The Gleeful Prophet of Doom

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s we begin 2026, God’s people at The First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights are spending some time with the ancient prophet Jonah.  How did he hear God’s call to take a message of hope to a foreign people?  Where is there grace and on whom does judgment fall?  On January 25, we watched the prophet trudge through Ninevah and preach a sermon (Jonah 2:10 – 3:10) that had a surprising impact.  We also listened to a portion of Jesus’ preaching in Matthew 5:43-48.  

To hear this sermon as preached in worship, please use the media player below:

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We open our reading of scripture today with an image of the prophet Jonah, who has been unceremoniously spewed onto a Mediterranean beach.  He’s wet, hungry, chastened, and maybe, finally, ready to hear a word from the Lord.

Jan Brueghel the Elder, Jonah Leaving the Whale, ca. 1600

How did he get here? He’d been called by God, who said qum lek – “Arise – get up”, and go to Ninevah.  Ninevah, of course, was the capitol of Assyria.  These were the sworn enemies of Jonah’s people, and God called Jonah to go and speak against their wickedness.

Jonah, as you might recall, had no intention of doing any such thing.  Hehated these people, and he did not “get up” – no, he went down… down to Joppa… down to the hold of the ship on which he intended to flee… down to sleep… down to the depths of the ocean… down in the belly of a great fish.

And after three days, he comes to some semblance of his senses and he prays.  As we mentioned last week, in this prayer he said the truest thing that anyone has ever said: yeshuata Yahweh – “deliverance belongs to the Lord!”

That’s where he’s been, and as I’ve said we find him here on the beach when the word of the Lord comes to him a second time.  Qum lek – get up, and go to Ninevah.  This time, Jonah obeys!  And our text is clear in its description that this is the big time – a “very important” city.

Jakob Steinhardt, Jonah Preaches in Nineveh, 1923, hand-colored woodcut

As our prophet begins to trudge through the streets of this foreign place, he mutters one of the shortest sermons you’ll ever hear: “Forty more days and Ninevah will be overturned”.  That’s only five words in Hebrew.

There have been some awesome things in this story of Jonah already, haven’t there?  The storm.  The sailors who had concern for Jonah’s life.  The fish, and his ability to survive inside it.  But here is something truly amazing: before Jonah even gets halfway across town, the people hear his message.  Your text says, “The Ninevites believed God.”  And then everyone in this vast metropolis puts on sackcloth and begins to fast.  It’s a miracle!

At this point, Jonah disappears from our narrative.  The text goes on to tell us about the impact of his words, but the prophet himself is nowhere to be seen.

But wow! Look at what happens! Everybody repents! The king himself puts on sackcloth and covers himself with ashes and declares that the fast applies not only to people, but to animals as well.  He orders his population to pray, and commands them to “give up their evil ways and their violence”.  The word for “repent” shows up four times in verses 8-10.

As you consider this scene in Ninevah, I’d like to encourage you to look at how it parallels the action in chapter 1.  There, Jonah had wandered into a strange environment filled with pagans.  And, like Ninevah, everyone on that ship was in danger.  Everyone there is crying out, repenting, and praying – well, everyone except for the prophet of God, who is asleep.  In chapter 1, the pagan ship’s captain shakes Jonah awake, filled with concern for his crew, and says, “Who knows? Maybe God will spare us!”

The Repentance of Nineveh, John Martin (c. 1840)

Here in chapter 3, the entire city is in an uproar.  All of its inhabitants, from the greatest to the least, are repenting, praying, and fasting.  Well, all except for the prophet of God, who is nowhere to be found.  And this pagan king, filled with concern for his people, issues a decree, saying “Who knows? Maybe God will spare us!”

And don’t you just know it? That’s what happens! Just as God cared for the sailors in chapter 1, here God relents and turns God’s heart toward the residents of Ninevah. This is great news, right?

I mean, seriously, every prophet would be low-key thrilled to see their words having such a profound effect.  Jonah must be over the moon to think that he would be used by God in such an amazing way.

… Um, yeah.  About that.  Spoiler alert: to say that Jonah is “thrilled” would be a colossal overstatement.  We’ll hear more about that next time when we get to chapter 4.  But we can get an inkling of that possibility here in chapter 3 as we listen to that oh-so-brief sermon.  What is it that he preaches?  “Forty days and Ninevah shall be overturned.” Not “could be” overturned, not “may be” overturned.  The prophet is as declarative and emphatic as he is brief: this town will be overturned.

Now, remember what we’ve said about Jonah.  He is a fervent nationalist and a staunch patriot.  He’s blatantly racist and ethnocentric.  He hates Assyria and Assyrians, and he hates Ninevah and Ninevites.  That’s who he is.

And when he gets a word from the Lord that this town is going to be “overturned”, he’s sure he knows what that means.  It has to mean that God is going to destroy Ninevah, right?  I mean the Hebrew word there, haphak, is the same word that is used back in Genesis 19, when God overturned, or destroyed, Sodom and Gomorrah.  That’s what that word means.

Yet presumably, Jonah spoke Hebrew, and so he should have known that haphak can also be used to describe a radical reversal, or even a transformation.  Back in Exodus, Moses’ brother Aaron had this really cool walking stick. Every now and then, Aaron would throw it to the ground and it would transform – haphak – into a snake.  Haphak can mean “destroy” or “uproot”, but it can also indicate a deep-seated change or “transformation”.

Yet Jonah appears to be so blinded by his own preconceived notions, so sure that God hated all the same people that he did, so convinced that those people were less human than he, and so persuaded that this entire city ought to be wiped from the face of the earth that he was chortling with glee as he announced his prophecy.  Jonah was apparently enjoying this preaching on God’s wrath directed at Ninevah, because Jonah simply couldn’t wait for God to give those losers what they so richly deserved.

The kindness and mercy of God simply infuriated Jonah – and we’ll get to that next time.  Why was he so bothered? Because he simply could not get past his own prejudices and opinions.

And this is what I want to do right now: I want to say that Jonah was a religious nationalist, a racist, and a xenophobe.  I want to slap labels on Jonah just as fast as he threw them on the people of Ninevah.  Because every label I slap it on some bigot like Jonah is a way to remind myself and to announce to you that I am not like that.  I’m better than that.  I mean, let’s face it: Jonah is not a good prophet.  It sure doesn’t look like he’s a good person.  Maybe, in fact, Jonah is as sub-human as he paints his enemies to be.

But when I start labeling like that; when I start othering like that; when I start thinking about all the ways that I’m so much better than he is… well, then, I become Jonah, don’t I?

Isn’t that the way of our world here in the 2020’s?  Don’t we “other” people all the time? We are conditioned to demonize those with whom we disagree. We trivialize those from who we are different.  It’s easy to gleefully predict and even hope for their downfall and humiliation.  We dismiss those whose opinions or experiences are different than ours as being less authentically Christian, less “real American”, less lovable than we are.

And in doing so, beloved, we ourselves turn into prophets of glee, who, like Jonah, delight in the prospect of woe befalling those people – those illegals… those ICE agents… the libs… that orange idiot…those fascists… you socialists…  We are tempted to want to see others hurt.  We are tempted to enjoy their pain or humiliation.

Beloved… this is not the way of Jesus.  The more we talk about putting others in their place, or taking their land, or throttling those who oppose us, or silencing any voice but those who agree with mine… the less we sound like the One who came to give himself for others, who calls us to walk first, last, and always only in the way of love.  Jesus calls us to love our enemies, and to pray even for those who persecute us.  He tells us that we are to be perfect, even as God is perfect.  That’s not some namby-pamby liberal talking – that’s Jesus, the One we’ve gathered to worship this morning.

Now before you think that I’m going to sit down on the floor criss-cross applesauce and start singing Kum Bah Yah, let me tell you that I get it.  Ninevah – then and now – is a wicked place.  The people are violent and dangerous, and opposed to living God’s way.  And Jonah was absolutely correct to speak against such behavior, and to call it out.  But he was 100% wrong to rejoice in the hope of their suffering.

Listen: I pray that in the Ninevahs of our world the power of evil to do harm in our nation, our community, is limited.

I pray God’s grace comes to those who are so terrified by the conditions in which they are raising their children that they feel forced to flee and seek protection in another land.

I pray protection for those who fear being ripped from their homes, and for those who are imprisoned without justification and separated from their families.

I pray for those who keep peaceful vigil on the streets, and ask God to limit anyone’s ability to do violence.

I pray that I will have the grace, strength, and wisdom to speak against any form of wickedness that infects our world.  I pray against any regime, anywhere, that murders dissidents in the streets.

I pray that we will see haphak – transformation – in our nation… that we will see a real and Godly turnaround in so many ways.

And hear this, too: I pray for those who walk with the intention of destroying their neighbor.  I pray for the safety of everybody at those protests, and do not desire to see any human brought low in debasement or violence.  May our culture hear the call of that ancient pagan king: “Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrated just a few days ago, once said “Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.”  So if your frustration with any part of what has been happening in the past decade or so has driven you to hatred, know that I’m praying for you, too.

May God protect us from the desire to enjoy the pain of our enemies.

May God embolden us to pursue peace and justice for all of God’s children.

May God strengthen us to work on behalf of all who suffer.

May God give us a great haphak in our world, in our nation, and in our own hearts.

Thanks be to God, who is rich in mercy and abounding in love.  Who has love for us.  And for them. Who has love for those who fear, and for those who cause fear.  And who will, by the power of Christ, bring all things to reconciliation.  Thanks be to God who invites us to be part of that reconciliation.  May we be wise enough to participate.  Amen.

A Cry from the Depths

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As we begin 2026, God’s people at The First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights are spending some time with the ancient prophet Jonah.  How did he hear God’s call to take a message of hope to a foreign people?  Where is there grace and on whom does judgment fall?  On January 11, we considered Jonah 1:17-2:9 and also heard I Timothy 1:12-17.

To hear this message as preached win worship, please use the media player below:

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Before we dig into the next section of our study of Jonah, I’d like to remind you about another Bible Story you probably know well.  We typically call it “the Prodigal Son”.  Do you remember that one?  A man had two sons.  The younger one approaches his father and says, essentially, “I wish you were dead.”  He demands his share of the inheritance on the spot – he’s not interested in waiting around for his father to grow old and die, he wants that cash NOW.

The Prodigal Son Leaving Home, Hieronymus Janssens (1624-1693)

Of course, this is a total rejection of the father.  The son leaves home – he can’t wait to see that place in the rear-view mirror.  On top of that, in the story that Jesus told, the son rejects the father’s values.  We’re told that he wastes the money (and his life) in “riotous living”, whatever that means.  In doing so, he not only disrespects his father, but he also debases himself, and eventually, this son hits rock bottom.  He wakes up one morning to find himself feeding the pigs, and wishing that he could eat as well as they did.

So this younger son comes up with a plan.  He will just explain things to his dad.  He’ll pay him back.  He’ll work it off.  He will take it upon himself to make things right with the old man!

And how does that plan work out?  Well, it fails miserably.  Before he can even start into his little spiel, his overjoyed father is slapping a ring on his finger, a robe on his shoulders, and ordering up a barbeque for the whole village.  The son’s plan fails because he underestimates his dad.  The father is not impressed by any grand proclamations or solemn promises.  He loves his son for who his son is.  He loves him unconditionally!

Have you heard that story before?  Do you remember it?

Good!  Because I’m here to suggest that in many ways, the book of Jonah is a prequel to the parable of the Prodigal son.

