The Spirit of the LORD is upon us, because God has anointed us to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.  This is our job now.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Third Sunday of Advent, year B
   texts:  Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28 (with references to Luke 4)

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

“The Spirit of the LORD God is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me.

God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.”

That’s it.  That’s the job description.  When Jesus began his ministry, Luke says he read these verses and proclaimed they were fulfilled in him.  Since the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church at Pentecost, Luke declares the Church itself is now anointed into this calling.

Isaiah’s beautiful words become real when God’s people take them to heart as our calling, our life.  We can’t hear this good news and live as if it wasn’t truly meant to happen.

Because the world is full of oppressed people.  Full of brokenhearted people.  Full of people who are bound up and captive.  Full of prisoners, especially in our country.  In the midst of the beauty of this prophetic word is real ugliness.  Just as the proclamation of the Good News of God in Jesus comes into a world of real ugliness that we read and hear and see around us all the time.

The thing is, Isaiah believed God was doing something about it.  The thing is, John the baptizer believed God was doing something about it.  The thing is, in Christ Jesus our Lord we live and breathe declaring God is doing something about it.  What that is, we need to understand.

Isaiah speaks of devastation because he speaks into devastation.

The exiles of Judah joyfully returned to their homeland to find it a wasteland: Jerusalem destroyed, homes and villages burned, the Temple a ruin, the holy things taken away.  They came home to find their home a wreck.

To them, Isaiah declares: God brings you comfort in your mourning, gladness instead of grief.  God is restoring the covenant with Israel, and will help you rebuild your ruins, repair your devastations.  Joy will come, like to a bride and groom dressing for their wedding day.

This happened.  Israel was rebuilt, the people were able to live and flourish.

Jesus appropriates this promise onto his own ministry.  The healing of devastation, pain, suffering, the promise of the LORD’s favor, that, Jesus says, is what he is about.

The Spirit of the LORD God is upon me, he said, because God has anointed me to this.

John’s Gospel introduces Jesus as the Light who comes into the darkness of this world revealing the heart of God.

Like the promise to the exiles, standing in the bricks and dust and garbage of a ruined homeland, the coming of the Son of God is light in utter darkness.

This is Good News, we say.  Because the world is full of oppressed people.  Full of brokenhearted people.  Full of people who are bound up and captive.  Full of prisoners, especially in our country.  We live in darkness and fear, much of which we have created.  We long for the Light of God to shine hope.

John the baptizer today tells us the Light is here, the one sent from God has come into this world.  Everything is going to change.

The Spirit of the LORD God is upon Christ Jesus, because God has anointed him, and we rejoice.

But the Evangelist points out an important question of the Baptizer: if Christ is the light, who is John?

Is he the Messiah?  No.  The prophet who was promised to come, one like Moses?  No.  Elijah himself?  No.  Then who?  I’m the one preparing the way for this coming of God, he says.

John the baptizer wasn’t the light of God himself.  He was the witness to the light.  Like the moon to the sun, John reflected the Light of Christ into the world so others could see it.

We’re different from John, though.  We are in fact anointed just like our Lord Christ.  We are anointed to carry Christ’s mission into the world.  Our baptism proclaims this, our calling from our Lord declares this, our new life in his death and resurrection reveals this.  Like John, we are not “the” Messiah, “the” prophet, but we are messiahs (anointed ones), prophets of God with small letters, reflecting God’s light.  Isaiah’s call is our work now, if we take our Lord seriously.

The Spirit of the LORD God is upon us, because God has anointed us.  Really.

We begin our calling as anointed ones by our laughter into the darkness.

Knowing the Lord has come to make all things new, our mouths are filled with laughter and shouts of joy, as we sang.  This is God’s will for us, Paul says: that our life be one of rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, giving thanks in all circumstances.

This is our reflected light: we can hold the joy of God’s healing and grace in a world of pain and grief, holding people, helping people, walking with people, always filled with inner joy because we know God is working in us and in many for life.

