Jesus had already spent time in the synagogue teaching, praying and discussing Torah, even casting out a demon that had possessed a person.

I don’t know if the synagogue had an equivalent to coffee hour, butMark says Jesus and his disciples left and went to Simon and Andrew’s home. Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a fever, and when they told Jesus about it, he came and cured her by taking her hand and lifting her from her bed. As a woman, I can’t help but notice that she immediately got up and served the men, but I don’t think we should get stuck on that, because the point of the story is that Jesus was getting stuff done: healing stuff. And word spread rapidly, because Mark tells us that the entire city of Capernaum was gathered around the door of Simon and Andrew’s home.

Archeological artifacts put the estimate of Capernaum’s population at about 1500 people in Jesus’s time. That’s a lot of people! And Jesus set about curing many of those that were sick or possessed by demons; that is, those who were spiritually sick. The guy must have been exhausted. How did he get the energy to get through the Sabbath—the day of rest, when he had people surrounding him, begging for attention?

Those of you who have been parents or even pet owners know that sometimes your dependents will stop at nothing to get your attention, no matter what else you might be doing. So I wonder, how did Jesus feel, when in what I presume to be utter exhaustion, he’d gotten up from sleep while it was still dark, gone off to a deserted place to pray, and his disciples virtually stalked him, finding him and saying, “Everyone is searching for you.” The text does not say, “He rebuked them.” He did not raise his voice in irritation and say, “Can’t you see I’m praying?” He just calmly said (and this is my paraphrase), “OK, let’s go to the neighboring towns, so I can proclaim the message there also, because that’s what I came to do.” So how DID he get the energy? How do WE get the energy to do the things we came to do?

Well first off, he was Jesus. But he was as much mortal human body as he was Son of God. That body faced the same challenges that any of the humans of the first century faced. That was the point of incarnation in our form: to fully experience it. Isaiah tells us, “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles! They shall run and not be weary, they will walk and not faint.”

And Jesus knew those things about God and went directly to God in prayer and deep communion, because nurturing that relationship gave him the strength and clarity he needed to recognize his purpose and go get it done.

He didn’t need a Five Hour energy drink because he knew that those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. I don’t suggest that Jesus didn’t need to sleep, nor do I suggest that YOU don’t need it. So here is an interesting idea to consider. Historian Roger Ekirch has researched the nighttime activities and sleep habits of people through the ages. He has argued that there is a body of evidence that before the industrial revolution, people did not sleep straight through the night but had a two part sleep cycle divided by a time of wakefulness that lasted one to three hours. In contemporary experiments, it turns out that this is a more natural biorhythm than sleeping straight through the dark time as we do today. The onset of the first sleep cycle was a little variable depending upon circumstance, but in the first century when Jesus lived, by the time it was dark, people were asleep. But they awakened after three or four hours and did those things that didn’t require light or for which moonlight was sufficient.

After people did whatever it is that they were going to do with the dark time, people typically had a second sleep cycle for about three or four hours. Perhaps it was routine for Jesus to spend his nocturnal awake time with God? After all, this is not the only story in the Bible that tells us he went off by himself to pray after teaching and healing and being surrounded by people. And come to think of it, not the only time he went off to charge his batteries in relationship with God when it was dark.

I think it’s kind of a two-part thing. First there’s forming a deep connection—a strong relationship with God, the source of ALL power. Isaiah asks us twice: “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” This is NOT a secret: Jesus got his strength from God, who never gets tired! God who gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless! Those who wait for the Lord renew their strength! This is not just for Jesus— it’s for all who came before him and after him as well—it’s for us!

The second thing: when you get into the groove and you find your calling, you feel amazing. We know that Jesus knew what he was there to do because he comes right out and says, “That is what I came out to do.” Don’t compromise when you are trying to figure out who you are and what God is calling you to be. Fulfilling your potential is the path of least resistance. It might seem like an uphill fight to get other humans on board, but I can tell you from my personal experience, it’s a bigger up hill fight to get through your life doing something other than what God has made you to do. It’s not always what we think—it takes discernment, but you will be amazed how much energy you have when you’re the most you that you can possibly be. These are the two things that provide you with the energy to go and be you:

(1) Do the things that God has given you the gifts to do and (2) spend as much time as you can strengthening your relationship with God. Just you and God.

Maybe you curse a need to visit the bathroom in the middle of the night. But perhaps, it’s the Holy Spirit using whatever means necessary to call you to an ancient rhythm of waking and sleeping where God is waiting for you to have a conversation in the dark. You shall run and not be weary; you shall walk and not faint. No caffeine required.

