Sunday’s Coming

The new year is only a few weeks old. Like most people I have been reflecting on the past year, wondering where the time went. But even more, I have been wondering what the world has come to.

One time at a women’s retreat, I was asked to tell my call story. I told this woman the whole, convoluted story—about serving as a missionary in Japan, about being restless in my work and volunteering for leadership roles in my church, about discovering old journals where I had written about my desire to study theology, about my memory of sitting in church as a teenager and hearing the pastor give the sermon and saying, “If I was a man, that is what I would want to do.” I told her that it had taken me a long time, but I finally realized that God was calling me to be a pastor. She was not impressed.

It was my first winter in rural South Dakota, and despite the worrisome weather, I was planning a road trip. On Sunday morning, one of my parish members came up to me and solemnly handed me a coffee can. It contained a roll of toilet paper, a candle, some matches, and a candy bar. “Put this in your trunk,” she said. I had no idea what this was. “Thank you,” I said.

I know of a congregation that, for many years, provided a “living nativity pageant” in its community. The church is in the center of town and has an expansive front lawn. On a certain December Sunday afternoon each year, it would fill that lawn with live sheep and goats and donkeys, costumed shepherds and wise men, a gaggle of angels, an innkeeper, a manger, and, of course, the holy family.

Last year, humanities professor Stanley Fish wrote a piece about selling his books. The books that had nourished his academic soul for half a century were wheeled unceremoniously out of his home. The ostensible reason for this sale was downsizing—Fish was moving from a house to an apartment. But the real reason was that he was approaching the end of his scholarly career, and the exit of his library was a symbol of a phase of his life coming to a close.

In my lectionary column on Luke 2:1-4, I focus on the theme of hope. Whenever I think about hope, I remember the story of Rabbi Hugo Gryn. He was the senior rabbi at the West London Synagogue when he died almost ten years ago.

This week's 2 Samuel and Luke passages get me thinking about promising. Not coerced promises. A promise to obey traffic laws in order to get a license is benignly coerced. A promise to be quiet under threat of harm is violently coerced. They're not what I'm thinking about.

Would it be that we all could sing our souls. I think Mary helps us. I think we should read her song, and preach it, and sing it over and over again. Sampling Isaiah, Mary's song sings of mercy, strength, humility, and the truest meaning of charity. Her song hears in each of these virtues a gift of God, and a sign of God's desire for all.

Nowadays, if we hear the word "holy" outside church, it’s usually in the expression “holier than thou.” The phrase is reserved for pompous religious know-it-alls who think they’re better at Christianity than everyone else. The title fits individuals who desperately need to re-read what the Bible says about humility.

Isaiah 64:5 speaks to God, saying, “You were angry when we sinned; you hid yourself when we did wrong” (Common English Bible). It took me a long time to come to terms with the idea of God’s anger. In my own faith, the most helpful idea here is that God is slow to anger. If we forget that God is slow to anger, then God is reduced to a cruel monster out to get us. If we forget anger altogether, then God is reduced to a puppy dog who wants to lick our face no matter what terrible things we continue to do. Both God-the-monster and God-the-puppy-dog are idols: images of God that don’t match what the Bible says.

Ezekiel 34:21-22 provides a particularly poignant image of God the shepherd’s care for the “least of these”: Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged. Reading these verses reminds me of a day several years ago, when our family visited a local petting zoo in Atlanta.

In my Century lectionary column for this week, I wrote about Zephaniah 1 and 1 Thessalonians 5, with their shared theme of the “day of the Lord.” Zephaniah’s account is particularly fearsome, and it serves as important background for the medieval liturgical text “Dies Irae.” I chose to focus on these passages because they are hard to hear. Initially they seem so alien, and yet on second reflection, their scenes of destruction are so terribly familiar.

In June 2012, my Uncle David died. Years of diabetes caused his body to wear out. He was 60 years old. For my mother, who was 20 years David's senior, the news was devastating. She was supposed to be the one who died first, not her baby brother.

If you happen to read the Message translation of Matthew’s beatitudes, you’ll notice that instead of saying “blessed” the word is “happy.”

Have you ever been inordinately annoyed by someone else's clothing? I have, and in my experience this is a classic indicator of what this week's Leviticus reading calls “hating someone in my heart.” When I'm repressing anger or frustration, I suddenly notice the hideously out-of-date belt my relative is wearing, or the way-too-short-in-every-inseam pantsuit my co-worker has on. The clothes are never the true offense, of course, but they send off alarms: time to speak up. 

My mother died on the winter solstice shortly after her 50th birthday. So I have spent a lot of time thinking about darkness and the return of the light. As I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark, I wondered if I had fallen prey to the dualistic paradigm she finds so troubling.

The hyperbole, violence, and abrupt scene changes in Matthew’s parable of the wedding feast have driven most interpreters to treat the story allegorically—thereby turning it from a dangerous puzzle to a reassuring message in code.

In her most recent book, Blessed Are the Consumers, Sallie McFague focuses on kenosis as the key element in shaping a Christian alternative to the pervasive religion of consumerism. McFague says that consumerism consists of those cultural patterns and practices by which people “find meaning and fulfillment through the consumption of goods and services.” We may rightly identify consumerism as a religion.

I begin sermon preparation by reading through the texts and writing a 200-word summary of the themes I observe in that initial reading. I include this summary in an online publication for the congregation I serve. It's called "Sunday is Coming," a title with an edge for the preacher. When I do this reading I I look for trouble—for the obvious, palpable problems in the text.

I find more than a dozen military references in the Pauline corpus. In Philemon, Paul includes in his greetings “Archippus our fellow soldier.” In this week's second reading, Paul advises his readers to stand firm and strive side by side. The former Roman soldiers living in Philippi would have heard a reference to a Roman military formation.