This is our reflected light: we can pray without ceasing, living our lives constantly aware of the presence of God in our midst so our very thoughts are prayer, our actions and grace offerings of praise, and we both see God’s presence in this world where others cannot, and live as signs of God’s presence ourselves.

This is our reflected light: we give thanks in all circumstances, thanks that God has sent us to make a difference, thanks that God has not abandoned this world to our destruction but come into it to bring healing, thanks that there is still time for us to do something, thanks that we do not do this alone but with the power and strength of the crucified and risen God.

The Spirit of the LORD God is upon us, because God has anointed us.  This is God’s will for us.

This life of joy, prayer, and thanks becomes the grounding for our entering Isaiah’s vision fully.

Jesus took seriously that he would bring good news to the oppressed, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to those captive and freedom to those in prison.  He was anointed for that.  He did this.

What would happen if we also took our baptismal anointing seriously and did just those things?

What good news could we bring to the oppressed?  Could we be a part of the healing of this nation, this world, finding our own places in the task to make this a society of justice for all, of equality and fairness?  Could we begin to heal the ancient and open wounds that our own sin has created, that subjugate people even in this country based on their skin color, or their economic status, or their education?  How might we, anointed ones of God, feel such wounds ourselves, like our Lord, and begin to repair such ruins?

What binding of the brokenhearted could we do?  Could we find roles for each of us to participate in the healing of a world of pain, where so many have caused or received so much pain that cycles of violence and killing and hatred lead to endless war, endless crime, endless abuse?  Could we be grace to the brokenhearted that stops the revenge and retaliation broken hearts so want?  Could we work to make this a culture of peace and wholeness instead of selfishness and violence?  How might we, anointed ones of God, take this pain on ourselves, like our Lord, and begin to build up such foundations from the ashes?

What freedom can we proclaim to those who are captive to systems beyond their control, what liberty can we proclaim to those imprisoned and thrown away?  Our society raises whole groups of people who never see the possibility of a way out of their situation, trapped in a system that crushes, who despair to find hope and real life.  Our society imprisons more people by far than any other so-called civilized society on earth.  Could we begin to work on these?  Support leaders who seek to dismantle unjust systems, who seek to find ways to heal society rather than build bigger walls and stronger prisons?  Could we be a part of God’s healing here?  How might we, anointed ones of God, enter such captivity ourselves, like our Lord, and begin to raise up hope out of these devastations?

The Spirit of the LORD God is upon us, because God has anointed us.  This is what God has called us to do.

“Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God,” we pray, “that anointed by your Spirit we may testify to your light.” [1]

The Spirit of the LORD God is upon us, because God has anointed us.  God has sent us to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.  That’s it.  That’s the job description. We most certainly need God to stir up our wills to do this, to reflect the Light of God that has come into the world.

But the Spirit of the LORD God is upon us, that is our hope.  We do not do this alone.  We do this with each other and all others so anointed.  We do this with the Spirit of the risen Christ who has anointed us to this.  So we are not afraid.  For the light has come, and we are sent to shine that light into this world so all can see.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen


[1] From Prayer of the Day for 3 Advent B

It is the Triune God who truly practices patient Advent waiting, longing for us and all God’s children to repent, turn around, and begin the healing and restoring of this world we have broken.  This is our hope and our call.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Second Sunday of Advent, year B
   texts:  2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; Isaiah 40:1-11

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

That’s some vision of a restored world in Psalm 85.  I can’t wait to see it.

We sang that the salvation of God is very near, salvation that looks like this: righteousness and peace kiss each other.  Steadfast love and faithfulness meet together.  Considering the divisions that fracture our society, the injustices and humiliations that some in our country daily endure, the self-centeredness and fear that drive the actions and thoughts of so many in our nation, such a vision as this would be a marvel to see.  Think what the rest of the world could do with it.

God’s steadfast love meets with our faithful service to God and each other?  All people would surely find a better life, a safer world.  God’s righteousness embraces our work for shalom – peace, wholeness, justice?  We would surely see a transformed world.  If Advent is a time to practice waiting for the coming of God, this vision is what such coming might be in reality.