Some thoughts on Mark 1:21-28

He wasn’t even in his hometown, but it was the Sabbath, so he went to the synagogue and taught. Now the synagogue was not the Temple in Jerusalem, where God was thought to actually dwell, but rather it was the local place where you went to pray and study the sacred Scripture—the Torah. While they were consecrated spaces, it was not necessary to go to a synagogue to worship God, because as long as you could get ten adult males to assemble in one place you could worship God communally. Some prayers required communal worship.

So here’s Jesus going into the synagogue in Capernaum not as a passive listener and learner, but as a full participant to teach. And while he was doing so (apparently quite well, because Mark tells us the people were astounded, something happens that’s so important we should all sit up and take notice, because it’s an important lesson for those of us who enter the Christian equivalent of the synagogue on the Sabbath. After all, as Christians, we are to follow the path of Jesus and try hard to model his behavior.

Mark tells us that there was a man with an unclean spirit in the synagogue. And that really got me thinking, “Really? Only one?” What is an unclean spirit? How would I recognize it? What would I do if I encountered it?

Jesus distinguished between the spirit and the man. He didn’t throw the person out; he rebuked the spirit, telling it to leave the man alone. And it did. I imagine that the synagogue was not too unlike its spiritual descendent, the church. So we can only speculate—did the guy with the unclean spirit attend regularly? Did people shrink away if they saw him coming and talk about him when they thought he could not hear?

The unclean spirits of today surely announce themselves to us, but they speak with contemporary behavior and in words we should be able to recognize. The unclean spirits speak with words of discord or pettiness or even hate. And the more often we hear the words the more anesthetized we are to their effects, and instead of rebuking those spirits in Jesus’ name, we keep silent.

Unclean spirits work kind of like viruses looking for a host, which they can infect with fear because fear paralyzes while the unclean spirits settle in. We all can recognize fear pretty well. It has an unmistakable look—even a smell about it. But the cause of the fear is often cryptic.

The authority of Jesus resides in his very nature: God incarnate in human form. We too carry the authority of Jesus; he gave it to us when he left this Earth, as he had to do because he had taken human form. We are mortal, and the mortal part of Jesus had to die because that is the nature of our human form.

We all are part of the Body of Christ; not the mortal body but the divine incarnation, and that means that we carry the authority to rebuke the unclean spirit, but it has to be done the way Jesus did it—recognizing that the man who was held captive by the unclean spirit was himself a beloved child of God. As members of Christ’s one holy, catholic and apostolic church, we are responsible for tending the body of Christ—all of us. That is why Jesus walked among us; to teach us reverently accept the responsibility for one another that had so long been abnegated by the repeated requests for God to send someone else to save God’s people. Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit because he knew that the authority of God ultimately prevails. And he also knew that sometimes the assembly doesn’t even recognize the destructive consequence of allowing unclean spirits to run amok.

So in the tradition of taking the logs out from our own eyes before trying to remove the speck from our neighbor’s eye, what can we do to make sure we aren’t ourselves the bearers of unclean spirits? First, remember this if you remember nothing else: God is love, not judgment. If we find ourselves more judgmental than loving, something is very wrong. Next, when you are irritated or afraid or otherwise uncomfortable with someone, instead of assuming it’s because of something you can attribute to them, first examine your own heart to make sure you are clear about whether you project the love of God to the people around you. Believe that as a member of the Body of Christ, you have more power that you can possibly imagine through the love of God. You are not paralyzed—it’s a Jesus movement. Love is more than a feeling it’s made manifest in action.

There is not a single person who God does not love, and we can struggle towards loving in likewise manner. And the best way to make it to that goal is to rebuke our own unclean spirits, leaving the assembly…our beloved church free to become the Kindom of God, where all really are welcome.

Sometimes, it’s really challenging to make good decisions when summoned to live into the future—to get on with the next thing that lies on the path before us. It can feel as though a course of action is clear, but often … not so much. Many times, I’ve been paralyzed by what I think of as caution. Sometimes it’s because I have too little information to make a good decision, and other times, it’s because I have too much information. Indecision can come about because we are overthinking a problem, or because we are not thinking much at all. It might even be because our hearts have become too tender, and fear keeps us from deciding to move forward.

So can you imagine these four fishermen: some itinerant preacher/teacher sees them at work and says, “drop everything and follow me,” and they do it? What made it so easy for them to decide and immediately get up and follow him? Had they been listening to Jesus proclaim the good news of God, and did they already have an inexplicable yearning to follow that charismatic teacher? James and John didn’t even blink—they left their father to carry on the family business with some hired folks and went straight away when Jesus called. Can you imagine doing that? Of course, we don’t know the family situation, and we don’t know their personal situations, but wow—Jesus called and there was no debate. They decided with their feet.

