Prayer for the First Sunday of Advent

God of liberation

who overthrows Pharaohs

and outsmarts emperors

and outlasts Caesars

and outlives kings and dictators

and overcomes bosses

and drains the powerful of their power

in every generation,

and lifts up the lowly in every age:

we gather in the increasing cold

and the deepening darkness,

still sated with the feast of our own harvest,

still impressed with the profligacy of our own productivity,

still aglow from the warm embrace of our own family.

And we turn our hearts again

to Bethlehem.

Even as catalogs cram our mailboxes

and the urgency of sleigh-bells ring in every commercial,

and the pressure is on to buy and spend:

We turn our hearts again

to Bethlehem.

To a pair of homeless refugees

jerked around by government,

rejected by business,

unrecognized by family,

who journey on their way

to Bethlehem.

Keep us focused

on the One who emerges

out of everywhere,

who is already here

in the eyes of needy children

in the places of poverty

in the brokenness of the broken

and the loneliness of the outcast

in the sorrow of grief

and the horror of pain.

Who takes it all on himself

who swallows it all

into his purifying infinity

and transfigures it

into new and blessed life

Make our communities,

gatherings of ones who trust

in him, into fruitful beds of

blessing and healing

for the world.

May his love radiate through us

healing disease and injustice

hatred and fear

anger and hurt

by our kindness and compassion

in his Spirit.

May we serve as witnesses

to the infinite joy

and the blossoming of new life

and the spectacular radiance

of presence

of wholeness

of goodness

of blessing

of everything.

May we get busy.

Amen.

How to Vote.

No, I’m not going to suggest for whom we should vote.  But I do want to recommend what kinds of things Christians take into consideration when casting a vote, by looking at Psalm 72.   

We don’t have a king, of course.  In a democracy it is supposed to be the people who are sovereign, and the people elect representatives to govern them.  When the Psalm refers to "the king," I hear it talking about the people and their representatives.  So I do believe that what Psalm 72 says applies to leaders in a democracy.  I hope that what we look for in our leaders reflects the values lifted up in this Psalm.

Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son.

May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.

May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness.

May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy,

and crush the oppressor.

There is a connection between the way we and our government treat the poor and oppressed, and the prosperity we enjoy as a people.  If we are hard-hearted and careless towards the needy, it will eventually bounce back to harm everyone.  If we allow greed and inequity to flourish, it undermines the whole economy in the end.  We have seen this basic principle working itself out before our very eyes these last few years.  Clearly, godly leaders watch out for the weakest among us... and that benefits everyone. 

May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.

May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.

In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more.

These natural images remind us of at least two characteristics of good leaders.  In the first place, the benefits of good government effect and lift up everyone.  As Jesus says, God has the rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.  Good government is like the balanced system of nature, providing to all what is necessary for life to thrive. 

Secondly, it is important to note that wise policies last forever.  Each generation learns from them and incorporates them into its program.  Lifting up the poor and empowering the powerless today, will mean having more people participating in the system tomorrow.  We look back with pride and thanksgiving on leaders of the past who challenged the status quo and the conventional wisdom by assigning resources to everyone’s benefit, and gave assistance to the poor and the outcast.

May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

May his foes bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust.

May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute,

may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.

May all kings fall down before him, all nations give him service.

A good leader is recognized and celebrated far and wide.  Some of the most effective leaders of our age remain role models for people everywhere.  We look up to our own leaders or those of other nations when they show courage, resist evil, and do what is right in God’s sight.   None of them are perfect and flawless, of course.  But good leaders are not vilified but respected and celebrated around the world because good leadership does not benefit just one tribe, race, family, or nation.  It benefits everyone. 

For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper.

He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.

From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.

Once again, the psalmist repeats, that good leadership is measured by the way the poor, helpless, weak, needy, and oppressed are treated.  Nothing is more clear from Scripture than that this standard is primary.  A government’s approach to the lowest in society is the main measure of its goodness.  If this approach has to do with deliverance, salvation, redemption, and help, then that government is faithfully representing God’s will.  If not, it is running counter to God’s way and slated for ruin.    

Long may he live!  May gold of Sheba be given to him.

May prayer be made for him continually, and blessings invoked for him all day long.

May there be abundance of grain in the land; may it wave on the tops of the mountains;

may its fruit be like Lebanon;

and may people blossom in the cities like the grass of the field.

May his name endure for ever, his fame continue as long as the sun.

May all nations be blessed in him; may they pronounce him happy.

Caring for and protecting the needy is a policy that God will reward.  Which is to say that God intends people to live in justice and peace, and when people live this way they are also living in harmony with the planet God made and placed in our care.  Injustice invariably draws down upon itself destruction; but justice and peace serve to heal the Earth and allow its resources to benefit everyone, not just the wealthy and powerful.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.

Blessed be his glorious name for ever; may his glory fill the whole earth.

Amen and Amen.

The Source of all goodness, peace, justice, and righteousness, not to mention prosperity, is God.  In the end, God is the only true and good leader.  Our human leaders always fall short.  But we know that some fall more or less short than others.  The beneficial government is one that follows the Lord’s commandments and values, blessing God by instituting policies that reflect God’s will.  In Jesus Christ we know God’s will to be for healing and justice, peace and forgiveness, living in love with each other and with God’s creation. 