In case you missed worship last week, or never went to Sunday School as a child, let me remind you of the story of Jonah so far.

God calls to Jonah, a prophet who is known to be devoutly patriotic and a fervent nationalist.  God says, “Get up” – qum lek, in Hebrew – and go to Ninevah to preach about the reality and presence of YHWH to Israel’s sworn enemies.

If you were here last week: does Jonah “get up”?  Hardly!  Chapter 1 is a narrative about how far and how fast Jonah can go down.  He goes down to Joppa.  Down to the hold of the ship.  Down to sleep.  And when God sends a storm and the Pagan sailors try everything they can think of to save Jonah’s life before eventually tossing him overboard, Jonah continues his descent.

He goes down into the belly of a great fish.  Down to the deep.  In verse 2, he enters the “realm of the dead”.  In Hebrew, that’s sheol – “the world of the dead”.  In verse 6 we find Jonah at the roots of the mountains and down in the pit.

God had asked Jonah to go up – qum lek – and Jonah ran as fast and as far as he could in the exact opposite direction.  Like the Prodigal, Jonah hit rock bottom.  There is nothing lower than the pit, the roots of the mountains, or sheol.

Maybe you’ve been there too.  Perhaps it’s as a result of a pattern of addiction.  Maybe there has been a sequence of abuse, or a series of horrible choices, or simply a string of apparently random events.  You’ve been in a place where you think, “Well, this is the worst.  It cannot possibly get any ghastlier than this.  I am nothing.  There is no hope for me.  I’m done for.”

If you’ve been there, then you know this; if you are there now, then let me tell you that this is not the end.  Your story is not finished.  If you know anything about the Prodigal, you know that the morning in the pig sty wasn’t the end for him.  If you know anything about Jonah, you know that his sojourn in the belly of the fish was not the end for him.

Jonah cast out by the Fish; 14th century stained glass window; from a temple in Mulhouse, France

Jonah 2 is a prayer to God.  It is a fine prayer.  Wonderful, really.  Although can you, like me, see at least a glimmer of an echo of the Prodigal son in this?

Like the son in Jesus’ story, Jonah finds himself at the end of his rope, and then he cooks up a plan to get back on God’s good side, and to make things right.

We’re told that when the sailors threw Jonah overboard he was swallowed by a fish.  How long did he stay there? 3 days and 3 nights.  Chapter two begins by telling us that then Jonah prayed.

Seriously?  3 days and 3 nights? What was he doing all that time?  You know he didn’t have any bars of cell service or wifi down there.  Was he sulking?  Hoping to die? Sleeping?  Whatever he was doing, he did it for 3 days before he decided to pray.  And then, look at the prayer he comes out with: “God, I know that you did this to me.  You cast me into the depths.  Your waves rolled over me.  You banished me.  But then, I remembered you.  I’m not like those other losers, those pagans who cling to worthless idols.  You know what, God? I’m gonna fix this.  What I have vowed, I will repay.  I know I owe you, God, and you can trust me, I’ll make good on this.”

And then he ends his prayer with a shout of acclamation: “Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”  In Hebrew, that’s yeshuata Yahweh!

Friends, that is the truest thing that anyone, anywhere, has ever said.  But know this: that just because Jonah said yeshuata Yahweh doesn’t mean that Jonah understands it yet, any better than the Prodigal understood his father when he came up with that pathetic little speech about getting a job and paying his dad back.

Chapter 2 ends with Jonah thinking that he will somehow be able to make it all up to God.  That once he gets back to dry land, he’ll figure out something that will make God like him better – way better, in fact, than God could ever like those losers over in Ninevah.

I think that we will see in the next couple of weeks that Jonah is turning into the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal.

But again, we’ve been there, too, haven’t we?  You know this temptation.  Tell me that you haven’t on your worst day, thought the same thing.  “God, if you just pull me through this, then I’ll…  If you get me out of this mess, then I’ll be someone you can be proud of.  I’ll donate a ton of money.  I’ll volunteer like nobody’s business.  You know what, God?  If you get me through this, I’ll even say ‘yes’ the next time they ask me to be an elder at church…”

And the unspoken clause at the end of all that bargaining is this: “because then we’ll be square, God.  Because I can make it up to you.”

But you know that can’t happen.  That is the scandal of grace!  God gives freely to those who don’t deserve and who cannot repay.  God draws the circle so wide that no one is excluded.  Even those people have a place!

Isn’t that what Paul claims in the letter to Timothy that we read a few moments ago?  “I’m a screw-up”, he says.  “I’m a failure.  There’s nothing I can do to talk God into loving me.  I don’t deserve any goodness that I have received from God.  And yet, God takes me as I am, right now, even at rock bottom, and because of Jesus – in Hebrew, that’s Yeshua – God says, ‘we’re good.’”

Paul talks here and in other places about the fact that he serves God; he does not, however, think that he is repaying God or impressing others.  He lives his life of service because that’s the only way he knows to say ‘thank you’ for the gift of such amazing grace.

Beloved in Christ, this is Good News for you and for me.  No less than Jonah, and no less than the Prodigal, God’s love for you is not an “if” or “because” kind of love.  God does not love you for what you do.  God is not impressed by your holiness, your tithing, your patience, or even your advocacy for the poor, the refugee, or the stranger.  None of those things is the first thing that God sees when God looks at you.

God loves you.  The ‘you-ness’ of you.  Right now.  Right here.  Full stop.  God cannot ever love you more than he does right now.

And your primary calling, like Jonah and the Prodigal, is to accept that love. To live in it.  And the longer that you live in that love, the more likely you will be to learn from God things like holiness, tithing, patience, and a willingness to stand up for those who are marginalized.  Because as you dwell in God’s love, you will discover that those things are who and what God is, and that those things are who and what we were made to be.

Thanks be to God who loves us, meets us, calls us, and invites us to serve and give in the name of Jesus.  Amen.

A Question of Identity

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As we begin 2026, God’s people at The First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights are spending some time with the ancient prophet Jonah.  How did he hear God’s call to take a message of hope to a foreign people?  Where is there grace and on whom does judgment fall?  On January 11, we considered Jonah 1:1-6 and also heard Psalm 139:7-10.

To hear this message as preached in worship, please use the media player below:

To participate in worship via YouTube, please use this link:

This morning I’m remembering the old story about the small elderly woman that sought comfort from the Bible during an airline flight that was really turbulent.  The businessman seated next to her noticed her holding the worn leather book and scoffed, “Do you really believe that?  Do you think that God can save us if something happens?”

She replied, “Yes, yes I do.”

He was incredulous: “But how can you take that book seriously? There are so many myths and half-truths!”

The woman calmly replied, “I believe that this is God’s word to me.”

“But how can you believe a book that’s got a story like Jonah in it? How could someone survive three days inside a whale?”

She replied, “You know, I’ve always wondered that myself.  I can’t wait until I get to heaven and I can ask Jonah about that!”

The man smirked, “Yeah, but what if you get to heaven and Jonah’s not there?  What if he’s in the other place?”

The woman thought for a moment, and then smiled and said, “Well, I guess you’ll have to ask him yourself, then.”

What do you think of Jonah?  How do you wrap your head around the story of the reluctant prophet who got swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it?  Do you agree with the man in that joke – that this is an absurd account that diminishes the integrity of the entire Bible?  Or have you seen it as an amusing story for children that features a cute whale and a bit of slapstick?

Could it be that this is a perceptive narrative that invites us to evaluate our most basic assumptions about ourselves, our neighbors, and God?  Let’s consider the beginning of this story.

The first readers of Jonah would have been shocked by the opening verses.  Yahweh, the God that Israel worships, is sending a prophet to Ninevah?  A Hebrew prophet, leaving Israel?  All the prophets – folks like Isaiah, Hosea, and Jeremiah – they speak to God’s people here in Israel.  They don’t waste their breath on those people!

And of all the people to send to Ninevah – God chose Jonah?  We learn in II Kings 14:25 that Jonah ministered during the reign of King Jeroboam II.  During that time, Jonah was an avid supporter of Jeroboam’s militarism and territorial expansion.  The first readers of Jonah would have thought of him as very patriotic and a fervent nationalist.  Jonah is the last person they’d expect to preach to the enemy!

Apparently, Jonah agreed with that assessment.  The word of the Lord comes to Jonah: “Go!”  In Hebrew that is qum lek.  It means “get up” or “arise”.  “Get up and go to Ninevah”.  Ninevah was the capital of Assyria, a nation that seemed to be perpetually threatening Israel.  These countries hated each other, and now God is telling Jonah to go and preach there?

Not only does Jonah refuse to travel northeast to Ninevah, he does the opposite, and travels southwest to Joppa.  He tries to flee the presence of the Lord.

Yet as you heard, God will not release Jonah from this mission.  Still in control, God cooks up a storm so violent that almost everyone on board the ship is paralyzed with fright.  The crew of foreign, pagan sailors are beside themselves.  And Jonah? He’s down below, fast asleep.

Do you know what that’s like? You have a sense of what you ought to be doing, but it seems so hard, so overwhelming… It’s just easier to check out and take a nap.  Have you ever felt like it was more comfortable to lay your best purpose aside and give in to inactivity and fear? To just hide out on the couch?

That’s Jonah, right here.  He is attempting the impossible – he’s trying to go someplace where God isn’t.  God had called him qum lek – “Get up”, and he spends all of chapter one and most of chapter two going down.  He went down to Joppa, down to the belly of the ship, down to sleep.  And now he is roused from that slumber by hearing the word of the Lord from the mouth of a pagan captain: Qum!  Get up!

Then the captain asks Jonah to pray, although there is no indication that Jonah actually did so.

Jonah, 16th c. Russian Orthodox Icon

Meanwhile, the sailors are trying to figure out whose fault this is.  They cast lots or draw straws, and arrive at the conclusion that this storm must have something to do with Jonah.  They pepper him with questions and try to get a sense of what his situation is.  Pastor Tim Keller[1] points out that they are really asking three questions:

  • What is your purpose, your mission, your job?
  • Where are you from? What country is home for you?
  • What is your race? Who are your people?

These are all questions of identity, aren’t they?  We define ourselves in ways like this.  I’m a Yinzer.  I’m a dancer.  I’m a follower of Jesus.  I’m a Democrat.  I’m Swedish.  I’m a redhead.

And the way that we think about all of these things tells us something about how we understand ourselves in relationship with or over/against someone else. We claim these labels, and we compare them to the labels we give to other people.

The prophet Jonah had been given a task in which he was, to put it mildly, disinterested.  He fled his home and family, and sought to be the consummate outsider as he stayed away from foreigners and strangers on the boat. He would not participate in their panic and he did not join in their prayer.  And when he finally responds to the barrage of their pagan questions, look at what he points to first: his ethnicity.  “I am a Hebrew”, he says.  Scholar David Timmer notes, “Since Jonah identifies himself first ethnically, then religiously, we may infer that his ethnicity is foremost in his self-identity.”[2]

If that is correct – and I think that it is – then it’s a way of saying that sure, Jonah had some measure of faith in God, but that was not nearly as important to him as his race or his nationality.  And that tracks with Jonah’s opposition to going to Ninevah in the first place, doesn’t it?  “Yeah, I believe in God and all that – who doesn’t? – but you can’t be seriously suggesting that God cares for them?  For those people?  For that place?”

Beloved, this is not just a question for arrogant Hebrew prophets from other times.

Who are we? Whose are we?

