Holiday Blues and Hope

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church – Lowry, MN

Advent 3 | 12.15.2019 | Matthew 11:2-6

An emotion that comes forward in today’s Gospel passage is disappointment. John the Baptist is disappointed.

I think it’s important to talk about disappointment this time of year. As much of a job the anticipation of Christmas does for our spirit, our disappointments don’t disappear during this season. In fact, for many of us, the Holidays and Christmastime bring a particular heaviness, and today’s bible story can serve as a reminder not to repress our disappointment, our heaviness, or our blues, but to state all of it, and to lift it all to God as John the Baptist did.

So, what are yours? What are your losses and your disappointments that you carry into this Advent and Christmas season? Is it the death of a loved one? Is it depression? Anxiety? Stress? A lost job? Farming anxiety? Family dysfunction? I want you to think about the heaviness that you carry. Is it the bully at school? The bully at work? A past relationship? A struggle for meaning or purpose in daily life? A mistake you made? Is it illness? Aging?

Although this is the season of hope and light none of these things fully go away in this season. In fact, in some strange and sinister way, some of these disappointments and blues can become heavier now than at any other time of year. For instance, for many, this season simply serves as a reminder of who is no longer here, and of what is not going right.

There is a great lyric by Jim Croce that accompanies such a sentiment:

Snowy nights and Christmas lights, icy windowpanes make me wish that we could be together again. And the windy winter avenues just don’t seem the same. And the Christmas carols sound like blues, but the choir is not to blame…

-‘It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way,’ 1973

This season can be really tough – even if joyful at the same time. There is lot of heaviness compounded by the season. I think of the children who will spend Christmas in a hospital bed. I think of nursing home and care-center residents who will long in Christmas memory of their former homes. I think of those of you who will spend yet another Christmas without your beloved, and therefore another Christmas that just doesn’t feel fully right. I think of my cousin, Taylor, who lost the love of her life, Jordan, twenty-seven years old, to suicide on Thanksgiving week. I think of those of you for whom this season presents stressful financial burden and risk. I think of the laid off, the overstretched parents, the lonely, the prisoner, the refugee, the soldier, the overworked, the poor, the orphan, the widow…all for whom this season will be heavy with levels of disappointment.

Disappointment is probably something upon which we don’t really want to dwell around the holidays…but it’s real. So, let’s face it. Let’s name it. Let’s also remember our sisters and brothers for whom this season is really hard. Talking about and acknowledging our disappointment, as we see today, is biblical.

Early in the Gospel of Matthew John the Baptist spoke with great excitement of the One who was coming, a Messiah, who was going to be the fixer of all things, the ultimate military champion (see 3:1-12), a hardcore conqueror of dramatic proportions[1]; that’s what John was expecting in Jesus – a warrior-king who would make all things right and change the system. But here, eight chapters later, that’s not the type of savior Jesus was turning out to be, and not only that, now John had found himself in prison…because of the corrupt leadership that he was hoping Jesus would destroy!

One theologian expounds:

[What John] predicted and longed for has just not arrived…you see, he expected the world to change; [but] now…things seem all too dreadfully the same…now, sitting alone in a prison cell, he is still waiting for that promise to be kept. John is, at best…disappointed.[2]

And that disappointment brought on doubt and confusion for John the Baptist. While in prison John would even tell a person visiting him to go find Jesus and call him out!—to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another” (11:3)?

It’s a moment in the Bible where one of Jesus’ most eager followers was losing hope and doubting the legitimacy of his Messiah…and what an honest text in which to immerse ourselves, because I wonder if many of us aren’t in the same space as John the Baptist – defeated, stressed, despairing…especially around Christmas!

That same theologian adds:

[John makes] a tremendously…sympathetic and useful character at this time of year. For aren’t we also still waiting for the consummation of Christmas promise?…isn’t it precisely what is so wonderful about Christmas—the promises of peace on earth and goodwill among all—that is also so difficult about Christmas, as the headlines and sometimes even our homes [and lives] regularly make it clear that peace and goodwill are…scarce commodities.[3]

This is what is so important about the season of Advent. It is a time, at least for a little while, to name honestly the misfortunes of many, including ourselves, to name the fact that many of us are “in a funk as dark and dank as John’s prison cell…Disappointed with ourselves, with the world, and even and especially with God, which feels all the worse [near] Christmastime.”[4]

Disappointment. The blues. That is where John the Baptist was in this moment, and perhaps is reflective of where some of us are.