For some of us, we either pretend it’s not God who is actually calling us to service, or we fight God, creating a list of all the reasons why we can’t just follow. We might even run away and hide, more like what happened with the reluctant prophet Jonah. You only heard a little part of the story in today’s reading: the part where he finally agreed to do what God asked. But before that, he was so afraid of answering God’s summons to his destiny, he ran away, trying to escape Yahweh’s command to prophecy judgment to the wayward people of Nineveh.

As you know, he eventually did go to Nineveh and prophesied as God commanded. And as a result, the people repented and God’s mercy and compassion were revealed both to Jonah and to the whole city of Nineveh. Answering God’s call to be his most authentic self was really hard for Jonah. Not at all like the lightning fast response of Simon, Andrew, James and John. Jesus called and they said yes.

What would you have done? Are you more like James and John, or are you more like Jonah? How do you respond when you feel that God is prompting you to move on to something new? Do you have to debate whether or not you should do it? Does your decision depend upon whether or not you believe it’s really God prompting you? Because how does one know?

Perhaps there’s a hint to be found in the rather sparsely detailed account of Jesus calling the fishermen to follow him. Maybe there is no certainty when God calls and the answer is to simply go, maybe the revelation that we need to feel good about decisions that affect our future only comes to us through the faith inherent in following the path that God asks us to walk, one step at a time. Perhaps a dynamic God requires a dynamic response. We can be still and know that God is God, but perhaps we can’t be still to discover who we are to God. It could be that the rightness of following Jesus is only revealed in retrospect, and the truest act of faith is not about belief but about getting up and following.

There is a Latin expression solvitur ambulando. It means, “The solution is in the walking.” Wikipedia says that the application of solvitur ambulando is to solve a problem by practical experiment. Or as the Nike commercial says: “Just do it.” A beloved friend taught this to me a few years ago, and whenever I feel stuck and uncertain, I repeat this phrase, reminding myself to get up and move.

We can’t all be like Simon and Andrew and James and John, but we do have something that Jonah didn’t have. We have a messiah who has promised to be with us always, whether we are stuck in the midst of indecision or walking right behind him. He will not abandon us if we answer his call. Don’t be afraid to try: the solution is in the walking, solvitur ambulando.

Looking and seeing are not the same thing. One important difference is that looking is an open-ended process. You can search, but you may not find, like the often-fruitless search to find the car keys, only to discover they were already in your pocket. We can look, but sometimes not see.

Looking is intentional, and seekers have expectations. One has to be careful, because sometimes those expectations can keep you from seeing. In science and exploration, we call that “model dependent observation.” It’s a fancy way of saying that we see what we expect to see, and can miss what’s hidden in plain sight because it was unexpected. That’s why we have the saying that warns us not to judge a book by its cover. Sometimes it’s how we look that determines whether or not we will ultimately see, and I think that whether or not we can see depends upon how open our hearts or our minds are to accepting the gift of insight.

Every one of the readings we ponder on the second Sunday of Epiphany-tide reminds us of how important it is to see, and not necessarily in the context of visual acuity.

The story of Samuel’s call is a special favorite of mine. An innocent child serving in the temple under the tutelage of the aging prophet Eli, he was sleeping peacefully when God called to him. We are told that Eli’s eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, but this is metaphor. Eli’s eyes and strength were failing because he lost sight of honoring his family’s priestly commitment to God in tolerating the behavior of his wicked sons who, though priests in the Temple were described as scoundrels, stealing sacrifices meant for God and cheating the Israelites. A holy man and prophet warned Eli that he would pay a price for breaking a covenant with God: for refusing to see what was going on under his watch. Meanwhile, young Samuel was growing up and finding favor in God’s eyes because of his innocence and obedience.

Samuel was sleeping right by the Ark of the Covenant, where God was thought to dwell. One night, just before dawn, the Lord called Samuel’s name, and he thought it was Eli calling, because he did not yet know God. Three times God called to him, and when Samuel ran to Eli each time, he began to realize that God was calling to the boy, so he advised him that if it happened again, he should stay where he was and say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening” [I Sam 3:10]. And there was indeed a fourth summons in which “the Lord came and stood there.” So Samuel answered as he had been instructed. And it’s too bad our reading didn’t include one more verse, because you would have heard God say to Samuel “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle,” [v. 11]. God was then revealed to Samuel. Now he could recognize God’s voice—he could see.