In my lifetime, we (especially in the US) have been taught to accept certain things as “givens”.  “I’m an American.  I’m white.”  And then we layer on some of the choices that we make as subordinate to race and nationality.  Maybe you’re a Christian, or a vegetarian, or a hockey player.  I am expected to be these things in the context of my whiteness or our American-ness.

That’s how I grew up… but it’s not right.

Jesus consistently calls us to center our identity in him.  In our baptisms and our confirmation and our discipleship, we insist that the primary way in which we understand ourselves is in belonging to God.  We walk with, we stand with Jesus.  And if that is our fundamental identity – if the most important thing about us is that we belong to Jesus, then our primary view of ourselves is that we are forgiven sinners.  And if we know ourselves as belonging to Jesus as sinners who are forgiven, then the only way that we can understand the people around us is as neighbors.

Do you remember what Paul wrote to his friends in Galatia?  “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28, NIV)

Am I stretching things if I say, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile nor Palestinian nor American nor Venezuelan.  There is no longer straight nor queer, white nor black nor brown, Republican nor Democrat – all are one.”?

Jonah could not see past his race and nationality and that fact blinded him to the presence of God and to the image of God in those who were around him.

And not only that – this way of thinking placed both Jonah and his non-Jewish neighbors the sailors in grave danger.  This storm that was occasioned by Jonah’s racism and ethnocentrism threatened everybody in the story.  Those sins have an impact, and those impacts are lethal and wide-ranging.

May God spare us from that.  May we keep our allegiances straight, and look to God first and foremost.  And look – you don’t hear either Pastor Dave or the Apostle Paul saying that it’s wrong to be Gentile or Female or Free or American or Republican.  But we can’t see any of those things as being primary to our relationship with Jesus.

Jonah Sarcophagus (detail) 3rd c.

Before we leave this passage, I want to take just a moment to look at the behavior of the sailors in the boat – the ones whom Jonah has dismissed as worthless.  After they discern that Jonah’s racism and pride are the reasons for all their trouble, and after Jonah says, “Just toss me over the side”, what do they do?  Verse 13 says that they rowed harder than ever, trying to make it to land.  This morning I’m thinking of an old friend – his name is Dirk.  He is a psychologist who is an Afrikaner – a white South African – who was active in the anti-apartheid movement during the 1980’s. After that regime collapsed, he went into places like Soweto and worked with communities that had been beaten down and oppressed for generations.  I asked him what that was like and he nearly wept as he said, “There is within these communities an astounding and overwhelming ability to forgive.  I think that they want reconciliation, even after everything…”  So too here in Jonah.  Eventually the sailors do toss him into the sea, but they do so with regret, humility, fear, and in worship.

Friends, why do we even bother showing up here on Sundays?  Do we dare to strut into this room, clinging to some sense of privilege?  Do we think that we live in some golden age of American exceptionalism where everyone knows where we stand, and everyone knows their place, and nobody challenges my place?

Or do we limp into this sanctuary each week in order to be reminded that the first and most important call on our lives is that of the Gospel?

We must return to this place, again and again, to proclaim and receive the Gospel that our true selves dwell within the heart of Jesus, and they are not defined by any national, political, cultural, or ethnic identity.  May we stand against the temptation to elevate some secondary descriptor of ourselves to the level of primary importance.

Remember, beloved, that you, no less than Jonah or those sailors, that YOU are made in God’s image and called to share love and grace in the world.

Thanks be to God who creates and re-creates us each day.  Thanks be to God for neighbors who become friends and family.  Thanks be to God for people who treat us better than we deserve.  Thanks be to God for the ability to hear God say to each of us qum lek – “get up, and go in my name and with my love.”  Amen.

[1] The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy (Viking, 2018)

[2] Quoted in Keller, p. 50.

Lessons from the Magi

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During Advent 2025 into Epiphany 2026 the saints at the First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights have walked through the common lectionary passages from Matthew’s Gospel as we seek to understand what it means to anticipate the arrival of Christ in our world.  On January 4 we observed the day of Epiphany and sought to be attentive to Matthew 2:1-12 and Isaiah 60:1-6.

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While I do not use Instagram, I have been prompted in this journey of reflection after a friend showed me a post (or series of posts) offered by a faith leader named Erna Kim Hackett.  Further exploration revealed that some of these posts were related to an Advent Devotional she published called The Long Unlearning of Empire and Patriarchy, to which I am deeply indebted for much of the good content in this message.  You can find more information here.

Have you ever heard the saying, “it ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”?  It’s often attributed to Mark Twain, but there’s no evidence that he ever said that (which is a delicious irony, I suppose).  This morning, I’m thinking about all the things that we know about Christmas that just ain’t so.

For instance, Peter Veltman and I have had several conversations this Advent and Christmas season about the fact that contrary to almost all the nativity sets we’ve got sitting around the house, Jesus wasn’t born in a stable.  It’s more likely that he was born in a crowded house belonging to Joseph’s relatives that, like other Palestinian dwellings of the time, had space for animals and people.

Here’s another one: Jesus was probably not born in December.  Luke tells us that shepherds were in the fields…  In that part of the world, December is a cold and rainy month, and shepherds are quite unlikely to be staying outside far from home for very long.  Jesus was probably born in the spring or fall.

And how many Wise Men were there?  Nobody knows.  Matthew just tells us that Wise Men came from the east, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Three gifts – but an unknown number of visitors.  And they were not kings (in spite of the song we sang a few moments ago) – they were magoi – magi – “wise men” from the East.  In all probability, Matthew is describing a group of pagan astronomers or counselors who followed the star to Bethlehem.  In spite of the way that the church often tells the story, it’s virtually certain that they were not there on the night of Jesus’ birth.  They would have arrived some time afterward – a few weeks, or even a year or two after Jesus was born.  This was a group of scholars who invested a significant amount of time and resources into making a pilgrimage to parts unknown.

Journey of the Magi, James Tissot (c. 1894)

All week, I’ve been thinking about these mysterious strangers who came to honor and worship the Christ child, and then melted into the legends without so much as leaving their names.  It seems to me that this Epiphany Sunday is a fine time for us to consider the practices of the Magi as we prepare to enter into a new year.  What can we learn from their behavior?

One thing that seems fairly evident, but bears mentioning, is that they leave.  That shouldn’t be sensational, perhaps, but as I contemplate my experience with local, regional, and international mission – their willingness to worship and then go home is fairly noteworthy.  Those of us who have roots in Western Civilization, at least, have a tendency to need to manage or “improve” the situations that we find.

I’ve seen this often in my travels through Africa.  I call it the “what you people need” syndrome.  I’ll see a school or a clinic that appears to be weathered or in some state of disrepair and ask my local friend, “What’s the story with that building?”  Too often, I’ll hear about the time when a group of Americans came through and one or two wealthy folks got into a discussion with some of the locals and were shocked by a particular story relating to education or health care. Instead of drilling deep to try to understand all the facets of that situation, in many cases the visitors talk for half an hour or so and then pronounce, “What you people need is a clinic right here” – without bothering to ask what the implications of building such an enterprise in this precise location might be. They return home and hit their friends up for money and before long, a structure is erected and the folks here in the US feel great – while our friends in Africa wonder how to maintain that structure and care for the staff required to run it.

The Magi, by He Qi (contemporary)

But the Magi do not engage in this kind of management.  They come on the scene and encounter something that is obviously sacred.  They offer their worship, and then they leave without trying to package, manage, export, or control the experience.  They allow it to change them and then they go home.

And when Matthew tells us that they leave “by a different way”, I believe that’s less an indication that they fiddled with their GPS until it showed them “alternate routes” and more a declaration that their time in this place of wonder and awe had changed them.

Before they went home, though, the Magi did something else that is noteworthy: they added wealth to the community where they visited.  Author Erna Kim Hackett points out that this is the antithesis of colonizing behavior.  Empires tend to show up, take what they’d like, and leave the folks there poorer than they’d found them.  Think about the fur and lumber extracted from North America that was shipped to Europe, or the human trafficking that sent enslaved people from Africa to the New World, or the ways that England’s occupation of India impoverished that sub-continent over the course of a couple of centuries.

Yet the Magi came to a place that they didn’t know and they didn’t try to own it or to “develop” it or to extract anything from it.  Instead, they left significant financial resources in the hands of people who really needed them.  I might suggest that without that gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Joseph’s little family might not have been able to afford to escape to Egypt.  The Magi’s wealth funded this refugee family and kept them alive.

Another noteworthy practice of the Magi is their refusal to partner with the Empire.  They had every opportunity to sell data about Jesus to Herod.  They might have gained a pretty penny, or been awarded power and prestige for cozying up to the tyrant – it could have been a very strategic move for them.  But they had no interest in becoming errand boys for the Empire.

Aren’t we fascinated with and lured in by the promise of power?  I know I am.  Some of you know this, but I’ve had the opportunity to meet with Presidents and other leaders.  It’s intoxicating!  So often, we start to think about how if we tip our cap to the powerful, if we just get their attention for a moment or two, that there might be some strategic advantage for our plans if they see us and extend to us the illusion of power and importance.  When this happens, the faith gets handed over to nationalism or the Gospel becomes confused with some political aim.  We want to sit in the seats of power that the Magi walked right past and Jesus ignored, and pursuing that desire harms the witness of Christ.

Journey of the Magi (1837 woodcut)

One further thing that is noteworthy about these foreign scholars who came to find the newborn King is this: they were curious.  They literally spent time gazing at the stars.  They wondered about what might be, and how it might be.  We don’t know that they had access to the Old Testament, but they knew how to read the signs of the Holy that are present in the creation.  They were open to mystery, and believed that it was possible to experience the sacred in ways that they hadn’t known before.

In fact, this ability to maintain and value their curiosity is probably what allowed them to walk right past Herod on their way out of Palestine.  They were not looking for something that was gold-plated; they were seeking the source of truth and light itself.  Their single-mindedness and attentiveness to what they saw as “the main thing” allowed them to avoid the lures of Herod’s offer.

Hackett writes, “Empire survives by distraction. It numbs us with outrage cycles, spectacle, urgency, and fear so that we never actually see what is happening. Attention becomes shallow, reactive, and short-lived. To cultivate deep attention is to resist.”

So as we prepare to enter into a new year, I think that I will look to follow the path of the Magi toward Jesus in at least two ways, and I will invite you to join me in them.

First, I hope to be able to practice generosity in ways that are meaningful and even transformative.  Look, the Magi invested a ton of real resources into their journey to find Jesus.  They spent their time, they offered their treasure, and they gave themselves in a place that was more than a little surprising to them.

I like to give away stuff… that I don’t want or need anymore.  I’m happy to give you the “extra” money that I have, or to offer the time that I can spare.  But what if we looked for ways to honor Christ with the wealth that we have?  What if we gave meaningfully – not the crap that we don’t want or use anymore, and not the money we have left over after we buy the trinkets or the streaming services or the fancy cheese that we think that we need – what if we thought of it as possible for us to give the stuff that really matters?

Will you join me being generous this year?

And will you help me to follow the Magi in looking up?  In resting?  In being attentive to what actually is right in front of me, rather than worrying about what might be coming or straining toward that next big goal?

Every day, we receive an invitation into mystery.  Do you really think that God stopped sending stars after Jesus was born?  Or is it possible that we’ve forgotten the importance of contemplation, of asking questions that begin with “what if”, “why not”, or “could it be”?  You could do this quite easily this morning by taking a “star word” with you.  Engage in this whimsical spiritual practice and be open to God surprising you every now and then.