And now…Jesus’ response to that disappointed question from John. So, Jesus, are you the One, or not!? Do you make a difference or not?

To the crowds, Jesus responded:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see.” (Matt 11:4).

Then, perhaps you can imagine the scene – John in a dark prison, wondering if it gets better, wondering what all the good news and hope is about, “when all of a sudden there is a knock” at the prison door.[5]

Jesus’ messenger arrives. The messenger offers Jesus’ reply:

[John,] the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. (11:4-5).

To John’s disappointment, Jesus spoke a different kind of hope.

Jesus was saying to John: I know I am not the warrior king you’d hoped I’d be. But I am out here, serving, loving, and being present to the suffering.

Jesus was saying to John: I may not be overthrowing Herod’s government, but I am out here…with the disappointed.

Jesus is saying to us: I am out here…with the depressed, the anxious, and the bullied. I am with the one trying to pick up the pieces of their broken relationships and broken families. I am with the child in the hospital bed. I am with the nursing home resident who longs for their former home. I am with the one who grieves their deceased. I am with Taylor who mourns over Jordan. I am with the laid off, the overstretched parents, the overworked, the lonely, the refugee, the soldier, the orphan and the widow.

This is the message of hope Jesus sends into the heart of any of our disappointment: he is with us. Our Emmanuel.

Amen.

     [1] Arland J. Hultgren, Commentary on Matthew 11:2-11, workingpreacher.org, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1935.

     [2] David J. Lose, Disappointed with God at Christmastime, workingpreacher.org (12/08/2013), http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2911. (*emphasis mine)

     [3] Ibid. (*emphasis mine)

     [4] Ibid.

     [5] Lose, Disappointed with God, workingpreacher.org.

Political Division, Weapons, War, and God’s Vision

St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Lowry, MN

Advent 1/2 | 12.08.2019 | Isaiah 2:1-5

I am going to preach on the Isaiah text, which isn’t an easy text. It needs a bit of context to be fully understood.

Not only that, this Isaiah text isn’t easy because it has some aggressive imagery concerning God’s vision for weapons and war. I know in December many of us want to think about cookies, Christmas lights, carols, and silver bells, but today the Bible leads us into a reflection on weapons and war.

But first, a terribly incomplete review of some of the Old Testament timeline starting with King David for some context:

1000s BCE – Hundreds of years after the Israelite tribes settled the Promised Land, they – mediated through the prophet, Samuel, demanded a single king so that they could become a singular kingdom instead of a group of ragtag tribes. Their first king was Saul. He didn’t pan out. Next to the throne was perhaps their most famous and beloved king: King David. David’s son, Solomon, would follow and become Israel’s third king.

922 BCE – Immediately after Solomon, there was division centered around who would follow Solomon as Israel’s next king. This led to an eventual civil war and split into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms.

722 BCE – After years of corrupt leadership and inter-kingdom violence, the Northern Kingdom of Israel would be ruthlessly conquered by the Assyrian Empire.

And that’s where I’ll stop, because we’ve now arrived in the context of our Isaiah passage—the N. Kingdom had been fighting and invading the S. Kingdom. Then the N. Kingdom was decimated and pulverized by the Assyrian Empire. There was betrayal and violence everywhere – a civil war and then an invasion of a foreign enemy. It was a devastating period of division, uncertainty, and carnage.

And into that moment the voice of God spoke though the prophet, Isaiah, and said this:

In days to come

the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains…

all the nations shall stream to it…

and [God] shall [mediate] for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more.

-Isaiah 2:1-5

Those words were a comforting challenge for their listeners. They pointed to the hope of a better future and at the same time, were words that showed no tolerance of violent rhetoric or vengeance as they spoke God’s vision for a more peaceable world.

Now this can be treated as an interesting tale of olden times where God spoke into a historically violent and divided time for Israel. But God’s Word is not a trivia lesson. The Word of God stands forever (Isa 40:8). So, today, reflect on how these 3,000-year-old words might speak to us.

In other words, where are we as a people of this country and citizens of this world seeing such a context like the one of Isaiah’s?

First, let’s look no further than our country’s politics. Political scientists and polling data tell us that this is one of the most divided partisan moments in our country’s history. Not since the Civil War[1] have people so rabidly caricatured, demonized, and despised those with whom they disagree. So divided are we that upon hearing that, I’m willing to bet that many of us in our own minds are already assigning all blame on the other side for the division! We’ve been conditioned to think this way. To many-a-conservative, the liberal is nothing short of a joke at best, and a demented monster at worst. To many-a-liberal, the conservative is nothing short of an ignorant nuisance at best, and downright evil incarnate at worst.