What if we’ve got this waiting backwards, though?  This season we sing of the God for whom we wait, as if Advent teaches us to wait for God to make Psalm 85 a reality.  Peter today suggests otherwise.

The question is whose responsibility is this broken world?

We seem to spend a lot of energy placing this in God’s job description.  The prophets’ dreams speak of God coming to restore all.  The Church has always rested hope on the promise of God’s new creation and life for the world, beginning in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

Yet Peter today speaks of the patience of God, the waiting of God, not our waiting.  Encouraging people who were worried that God was letting the problems of the world pile up and not coming to heal all, Peter says the Lord isn’t slow about his promise.  God’s just being patient, hoping that all will come to repentance.

Isn’t that interesting?  John the baptizer called people to repentance, to a turning around.  To prepare themselves for the way of the Christ by walking in a different direction than the one they were going.  So if God is patiently waiting for all to repent, so none perish, Peter is saying our repentance is the way God’s restoration will happen.

That is, the healing of the nations, the blessing of the cursed, the enriching of the barren wastes is not something God is going to do for us.  God, in fact, is the one who waits for us to turn into this way, repent, find the path.  The way to the salvation of Psalm 85 is through God’s children.

This is an entirely different Advent, to consider the patient waiting of the Triune God.

To see the pain and suffering of this world and instead of sitting back and praying that God restore the creation, rather to turn our lives around from the ways we contribute to the destruction.  To turn around to find the path of Christ, the path of the cross, already announced at this beginning of Mark’s Gospel.

What would it mean if Advent became a season where we sang of God’s waiting for us to be about the healing of this world?  If we heard John’s call to repent not as some minor course correction – stop doing a sin or two, whatever you can come up with – but as a drastic road altering project the likes of which Isaiah proclaims?

This is ours to do: look at Isaiah.  The call to make a new path, a safe road in the wilderness of the world is to us, not to God.  God’s doing plenty: God will come to us, take us up in loving arms like a shepherd, feed us like a mother sheep.

But we’re the workers here, the ones to fix the mess this world’s in.  Because we’re the ones who made it.

It’s our sin of over 300 years in this country against entire races of people that has given birth to the injustice and sickness of racism that still infests our courts, our laws, our police forces, our churches, our public squares.  That’s our doing.

It’s our sin of greed and capitalism of 300 years that has given birth to greater and greater inequality of wealth and a disgusting reality that people can work two full-time jobs and still not earn enough in this so-called land of opportunity to feed their families.  That’s our doing.

It’s our sin of nearly 400 years in this country of rabid individualism and obsession with personal violence that has given birth to murder rates and gun insanity that no other civilized culture on this planet will tolerate but that we absolutely refuse to address, while week after week our children are shot, our sisters and brothers are abused and killed, and our police feel threatened every time they go out into the streets.  That’s our doing.

If this world is a wilderness, an unsafe place, we needn’t look far to find who has made it so.  And God patiently waits for us to admit it and turn around, change our direction.  So life can begin to be restored.

God’s patience, however, is at great cost.

That’s what patience means.  Our word for patience, like the Greeks and the Romans and other cultures, is related to the word for suffering.  When we speak of patience, for thousands of years of human language, we speak of waiting that involves suffering.

This is God’s patience: to suffer as we destroy this world and wait for us to change rather than wipe us out.  God made a good world, where righteousness and peace embraced, where God’s steadfast love was everywhere.  But we refused to live in love with God, neighbor, and creation, and made it as it now is.

Because God wants us to freely choose such life, God is also committed to our solving this mess.  God will inspire, empower, command, even model such a way, such a path, in person through Christ the Son of God.  God’s love we see on the cross forgives us when we fail, we know this.

But God will not do this all for us.  Think of what kind of suffering that puts the Triune God through.  To see all the hatred and violence and injustice and destruction we do to each other and this creation, and know we could change it all but won’t.  To hear us pray for dramatic rescue from God while refusing to do anything ourselves.  It must make God sick at heart.