Mary Oliver is not often thought of as a theologian or a preacher.  She’s a poet who has been a guide for many who seek to find something sacred in everyday objects and experiences.  I think her poem Mysteries, Yes captures the spirit of wonder that guided the Magi:

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

This year, will you help me to say “Look!”? Will you risk being astonished with me?  Can we pledge to let our curiosity, rather than our certainty, guide us into the mysteries of discipleship and community and generosity and love?

Thanks be to God for mysterious outsiders who are willing to walk with those of us who think we know everything.  Thanks be to God for the graces of wonder and astonishment.  Thanks be to God for the possibilities before us.  May God have mercy on us as we exercise our imaginations and unlock our hearts.  Amen.

 

Christmas is Scary

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In the Fall of 1992 I was privileged to take part in an intensive preaching workshop held in the National Cathedral in Washington DC.  Our teacher was the Rev. Dr. William Willimon, who had been and is one of the icons in my preaching world.  During this week, we were each charged to prepare and then present a sermon to the group.  The group (including Will) would then respond to the message and help the preacher improve it.  That experience was one of the deep blessings of my vocation, and the sermon that emerged from that week was originally called There He Goes Again.  If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll hear things today that you’ve heard before.  For some reason, this is one of the favorite sermons I’ve ever preached, and I attempted to refashion it to serve the needs of God’s people in the First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights here in 2025.  Our texts included Matthew 2:13-23 and Exodus 23:1-9.

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Well, you almost made it.  Almost, but not quite.  You did very well, I must say.  You’ve survived the gauntlet of Christmas.  For some of you, it was tough, I know.  You didn’t know how you’d get through – there was so much going on, it seems.  Maybe you had some time with friends.  I suspect you spent some time alone.  And perhaps you managed to temper, for the most part, your great expectations for the entire holiday season.  And even if you can’t say you can say had a great Christmas, you made it.  And now you duck in here to close out the year, you come to church looking for a little peace and quiet, one last shot at “good will toward men,” and perhaps a couple of carols, and the preacher goes and pulls something like this.

Pulpit image in the Cathedral of Pisa, Italy, carved by Giovanni Pisano 1302-1311.

What kind of gospel reading is this, anyway?  You’d think that once — just once, we could come into church and not have somebody bleeding all over the carpet.  What is it with this place, anyway?  Why is it that every time we open the Bible, somebody’s dying, somebody’s smiting, or somebody’s getting smitten?

And while I’m at it, this is some God, too.  On the first Sunday of this month, we cracked open the hymnals and sang along with Mary: “My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the world is about to turn!”  Were you here? Isn’t that an amazing song, and a better word from the Lord?

So excuse me for asking, but is this the same God?  Mary, are you sure?  Who is going to tell that to those mothers in Bethlehem?  Who was on duty in heaven the day that old Herod went through town and killed all those kids?

Massacre of the Innocents, León Cognlet (1824)

What about the pictures on the front of all the Christmas cards?  What about GENTLE JESUS MEEK AND MILD?  Why is this part of Christmas so scary?

I’ve got to tell you, this has always been a hard text for me to listen to.  For a long time now, I’ve been aware that the lectionary passages for Matthew include this reading.  For years, I’ve been walking around it, sticking it here, probing it there.  I hate this part of the Bible.

I have not been able to escape from the wailing of those mothers.  Everywhere I go, I hear that loud lamentation — during dinner, walking through the Heights, in the hospital, watching the news, looking at you all during the candlelight on Christmas Eve, and playing with my grandchildren.  Especially, I think, playing with my grandchildren.  Everywhere I look, I see the mothers and I hear their wailing.  I ask myself, didn’t Jesus come to bring hope?  To share joy?  How is it, then, that this first Christmas has cost the town of Bethlehem so dearly?

And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if somehow I could leapfrog to the end of the story and see Jesus trashing Herod soundly.  But you know what happens — they get Jesus, too.  Mary’s voice is added to the chorus of mothers weeping for their children.  And as far as I can tell, the innocents keep getting slaughtered.  There’s Jesus, yes.  But don’t forget Stephen.  Dietrich Bonhoffer.  Martin Luther King.  The children from Sandy Hook School.  In the last two years alone, more than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza.  This sure is a funny way to bring in a kingdom of peace and light.

Massacre of the Innocents, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1566). The artist re-imagines the scene depicting an attack on Flemish families by Spanish soldiers and German mercenaries in the Eighty Years’ War.

A thought occurred to me: I know I said I was going to preach through Matthew’s readings in 2025, but why don’t I skip this one?  Preach out of something else, Dave!  Forget about all that gory stuff.  My fingers fairly flew as I rifled the pages from Matthew to Revelation.  But the story stayed with me.

And then it hit me.  The news in Matthew’s story is not that some cut-throat dictator had a couple of dozen babies killed in a fit of jealous rage.  Heck, Herod was a thug through and through – he had killed 300 of his court officers.  He had iced his own wife and three of his sons.  In his dying breath, he arranged for the killing of all the leading citizens of Jerusalem.  No, it’s no great surprise that tinhorn power-mongers get violent, then or now.

Here’s what is news:  that God cares about those babies that died.  And God cares about Stephen, and Dietrich, and Martin, too.  And God cares about children who are ripped from their families or stuck in cages.  In fact, the story of the incarnation – of God becoming human – is that because of his own sufferings, Jesus is able to remember yours and mine, and that he is able to help us bear the load of grief.  The news in this story is that God knows where you and I hurt.

Dove of the Holy Spirit, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (ca. 1660, stained glass, Throne of St. Peter, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican)

Jean Vanier, in his wonderful little book From Brokenness to Community, describes how our discovery of our own pain can lead us to God.  “The cry makes us touch our inner pain.  We discover our own brokenness and the barriers inside of us . . . It is when we have realized this that we cry out to God.  And then we meet the ‘Paraclete’ whom Jesus and the Father have promised to send to us.”[1] We often translate “paraclete” as the comforter, or the Holy Spirit, but Vanier points out that it literally means “the one who answers the cry.”  He suggests that it is not possible for us to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit unless we cry out, and unless that cry comes from the awareness of our own brokenness and pain.

If we are honest, we will admit that we know something about brokenness and pain.  We are acquainted with grief.  We have lost those whom we love, and we have lost parts of ourselves that we are afraid to name.  What happens in us when we consider the pain that we and the world endure?

It’s possible, of course, for those things to overwhelm us.  That happens from time to time in each of our lives – the pain and grief are so numbing that we hide up somewhere and just wait for it to hurt less.  And for some folks, that part never stops – the work of grief is too great, and so they just check out and stop caring at all.

And for others, in some cruel fashion, the pain is so intense that the only way they know how to respond is by dealing out more pain.  The abuse you suffered as a child hurt so badly, and the way that you relieve that pain is to inflict worse on someone else – to yell louder and hit harder and therefore somehow prove that you are stronger than the pain you’ve suffered.

Yet scripture proposes another possibility.  Our reading from Exodus is a part of a much longer narrative that is given to instruct the children of Israel about the right way to live in the new place that God is giving them.  This narrative begins with the giving of the 10 commandments in Exodus 20, and then there are several chapters that lay out God’s intentions for how we are to treat one another, our community, and our environment with justice.  The last verse from our reading today offers an important principle about living life God’s way.  It reads “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”

The Lord is saying, “You know how it feels to suffer.  You know what it means to be ‘othered’.  So don’t do these things to anyone else.”  The principle here is that of empathy.  We respond to the pain in our own lives and that in the world around us by seeking to become agents of healing and hope.

This is the power of empathy.  I know that in some circles these days, empathy is not held in high regard.  Not long ago, Elon Musk said, that empathy was the “fundamental weakness of Western civilization”.[2]  He may be right, especially if we think of empathy as public policy.  Yet as your pastor, I’m here to say that one of the quirkiest things about the Gospel is that so often it seems to value, say, the weakness of the children of Bethlehem over the strength of the Roman Empire.  It seems to me that empathy is a way of participating in God’s healing of the world.

Perhaps you have heard of a young man who received substantial injuries in the Civil War.  For the rest of his life, he cried to God, asking to know where God was in the midst of his pain.  At the end of his struggling, he penned these lines:

I asked for strength that I might achieve; I was made weak that I might obey.

I asked for health that I might do greater things; I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy; I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of others; I was given weakness that I might feel the need for God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life; I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

I have received nothing I asked for, all that I hoped for.

My prayer is answered.

Where are your deep aches this day?  A dream unfulfilled?  A cancer-ravaged friend?  A vacant chair at the breakfast table?  A lost job?  A broken marriage?  Welcome to the family, dear friend.  Your cries have been heard, and in Jesus they are remembered.  And you can be re-membered.  I like that word: re-membered.  Often, we use it as the opposite of “forgotten”.  We say, “Oh, no! It’s your birthday! I forgot! I can’t believe I didn’t remember.”

But it’s also the opposite of another word: dismember.  When we dis-member something or someone, we take it apart, often with violence, hatred, or evil.  Dis-membering is cruel and gruesome.  We have, some of us, been dis-membered in a metaphorical sense; we have had bits of ourselves hacked off or plucked out or taken away.  But as your pastor, I am here to tell you that those who have been dis-membered will be re-membered.  What has been lost will be found, and what has been cut off will be restored.

Christ in Limbo, Fra Angelico (c. 1442)

You know, Matthew is the only gospel to mention the slaughter of the innocents.  Perhaps it’s not too surprising, then, to note that when the Gospel writers talk about the resurrection, Matthew is the only one to mention that when Jesus rose, “the tombs also were opened, and the bodies of many of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised … they came out of the tombs and appeared in the holy city” (27:52)

Sheesh — there he goes again.  Why is it that I can’t even walk into this place without dead people rising up?  It’s so messy, so confusing all the time.  Why can’t they just stay dead?

No.  Not with Jesus.  The bad news is that we’re all dead or dying in one way or another.  The good news is that Jesus gives us life each day – in spite of the death that we share.

So when you walk into this room, remember, that yes, it is a room of death.  We do wind up bleeding on the carpet a good deal of the time.  But remember, too, that it is a room of resurrection.  The cross is empty.  We have the promise of our brother, Jesus, that death is not the end, but rather a gateway to resurrection — for children who die too soon, for saints, for me, and for you.  Do not marvel that we die, or that difficulties come; be grateful that we have lived!  Thanks be to God for the gift of life and the promise of hope to come! Amen.

[1] From Brokenness to Community , Paulist Press, 1992.

[2] https://www.npr.org/2025/03/22/nx-s1-5321299/how-empathy-came-to-be-seen-as-a-weakness-in-conservative-circles

 

Wholly Surprised (A Christmas Story)

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Each year, I write an original Christmas Story to tell to my congregation.  It’s been a sacred honor to do so since 1990!  Some of these stories have been collected and printed in a volume entitled I Will Hold My Candle and Other Stories for Christmas.  This year’s story is rooted in Luke 1:39-45 and of course has echoes of Luke 2:1-15 in it as well.  I hope and pray you find a glimpse of something holy here!

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While she was waiting at the red light, Maria Hernandez fiddled with the air conditioning knobs in her father’s car.  Everything was working fine – she was just antsy, and eager to get to “The Pines”, the local long-term care facility where she’d gone to fulfill her high school’s requirement for volunteer community service.  It was the third week of August, and she had technically satisfied the requirement by the end of July.  Yet Maria had been surprised to note how much she’d enjoyed visiting with the resident to whom she’d been assigned, a diminutive woman named Elizabeth.