In the case of Nathanael, it was his friend Philip who wanted to bring him to a deeper knowledge of God. Philip wanted Nathanael to see, but when he said, “Have I got something good for you,” Nathanael was skeptical. He had to be invited to take a look—to meet Jesus, because his model-dependent observation led him to believe that nothing good could come out of Nazareth. But Nathanael was a good man—as Jesus said, a man in whom there was no deceit. And apparently he had an open mind, because when his friend said, “Come and see,” and he did. He talked to Jesus and saw. A humorous part being that Jesus saw him first—before even Philip brought him. Seeing begets seeing because each new insight gives birth to another. Jesus assured the astonished Nathanael that he would see even more. This is the promise of the new covenant that comes with the incarnation of God’s love on Earth. “Come and see,” says Philip to his friend. Says Eli to Samuel, “If he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” Looking is a good first step—being ready to see and know. But whether or not YOU look, God has already searched you out and known you, discerning your thoughts from afar as Psalm 139 so beautifully says. And just as Jesus says to Nathanael, you will see even greater things than a God who knows you and recognizes you standing under a shade tree.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good,” says the psalmist [Ps.34: 8]. See and know. There is plenty of room at this table and all are welcome. Come and see.

Wikipedia defines an epiphany, from the ancient Greek epiphaneia, which has a literal meaning of “manifestation, striking appearance” as an experience of sudden and striking realization. In the case of Jesus, we celebrate the revelation that he was the incarnation of God’s love on Earth. As a culture, we have typically made Epiphany about the arrival of the wise men. They are described as kings in the Bible, and scholars believe that’s so because they are meant to represent the many nations that recognized the sovereignty of this newborn king of heaven. Whether they were magi in the strict sense, who were a priestly mystical Persian religious class or kings in their own right, doesn’t matter as much as the fact that there are what I think of as four important messages to think about regarding humankind’s reaction to the birth of Jesus.

1. The wisest and first person to recognize the significance of God incarnate while Jesus was still in utero was John the Baptist, himself still a fetus. He reacted with the only communication he could while still in the womb—he leapt and let his mama know something had stirred him. So the Holy Spirit filled Elizabeth, his mother, and she cried out recognizing the blessing that was Mary’s baby.
2. The innocent shepherds had a visitation of from an angel who told them about the baby. They believed the angel without question, though of course the multitude of heavenly beings singing “Glory to God” after the pronouncement probably helped convince them. But these innocent people of no social standing went right away to see that God had done something new, and they went without question to figure out what it was and see the baby. They told Mary what the angel had told them and the Bible told us she pondered these things in her heart. She had a lot of thinking to do. Anyway, the shepherds left and then Matthew tells us they were glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard.
3. And then the supposedly wise representatives of the power structure of other nations showed up bearing gifts. The rest of the people: the religious authorities of Israel and Judah: it took them a long time to catch up. Theirs was not an epiphany, but rather a slow dawning–
4. The fourth thing you might consider is a question. It’s the what’s-in-it-for-you part: Can you recognize love incarnate when you see it? Is that recognition a powerful and abrupt “aha” or is it the type of realization that takes some time?

Because you see, whether you are a person of wisdom or a person of innocence, or maybe even a person of ignorance for whatever reason, you are invited to look upon the promise of love incarnate in Mary’s baby.

We, as Christians, are all invited to look for the face of Jesus– love incarnate,  in the eyes of our neighbors. When we can see him there, it’s just a short jump to the next step—loving that neighbor.

May God bless you with wisdom and love whoever you are so that you never lose sight of the promise of that baby.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” [John 1:1-2].

The Bible has a lot to say about what was happening at the beginning of things. And it also has a lot to say about what will happen at the end times. To understand how the stories of our faith history are relevant today we have to dig a little deeper and we have to remember that the stories of The Old and New Testaments were written down in antiquity for people in a very different time and place than the context in which we find our own selves. It’s hard for us in the 21^st century to translate the meaning of Jesus’ life, ministry, execution and resurrection unless we look to Jesus himself for guidance. So yes, we look to the scriptures to learn what we can through the filters of storytellers, writers, early followers and the architects of the church, then and now. But the most important tools we have to understand how to walk in the footsteps of Jesus in the here and now are direct relationships with God and with one another.

The gospel of John begins with a mystery: he refers to Jesus as “the word,” or “logos” in Greek, and this reference explains something important about the nature of Jesus. It’s a clue about how to approach him directly. John says that the word, or Jesus, existed at the very beginning, both with God and as God. That means that Jesus exists in eternity—outside of human space and time. Jesus is not a symbol for God, but the very same God. At the beginning of time and at the end of time, and in our time, because Jesus exists in eternity, and when we go directly to him to know him, we go to God, who is timeless, and therefore as relevant now as at the start of the universe in the Big Bang.