We hope and pray that whatever government we have will reflect God’s goodness and not God’s judgment upon us.  And the sure sign of this will be whether the resources of God’s creation will be cared for and used for the benefit of everyone, especially those on the bottom, or whether we will call down destruction upon ourselves by persisting in an existence characterized by fear, anger, greed, and violence.

New and Old.

            Here is a direct quote from an actual Church Information Form (the form Presbyterian churches use when they are searching for a new minister):

“We are seeking [to be] a new church, but one patterned by tradition.  By blending the emotional comforts of the past with the benefits of modern conveniences, we envision _PC as a ‘New Old Church.’  Traditions will be honored as they illuminate our path to change and transformation….  We are looking for change, but want it tempered by custom which is honored and valued as it illuminates our path to growth in an ever-evolving world.”

            My first thought was that this is complete nonsense.  Is what this church wants even possible?  How exactly do traditions “illuminate a path” to growth, change, and transition?  What does that look like?  “Blending the emotional comforts of the past with the benefits of modern conveniences”?  Find me a place where the Lord Jesus advocates comforts and conveniences.  This appears to be a fitting example of committee-speak, in which we devise sentences that are completely contradictory and don’t make any sense, but satisfy the needs of disparate interests of individuals in the committee that wrote them.

            But let me give this committee credit for talking about change and transformation at all.  This in itself is far more than most documents like this are interested in.

            The relationship between new and old has always been an issue in Christianity.  Jesus is a change-agent.  He preaches a radically transformative message.  He has primarily to do with the breaking in of the “new.”  Hence, he makes famous statements about new wine and old wineskins, and a new, unshrunk piece of cloth, sewn onto an old, already shrunk, garment.

            Yet at the same time Jesus expresses a strong continuity with his own Jewish tradition.  “Do not think that I have some to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).  He references the Hebrew Scriptures all the time, and he clearly sees himself and his ministry as the fulfillment of earlier prophecy.

            So his is a new message, firmly rooted in the old.  Is this tradition “illuminating the path” forward?  Or is it the path forward, in terms of himself, illuminating and reframing the tradition?

            Jesus talks in several places about the relationship between new and old.  Clearly it was a hot topic then as well. 

            “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old”   (Matthew 13:52).  This image reminds me of Phyllis Tickle’s remark about how the church (and culture) declare a rummage sale every 500 years.  A rummage sale involves cleaning out the attic and the basement, giving a reassessment to “what is new and what is old.”  Some new things are let go.  Some old things are rediscovered and kept.

            Jesus also says: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old.  And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.  But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.  And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good’” (Luke 5:36-39).  People like the old, comfortable, seasoned, ways. 

            But Jesus contends that new teaching cannot be easily received by people whose minds have already been shaped by old teaching.  (See http://www.bethimmanuel.org/articles/new-wine-and-old-wineskins-parable-luke-536-39-re-examined for a wonderful rabbinic analysis of this passage.)  That’s why he chooses for his disciples not Torah scholars, trained rabbis, and experienced priests, but common people who do ordinary work.  They are able to receive the “new wine” and the “new garment” of his teaching, where people who are already invested in the old paradigm are generally not.

            What this means for the church is very challenging.  What I hear him basically saying is that people raised in the old paradigm of church life, what we call “Christendom,” in which the church was the spiritual arm of American/Western culture, are simply not able to hear his new message.  The “fresh wineskins” are new people, people not now in the church, who have not been tainted by old theologies and doctrines, who approach the message of Jesus with openness and freshness.  They are not burdened with the “the old is better” bias.

            Jesus says that the tax collectors and prostitutes, the sinners, who follow him are advancing into the kingdom of God more readily than the pious, upright, holy people of his day, the scribes and Pharisees.  In our day it is the drunks and drug addicts, meeting in 12-step groups in church basements, that are advancing into the healing that characterizes the kingdom of God before the well-dressed, respectable, responsible church-people.       

            So, on the one hand the new and the old do not mix.  But, on the other, Jesus says the Kingdom of God exhibits new and old being drawn from the same treasure.  So, for Jesus, it is the new that has priority.  Not just any new thing, not novelty for its own sake… but his new.   The central fact of his mission is the reconciled relationships with God and others he proclaims, calling it the Kingdom of God.  This reconciliation is really very old and original, going back to creation itself.  But it feels new to people whose minds are just now being opened to perceive and realize it.  What Jesus announces as “new,” was also announced by the prophets, and is the good news at the very heart of the Torah: God’s liberating presence in the world.

            When Jesus says, at the beginning of his ministry, that “the time (kairos) is fulfilled” (Mark 1:15), he means that this kind of time that is always new is where we are called to live.  The old way of thinking is one that did not understand or accept this, but stayed boxed into traditions and habits that had been superimposed by people, powers, and culture.   

            Venerability is not a value in itself; neither is novelty for its own sake.  The point is to get into the flow of God’s kairos, God’s living present.

            This has meaning for the church today because so much of what passes for “change” is just trivial window-dressing.  It is getting on the latest trend in “church growth strategies.”  The real questions we need to face about change have to do with whether and how what we are doing actually serves Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God now.

            So the balance between new and old that this church apparently wants to strike is beside the point.  The new that Jesus calls upon us to follow is his vision of justice, peace, healing, reconciliation, and love.  These are the criteria that determine the character of our discipleship.  I favor a Christ-based approach that subjects everything a church does to the test of faithfulness to Jesus.  Some very traditional practices will certainly pass muster; some very new and contemporary practices will not.  It is not about how long something has been around but how well it reflects and expresses Jesus’ teaching and actions.