Elizabeth wasn’t from town, that’s for sure.  She’d come to the US from someplace else… maybe Central America?  She spoke with an accent that Maria found delightful, and had bright brown eyes, silver hair, and weathered skin.  Elizabeth had a sense of ease around her, and Maria had come to like and trust the older woman.  In fact, on that day, Maria had something she wanted to share with her friend.

Earlier in the week, Maria and her 9-year-old brother, Kevin, had visited the local thrift store.  Maria was looking for a few back-to-school items, and Kevin never turned down an invitation to paw through a collection of action figures looking for a superhero to add to his collection.  At any rate, on the way home, Kevin shocked his sister by singing a chorus of “Silent Night.”

You might think that “shocked” is a strong word to use when a child lets loose with a few lines from a familiar song, particularly after having encountered an array of Christmas sweaters at the thrift store, but “shocked” was an understatement for how Maria felt.  You see, for his entire life, Kevin has been nonverbal.  Maria didn’t even know that he had a voice, and now he’s in the back seat dropping “Silent Night”?  After she told her folks about it, Maria continued to ponder that mystery.

Ever since he was born, Maria and Kevin have had a special bond.  While she doesn’t always understand Kevin, she loves him fiercely and is happy for his company on almost any day.  Kevin has always felt safe with his sister, and has tried to let her know that he thinks that she reminds him of some of the best qualities of the superheroes with which his world his filled.

In fact, Kevin was on this trip because he’d been on the lookout for one of his favorite characters: The Green Lantern.  While not as well-known as Batman or Superman, the Lantern’s power is amazing! With only their ring and their imagination, the Green Lantern is able to use their willpower to transform the light from their ring into tangible objects like shields or weapons, to translate other languages, and even to bring healing.  Kevin wished that he knew a Green Lantern in real life.

Maria didn’t know any of that, of course – she was simply astounded to hear her brother’s voice. For some reason, she thought that maybe Elizabeth would be a good person to help her make sense of what she had heard.

They usually visited in one of the common rooms in the center, but today, Elizabeth asked Maria to join her in her little apartment.  When she sat down in an old green chair in Elizabeth’s room, Maria related what had happened.  Then she said, “Well, what do you think? Isn’t that awesome?”

Elizabeth stirred her tea and smiled and said, “How wonderful!  It’s a holy surprise!”

When the old woman used that phrase, it seemed to hang in the air between them. “Wait!”, cried Maria.  “How do you know about being wholly surprised?”

Confused, Elizabeth responded, “What do you mean, ‘How do I know’?  I see these things.  I look for holy surprises. Life is full of them if you pay attention.”

“No,” sputtered Maria. “That’s not what I said.  You know that there’s something different about Kevin.  It’s called autism, and he has never spoken.  I remember back during the pandemic, when my mother was talking with Kevin’s doctor on the computer.  He was a lot younger then, and my parents wondered if he would ever talk.  I can still see that doctor’s face when she paused for a moment and then told my mom, ‘I’d be wholly surprised if Kevin ever spoke.’  Those were her exact words – ‘wholly surprised’.  It really stuck with me, and now you just said it!”

Elizabeth just shrugged and said, “Well, English is a funny language.  I don’t know anything about what a doctor means when she says she is ‘wholly surprised’, but I know a lot about holy surprises.  Like I said, I see them all the time.”

‘The Visitation’ by Jacopo Pontormo (c. 1530)

She went on to say that this was something she’d done all her life.  She had been named, Elizabeth said, for a woman in the Bible.  That person was a cousin to Mary, and the mother of John the Baptist.  “First, I saw my name in the Bible,” Elizabeth said, “And then I saw how God surprised that woman by giving her a child in her old age, and how her son connected Elizabeth to the Christ child.”

“I know that part of the Christmas story,” said Maria, “But whatever happened to Elizabeth after that?  I’ve never heard anything more about her.”

“Right!”, said her friend.  “Nobody knows.  It’s a mystery.  She was there to help announce and to welcome something amazing, and then nobody talks about her again.  As I got older, I actually enjoyed that part of her story – that Elizabeth was able to be surprised herself, and then to help Mary and Joseph find some kind of holy surprise in their own lives – but she never became the focus.  Since then, I’ve looked for and I’ve tried to help other people discover some holy surprises in their own lives.  And now, you’ve had one!”

Maria looked out the window as she considered her list of five or six questions, but she was suddenly distracted.  “Wait!”, she blurted out.  “Is that a manger scene on your windowsill?”

“Yes, yes it is”, replied Elizabeth.

“But why?  I mean, it’s August!”

“Of course it’s August, Maria.  That’s why I set up the one made in Bethlehem last night.  I collected them for most of my life, and now I put up a different one every few weeks.  They are beautiful, and seeing the scene helps me to remember that holy surprises can come anytime, anywhere.  Like today, for instance.”

Maria peered at the little creche.  “But..but..,” she hesitated.  “Are those regular wise men?”  And she knew as soon as she asked that they weren’t.  Sure, there was one olive-skinned man who appeared to be leading camels laden with treasure, but next to him was a small Yoda who was accompanied by another figurine that Maria thought must have been Ted Lasso, from the TV show.

Elizabeth grinned impishly.  “Well, you know, I like a few surprises myself.  Nobody knows what really happened back then, anyway.  And besides, I’m old enough to know that wise people come in all shapes and sizes.  If we lose our ability to wonder what might be, then we miss out on a lot of surprises all around us.”

Maria took a sip of tea and then asked, “Elizabeth, have you ever been surprised?”

The teen was shocked by the volume of laughter that erupted from the small old woman before her.  “Oh yes, child.  Many times.  So many, many times.”

Then, Elizabeth grew a little wistful.  “When my husband, Juan, told me that he wanted to leave our village and come to America, that was a surprise.  And when we found that we were welcome in an old church, even though they spoke a different language and sang different songs.  As I got older, I was surprised when I discovered that I could change my mind about things – that somehow, I could see things differently than I once did.  I’m surprised to find that I’ve lived this long, and that now I have this home, here.  And you, Maria – you are one of God’s holy surprises to me.  When I am with you I don’t feel as old, and look – today, you brought me another holy surprise!”

She took the teen’s hand in hers and smiled.  “We just have to remember to keep looking, to keep listening. Sometimes it’s ‘Silent Night’, sometimes it’s birthday candles, sometimes it’s a bird at the window… but the world is full of holy surprises.  I have learned that they are always there – it’s up to us to pay attention, and to point them out when we see them.”

In the weeks and months that followed, Maria made more trips to the Pines. In fact, she brought Kevin with her a couple of times.  Last week, they made a few Christmas cookies together!  I wish I could tell you that they all had hot cider and shared a long talk, but that’s not what happened.  Maria played a little Christmas music from her phone, and Elizabeth talked a lot while Kevin kept trying to make the star-shaped cookies look like Captain America’s shield.  Maria thought it was nice, even if it was wholly unsurprising.

But if you were to ask Elizabeth, however, she’ll tell you that as the kids walked toward the front door, she is certain that she heard a small boy’s voice whisper “Merry Christmas”.  And whether you believe that or not, I’m here to tell you that she was shocked when she returned to her room and discovered that right there, in her December nativity set (the one with the Asian features), there was a new shepherd on duty.  Someone had placed a Lego Superman figurine to keep an eye on the sheep.  She smiled.

And I bet she’ll be tickled pink when Maria comes in next week to show her the photos that she snuck in at her church’s Christmas Eve service.  In that church, much like this one, there’s an elaborate nativity scene at the front of the sanctuary.  And so far, nobody but Maria and Kevin have noticed that the three wise men do not represent kings from the east.  As a matter of fact, they look amazingly like members of the Justice League – there’s the Flash, Wonder Woman, and, you guessed it – a Green Lantern!  When the folk in the church finally notice, it will be indeed wholly surprising to everyone – everyone except for a 9 year-old little boy and his big sister, who are filled with joy about the gift of holy surprises and who are waiting, like you and me, to sing Silent Night in one way or another.  As they dwell in that music, Kevin will think about a God who gives us imagination and the power to change.  Maria will hold onto the notion that the best things in her life have been wholly surprising.

What if things aren’t always the way that they seem?  And what if they don’t have to stay this way forever?  And what if we don’t have to stay this way forever, either?  Thanks be to God, who is holy and wholly surprising tonight and every night.  Amen.

What Are Your Dreams?

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During Advent 2025 the saints at the First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights are walking through the common lectionary passages from Matthew’s Gospel as we seek to understand what it means to anticipate the arrival of Christ in our world.  On December 21, we sought to be attentive to Matthew 1:18-25. and Isaiah 7:10-16.

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Maybe you’ve noticed this, and maybe you haven’t, but dreams are big this time of year, aren’t they?  You’ve got old Ebenezer Scrooge and his nighttime visions of ghosts… George Bailey is given a glimpse of a world in which he’d never been born… and in the same way, a young boy climbs out of his bedroom window and hitches a ride on the Polar Express.  And let’s not forget about everyone’s dreams for a white Christmas…

What about you?  What are your dreams this year?

As we look at scripture, we see a couple of folks who are in rough shape.  Ahaz is the king of Judah in the 8th century BC.  I need to tell you that from everything we can ascertain, Ahaz was a repugnant human being and an even worse ruler.  He was an idolater who’d left the faith of his father Jotham.  Ahaz endorsed child sacrifice and was known for leading the nation of Judah into spiritual corruption and military disaster.  Ahaz was neither good nor faithful.

Isaiah’s Prophecy To King Ahaz, an illustration from an Italian Book of Hours (1546)

In the passage from Isaiah we read earlier, Ahaz had been suffering a lot of sleepless nights.  At this particular time, there was a bit of a weird geopolitical power vacuum.  Perennial superpowers Egypt and Assyria had been dealing with some of their own issues, and as a result their impact on their neighbors was diminished.  That led to a situation where some of the second-tier military powers had a chance to flex their muscles.

In our reading from Isaiah, Ahaz is stewing about two of his neighbors.  It turns out that Rezin, the king of Syria, happened to run into Pekah, king of Israel.  One thing led to another, and those fellas decided that since neither of them was having to defend their own territory against Egypt and Assyria, maybe they could take advantage of all this time on their hands and conquer Judah and divvy it up. They start amassing troops on the border and, as Isaiah says in 7:2, “the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.”

While Ahaz is out there scared to death, God sends him a messenger in the form of the prophet Isaiah.  Isaiah tells Ahaz to relax, and trust that God is with God’s people.  Ahaz is not particularly interested in spending time with God, though, and he attempts to dismiss the prophet and get back to whatever it was that he was doing.

Isaiah will have none of it, though.  “OK, so you don’t want a sign?  Look, King, I’m here to tell you that the Lord will give you a sign anyway!  You see that woman over there?  She’s going to have a baby.  And by the time that kid is potty-trained, the world will be a different place.  By the time that Jr. is old enough for school, that alliance that has you shaking in your boots will be a distant memory.  And because you just can’t believe the promises of God, well, you will fail as a leader.”

Sure enough, Ahaz’ son Hezekiah is born.  When he’s ready for preschool, the Assyrians march through the area and destroy the Syrians and demolish the nation of Israel.  Ahab eventually shrivels up and his son Hezekiah leads a religious and cultural rebirth in Judah.  Hezekiah is, in a real sense, “God with us” for the people of Judah.  He is their future.

