"Peace" December 9, 2012 Second Sunday of Advent, Year C Luke 3.1-9

            “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish,” writes C. S. Lewis in the preface to The Great Divorce, “but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.”

            That was John’s essential message to Israel. He came “preaching a baptism of repentance,” a loaded theological word, a real eraser of a noun. Israel, he declared, had put two and two together and gotten eleven and only a good soaking in the muddy Jordan could expunge the miscalculation and offer a fresh start. That involved going back a long way, because John’s baptism essentially re-enacted the nation’s original amphibious invasion of the Promised Land under her ancient hero Joshua. (Joshua 3)

He tosses in a construction metaphor from the prophet Isaiah to say that shoveling a little hot-mix into the potholes won’t suffice; Israel must completely rebuild the road. Washing the car, he warns the crowds, won’t fix this engine; it has to be completely rebuilt.

Start over! Only this way, John argues, can Israel open a superhighway for her new ruler and find true peace.

            Luke sets this message in the context of a rival method: He names five political leaders in descending order of power, then a couple of local religious rulers. All of this seeming order in fact speaks of impermanence and turmoil: Herod and Philip had snatched scraps of their father’s turf and now quarreled over control. Ananias and Caiaphas couldn’t both be high priest at the same time since the Law said the high priest served for life; but the Romans didn’t like anyone holding power for too long so they instituted a rota. If the key to peace was more government, Israel should have been the most peaceful place on the planet. Instead the people groaned under ruinous taxes, Tea Party patriots hid weapons caches in the hills, and Roman crosses dotted the skyline. John’s message says that more human effort amounts to an exponential multiplication of the wrong number.

Sometimes peace comes only through the messy business of tearing everything up and starting over. Sometimes “peace” comes at the expense of “quiet.” Reworking the sum is troublesome and time-consuming, but wrong calculations count when the answer is eternal.

Peace Out!

Doug

"Hope" December 2, 2012 First Sunday of Advent, Year C Jeremiah 33:14-16

            On Friday, November 15, air raid sirens sliced through the skies above Jerusalem and sent residents scrambling for cover. At least two rockets thumped home in the sacred soil. Palestinian forces in Gaza claimed credit. Even Saddam Hussein avoided training missiles on ground held holy by Muslims as well as Jews. Abu Obeida of Hamas declared, “We are sending a short and simple message: There is no security for any Zionist or any single inch of Palestine.”

            Sometimes when we encounter the unthinkable, our only choice is to hope the unhopeable.

            Jeremiah lived to see Jerusalem’s homes razed so the repurposed stones could plug gaps in her ramparts (v.4), and the city’s streets strewn with unburied battlefield casualties (v.5). The temple that could not fall fell and the royal line that would rule forever ruled no longer. In the face of the unthinkable he hoped the unhopeable: The stump-sawn tree of David would put forth a branch strong enough to shade all the earth with justice. All the earth – because only when justice reigns everywhere can there be peace anywhere.

            Sometimes when we encounter the unthinkable, our only choice is to hope the unhopeable.

            As we enter the season of Advent, the newsreels remind us that our world yet yearns for the full coming of Christ’s rule. In the face of unthinkable devastation, intractable hostilities, and unforgiveable atrocities, Christians face again the challenge to hope the unhopeable: that the actual obedience to Christ which calls us to our crosses will result in the actual Kingdom of Heaven coming to reign among us.

            “In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell in safety.” Once again our world is unthinkable; once again our hope seems unhopeable; once again, we hope.

Shalom,

Doug

            

Back Where I Come From. . . November 25, 2012 Christ the King Sunday, Year B John 18.33-37

            “Back where I come from. . . .”

            We’ve all heard the phrase. We’ve probably even used it. It is a cultural meme that introduces controversy. The words imply that the speaker is about to question the prevailing patterns of behavior by setting them against an outside standard.

            Southerners use it on yankees who fail to offer a woman a seat on the subway. Yankees use it on southerners who end sentences in prepositions.

            Rednecks use it on city-slickers who think verbal badinage won’t result in a butt-kicking. City-slickers use it on rednecks whose fingernails aren’t clean.

            Anglos use it on Hispanics who don’t respect their privacy. Hispanics use it on Anglos who don’t understand community.

            And Jesus uses it on Pilate, who doesn’t understand. . .well, hardly anything.

            “My kingdom is not of this world.” All the standard translations render it so, understanding Jesus to say that his reign takes place elsewhere – in Heaven, maybe, or Oz or Narnia.  But the preposition is tricky and can show origin as well as nature. “My kingship does not derive its authority from this world's order of things,” reads the Complete Jewish Bible. And Jesus proves his claim by the fact that he told his troops to stand down: No good using a hammer to write a symphony; no good using a sword to bring in a kingdom that holds no territory.

            “Back where I come from,” Jesus smiles slyly at Pilate, “we don’t win wars that way.” But Pilate misses the smile, because they’d busted Jesus’ mouth up until the swelling hid his teeth.