John’s mystery is that Jesus is not to be known by the stories or words that people used to talk about him, but by direct relationship with him! Jesus is God’s own story: true God from true God, and as the primordial Word, he speaks for himself!

In other words, although John does tell the story of Jesus, he gives us the solution to the riddle of how to get directly to God without going through the filters of someone else’s relationship with God. There is not to be a gatekeeper. No priest is necessary to intervene in the relationship between an individual and God. This was a very different message to tell in the culture and time in which John’s gospel emerged, which scholars believe was around 60 or 70 years after Jesus’ crucifixion. When John says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, he is giving us the secret to understanding the relevance of Jesus to our lives today. We are invited to touch eternity—the God that lives outside of time, so Jesus was and is and will be, and it’s our life’s work to discover what that relationship teaches us about our place in community and our community’s place in the world. Because a living word—an utterance, is a vibration like a pitch in music. When we pray, we are tuning ourselves to the fundamental tone—the tuning fork, or for you singers—the pitch pipe of God. When we are in harmony with that Living Word, we are like little radios or amplifiers broadcasting “Jesus notes” to people who have a hard time to still themselves and go directly to God—that is why we live in community—to help each other hear God!

Words, like pictures are symbols. If I write down the word “tree,” you’ll know what I’m talking about, even though the word is not the same thing as the actual tree. So when I pick up my Bible and look at the name Jesus, I only have a sense of who he is based upon the stories that his apostles told that were written down in Greek, translated into Latin, then into English, and retranslated again and again until you got the version you heard today. Those are just words—they may be our canon but they are inspired words that tell the story of our faith. The Logos—THE word, is not a symbol John tells us that the word was with God and is God—the real thing

So what does that baby born a little more than two thousand years ago have to do with our lives today? That baby was and is the Logos—the word that is God and exists in eternity. Logos has a special meaning in Greek—not just the Word, but it’s something hard to translate like “first cause” or “cosmic reason.” The Jewish philosopher Philo said that Logos was very like the Hebrew concept of Wisdom.

Jesus, the one who lives in eternity is the wisdom of God, audible to us as a living word, to which we can tune ourselves. Timeless and as relevant today as he was when he lived on Earth. By all means read the stories in the Holy Bible, but if the language of an ancient and agricultural society makes it hard to grasp why anyone would care in 2018, go directly to the source—the Living Word. Then go write your own stories. God is not done speaking to us.

We’ve spent a month preparing ourselves to rediscover the mystery of a God who would come so near to us that the very essence of God’s love could appear in human form. We’ve tasted Hope in the first Sunday of Advent, Peace on the second, and on Rose Sunday, we thought about rejoicing and how joy might get us to peace and hope. The fourth Sunday in Advent is special. Any other year, it would be today—the Sunday where we focus on love. And this year, today is also Christmas Eve, so it’s a “both/and” Sunday. It’s both the day we focus on love AND it’s the day that, Isaiah puts it, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” [Isaiah 9:2].

And that light is love. In spite of the contemporary use of the slogan “God is love,” and supporting theology that states God really IS love, not all people think of or talk about God that way. And no wonder, because through history, the language we use in the Bible to speak of God includes words like “almighty,” “wrathful,” etc. The stories of our faith history include phrases like “fear and trembling” or “power and might.” Because the way humans think of power is usually in terms of dominance. In spite of anecdotes about the power of love, few of us really recognize love as more powerful than anger. Few of us see pacifists as powerful, and when we’re threatened, we often lash out, wanting to harm those who threaten us. Perhaps it’s counter-intuitive, but love is subversive, strong, and sustainable in ways that dominance and brute strength cannot be.

God IS love, and there is unfathomable power in that love, even though the two concepts, love and power seem opposite from each other. It’s really hard to understand truth without using what is known as “non-dual” or “both/and” thinking. That’s a perspective that recognizes that most things in the universe are not purely one thing or another. We have to view reality without thinking of everything as oppositional. Both/and thinking allows for two things that might seem incompatible to be true at the same time. There are no winners or losers in both/and thinking, and with your heart in “both/and” discovery mode you can look at love itself a little differently. Love is both strong and vulnerable.

When Jesus offered himself, completely vulnerable, it also made him infinitely powerful. The both/and nature of God’s love is that when we turn to God in weakness, we are made strong in God’s love. Love requires a certain vulnerability and open-ness to experience its power. It can’t be forced!

The almighty God that IS love came to us, and experienced all of human vulnerability as both God and a helpless baby—power and helplessness, love and strength. The mystery of that immanence or nearness of God is that a relationship with God is required in order to feel God’s presence. Because a God of love is a God of relationship, assuring us that where two or more of us are gathered together, there God will be. Our God tells us that the power of one resides in the love between the many, like a stout rope of multiple strands. Hence we have a God that can only be understood as pure and holy relationship: the mystery of the one that is three, yet indivisible.