Joseph’s Dream, Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman (contemporary)

Fast forward 700 years or so and Joseph, like Ahaz, is having a tough time.  His situation is far more personal: he’s not balancing the fate of nations here, he’s trying to decide how to break things off with his fiancée.  Unlike Ahaz, Joseph is both religious and good.  We’re told that he is “faithful to the law”, but also that his fundamental decency makes him want to shy away from exposing Mary to the public disgrace that his religious system would seem to require.

Joseph wants to be faithful to the tradition that he’s inherited, and yet he also wants to treat Mary with kindness and decency.  As he struggles with his options, God once more sends a messenger.  This time, it’s an angel, who appears to Joseph in his dream.  The angel instructs Joseph to go ahead with the marriage, and then, curiously, reminds Joseph of Ahaz’ dream centuries before.  There will be a child, the angel says.  And that child will be God with us.

That child, of course, is Jesus.  That child, of course, is the One to whom we seek to be attentive and claim to follow.  You know something about Jesus.

He was born into poverty surrounded by the opulence of the Roman Empire.  He was a brown-skinned Middle Easterner who, as a child, was deemed to be an enemy of the state and therefore was forced to become a refugee.  He was bundled up by his mother and carried by his father through the desert into another country, where he sought shelter, protection, and a chance at life.

Jesus did not see poverty as a character flaw.  He didn’t blame hungry people for being lazy and tell them to get their stuff together.  He didn’t see food as something that someone had to somehow deserve.  Nobody went hungry in the presence of Jesus.

In the same way, Jesus didn’t view illness as a sign of God’s disfavor or a punishment for sin. He didn’t see health and wellness as privileges reserved for those who could afford them.  He was accessible to those who were sick or who had been injured, and he brought healing wherever he went.

These are some of the ways in which Jesus, the son of Joseph and the son of God, is Emanuel – God for us.

So those are Ahaz’ and Joseph’s dreams.  What about you?  What keeps you awake at night?

I am disheartened to say that for far too many people, the struggle of Joseph seems to be real and present.  I don’t mean that they’re trying to make sense of an unexplained pregnancy.  In some ways, that would be easier.  I’m talking about the fact that one of the great struggles of the church in 2025 is that it seems as though people are trying to decide, like Joseph, whether they’d rather be religious or good.

Think about it.  I wish I could say that Joseph’s situation here was a one-off.  I mean, really, how could being a religious person be seen as antithetical to being a good person?

But here we are.

I have too many friends who, if I were to ask them “What keeps you up at night?”, would point to religious trauma that they’ve experienced.  At some point they’ve gone to church and been shamed or accused or groped or abused or manipulated. They’ve had their personhood denied and been told to hide their true selves and submit to the authority of someone who told them that God put him in charge.

You have friends like that, too.  You may be dealing with religious trauma yourself.

As a pastor, as an agent of the institution that is the church, I can only offer an apology.  We say that we are trying to follow, trying to learn from, trying to be like Jesus.  And yet too often, we are not.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who was often at odds with the church, offered this critique:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?[1]

Kierkegaard goes on to lament the fact that too often, people who claim to follow Jesus have invented religious systems that are designed to allow us to think that “we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.”

Another one of my heroes is pastor and author Barbara Brown Taylor, who puts it this way: “The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor… Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.”[2]

Look: I’m no prophet, like Isaiah.  And I’m surely no angel, such as the messenger who appeared to Joseph.  I’m your pastor.  And I, too, have a message.  I believe that this message, like the ones received by Ahaz and Joseph, is from God.

The message is this: Emanuel.  God is with us.  God is with you!  Jesus is the Word of God, come to dwell in and among us.

What can that mean for you today?

Emanuel means that you are never alone.  On the scariest of days, in the scariest of places, God is with you.  God is for you.

Emanuel means that God is with them.  God is with the people who you deem to be illegal, inconvenient, or disruptive, or arrogant, or just plain wrong.

Emanuel means that God longs to use you.  You are the channel through which God intends to deliver food to the hungry, comfort to the afflicted, and community to the lonely.

Because God is with us, because Emanuel, we can be brave.  We can try to love and we can risk sharing the gift.  We can give away the credit and laugh with those who see joy even as we weep with the broken and bereft.

What keeps you up at night?  What are your dreams or your nightmares?  Remember, beloved, that all of those anxieties are included in a word: Emanuel.  Look for God in the midst of those hard, scary, beautiful, confusing places.

God extended the promise to Ahaz, one of the most disgusting human beings ever to walk the planet.  And God extended the promise to Joseph, one of the best human beings ever to grace the earth.

And the Good News of the Gospel is that God has extended the promise to you.  Emanuel.  God with us.

Let us live, beloved, as though we expect to encounter that promise today.  Let us live, like Joseph, as those who will not allow our faithfulness to be turned into a weapon, but who will seek to extend the grace and peace and mercy that we have received from Jesus into the world in which our neighbors walk.

Thanks be to God, who invites us to be both righteous and good as we follow ever more closely in the steps of Jesus, our brother.  Amen.

[1] Taken from Provocations, quoted at https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/discipleship/forget-the-commentators

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others (Harper1, 2019).

Signs of the Presence

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During Advent 2025 the saints at the First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights are walking through the common lectionary passages from Matthew’s Gospel as we seek to understand what it means to anticipate the arrival of Christ in our world.  On December 14, we braved a snowstorm, held a congregational meeting, and sought to be attentive to Matthew 11:2-12. and Isaiah 35:1-10.

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Do you know this old saying?  “Red sky at night… sailor’s delight; red sky at morning… sailors take warning”?  I suspect you’ve at least heard that adage before, and it’s helpful. It also has a basis in scientific fact: in the mid-latitudes, a red sunset can indicate a high concentration of dust and moisture in the atmosphere, which is a good indicator of a high-pressure system moving in, which means that the skies should clear overnight and into tomorrow.  The color of the sky is a sign for those who are attentive to such matters, isn’t it?

So yes, there have been times when I’ve been out on a boat and I’ve been grateful for that clue, that promise of something better on the horizon.

You don’t need to answer this one out loud, but I wonder: have you ever asked God for a sign?  You’ve been wondering about something important, or trying to make a decision, and so you ask God, or the universe, or something for some indicator of how you ought to proceed.

I think that many of us have done that.  We want to know that everything is going to be all right.  We want to know if we’re going to make it.  We want to know that God is still in charge.

The Prophet Isaiah, by Ugolino di Nerio, (c. 1317 – 1327, National Gallery, London).

That’s what’s happening in the narrative we find in Isaiah.  The prophet is preaching to a group of captives who have descended from people who’d been forcibly removed from their homes in Jerusalem.  For most, if not all, of their lives, these folks have lived in enemy territory.  They’ve learned geography that wasn’t theirs, eaten strange food, witnessed an alien culture, and been forbidden to worship in the manner that they’d prefer.  They had places to stay, surely, but there were no real “homes” of which to speak.  They’ve heard the promises of God and long for the ability to dwell in the land of their ancestors… but they wondered if it would ever happen.

Then Isaiah proclaims that salvation is at hand: “those the Lord has rescued will return.  They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”  That is the promise!!!

The Arabian Desert awash in blooms in February 2023

And that seems unbelievable!  Can it really be?  And so the prophet offers them a sign, one that they can recognize.  It’s a phenomenon that shows up in the desert that is sometimes called “sudden bloom”.  When heavy rains suddenly and unexpectedly appear, seeds that have lain dormant for years will germinate and in a matter of days the entire landscape can change.  Blossoms emerge, rivers and streams and even waterfalls appear, and what has seemed lifeless and drab is awash in vibrancy and joy.  Here, Isaiah is saying, “Look, you know that this can happen in the desert… I’m here to remind you that it can happen for you, too!  Be ready for the appearance of God in your lives!”

 Six hundred years later, Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist found himself identifying with those feelings of captivity, longing for freedom, and wanting a sign.  When we saw him last week, he’d been out in the desert, preaching up a storm, inviting people to repent and be baptized.  One of the folks to whom he issued that invitation to repentance was the King, who didn’t take kindly to that kind of meddling from a preacher.  John had been arrested and imprisoned.  He’d given his life to proclaiming the coming presence and power of the Holy One.  He thought that maybe Jesus might be that guy… but could he be sure?  Is Jesus the real deal?

St. John the Baptist in Prison Visited by Two Disciples (detail), by Giovanni di Paolo (c. 1455-1460)

And so John asks for a sign.  You can’t blame him, after all he’s been through.  Jesus responds: “Look! The lame are walking, the deaf can hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are getting good news.”  This is the sign for which John had been asking.

And then Jesus goes on to announce that John himself is a sign from God.  John, the messenger, the preacher, has been sent as a sign from God to proclaim the Divine intention and to invite all to participate in God’s future.

 So I’ll ask you again – have you ever prayed for a sign?  Have you ever stood off to the side while something amazing (or horrible) was happening for someone else and wondered if maybe a part of that was for you?  Have you asked to be given a glimpse of the Holy?

It’s a fair question, particularly in Advent.  We say that we are waiting.  That we are expecting.  That we are hoping.  And no, none of us is really in captivity.  We’ve not been taken from our homes or forced into the kind of exile that Isaiah’s congregation knew about.  And we’ve not had our lives threatened as directly as John.

But we know what it is to live with a sense of dis-ease.  We don’t have to look too far to get glimpses of brokenness, of violence, of discord, of lawlessness.  We wait for diagnoses, we hope for confirmation of job offers or school acceptances, we long to know that things are going to work out somehow.

And the good news is that we can look back and claim the promises that were offered to God’s people in exile or to John in prison.  There is a sign for us!  These candles, those Chrismons, that story – they are for you, beloved.  Be encouraged by that.

But don’t stop there!  Let me encourage you to recognize the truth that you are not merely waiting for a sign of God’s presence.  As the church, the body of Christ, you are the sign of God’s presence in the world!  Here and now, this community is called to bear witness to the fact that Jesus comes to the world, and intends us to point others to the promises that are for all of creation.

 This week, I had the opportunity to consider several ways in which this congregation is a living reminder of the presence and hope of Jesus for the world.

Look at the ways in which you celebrate God’s intentions for community!  Every day I get to see how the Preschool and the Open Door bring people together and equip children and families for success.  A few days ago the prayer chain was buzzing not only with concern for some of our friends who’ve suffered grief or loss or injury, but with care and love.  Soup is made.  Cards were sent.

Not only that, but somehow against all odds, this little band of Christ-followers has managed to add sixteen people to the congregation this year.  There is something lovely about the ways that God’s people are finding it possible to come together in this place at this time.

And it’s not just the adults!  I hope that you are celebrating the children and young people with whom we have been graced. The kids of this congregation are looking for ways to not only grow in their own faith, but to encourage their peers (and their elders) to do so as well.  Next Sunday, for instance, the kids will lead a worship service here on the “longest night of the year”.  They’ve chosen some scripture and some songs that will help us to reflect on the promises of light and life in Jesus even when so much of the world seems cold and dark.

And how about this?  Not long ago, a few of your young people came to me and said, “Pastor Dave, we really like youth group, and the games and everything are fun.  But do you think that we could come together on a special night and just sing and worship?  We will pick the songs, and some Bible verses and some prayers… but we just want to come and start the year in worship.”  As we talked about it, the idea grew, and so now they are taking invitations to this event into their schools with them – “because a lot of our friends would like this, too.  We should invite them.”  That is a sign of God’s presence, beloved!  Do not take it lightly.

