The ashes show us the end. The end of the gods we serve.
The gods of pride, power, pleasure. You serve them with prurience, preening, pouting. You prate and prattle, but do you repent? Do you change? What has your service to the gods of this age really achieved? Where will it get you? Dust and ashes, nothing but….
Read MoreA wise man once said, “Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind.” Does that describe your life? It’s tempting to imagine that this is the result of our always-connected devices, with the expectation that you work from the moment you awake until the moment before your head hits the pillow. Certainly the ability to be on another continent in a matter of hours, and the twenty-four hour news cycle, leads to a frenzied sort of existence. But at its core, the saying reflects a very old problem. This saying—“Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind”—this saying comes from The Wisdom of Sirach [11.11 NJB], a second-century BC Jewish book similar to Proverbs. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I read from the NJB; the ESV is a bit more stately: “There is a man who works and toils and presses on, but falls behind so much the more.”
That idea of failing, falling, falling behind – it’s a universal human experience. Try as we might to accumulate resources, it’s never enough. And time, our most precious commodity, is steadily ticking away. All the fears about population and climate change reflect the human anxiety that we are running short, lacking, dying.
That’s what underlies today’s Gospel. It’s a real event, not a parable. Jesus really did change water into wine at Cana. It’s not fiction – but it is loaded with symbolism. Running out of wine makes the wedding a failure….
Read MoreWhen the Scriptures describe us as being in bondage to sin, it certainly includes the sins we commit - the twisted lusts within us and the things we do contrary to the commandments. But often the sins committed against us also hold us in bondage: when someone betrays us, when a friend you trusted doesn’t keep his word or is working against you. Perhaps you remember a cutting remark spoken against you even decades ago, but still it lingers in the mind, making you bitter, cynical. And so it’s not only the sins that we have committed, but also the sins committed against us, that need to be dealt with.
We would like justice. We want things put right. And sometimes, we want more than justice: we want revenge. For the person whose betrayal still stings, misfortune upon them would, we imagine, taste sweet to us….
Read MoreIn the days of Herod the king, men asked, “Where is He who has been born king of the Jews?”
A dangerous question! Herod was notoriously paranoid, and notoriously ruthless. He eliminated anyone he perceived a threat. This included several sons. To call Herod “troubled” at this news is a masterclass in understatement…
Read MoreDoubtless you’ve heard the myth—and it is most certainly a myth—that the Christian holy days were borrowed from older pagan festivals. You do find this kind of thing in Latin America, where Roman Catholic missionaries renamed local deities as Mary or one of the saints, so the people continued to worship the same statues but with new names. It’s called christopaganism. But that all happened much later. I’m talking about the origins of Christianity.
Jesus probably was born on December 25, or a day close to it. But today, January 1, was a day the early Christians resisted celebrating. That’s because New Year’s Day was “kept with great riot and licence by the pagans” …
Read MoreWorld power makes audacious claims. The power to tax and make war.
“A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered,” which is to say, taxed. The word for decree here is δόγμα – a dogma went out from the Emperor who styled himself Augustus, “the exalted one.” These are the audacious claims of world power. The exalted ones issue dogmas, and the little ones obey.
The dogmas of today have us racing, chasing tinsel as worthless as FTX crypto. The dogmas of world power demand we find satisfaction in a moment of purchase, pleasure in a hit of Soma or a night at the Feelies. The dogmas of world power declare blue is pink and always has been….
Read MoreA new version of “Blue Christmas” hit the charts this month, sixty-five years after Elvis Presley’s popular rendition. Christmas is blue (the idea goes) when we are without the person we love. “I’ll have a blue Christmas without you.”
Some churches now offer “Blue Christmas” services. One church advertised their service like this: “a space for those not feeling so merry & bright during the holidays.” The church offers “a space where you can be still and quiet and not have to pretend to be jolly.”
It’s well meaning, responding to the cultural demand we put on a veneer of gaiety. Happy holidays! And if they’re not happy for you, at least pretend.
The assumption is that the big Christmas service—which here at Immanuel is this one—is merry and bright and doesn’t really offer anything for the losers: the people whose lives are difficult, and lonely, and painful.
But that’s not Christmas. Christmas is for losers….
Read More“We have seen the Lord.” Thomas doesn’t believe it.
It’s hard to blame him. The dead remain in their tombs.
Jesus heard Thomas’ words: “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
Jesus repeats Thomas’ words back to him: “Put out your finger, and see the wounds; thrust your hand into My side.” And Thomas confesses: “My Lord and my God!”
That confession is Christianity: God is in the manger; God is on the cross. God was made man in Mary’s womb. The God-man died and was laid in a tomb….
Read MoreOne of my favorite scenes of The Simpsons is from the episode “Bart the Murderer.” Bart is in jail, pumping iron, when two guards usher in the family pastor to visit Bart. “Rev. Lovejoy!” Bart exclaims. “You’ve come to comfort me?” “Yes, Bart,” he says, then sits next to him, and pats him on the shoulder, saying, “There, there. There, there.”
Rev. Lovejoy has no real comfort to give. The prophet Jeremiah accused the clergy of his day of the same thing. “They have … healed the hurt of My people slightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ When there is no peace” [6:14].
A few months ago my son had a seizure. In the ER he was non-responsive. He wasn’t breathing. He had to be intubated. It seemed like the end. And that’s when a hospital chaplain showed up….
Read More“Daily the world is oppressed by new and growing evils.” Thus spake Gregory the Great, in the 6th century. “Daily the world is oppressed by new and growing evils.” A thousand years later, in the 16th c., Luther said, “There has never been greater error, sin, and falsehood on earth from the beginning as there has been in the last century.”
It feels like our day is different. The transgender craze seems a unique rebellion against nature itself. But each age has its madness, as we spin closer to the day of judgment. Luther saw the immorality of the clergy as a harbinger of the end: “Unchastity has taken forms against nature and has drowned no estate as much as the spiritual estate” - the spiritual estate meaning the clergy and monastics. The depravity of our day may be uniquely celebrated by government and corporations, but the rebellion against the Creator is not new. The historic Lutheran complaints about abuses testify that the deep perversions inside the Roman Catholic monasteries and seminaries were already scandalous five hundred years ago….
Read More