The most powerful energy in the universe does not reside in physical strength or powerful weaponry but in the transformative power of love. Mary’s love for God transformed her into a resolute young woman, ready and willing to give birth to and nurture the hope of her people, Jesus– Emmanuel– God with us.

God came to US. He didn’t say, “come to the temple and I’ll set you up with an appointment.” The whole point of Christmas is that God came to us in the life of Jesus so that we would know that true love seeks US out. It does not demand proof of worthiness before showing up to us. And we’re not forced to say yes to it. That’s a choice. Love can be everywhere around you, but you might not be able to see it if your heart is closed. And closing off one’s heart seems to be an instinctive response to hurt and disappointment. Instead of becoming more vulnerable to love and moving closer to it, we retreat into what we think is safety, and that can be mighty isolating. Love is risky because it has to be experienced in vulnerability. You might get your heart broken.

Sometimes I think about how many times Jesus’ heart was broken over his all too brief life. Yet he kept manifesting God’s love through it all—right up until the end, when that same baby, all grown up, was being tortured on a cross. He continued to bring the love, even asking God to forgive the people who had him crucified before he drew his last breath.

What an amazing God who goes more than halfway to meet us in love. This is a God who is willing to follow us when we stray into unfriendly territory, returning us again to safe pasture, but leaving the gate open. We can stay or go. God who keeps reaching out to us, first in the most vulnerable state as a baby, later as a teacher, then in the most miserable of states from the cross, and ultimately as the risen Christ. He keeps coming toward us in love and the power of that love has lasted through the last 2000 years.

If you want to receive a surprise insight about the love of Jesus, go see the film, “The Last Jedi.” A meek, yet stubborn resistance fighter named Rose has an epiphany while fighting against the bad guys. She says of the fight against evil, “That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.” God’s gift to us, Jesus the Christ, did not come to fight evil. God came to Earth as a baby to save us with love. And God will keep coming to us as love no matter what we do. All we have to do is open our hearts to that love, and God will come the rest of the way. May the force—the love of God– be with you this day, and all your days.

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” Luke says Mary sang out with joy while she was visiting with her pregnant cousin Elizabeth.  Elizabeth was also the recipient of a divine miracle—she was an older woman who had not previously had a child, but by God’s will and the power of the Holy Spirit, she conceived a son who grew up to become John the Baptizer—the one who came to prepare the people for the ministry of Jesus. Anyway, the older woman’s baby moved inside her womb at Mary’s arrival, and Elizabeth recognized this as a Holy sign, so she praised and honored Mary’s faith.

This is a remarkable story for a couple of reasons. First, as you know, Mary was not yet married. For her to become pregnant created a dire situation in a culture where women would not only have been rejected as marriageable material, but also probably stoned for such immodesty as to become pregnant before marriage. But Elizabeth, instead of censuring Mary, immediately recognized the hand of God upon her younger cousin and said, “Blessed are you among women…” Not cursed, but blessed! By the way, those words are referenced in the Catholic prayer known as the “Hail Mary.” The second reason this story is awesome is the same reason that Mary herself is awesome. Luke does not say she felt guilty, or afraid. Instead, Mary is all about rejoicing in what God has done. She says her very soul, “proclaims the greatness of the Lord, [her] spirit rejoices in God her Savior.” There is no feeling sorry for herself, calling out for friends and family to defend her against the accusatory stares of the community. Mary sees the bigger picture—she sees the magnificence of God, the driving power behind all of life, her whole world, and realms beyond her imagination. She got it that there was something bigger than her own self, and she was honored to be invited to play a part in God’s plans for humanity. She rejoiced in God, and that rejoicing took her outside of her own self, her own world, which probably represented a whole heap of trouble.

You see, there’s something to be said for the curative power of rejoicing. It’s not that we rejoice in bad things when they happen to us or to those we love. And it’s not that we rejoice in the chaos and messiness of life. It’s not that we should just “snap out of it” somehow in the midst of crippling depression. We don’t take joy in the things that hurt us more than we ever knew that we could hurt. What we CAN do is grab onto that joy like a life preserver, and allow that joy to pull us out of the deep water when we can’t do it for our own selves. That is a viable approach to surviving the difficult things that life throws at us, but it probably seems like something that is far easier said than it is done.

Whether or not we can find joy in our own selves, we can still find it in God. I’ve got to think that Paul knew that when he told the Thessalonians “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” There’s a reason why we are told to rejoice. It’s because it’s cleansing for our souls. Rejoicing is the cure for hopelessness. So you see, it’s not so much that we are urged to ignore bad circumstances or that we should not worry and just be happy. It’s not that we are bad people if we are not happy. In fact, it’s not about happiness at all! Rejoicing is the treatment for whatever ails us.