One of the most amazing signs of the presence of God in Jesus’ day and in our own is that there is good news for the poor.  Jesus proclaimed that in Matthew 11, in Matthew 25, and again in Luke 4 just for starters.  You need to know that this community of faith is actively engaged in a similar proclamation!

 You are probably aware of the fact that more than 200 families crowded into the building last Friday to get a bunch of food: ham, chicken, eggs, produce, staple goods.  Oh, there was a lot going on, and we celebrate that.  And maybe you realize that so far in 2025, nearly 50 families have come to the church looking for help with rent, utilities, security deposits, or medical bills and found blessing through the Lazarus or Helping Hand Funds.

 But I bet you didn’t know this: not long after the first of the year, thousands of people in Western Pennsylvania will get a letter from a group called “Undue Medical Debt”.  These neighbors of ours, who are not expecting any kind of communication or grace, will discover that because of the generosity of the Presbyterian Church, $14 million in crippling medical debt has been cleared off the books for residents of Allegheny County.  That number includes half a million dollars that was taken care of by the contributions of people here at CHUP.  With our partners at Undue Medical Debt, we’ve purchased these bills for pennies on the dollar and wiped them out – giving families a lifeline to start again.  Praise the Lord for that!

 I’m telling you, this congregation is a sign of God’s blessing in and for this community.

And I know, I know… we can’t be fooled.  Herod still thinks that he’s running the show.  And everything is not sweetness and light.  The city schools seem to be perpetually in crisis.  Millions of us will see our medical insurance bills rise through the roof later this month.  War drags on in Gaza and Ukraine and threatens in Venezuela and who knows where else.  And today we woke up to the news of a mass shooting at Brown University and learned that 11 people were killed celebrating Hannukah in Australia.

I could go on, but I think you get my point: we dare not come in here and pretend that everything is hunky-dory and our problems are all behind us.  The world, too often, is a mean and ugly place.

But by God’s grace, beloved, let us claim the signs that we can see, and embrace them!  Let us celebrate the truth that the Advent God is on the move!  The world as we see it is not all there is: there is hope and healing, health and wholeness, that is for you and for your neighbor!

I hope that when we get to the next hymn you’ll lift your voice with me and proclaim the truth that is verse 4:

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow,
look now, for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing:
O, rest beside the weary road,
and hear the angels sing.

Oh, beloved, this is the Good News of Advent: the signs are for you.  And you are the signs for the world!

Thanks be to God for a community of faith that has been since the days of Isaiah and John; thanks be to God for the promises that are palpable here and now; thanks be to God for the hope that you have and the hope that you represent for all that lies ahead.  Amen.

Preparing The Way

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During Advent 2025 the saints at the First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights are walking through the common lectionary passages from Matthew’s Gospel as we seek to understand what it means to anticipate the arrival of Christ in our world.  On December 7, we welcomed new members, celebrated a baptism, and sought to be attentive to Matthew 3:1-12. We also heard from Isaiah 11:1-10.

To hear this sermon as preached in worship, please use the media player below:

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Have you ever noticed that so often when the Bible is brought up in public discourse, it’s almost always in the context of what someone else ought to do?  So often, scripture is used as a tool pointed in the general direction of those people… those rich folks who ought to give more; the people who understand sexual identity and gender differently than I do; those losers who carry grudges against me and who won’t forgive… Too often, it seems as though the Word of God is like a firehose that we train on someone else: we keep covering them with it and hope that they’ll see the wisdom in what it (and we) are saying.

Maarten van Heemskerck, Detail from Prophet Isaiah predicts the return of the Jews from exile (c. 1560)

There was a man named Isaiah who prophesied in ancient Israel.  He called out to God’s people in captivity and voiced their longing to return home.  And then he heard a voice that said to him, “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God!”

And from what we can tell, people heard that voice.  And, so far as we know, they assumed that it didn’t apply to them.  For 500, maybe 700 years, folks came across that bit in Isaiah’s scroll and assumed that the imperative to prepare the way of the Lord was meant for someone else.  Maybe another prophet.  Maybe the rabbi.  Me? No, I don’t think so.  I’m no prophet.  I’m no herald.

But then a man named John read that passage that every faithful believer could recite from memory and he said, “Yes.  I will do that.  I think that this is a word for me to follow.  I’m one who should cry out.  I’m one who ought to prepare.”  And he did.

St. John the Baptist, El Greco, c. 1600

Let’s think about how John accepted this mandate to announce the coming presence of God.

First, he lived quite simply.  To say that John was a fashion minimalist is an understatement.  His wardrobe and his diet were both simple, to say the least.  He lived in the desert, where he could avoid distraction.

Second, he spent time listening to those who were broken.  We are told that while he was out there in the middle of nowhere, he entertained people – hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people – and he listened to them confess their sin.  He made time for the ones who knew that they had fallen short in one way or another.

And thirdly, he used his voice to speak truth to power.  He called out the religious and political elite when they came grandstanding for public approval but had no intention of modifying their own behavior.

That verse from Isaiah – “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God!” – it had been in the scriptures for hundreds of years when John thought that maybe, just maybe, it might be for him.

Similarly, it’s been in our bibles ever since then, too.  What if the prophetic call to make a way for the Lord is not only for Isaiah and John?  What if there is some kind of a Divine expectation that we – you and me – might participate in announcing the presence, the reign, the purposes, and the hope of Jesus?

How could we live into that?  Can we follow the strategy and behavior of John?

St. John the Baptist Rebuking Herod, Giovanni Fattori (19th c.)

 “Yes!”, I say immediately.  “Sign me up!  I can’t wait to speak truth to power.”  I mean, if I was ready for anything, it’s this!  Among other things, I am appalled by the fact that in the last three months, the United States has executed at least 87 people who are suspected drug traffickers. Not a whiff of due process – just wiped them out.  And I’m angry at the ways in which huge corporations are failing to provide decent wages or health insurance to their employees, thereby forcing them to rely on the increasingly shaky social safety net of programs like SNAP and Medicare.  And that’s just two.  There are about a hundred things that are making me furious right now!  Where do I sign up to speak truth to power and let them have it like old John did?

Did you know that each year the folks at Oxford University Press select a “word of the year”?  Have you heard what that word is for 2025?  Rage bait.  It means “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive”.  Rage bait are those posts that get you so angry that you click on them in order to tell the poster what’s up, or how they’re wrong, or why that is so stupid.

According to the people at Oxford, rage bait is “the internet’s most effective hook,” used to stimulate that ever-sensitive feeling of human anger existing — though perhaps in different forms — within us all.[1] Rage bait is online content that hijacks my emotions in order to influence me to spend more time online, and in so doing make me more profitable to the systems to which I am opposed.

Saint John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness, by Pier Francesco Mola, c. 1655

So, maybe it’s best if I don’t start off with the intention of speaking truth to power.  What if I took another of John’s practices?  Could I listen to those who are broken in some way?  I mean, that’s what John was doing out in the desert, right?  Holding space with and for those who saw that they were not the people that they wanted to be, and so they came to John, and they asked him to pray with them, and to baptize them.

I do that – it is my privilege to do that a lot, actually.  And can I tell you something?  It is exhausting!  Not only physically, but even more so emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.  Stories of abuse, or injustice, and downright evil.

And there’s this: so often, the people who have been broken in some way are trapped in spirals of their own behavior, or someone else’s that is beyond their control. They tell me what hurts and where things are wrong, and I can’t really fix anything.  I want to be encouraging, but it’s just so wearying, especially when they keep on making the same mistakes over and over again.

So I realize that so far I’m not making a great case for following in John’s footsteps here.  We are not ready, perhaps, to speak truth to power.  We grow weary with litanies of brokenness and our own powerlessness to change the narratives.  Tell me, John, tell me that at least I can hang out with you and Isaiah in the desert?

By that I mean, can we join the prophet in a posture of humility and seeking focus?  Because before John was able to call out the hypocrisy of the powerful, and before John was equipped to hear the stories of his neighbors, John chose to sit for a while in the wilderness.  Our text says that John “came” – in Greek, it’s paraginetai.  That word means “arrive” or “appear publicly”.  In other words, John made his “public” appearance in the wilderness.  Before that, he must’ve been somewhere even more remote.

Qumran

In the middle of the Judean desert is a place called Qumran, which was founded in about 100 BC by a small community known as the Essenes.  This fringe group of Jewish believers were notoriously private and lived very austere lives.  They practiced a kind of baptism, ate very simply, and shunned all outside influences.  There are some scholars who believe that John may have been raised in this community before embarking on his broader, public, ministry.  My point is that it seems as though John didn’t just go and set up shop in the wilderness and hope that people would show up.  Rather, he emerged into the wilderness from a place that was even more disconnected and remote, and it was that lifestyle that allowed him to focus on who God was calling him to be.

Our lives could not be further removed from the life of either John or the Essenes.  We are so connected, and so available, and so distractable.  How many texts do you think that the average American adult receives in a given day?  It’s 52!  And what percentage of text messages are opened?  99![2]  For the teens in the room: how many notifications does the average teen get in a single day?  237![3]  We are bombarded not only by texting and through social media, but by the 121 emails the average adult receives in a day[4] and the 24/7 news cycle in which we all live.  We are bombarded with stimuli.

Listen: we mentioned this last week, but it bears repeating.  Advent is not a “warm-up” for Christmas – it’s not our “pre-game”.  Advent is a season that the church observes that calls us to a period of reflection and contemplation and confession.  I was trying to figure out a way to express this today, and just this morning I received this from a friend:

Christmas is not here to offer a four-week escape from the pain of the world with a paper-thin layer of twinkle lights.  It is not here to anesthetize us with bows and eggnog lattes.  Christmas is not offering us the chance to escape the ache of life through piles of presents.  Christmas is God saying, “yes, this pain is too much.  Yes, it is too sad.  Yes, the ache is too great.  Hang on.  I’ll come carry it with you.”[5]

In Advent, we open ourselves to wondering, and to asking questions like “what would hope even look like here?”

Beloved, I am doing you a favor here: I’m inviting you to observe a holy and restful Advent.  Let me urge you to look for ways to spend at least a little time in the desert.

How can we do this?  You don’t have to move to the Southwest!  You can take small steps and look for ways to unplug. My friend Emma, for instance, showed me something.  I’ve noticed lately that when she comes into Youth Group, she takes her phone out of her pocket and she puts it on a shelf in the youth group room.  Then she goes and sits with her friends, and she engages with them.  She listens to them, and laughs with them, and is fully present for that time together – while her phone is across the room.  Is that a practice in which you could engage once a day?

You can find five moments, I suspect, to read a Psalm each day.

On a weekly basis, and I know that I’m preaching to the choir here, you can come to worship.  Find your way to this room (or one like it) where you are not being productive at all.  Instead, you are opening yourself to the practices of prayer, listening, and communal singing.  And when you sing – pay attention to the words!  The poetry there, most times, will knock your socks off.  If you don’t believe me, listen to the lyrics of our final hymn and see if that doesn’t bring a truth-storm to your life!

Apart from these blatantly spiritual exercises, let me encourage you to lean into your status as one who is made in the image of God and try to create something.  Bake something in the kitchen, or make a craft, or build a snowman.  Engage yourself in a process that involves shaping and hoping and wondering and trying.

