A Fresh Perspective

Someone said that nothing is as over as Christmas when it’s over. The themes that run through Advent are the themes of hope, peace, love, and joy and we always emphasize these in one way or another through prayers, songs, Scriptures, litanies, and in the sermons. But ask anyone who is going through a difficult time, anyone who is in grief from the passing of a loved one, or one who is unemployed without any prospects soon of finding a job, or someone who is struggling with a physical or mental illness – ask them and they will tell you that it is easier to sing or talk about hope, peace, love, and joy than nurture these in our lives. Our Scripture text today is an after Christmas text, but it is still part of the birth narrative in Matthew’s Gospel. When we are trying to get into the Christmas spirit this is a part of the Christmas story we would just as soon forget. The joyful news brought by the angel is now replaced by the loud weeping of the parents whose babies were killed in ...

“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly” (Matt. 1:18–19). Engagement in that culture was a legal contract. You couldn’t just say, “I’ve had second thoughts, I don’t want to be engaged anymore.” It could be broken only by going to court. It was as binding as marriage. So Joseph and Mary were engaged and may have been engaged for years. Often marriages were arranged by parents years ahead of time. Before they consummate their marriage, Joseph discovers that Mary is pregnant. Matthew says that Joseph is “a righteous man.” For many in that culture that meant that Joseph kept the law of God, he revered the law of God as holy and sought to obey it. That sounds good, but is slavish obedience to the law—to what...

“When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matt. 11:2) What sparks this question? Matthew introduces John the Baptist earlier in his Gospel as the Elijah-like precursor to the Messiah (see 3:1-12). He is pictured as an anti-establishment desert prophet prophesying outside institutional religion (the temple and the synagogue), calling Israel to spiritual conversion and renewal. He believes the kingdom of heaven/God is about to be realized through the Messianic mediator who will immerse people in a fiery judgment. The wheat and the chaff will be separated. John announces that the kingdom “has come near” in the person of the Messiah. The time is at hand. The ball is about to drop. “Even now,” says John, “the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” The righte...

In the familiar Christmas story in Luke’s Gospel, the angels announce to the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14, AV) In a world of constant rivalry and competition, where the win-at-any-cost attitude is the common mode of operation, can there be any lasting peace? Is peace possible in a world of harbored grudges and continuous striving, fighting, and killing? Jean Vanier, the founder of the L’Arche’ communities, where those with mental disabilities live with their assistants in community, wrote about being in Rwanda shortly after the genocide. A young woman came up to him and told him that seventy-five members of her family had been assassinated. I can’t imagine or don’t want to imagine what that would be like. I’m not sure I could ever recover from something like that. She said, “I have so much anger and hate within me and I don’t know what to do with it. Everybody is talking about reconciliation, but nobody has ...

The radio stations I normally listen to are playing all Christmas music; one can handle “White Christmas” and “Frosty the snowman” only so many times. I turned 55 last week and decided, less I get stuck in old ways, to broaden my music appreciation (after all, Bob Dylan and James Taylor are older than I am). So, I have been listening to different types of music lately.   I came across the song called “Demons” by the group “Imagine Dragons” which is currently listed at #6 in the Hot 100 Billboard charts. It’s kind of dark, but speaks to the human condition.  Some of the lyrics are: I want to hide the truth I want to shelter you But with the beast inside There’s nowhere we can hide This is my kingdom come This is my kingdom come. When you feel my heat Look into my eyes It’s where my demons hide It’s where my demons hide Don’t get too close It’s dark inside It’s where my demons hide It’s where my demons hide. Another verse reads: No ma...

I love the story about the little boy who learned to tell time by listening for the chimes of their grandfather clock. One afternoon he was playing in the house while his mother was out working in the yard. The clock began to chime; he expected three chimes. It chimed once, twice, three times, then four times, five, six, seven, eight – the clock had malfunctioned. Totally disconcerted the little boy raced outside to find his mother, “Mommy, mommy, listen to the clock,” he screamed. His mother said calmly, “Billy, what time is it?” He exclaimed, “I don’t know, but it’s later than it has ever been before.” It’s true, you know. It is later than it has ever been before. Paul says to his readers, “You know what time it is, it’s time for you to wake from your sleep" (Romans 13:11-14). May that not be the Spirit’s word to us today gathered in this place this first Sunday of Advent? It’s time to wake up. If it’s time to wake up, then what is it that we are to wake up to?  It’...

