who doesn’t as if the effort is ours to make rather than God’s to give. On the other side of the coin we have people in anti-religious circles who write off Christians—and peoples of all faiths—until they meet academic criteria; until, for example, they publish a peer reviewed scientific article proving God’s existence. They, too, set guidelines for what is in and what is out.

            Friends, this world needs Jeremiah. We need someone to tell us that God knows us, warts and all, and so, we know God. It doesn’t need to be in a moment of conversion. It certainly isn’t because of our intense study of God. It is that Holy Spirit and it is Jesus Christ who are the reason for our knowledge of God, and that is what we celebrate this Christ the King Sunday.

Yeah, but prove it, says the world. Prove it! says Newsweek and the scientific journals. Prove it! say Christians to one another, because apparently in God’s eyes it matters more whether you are Lutheran or Catholic or Covenant or Pentecostal than it does whether you are sharing the good news. Prove it! we say. And God says, “OK, you really don’t get it, do you? This is not a true/false test. You will be my people. I will be your God. End of story. The rest of your lives are simply responses to that reality.” You see, part of the reason why judgment is such a big deal for Jeremiah is because we inevitably ignore the truth that is in us, and when we ignore that truth we ask the question behind all our misgivings: “Prove it!”

            We become like Pontius Pilate, who represents the powers of this world, when he asks Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18:38) in that iconic passage from the Gospel of John.

            The irony of the question is staring Pilate in the face. John’s Gospel doesn’t even do the courtesy of giving Pilate an answer because it is so obvious. Truth is Jesus. Not a concept, as Pilate believes, but a person—the very person standing in front of him. He cannot recognize truth when it is staring him in the face. Moreover, truth is not knowing Christ, as people today would have you believe; it is Christ. All we can ever do is respond, like the centurion in Mark’s Gospel who points to the cross and says, “Surely this man is the Son of God” (Mark 15:39). He knew the truth. It wasn’t because he accepted Jesus into his heart; it was because he experienced truth in the flesh. He knew God because God knew him. So we know God—the God who has chosen us to be his people—because God has written it on our hearts. Your acceptance of that promise is almost irrelevant.

Our job, then, starts with not judging, but not just because it is something that fits on a bumper sticker. Our task is to move from judgment to proclamation. Stop parsing who is in or out. Stop looking at our neighbor and wondering, “Does she know God?” Instead, talk to that person and say, “God knows you.” Our task is to get off of our thrones and admit that it’s not because we are so smart or so brilliant or so worthy or so perfect that we know God; we know God because in spite of our unworthiness, in spite of the pain we often cause, and in spite of our lack of knowledge, God knows us.

There is no in and out. There is only Christ the King.

Thanks be to God.