The point is this: Advent provides all of us – each of us – with an opportunity to stop and catch our breath.  Focus on that breath, and take in this truth: God sees you.  You are enough right now.  Hope is for you.

Beloved, I hope you will join me in seeking God’s face, in learning Christ’s purposes, and in waiting for the power that comes from the Holy Spirit.  If we do this, we will, as we said last month, be walking humbly with God.

If we do that, then perhaps we might find some ability to be present with our neighbors, and to sit with them in times of pain or brokenness or frustration.

And if we are participating in a kind of community that encourages reflection and wonder and values the sharing of our joys and concerns, then maybe we might be in a position to raise our voices in holy outrage on behalf of the poor and the marginalized.  If we follow this process, then, our cries will not be those of personal affront or self-justification or even rage baiting.  Instead, we will find ourselves singing in harmony with prophets of every age who call God’s people to God’s purposes each and every day.

The call is clear: “Prepare the way of the Lord!  Make his paths straight!”  First, in your own heart and spirit.  Then by becoming a trusted friend and a safe ally.  And finally by becoming a witness for Jesus in what you say.  Take and use the words of scripture – first for yourself, and then, only after you’ve sat with them in your own life, in the context of engaging the community.

Thanks be to God who promises us that there is a way to be made, and who invites us to join Jesus in all that is holy and reconciling.  Amen.

[1] “Don’t Get Angry: But the 2025 Oxford Word of the Year is ‘Rage Bait’”, https://www.npr.org/2025/12/01/nx-s1-5627179/rage-bait-oxford-word-of-the-year

[2] https://99firms.com/research/texting-statistics/#gref

[3] https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/teens-are-bombarded-with-hundreds-of-notifications-a-day

[4] https://emaillistverify.com/blog/how-many-emails-people-receive/

[5] https://substack.com/@meredithannemiller/note/c-183761895

The Interruptive Presence

by

During Advent 2025 the saints at the First U.P. Church of Crafton Heights are walking through the common lectionary passages from Matthew’s Gospel as we seek to understand what it means to anticipate the arrival of Christ in our world.  On November 30, we sought to be attentive to Matthew 24:36-44.  We also heard from Isaiah 2:1-5.  

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We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again.  Church is weird.  We said it last week as we offered a “Liturgy for the Dedication of a New Church Boiler”.  Some of you rightly said, “C’mon, Pastor! Who sees the boilers?  And what makes them worthy of a moment in worship?”  Someone mentioned that they had a new lawnmower, and would I bless that if they brought it down.  I’m telling you, church is weird.

Take today, for instance.  Here we are, all decked out for Advent.  The centerpiece for today is a new-to-us recently-donated, imported, fancy-schmancy, incredibly WHITE nativity set.  It’s gorgeous, but let’s be real: check out Joseph: he looks like he ought to be playing volleyball on a beach in Southern California.  And that angel?  I feel like I’m looking at a Swedish postage stamp.  There are not many Middle-Easterners on the table in front of me.

Now, to be fair, there are a number of other creche scenes around the room, including one from Malawi in Africa.  But the bigger, and perhaps weirder, question, is why?  What is the point with all the nativity sets? Are we just playing with dolls here?  Advent is weird!

On the one hand, most of us have come to see the season of Advent, which begins on the fourth Sunday prior to Christmas, as essentially a run-up to Christmas.  Culturally, we’re all digging out our ugly sweaters, decorating the house, playing and singing Christmas music, and either attending or avoiding Holiday parties.

Here at church, these nativities help us to look back at Jesus’ first advent – his first arrival – among us.  So in addition to these figurines, we look back at the Old Testament prophecies about the birth of a savior, and we talk about the importance of marginalized people in the Christmas story, and we remember the shepherds as outcasts who in some ways became the first evangelists.  We sing about the foreigners who make their way to seek and to worship the newborn king.  We point to the time when Joseph gathered the young family and escaped to Egypt, where Jesus began his childhood as a refugee for years before returning to Palestine.

So one could make the case that while it may be a little odd for us to be setting out all of these little doll-houses around the church building, they do help us to remember, and to teach our children, stories that are important to us.  Viewed through this historical lens, then, we could say that Advent reminds us of all that was good and right and holy and true about the first Christmas.  And that is a good thing.

 Yet on the other hand, if the church persists too long in looking only backwards, we fail, because Advent is also the time of year to look ahead.  Jesus promised again and again that he would come back.  Our reading from Matthew today is just one of many occasions where he indicated his intent to return to earth and complete the work that he’d begun.

Ever since his ascension as described in the Gospels and the Book of Acts, the first disciples and the earliest believers lived in anticipation that Jesus meant what he said, and soon.  He would return, and on that day, heaven and earth would be reconciled.

In this understanding, then, the proper focus of Advent is not merely memorializing the events of some distant past, but on being attentive to what theologians call eschatology – the study of the end times.

Central to Christian faith and practice is a linear understanding of time.  That is to say that time, like the universe itself, is a creation.  Time had a beginning and time will have an ending – an ending punctuated by the return of Jesus in an event that we call the parousia.  In fact, the word parousia shows up 24 times in the Greek New Testament, including here in our reading from Matthew.  It means “arrival”, or “coming”, or “presence”.  Jesus will return, thanks be to God.

Now I should mention that one word that does not show up in our reading – or anywhere else in the Bible, for that matter, is “rapture”.  In much of modern American theology, “rapture” and parousia are thought to be intimately connected.  I don’t intend to spend a lot of time on this in the sermon today, but because this text is often taken to support the idea of a rapture I want to say that I find this concept not only unhelpful, but unbiblical.

In the mid-19th century, a small sect of Christians began to teach that at the end of the age, Jesus will come and whisk all of his chosen ones away to glory while the rest of creation is left to suffer in judgment.  In fact, you may remember that this past September there were a lot of folk predicting that Jesus would do exactly that.  It didn’t happen.

Our text refers to two people in the same situation who are suddenly separated.  One is “taken”, and the other is “left”.  In recent pop theology, the claim is that the one who is taken stands for the faithful who are rescued by Jesus out of a world of sin and pain, whilst the one who remains represents those who will stay and suffer torment and judgment.

Yet in the example before us, where Jesus speaks of Noah, it seems as though the opposite is true.  If the one who is “taken” at the time of Christ’s return is comparable to the one who is “taken” by the flood, then would that not imply that it is the ones who are “left behind” that will be saved, just as Noah and his family were left behind in the Ark at the time of the flood?

Overall, I see very little biblical support for the idea that God’s favorites are somehow given a pass to avoid suffering and pain that God is longing to inflict on those with whom God is angry.

But, back to our text for today.  It seems as though Jesus is not interested in giving a detailed timetable or roadmap concerning the parousia.  Instead, he affirms that he will return and he offers a strong imperative – those who love him and who follow him will want to be prepared.  You heard him: “So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour you do not expect him.”

I don’t know about you, but I find thinking about the parousia, the second coming, the eschaton to be wearying, frustrating, and confusing.  Yes, I believe that it is coming, and I’m glad for that.  At the same time, I confess that I have no idea when that will be, and there is nothing I can do that will effect that.

So, like a lot of pastors, I maybe steer my congregation into seeing Advent more as a time of memory, rather than hope or expectation.  It’s a lot easier to get the kids to help set up the nativity than it is to sit down and explore the mysterious and unknowable.

But what if the words of Jesus to be prepared can point us to a third way of understanding and practicing Advent?  What if his message about avoiding surprises and living faithfully in each day can inform our lives right now?  What if the truth of Advent isn’t contained only in the memory of what happened two millennia ago nor in the vague hope of what could happen in an uncertain future? What if the time to look for Jesus is right now?

This week I found myself thinking a lot about all the times when it seemed as if Jesus had a plan for his day, and then someone went and threw a monkey wrench into that plan, but rather than backfiring, something even more amazing happened.

 I’m recalling the day he was leading this totally awesome Bible study in a friend’s home, and then all of a sudden four guys cut a hole through the roof.  Then those men let down some rope with a stretcher containing their friend who was sick, and Jesus interrupted the Bible Study in order to heal that man!

 Or what about the time Jesus had agreed to go with Jairus and have a look at his sick daughter?  They hadn’t gotten very far when all of a sudden this woman who’d been bleeding for twelve years apparently bolluxed up the works, making him so late that the little girl died.  At the end of the day, though, the woman had received a healing and was restored to her family and community and Jesus raised the child from the dead.

 Do you remember the day where Jesus was so exhausted that all he wanted was a quick nap on the boat, but the disciples were so afraid of the storm that they woke him up?  And instead of his nap, Jesus sat up and calmed the storm and taught his friends a lesson about faith and trust.

 And who could forget the night he’d been invited to a fancy dinner at the religious leader’s house, only to be interrupted by a so-called “sinful woman” who showed up and anointed his feet with her tears and some outrageously expensive perfume?

In reflecting on these and other stories, it seems to me that Jesus so often experienced interruption not as a distraction from his “real job”, but rather as an opportunity to encounter the Holy in someone else.  None of the episodes mentioned above, and dozens like them, took Jesus away from his call to serve, love, and teach faithfully.  In fact, the interruptions were occasions for him to do and be just that for those whom he encountered.

And if that’s how Jesus went through each day, then why should I be any different?  How dare I be offended by the interruptions in my day?  What if these are opportunities to encounter the Holy in unexpected people and places around me?

Look, I’m like you.  I have plans!  Plans for the weekend, plans for the holidays, plans for how I’m going to spend my money, plans for how I’m going to use my time.  I’m a big-time planner.  Admittedly, I’m not the biggest planner in my family, but I’m big.  Trust me.

But those plans?  They ain’t all going to happen.  I mean, yes, of course, I hope that they do and I expect a lot of those ideas to take shape, but you know as well as I do that things will change.

In light of that truth, then, what if I am able to hear Jesus’ call to be prepared as an invitation to live this Advent as one who is on the lookout for the light of Christ in every room I enter, in every situation of which I’m a part, and in every face I encounter?

Is the light and presence of Jesus to be found in the people rushing around on Black Friday? In those who are lined up for food? Is Jesus with the ones who are fleeing across borders, being harassed for the color of their skin or the object of their worship or the people with whom they’ve fallen in love?

Dorothy Day and the Holy Family of the Street (Kelly Lattimore, contemporary)

What if, to paraphrase the late Dorothy Day, what if these people don’t merely “remind” me of Jesus… what if the people who show up on my porch or on my newsfeed or in my life, people who seem to expect or demand time and energy and money and attention from me… what if they really are Jesus, inviting me to find room for him now exactly like his parents did in Bethlehem 2000 years ago?[1]

You know, just one chapter later, in Matthew 25, Jesus points out that the people who get rewarded in the heavenly accounting system after the parousia are the ones who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and cared for the sick.  And do you remember how he ended that little chat? “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”

What if Advent isn’t only looking back, and it’s not only looking ahead?  What if Advent is looking around for Jesus right now?

Remember where it started.  Hope for what’s to come.

But today? For Christ’s sake, people – literally, for Christ’s sake – go out and look for opportunities to see Jesus in your neighbor.  I charge you to look for the interruptive presence of the Christ, and then to give yourself away in love and service to him in the situations that are presented to you – even if you didn’t plan for them.

Thanks be to God for what we are privileged to do between the already was and the not yet.  Amen.

[1] Dorothy Day, Room For Christ, 12/1/1945 https://catholicworker.org/416-2/