I do not believe it is possible to live a thriving spiritual life without gratitude. By gratitude I mean a particular orientation toward life, a pervasive spirit that saturates our thinking and compels our doing. Gratitude is a way of life that flows naturally from the awareness that all of life is gift, that all we have and are is due to divine grace. A life of gratitude, therefore, should not be equated with expressions of thanksgiving that all too often arise from feelings of superiority, deservedness, and the delusional belief that we are self-made. One might recall the barrage of opposition launched at President Obama when he pointed out that no one has succeeded in this life without some help.    Some of you may recall the table-grace offered by Jimmy Stewart’s character in the movie, Shenandoah . He prayed: Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed, sowed it, and harvested it. We cooked the   harvest. It wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be eat...

The late William Sloan Coffin, when he was chaplain at Yale University , would sometimes ask students, “Who tells you who you are?” Coffin knew all too well the power of higher education to tell students who they are. I ask myself, “Who tells me who I am?” My greatest regret is that for a large part of my life my need to be somebody—to be successful, popular, and important—influenced so many of my decisions and controlled so much of my thought. My ego, attached to American ideals of success, determined who I was. In high school, I strove to be a stand-out basketball player so I would be popular. I danced to the music of whatever tune would win me applause. One Sunday in church, a girl from another high school attended my Sunday School class. Attracted to her, I asked her out and we started dating. She was not popular and I began to catch drift of rumors questioning my judgment. She was a good person—real and authentic; I was shallow and superficial, driven by ego. Wit...

Sometimes deaths in communities come like waves. I am ready for the tide to turn. I have conducted too many funerals in too few days. The following is a story I love to share with families. I’m not sure where it originated. I got it from a minister who got it from a minister who got it from a minister. Once there lived a colony of grubs at the bottom of a swamp. Ever so often a member of the community would feel the urge to swim to the surface of the water and then disappear, never to be seen again. This confused and bewildered the others, and so one day they agreed that the next time one of them felt compelled to leave the colony, that one would return and share with the others what it was like above the surface of the water. It wasn’t long before one felt the urge to depart. She swam to the surface and crawled out onto a lily pad and in the warmth of the sun went to sleep. As she slept the carapace of the little creature broke open, and out emerged this beautiful rainbow...

The only time in the Gospels where Jesus talks about life after death is in a response to a question by the Sadducees. They did not believe in life after death, so the question posed to Jesus is a loaded question. A woman had married seven brothers successively in obedience to the law of levirate marriage. Whose wife will she be in the resurrection? The Jews who believed in life after death, like the Pharisees, believed in resurrection, not immortality. Many of the Greeks believed in immortality. They believed in a sharp distinction between soul and body. Some Greeks called the body the prison house of the soul. They believed that in death the soul doesn’t die, it simply departs the body. In the Hebrew tradition, there is no separation of soul and body; soul and body are one. The immaterial is inseparably connected to the material in Hebrew thought. Therefore, they believed that when the body dies so does the soul, and then it takes an act of God to raise the total person....

Once a month I visit with my mother who lives a couple of hours away. Typically, we talk for a couple of hours, I take her out to eat and we run some errands. Though I am a minister, spiritual teacher, and a writer, we rarely talk about religion. There is a reason for this. On a recent visit, I took her a copy of my book, Being a Progressive Christian (is not) for Dummies (nor for know-it-alls): An Evolution of Faith. I did this, as I have done with all my books, because she is my mother. And because I am her son, she reads them. She doesn’t read them quickly or easily, but she reads them. She told me, “They’re deep.” What she really meant was, “How the hell did my son come to believe such nonsense?” She would never admit this. She would severely object to the way I just used “hell,” in her view a perfectly sound biblical teaching. I am joking, of course . . . kind of. Our conversation turned toward the state of the world. Such a state signals for many conservative Chris...