This waiting costs God.  Costs the world, while we go our way of destruction.  The longer it takes for us all to repent, the greater the pain of the world, the greater the pain of God.

We say we can’t wait to see this healing.  God can and does wait.  So what shall we do?

Peter says we could consider what sort of people we want to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness.  We could repent, turn around, John says.  We could start making a clean path in the wastelands we’ve created, Isaiah says, so God’s healing can spread.

With the ills and evils that plague our society, it seems impossible any of us could find any new direction that would heal.  But we have each other, this gift of Christ.  We talk to each other, help each other listen better to the world and walk the path of the cross.  We support each other in changes – big and small – we begin to start making in each of our lives, as we begin to turn:  How we vote.  How we see the world.  How we treat others.  How we spend our money.  How we deal with violence.  What we talk about and care about.

We say the problems are too great, we can’t do anything.  Meanwhile, God patiently, sufferingly, waits for us to stop saying that.

Today our Prayer of the Day didn’t ask God to stir up power and come.  We asked God to stir up our hearts to prepare the way of Christ in the world.  That’s the Advent prayer we need.

The Lord’s patience is so that none will perish, all will live.

This is the great grace, why we regard the patience of the Lord as our salvation.  The great heart of the Triune God suffers and longs even more than we do for the healing of all things, hopes beyond hope that we, and all God’s children, will see this path and turn into it.  Will build new bridges and paths in the wilderness so others can see and find hope and light.  Will turn our lives around so all the world’s children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will live in a better world than we do.

In God’s Advent waiting we find our call to love and life and service, and the world finds hope in us, sees the healing of God come to reality through us.

That I can’t wait to see.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

It is the Triune God who truly practices patient Advent waiting, longing for us and all God’s children to repent, turn around, and begin the healing and restoring of this world we have broken.  This is our hope and our call.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Second Sunday of Advent, year B
   texts:  2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; Isaiah 40:1-11

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

That’s some vision of a restored world in Psalm 85.  I can’t wait to see it.

We sang that the salvation of God is very near, salvation that looks like this: righteousness and peace kiss each other.  Steadfast love and faithfulness meet together.  Considering the divisions that fracture our society, the injustices and humiliations that some in our country daily endure, the self-centeredness and fear that drive the actions and thoughts of so many in our nation, such a vision as this would be a marvel to see.  Think what the rest of the world could do with it.

God’s steadfast love meets with our faithful service to God and each other?  All people would surely find a better life, a safer world.  God’s righteousness embraces our work for shalom – peace, wholeness, justice?  We would surely see a transformed world.  If Advent is a time to practice waiting for the coming of God, this vision is what such coming might be in reality.

What if we’ve got this waiting backwards, though?  This season we sing of the God for whom we wait, as if Advent teaches us to wait for God to make Psalm 85 a reality.  Peter today suggests otherwise.

The question is whose responsibility is this broken world?

We seem to spend a lot of energy placing this in God’s job description.  The prophets’ dreams speak of God coming to restore all.  The Church has always rested hope on the promise of God’s new creation and life for the world, beginning in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

Yet Peter today speaks of the patience of God, the waiting of God, not our waiting.  Encouraging people who were worried that God was letting the problems of the world pile up and not coming to heal all, Peter says the Lord isn’t slow about his promise.  God’s just being patient, hoping that all will come to repentance.

Isn’t that interesting?  John the baptizer called people to repentance, to a turning around.  To prepare themselves for the way of the Christ by walking in a different direction than the one they were going.  So if God is patiently waiting for all to repent, so none perish, Peter is saying our repentance is the way God’s restoration will happen.

That is, the healing of the nations, the blessing of the cursed, the enriching of the barren wastes is not something God is going to do for us.  God, in fact, is the one who waits for us to turn into this way, repent, find the path.  The way to the salvation of Psalm 85 is through God’s children.

This is an entirely different Advent, to consider the patient waiting of the Triune God.

To see the pain and suffering of this world and instead of sitting back and praying that God restore the creation, rather to turn our lives around from the ways we contribute to the destruction.  To turn around to find the path of Christ, the path of the cross, already announced at this beginning of Mark’s Gospel.