If God is the ultimate source of joy, then we are off the hook for trying to find something in which to take joy when we just don’t like we can see any joy in world. If you are still having trouble believing that there is anything in which to rejoice, take another look at the song of Mary. Young, pregnant and unmarried, Mary says, “the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.”

Because her spirit rejoices in God, her savior, Mary’s soul proclaims the greatness of God. It’s cause and effect. If you want to feel joy, you have to rejoice. Take it where you can find it, God is an endless and renewable resource of joy. Not a God of judgment—a God of joy. If you are struggling to find the joy in your own life—rejoice in God. And that’s how you become a person whose soul proclaims the greatness of God.

What does your soul proclaim?

On a daily basis I am bombarded with a steady diet of bad news, fake news, old news, videos of cute baby animals, pictures of what my nephew had for lunch and suggestions for how to treat the illnesses I am presumed to already have given my advanced age. All courtesy of this: my auxiliary brain! Even now when I’m only living out one career rather than simultaneously juggling three, all of this information can get a bit overwhelming. In fact, one of the things that I’m just now learning to do is to avoid looking at it just before bed. Because if I don’t turn off the information spigot, I can’t sleep. My brain thinks it’s supposed to be solving problems instead of drifting off into the comfort of restful peace.

As we navigate our way through life, we often look for comfort and we seek it in all sorts of ways: some of it temporary, some of it lasting. It’s an instinct to seek comfort, whether it’s in the form of mac and cheese, a sappy Christmas movie on TV or as a hug from a loved one.

Even when everything is going well, we still seek comfort—cookies, a snuggly blanket and the like. It’s an instinct, and it calms us down so we can process information. It’s the consequence of being gifted with the most complex of all computers—the human mind.

As long as there have been people, there has been the instinct to seek comfort, and it’s not always been clear where or how to find it.

Our faith ancestors were asking for it a thousand years ago—we see the evidence of that yearning for comfort when we read the psalms of David.

Prophets do more than speak truth to power; they’ve also spoken words of comfort to people who are suffering through times of trial. A true prophet is not an oracle predicting the future, but rather the mouthpiece of God. A servant willing to trust that God will provide the words if only they are willing to open their mouth on God’s behalf.

So when the prophet Isaiah opened his mouth somewhere around 600 years or so before Jesus was born, he did so to speak both a warning of the consequences to the Kingdom of Judah for her betrayal of the northern Kingdom of Israel, and also to speak comfort to God’s people living in exile. “Comfort, o comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid…”

“Comfort is coming,” says the prophet! Some times it takes a little while to get that set up. And if you’re expecting the comfort to taste like mac and cheese or other comfort food when you don’t feel at your best and instead you get a big old dose of medicine– it’s pretty disappointing! You may not even notice the comfort when it comes five or six days later, after the treatment starts to work. That’s why we have to keep alert, so we can know the medicine worked and go for it quickly if we get sick again.

Isaiah said “Comfort, o comfort my people,” and went on to foretell of John the Baptist, the voice in the wilderness yelling, “People, get ready!” because the glory of the Lord was about to be revealed. Seven generations had already passed between Isaiah’s prophecy and the appearance of John the Baptist and the messiah—Jesus. So John had to yell, “Wake up, everybody! It’s time! Wake up and see what God has done, and you will never believe what your comfort looks like!”

That’s why “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” [Mark 1:1-8] starts with Isaiah’s prophecy about a voice crying out, alerting us to the most awesome news ever to come to humankind: comfort is here, comfort and joy! He was reminding people of the comfort Isaiah had promised. By the time John the Baptist began his ministry waking people up to the good news, Jesus was already a grown man. I’m guessing that the people didn’t expect the good news of comfort and joy to come out of the mouth of a crazy-looking guy eating bugs and wild honey, any more than they expected it to come out of Isaiah 600 years earlier, but there you have it. Here it was again: “…the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Where is that good news today? Is it so obvious that it no longer needs telling? If that’s the case why are so many of us still hurting? Why are we still craving comfort food or something stronger to numb the pain? Have we forgotten that in a world of pain there still is still true comfort to be had? Who is it that speaks peace in our town? Who brings comfort and joy and peace and hope? Jesus told his first followers that the good news was now their responsibility to bring to the ends of the earth. We are the spiritual descendants of those apostles, and now that good news of comfort and joy is ours to tell. As the hands and feet of Christ on Earth, we are the bearers of that good news, but we are more than just the field reporters speaking live from a time of trial. It’s more than the telling; we ARE that good news because when we love, when we offer ourselves in relationship to others, that’s where God emerges. It only takes two people together for God to be made visible—one to say, “I love you,” and another to hear it and be comforted.