According to a Georgetown University poll, 67% of Americans believe we are on the verge of another civil war![2] 67%! This is all to say, we have successfully dehumanized each other.

So, my friends, we are not so unlike that divided kingdom of Northern and Southern Israel in which Isaiah was preaching, and the Word of God challenges us to be something different in a moment of fracture – that, perhaps, we ought to recognize our oneness, as God does.

Second, although much different today, I would say that violence seems to be a ceaseless part of our reality like it was in Isaiah’s. Domestically speaking, this is undoubtedly true: human trafficking, poverty, hate crimes, school shootings, mass shootings, domestic violence, cartel violence, you name it.

Geopolitically, my word…our world is warring without end!

I once spoke at the Lowry Memorial Day observance in 2015 and I remember saying that my generation has not known a single year in our lives that the US wasn’t involved in military engagement. And isn’t interesting that we would consider this one of the more peaceful 30 years compared to the rest of the century!

But indulge me: my generation was born into the final years of the Cold War where the world stockpiled enough weaponry to destroy the earth multiple times over; we were born into a world that was actively turning plowshares into swords at a rate it had never known. Our early childhood took place during the Gulf War, the Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kuwait conflicts; our middle school years happened during Operation Desert Fox in Iraq and armed conflict in Kosovo. Our high school years up until now started with 9/11 and continued with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – the latter continuing as the longest war in US history. Now add the Libyan invasion, countless drone strikes, and military engagements in Syria.

This is something President Eisenhower warned against: perpetual warfare.

Now, I’m not trying to be naïve about global military conflict, nor am I taking a stance on US foreign policy – in such a divided partisan world I feel the need to state that. My point is to lift a biblical passage where God has something to say in the midst of perpetual warfare – a passage that challenges us to also not be naïve about the annihilation that perpetual warfare and weapon stockpiling has our humanity.

We are still a people hell-bent on division and warring with one another, and 3,000 years later God’s Word stands to say this:

…they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

…neither shall they learn war any more.

(2:4).

God’s Word serves as an interrupter of the cycles of disunion and revenge. It not only interrupts, it envisions something entirely different: a more peaceable world.

If this is God’s Word to a divided and warring people, then we as God’s people are called to provide a different voice in the midst of all this brokenness – a voice of peace. That is God’s vision, not a partisan vision, but God’s – that we might be so committed to peace, that we might turn our weapons into farm equipment, from things that take life into things that cultivate life. (So, you farmers are allowed to have a big head if you want – you work the equipment that is the imagery of God’s ultimate dream for the world!).

Sisters and brothers, we worship the Prince of Peace, not the Lord of War. In Advent we look forward to the celebration of the birth of that very Prince who took up no arms, gathered no armies, stockpiled no weapons, but rather told his followers to put their swords back in their sheaths (John 18:11), and who blessed not the war-makers but the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9).

And that is exactly who he was and is to us. To our sinfulness and brokenness, Jesus raised no sword, but instead was raised up for us. To a world that was violent to him, he was loving and merciful to the world. And, my friends, if that is who Jesus was for us, then we, especially in this season, must reflect upon how we can be that to one another in a country and a world so desperate for peace.

It’s a radically difficult calling, but it is our calling and we cannot abandon it, just like Jesus never abandons us. We must dare to love the ones with whom we disagree and dare to find ways to turn our weapons into things that do not take life but sustain it.

So, to paraphrase one biblical scholar, this Advent and Christmas season, when you hear the bells and seasonal ringings, don’t only think of Jingle Bells, don’t only think of the cute festive sentimentality of the season, but when you hear the ringing of Christmas, think of Isaiah…and think of the ringing of swords being beat into plowshares.[3] Think of the peace that God has already forever established towards us…AND think of the peace that God wants us to work for in this world. Amen.

     [1] https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/409718-analyst-says-the-us-is-the-most-divided-since-the-civl-war

     [2] http://politics.georgetown.edu/press-releases/civility-press-release-oct-2019/.

     [3] Limburg quoted by Rolf Jacobson, “#693 – First Sunday of Advent,” Sermon Brainwave, Workingpreacher.org. http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1199.