What would it mean if Advent became a season where we sang of God’s waiting for us to be about the healing of this world?  If we heard John’s call to repent not as some minor course correction – stop doing a sin or two, whatever you can come up with – but as a drastic road altering project the likes of which Isaiah proclaims?

This is ours to do: look at Isaiah.  The call to make a new path, a safe road in the wilderness of the world is to us, not to God.  God’s doing plenty: God will come to us, take us up in loving arms like a shepherd, feed us like a mother sheep.

But we’re the workers here, the ones to fix the mess this world’s in.  Because we’re the ones who made it.

It’s our sin of over 300 years in this country against entire races of people that has given birth to the injustice and sickness of racism that still infests our courts, our laws, our police forces, our churches, our public squares.  That’s our doing.

It’s our sin of greed and capitalism of 300 years that has given birth to greater and greater inequality of wealth and a disgusting reality that people can work two full-time jobs and still not earn enough in this so-called land of opportunity to feed their families.  That’s our doing.

It’s our sin of nearly 400 years in this country of rabid individualism and obsession with personal violence that has given birth to murder rates and gun insanity that no other civilized culture on this planet will tolerate but that we absolutely refuse to address, while week after week our children are shot, our sisters and brothers are abused and killed, and our police feel threatened every time they go out into the streets.  That’s our doing.

If this world is a wilderness, an unsafe place, we needn’t look far to find who has made it so.  And God patiently waits for us to admit it and turn around, change our direction.  So life can begin to be restored.

God’s patience, however, is at great cost.

That’s what patience means.  Our word for patience, like the Greeks and the Romans and other cultures, is related to the word for suffering.  When we speak of patience, for thousands of years of human language, we speak of waiting that involves suffering.

This is God’s patience: to suffer as we destroy this world and wait for us to change rather than wipe us out.  God made a good world, where righteousness and peace embraced, where God’s steadfast love was everywhere.  But we refused to live in love with God, neighbor, and creation, and made it as it now is.

Because God wants us to freely choose such life, God is also committed to our solving this mess.  God will inspire, empower, command, even model such a way, such a path, in person through Christ the Son of God.  God’s love we see on the cross forgives us when we fail, we know this.

But God will not do this all for us.  Think of what kind of suffering that puts the Triune God through.  To see all the hatred and violence and injustice and destruction we do to each other and this creation, and know we could change it all but won’t.  To hear us pray for dramatic rescue from God while refusing to do anything ourselves.  It must make God sick at heart.

This waiting costs God.  Costs the world, while we go our way of destruction.  The longer it takes for us all to repent, the greater the pain of the world, the greater the pain of God.

We say we can’t wait to see this healing.  God can and does wait.  So what shall we do?

Peter says we could consider what sort of people we want to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness.  We could repent, turn around, John says.  We could start making a clean path in the wastelands we’ve created, Isaiah says, so God’s healing can spread.

With the ills and evils that plague our society, it seems impossible any of us could find any new direction that would heal.  But we have each other, this gift of Christ.  We talk to each other, help each other listen better to the world and walk the path of the cross.  We support each other in changes – big and small – we begin to start making in each of our lives, as we begin to turn:  How we vote.  How we see the world.  How we treat others.  How we spend our money.  How we deal with violence.  What we talk about and care about.

We say the problems are too great, we can’t do anything.  Meanwhile, God patiently, sufferingly, waits for us to stop saying that.

Today our Prayer of the Day didn’t ask God to stir up power and come.  We asked God to stir up our hearts to prepare the way of Christ in the world.  That’s the Advent prayer we need.

The Lord’s patience is so that none will perish, all will live.

This is the great grace, why we regard the patience of the Lord as our salvation.  The great heart of the Triune God suffers and longs even more than we do for the healing of all things, hopes beyond hope that we, and all God’s children, will see this path and turn into it.  Will build new bridges and paths in the wilderness so others can see and find hope and light.  Will turn our lives around so all the world’s children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will live in a better world than we do.