There’s not a one of us who doesn’t possess a beautiful and amazing heart with nearly unlimited potential to be the comfort for someone else in a troubled world. How we speak to one another is a choice. Choose tenderness. Choose words of peace over words of conflict. “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.”

So the season of ordinary time has ended and the new liturgical year begins…today. And like every milestone that marks the conclusion of one season of our lives and the beginning of a new one, it can be bittersweet, exciting, and maybe even a little scary as we anticipate what is about to unfold.

Our faith history shows us that one of the paradoxes of living at the threshold of something new is that anticipating it doesn’t create the change. God’s people asked for Judges to help them settle disputes. That did not end the seemingly endless cycles of oppression and liberation amongst the twelve tribes, so they asked God for kings to rule them justly and keep order. But many of those kings were corrupt and not only ruled unjustly, but also sometimes created new manifestations of oppression. And then Israel asked for a messiah—that special person who would deliver them once and for all from oppression and unjust exploitation. Every time that our spiritual ancestors (or we) have asked God to do something for us, we have waited for the end of the era we are in, and the beginning of the new one which will surely be better. We cry out to God saying, “Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved,” (Psalm 80:3). You see, anticipation can be a lament: “When will this pain ever end?” or perhaps “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence…” (Isaiah 64:1).

Anticipation can also be something else: the impatient looking forward to something that you know is coming, like waiting to be sixteen so you can get your driver’s license, or for Christmas, or for the return of your beloved when they’ve been away from you. Anticipation can feel really great, or really terrible and when we look back at our own lives and the lives of our ancestors, sometimes we can pick out the rhythm of the changing seasons of life. We can begin to look at the seasons when we were swept along in an unfriendly riptide, or running on the water opportunistically making good time with the wind at our backs.

Can you relate to either of those two scenarios? There’s something missing there. And that missing piece is the punch line for the first Sunday in Advent: “…keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake,” (Mark 13:35-37). Ours is not a faith of waiting passively. Ours is a faith of BE-ing—doing. We are not to sleep, we are to act. The incarnation of God in a baby who grew strong in his faith and in his mission, who was willing to keep speaking truth to power until he was killed for it, who turned around and told us that we are now his body: that incarnation is raw, creative, transformative and yes, awesome, power! It is the power to imagine and then do amazing things!

As we learn from St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians: we “are not lacking in any spiritual gift as [we] wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Cor. 1:7). The revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ is not just in the birth of the infant, he is revealed in us by our love for one another. He is revealed by our willingness to do life a wholly different way, not by dividing the world up into winners and losers, conquerors and the fallen, but by seizing the transformative power of working as One Body, as we follow him one step at a time. The revelation of God’s amazing love through covenant with Moses was not enough for us to be faithful. So the God of Love, came even closer, dwelling among us in human flesh so that we might know to seek that same God in the eyes of our brothers and sisters: God with us and God in us. So if you can imagine that the God of love is always showing that love to us, can you go a step further and imagine that God is also showing that love through us? This is the God that always does something new, because God is alive, and new thing is done with us for us and through us. That is what the church is for.

Jesus did not say, “In those days there will be suffering, the sun will be darkened” and so forth, but rather Jesus said “In those days, after that suffering…” You see? We build the Kindom of Heaven to get past the suffering! Mark’s account of Jesus prophecy continues, “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven,” (Mark 13:24-27). How do we know that the Son of Man coming in clouds, isn’t made visible by us getting on a plane and going the side of someone in crisis? How does any one of us know that we are not an angel that is helping to gather God’s elect? And because Mark uses the words “from the four winds from the ends of the earth,” the implication is that Jesus is saying his elect are everywhere and they/we are meant to gather everyone in to the Body of Christ!

The rhythms of life for individuals, or families, churches, or an entire people are the signatures of life—these rhythms are the hallmark of evolution—of change over time. The way the people begged God to intervene in antiquity is not so different from the ways in which we often beg God to do so now. And God responded then with Jesus, just as God responds now with Jesus. But in our time WE are the Body of Christ, just as the infant Jesus was over two thousand years ago. So when we lit that Advent candle and said, “Come Lord Jesus,” remember: we are inviting our own selves, the Body of Christ to answer that call.

On this day, the first day of Advent, we remember the prophet Isaiah, who proclaimed and rejoiced that the Lord will deliver his people with Emanuel, God with us. Emmanuel: you, the Body of Christ.