            And this world continues to miss the Lord’s subtle grin because our trusty weapons have marred his countenance. We have bruised him in the person of the poor or the other or the enemy and vandalized our only hope of seeing the truth. We relegate the Kingdom of Heaven to the ether, and fail to realize that it is, in fact, the Kingdom FROM Heaven: not something we go to but something that comes to us.

            “Back where I come from,” Jesus lisps through a split lip and two missing teeth, “we love our enemies. Back where I come from, we turn the other cheek, and then the other, until we whiplash ourselves into genuine forgiveness. Back where I come from, those who die on crosses, not those who crucify others, are the winners.” And he leaves unspoken the obvious conclusion: “And the Kingdom of Back Where I Come From is coming here.”

And That’s the Truth,

Doug

           

The End is Near November 18, 2012 Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B Mark 13.1-8

            The end of the world went O-for-two in 2011 and 2012 isn’t looking good either.

            Radio preacher Harold Camping made a considerable splash when he scheduled the rapture for May 21, 2011, to be followed five months later to the day by the destruction of the world. You may have noticed it didn’t happen. Now warming up in the apocalyptic bull pen is December 21, 2012, the sell-by date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.

            I don’t blame people for their fascination with this kind of things. Jesus’ disciples shared the same itch. When their rabbi started talking about a Hurricane Sandy-sized hurt hitting the most majestic building in their world, they asked a natural question: “When will these things be?” Our Lord’s answer is a little unsatisfying. Jesus reaches deep down in his prophetic grab-bag of apocalyptic imagery and lets loose with a lot of rhetoric about natural child birth and zodiacal indigestion and stories about fig trees and CEO’s on business trips.

            What does all this mean? An earthquake hit Dallas a while back; should I be worried?

            Look for a moment at what’s happening: Jesus is a prophet, arguably The Prophet, the Messiah. He turns his back on the control panel of the ultimate piece of religious technology that his own faith and history recognize, hikes across the Kidron, enthrones himself on the Mount of Olives, takes in the view of that very structure, and predicts its destruction. (And, unlike Harold Camping, history proves Jesus right: the Romans leveled the place some three decades later.) Ezekiel saw the Shekinah cloud of God’s glory depart from a corrupt temple taking pretty much the same route. (Ezekiel 10-11) Jesus warns the disciples that God won’t honor godly architecture or activity when God ceases to be its center.

            Of course, this makes it tough on a would-be redeemer. Jesus already knows that a few days later the Romans will execute him; he plans to let the temple of his body take the heat that the temple building deserves. And he warns his followers that we have the same job: He calls us to embrace the unjust suffering that comes from living the Jesus-life in a God-rejecting world.

            When will the world end?

            Well, my world might have to end today when the gospel requires me to put self aside and bear the well-deserved sufferings of another in order to demonstrate God’s love. And personally, that Mayan thing sounds a lot easier.

Save the Date!

Doug

           

Pomp and Recompense November 11, 2012 Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B Mark 12.38-44

            Tony Celelli, our president here at the South Texas School of Christian Studies, recently received his doctoral regalia. It is stunning: a sort of steel-blue gown with cobalt blue chevrons picked out in gold piping, off the shoulder with a slit up one side. (All right, I made that last part up, but it would add some dash.) He has declared that henceforth we will wear gowns and hoods to our weekly faculty meetings.

            I don’t blame him!  I myself have never managed to develop the professional disdain one is supposed to display for the full regimentals of religious scholarship. I have owned my academic trappings for six years now and still look for opportunities to tog up, even to wear the hat – an oversized octagonal tam that looks like some sort of monstrous velvet sombrero. I worked hard for the right to wear this get-up and I feel smarter just hearing it swish around me as I walk. And I still get a charge every time someone refers to me as “Dr. Jackson.”

            All of that is harmless enough, I suppose, but Jesus took a dim view of such sartorial distinctions, and he wasn’t much for titles. The problem is that flowing robes have plenty of room for deep pockets and can cover up a lot in the way of ill-gotten gains. The position of seminary professor implies a certain holiness that I may not in fact possess, and can lead me to forget that an unnoticed widow may outdo me in her love for God.

            At the final moment of his conversion, St. Francis of Assisi shucked the silken finery he had always worn as a rich man’s son. No one is quite clear on how he then came by the battered brown tunic that the turned into a friar’s habit – some say he traded for it with a beggar; G. K. Chesterton speculates that he may have stolen it from a scarecrow. However he obtained his outfit, Francis was the man who made the clothes. “Ten years later,” records Chesterton, “that make-shift costume was the uniform of five thousand men, and a hundred years later in that, for a pontifical panoply, they laid great Dante in his grave.”

            Jesus warns against the deeply fallen assumption that what we wear tells the world who we are. Instead, Our Lord insists, who we are should transform what we wear. All the world’s wealth and all the world’s honors will not buy one thread of the white robe of Jesus’ exchanged righteousness, but two mites’ worth of self-sacrifice can purchase the Christ-given distinction of being great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Suit Up!

Doug