In God’s Advent waiting we find our call to love and life and service, and the world finds hope in us, sees the healing of God come to reality through us.

That I can’t wait to see.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Advent calls us to live in hope that God is with us today, to trust that the kingdom of God is at hand.  So we stay awake, and keep watching for signs of God’s coming and presence in our lives and in the world.

Vicar Meagan McLaughlin
   First Sunday of Advent
   Texts: Isaiah 64:1-9, Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

I can still feel the anticipation that filled me as a child when Thanksgiving came, and I knew Christmas was “just around the corner.” When we were expecting company, I would watch from the couch in our living room, because it had a great view of the street and I would be able to see the guests arriving. I spent the entire month of December, figuratively speaking, leaning over the back of the couch, trying to make the time go faster! I was desperately curious about all the details of the parties being planned—what food would be served, when my cousins would come in from out of town, what service we would attend at church, what Santa would bring me, and could I please, please, please go along when my dad went to pick up my grandmother and great aunts? Every minute seemed like an hour, hours like days, days like weeks.  Christmas was all I could think about, and at the same time it felt like it would never get there. Advent is a time to follow what Jesus calls us to do in Mark—stay awake, keep watch, and I certainly had that down, even if I was more focused on parties and presents than the birth of Jesus!

Time has changed since then, or perhaps, it is my perception that has changed. Now rather than being painfully slow, the month of December flies by so quickly that I hardly have time to realize that it’s Advent before suddenly here it is—Christmas Eve. Being who I am, I am always prepared, at least in one sense. The presents are bought and wrapped, the tree trimmed, food for the family meal prepared. But spiritually and emotionally, I am always taken by surprise when Christmas comes. I spend more time on my to do list and less time leaning over the back of the couch, and as the years go by I find myself yearning for the time I spent as a child simply anticipating.

Our effort to be present and wait during Advent is certainly not helped when we have to walk past several aisles of Christmas decorations in the store in order to get to the Halloween costumes in mid-October, all the while listening to Deck the Halls and Frosty the Snowman piped through the sound system. Everything around us seems to call us to a flurry of activity . . . . buy, bake, order, send, and hurry up because time is running out! And of course, it is important to do the things necessary to get ready to welcome and celebrate with family and friends. But in the midst of all of this activity, on top of the regular daily life that continues, it is easy to forget that Advent is about waiting, and it is particularly easy to forget what we are waiting for.

So, what are we waiting for? The obvious answer is that Advent is a season of waiting for Christmas, Jesus’ birth. But it is so much more than the birth of a baby that we await. God, in all God’s fullness—the God who, as Isaiah described, makes the mountains quake, the God who Mark tells us has the power to make the sun dark and the stars fall, the God of all creation—came to live with us in the messiness of life in the person of Jesus. We remember not just the historical event of Jesus’ birth, but the reality of God’s presence and work in us and in the world, here and now. Advent is a time to remember that God is with us today, a time to live in hope.

When we look at the world, it can sometimes be really challenging to have hope. All we need to do is read the headlines to see evidence of pain, suffering, and evil in the world. This week in Ferguson, Missouri, and cities all over the country, we see fear, anger, even rage in the wake of the grand jury decision to exonerate Police Officer Darren Wilson of Michael Brown’s death. Just a mile down the road from here, thousands of people rallied for hours on Tuesday night, calling for justice. If we listen, we hear stories of those who live in fear, who have experienced the daily threat of discrimination, who can’t ever forget that they are treated differently in countless ways because of the color of their skin. If we listen, we hear stories of those who commit themselves to protecting others, often putting themselves at risk, and know daily the reality that they or someone they love may not come home. Setting aside guilt or innocence, right or wrong, justified or unjustified, in these events the damage and grief of centuries of systemic racism has been brought fully to the surface. We are all impacted, in one way or another. It is overwhelming, and it is hard not to turn away, to minimize the pain. Today, on the first Sunday of Advent, we take a few minutes to hear these voices, and ask the question of how we can have hope, and see God at work, in the midst of it all.

The pain of this world is not new. In the verses before our passage from Mark, Jesus describes war, betrayal, murder, destruction. And he encourages his followers, promising that nothing is too much for God to overcome. With the psalmist, we can bring the brokenness of our communities, and our own pain and brokenness, to God, and cry out—“Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, shine forth. Stir up your might, and come to save us! Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.”

The miracle of the hope we have in Advent is that we are waiting on a God who has never turned away from our pain. As Christians today, whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, whatever challenges we face, we await the birth of Jesus knowing the rest of the story—Jesus lived, taught, challenged, loved, forgave, healed, called. And Jesus died—and rose again. Death was not the last word then, and it is not the last word today. Jesus transformed people’s lives, and we are invited to put ourselves completely in God’s hands, like clay ready to be formed by the potter, willing to be changed, to be made new.

In Advent, we are called to live in hope that God is with us today, to trust that the kingdom of God is at hand. Waiting, anticipating, living in hope don’t easily find their way onto our “to do lists,” but in this moment, for this season, it is the most important thing for us to do. We don’t know the day or the hour when the kingdom of God will be fully accomplished, but we can keep watch, and if we do, we will see glimpses of it. We can see God at work in the world in the way people love and care for each other, in voices courageously speaking truths that are hard to hear, in the beauty of creation. And we can call out like a watchperson—Hey, look, there it is, God is here, did you see it?—so those around us will also know that we have great reason for hope. We are called to witness to God’s presence by being the hands and feet of God in the world ourselves, by showing God’s love and care for others and calling for justice where it is due, so others can see God at work through us. And most of all, we can put our trust in God, who sends Jesus to show us that we are never alone.

I plan to spend a lot of time leaning over the back of the couch this Advent, anticipating God’s coming into the world anew. I invite you to join me, so we can support each other in our commitment to take seriously the call to keep watch for the presence of God in our midst. We don’t know the day or the hour, but there is plenty of room on the couch, and it has a great view.

These parables are full of surprises: grace to those who don’t deserve it, truth about where we find Christ in our lives, and, most of all, a King who becomes a servant to save the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   Christ the King, Last Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 34 A
   texts:  Matthew 25:31-46 (referring to all of Matthew 25, plus some more)

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Did you notice both groups of the King’s servants were surprised at the truth?

Both wanted to serve their King, care for him; neither knew how.  The only difference is one group took care of people with needs, one did not.  The last day brings a stunning surprise when they are called before their King, who tells them the truth.  “We had no idea,” they all say.

This surprise is only one of a number of surprises these judgment parables we’ve heard lately spring, things that aren’t what they seem, situations that don’t turn out as we expect.  If we’ve struggled with these stories, feared them, it’s because, like the servants of the King, we’re not in on the surprise.

We could be.  Everything we need to understand the truth of these parables, of our relationship to our Lord, of life and death and eternal existence, is given us, if only we look.

So let’s look.

We start with this first surprise.

It’s remarkable: in the 25 years I’ve studied these parables, discussed them, taught them, heard others speak about them, most of the time people want to talk about the judgment, the sentencing.  If the actions called for today are mentioned, it’s related to the threat.  People say “do these or else, that’s what Jesus is saying,” or people won’t consider living in this way, frozen in their fear.  Most reading these parables come away scared, worried, or self-righteous.

If you insist on focusing on the judgment, the “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” fine.  Then notice what Jesus has given us.  In this insider parable, Jesus has told his disciples, his followers, the very people who, like the ones in the parable, want to serve their King, precisely what they need to do to do that, and avoid judgment.

I don’t believe Jesus is threatening us here.  But if you insist on that, know this: you have the answers to the final exam.  If there’s going to be a judgment such as this, none of us will be the second group.  None of us.  We’re not going to be surprised, that’s our surprise today.

We, unlike they, know exactly where our King is.  In the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned.  So even if you fear this judgment, this fire, you’ve got all you need to avoid it: take care of the least of these.

But the next surprise is that the judgment itself is not to be feared.

A few chapters earlier Jesus tells this story of the kingdom: there was an owner who hired people to work in his vineyard.  The first at 6 a.m. were promised a full day’s pay.  During the day he hires more, because there’s more work.  With less than an hour to sunset, he gets a few more.  At the end of the day, everyone gets a full day’s pay, regardless of their work.

Do you see?  Those who take care of the “least of these” for decades are no better off at the judgment than those who do it only a little.  In other words, if we have the answers to the final, in Matthew 22 Jesus says he’s throwing out the final results, everyone’s getting an A.  Everyone.  Even those who sat around all day.  That’s a shock.

Now, we don’t mind if we get slack from Jesus.  But if (in our opinion) we are prepared bridesmaids, slaves faithful with our God-given gifts, folks who care for the least of these, we can be less than thrilled if someone who doesn’t do much also gets a free pass of grace in the end.

“Are you envious because I am generous?” the owner says in that parable.  “Can’t I do with my wealth what I want?”  That’s the point: God’s generosity is for all, even us.  Because let’s be honest: none of us works a full day, we all fall short.

As Jesus dies on the cross he takes all of our tests, all of our work, all we have done, good and bad, and throws it out.  He says, “I’ll take care of this.  I’ll love you all.”  We see it almost right away after the resurrection when he first re-claims all his faithless disciples and names them as his chief witnesses and leaders in bringing God’s grace to the world.

The cross also reveals we don’t need to fear the authority figure.

That’s a big problem we have here.  The groom says “I don’t know you.”  The master kicks out the third slave and gives his talent to the first, and slave-owner is hardly a nice model for God.  The King says that because some of his followers didn’t know or do, well, they can go to you know where.  None of these sounds like someone to be trusted, let alone loved.

If we look only at these three parables we miss the biggest surprise of the whole Gospel: Jesus, the Son of God, consistently flips our expectations about being our Lord upside down.  When the disciples fight over which is greatest, Jesus reminds them, only a few chapters earlier, they are to serve each other, because that’s what he does.  “The Son of Man,” he says, “came to serve, not to be served.”

Now do you see?  The slaveowner of the second parable becomes a slave himself and dies in service.  The bridegroom gives his life for his neglectful, unprepared friends.  The king ascends his royal throne, only it’s a cross, and he is crowned by being tortured to death.

None of these parables make sense if we read them alone.  They’re told to disciples, to us, and we only understand when we stay with the Storyteller through the cross and the empty tomb.  So yes, in these stories we are called to serve others, use our gifts, be prepared.  But only because our King, Master, and Groom is already on his knees doing it himself.

Have you had enough surprises?  Here’s a big one.  If we stop fearing the authority, and quit obsessing on the judgment, we actually find the point of these parables. 

The largest amount of words in these parables, the bulk of what is said, is our Lord and King inviting us to join him in bringing life to the world.  Asking us to prepare for his coming reign by making it happen in our lives.  Asking us to use the gifts we’ve been given for the sake of the reign of God.  Asking us to expect to see our Lord in the eyes of those in need, and to expect such relationships to bless us in return.

Now that we know we need not fear our Lord, we begin to see these stories for what they are: our Lord’s gracious call to be of service as his followers.  What if we let go of our fear and anxiety and were just that?

The biggest surprise is that we’re surprised at all.

Everything we’ve ever seen in Jesus should have shown this path to us.  None of these calls to action are surprises, given Jesus’ other teaching and life we’ve heard and known.  Fear of the judgment should never have been our obsession, given Jesus’ death and resurrection.  We live trusting in God’s free and undeserved grace given us through Christ Jesus, not in terror of God.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this, but that’s OK.  The only question is, will we follow our King and Lord into this path of love and service for the sake of the world, trusting grace and forgiveness will be what he has said, trusting the path of sacrificial love will bless us as much as those we love, trusting we are in the hands of the Triune God who only hopes that we will join all God’s children in restoring this earth to what it was created to be.

The vision of what we could be, living as these parables invite, is thrilling to imagine.  I can’t wait to see what happens next as we mature into this life.

It might actually surprise us how wonderful it is.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen