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Matthew: “Jesus is the Light!” Jesus: “You are the light!” (5th Sunday after the Epiphany, 2/8/2026)

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Readings

Last week we heard the prophet Micah: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” This week’s reading from Isaiah is working the same question. We might hear it as fleshing out Micah’s answer:

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

Doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly with God: both about responding to specific needs and reknitting the torn fabric of our culture, recovering our common humanity.

And, like last week’s psalm (Psalm 15), Psalm 112 offers a portrait of those who do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God. But it does something more, and, heading towards today’s Gospel, it’s worth noticing. So please turn to pp.754-755 of the BCP. Both psalms are acrostic, each line ordered—after the initial “Hallelujah”—by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, running from A to Z, as it were.

Back in Genesis we hear “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (1:26); we might hear these two psalms as a meditation on how that plays out.

The divine-human relation is certainly not symmetrical. Both psalms begin with “Hallelujah!” (Not first “Praise Yah” and then “Praise Us.”) The first psalm ends with “the fear of the Lord;” the second begins by declaring “happy” (there’s that word again that we met in last week’s Beatitudes) “they who fear the Lord.”

What is striking is the celebration of image/likeness, in the identical vocabulary (in Hebrew) in vv.3-4:

111:3b and his righteousness endures forever.
112:3b and their righteousness will last forever.

111:4b the Lord is gracious and full of compassion.
112:4b the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.

The celebration continues, taking the differences of scale into account. The Lord is generous (vv.5a, 6b, 9a), as are the righteous (vv.5a, 9a).

Besides the Creator/creature difference, perhaps the most obvious difference is that the Lord is unopposed; the idols of the nations are not worth mentioning. The righteous, on the other hand, live in the midst of the wicked. And here’s where the psalm notices a corollary to the fear of the Lord. The righteous fear the Lord. So they do not fear evil rumors (v.7), they do not “shrink” (v.8, same Hebrew word). A proper fear/reverence of God puts others who demand our fear into perspective.

Today’s Gospel: the middle section of Matthew 5. Last week we heard the first section, the Beatitudes, another fleshing out of Micah’s “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” The third section, that series of “you have heard…but I say to you,” gets preempted this year by Lent.

So what’s in this middle section?

First, the hearers as salt and light. Salt is an open-ended metaphor, inviting us to meditate on it, and see where that meditation leads. Light, on the other hand, is an image Matthew works with repeatedly. Probably the most important connection would be in Matthew 4, citing Isaiah: “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned” (4:16). That would be Jesus. Then in today’s reading: “You are the light of the world.”

It’s the same move made in that Isaiah text that begins “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me” (61:1) that Jesus reads in the synagogue in Nazareth. By v.3 the text is talking about those whom the speaker has touched:

They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations. (Isa 61:3b-4)

That, as you probably recognize, is the same project our first reading from Isaiah 58 was describing. Parenthetically, it’s easy to focus on Jesus as the light of the world, the generous God of Ps 111, and postpone “you are the light of the world” and Ps 112. In the first we’re the beneficiaries; in the second we’re also the agents. But it’s a package deal.

The Beatitudes: an implicit description of both Jesus as light and Jesus’ followers as light.

The second part of today’s Gospel is the lead-in to the “you have heard…but I say to you” section. Whatever Jesus is doing there, it’s fulfilling, not abolishing the law and the prophets. Since Lent is preempting hearing vv.21-48 this year, a couple general comments:

First, throughout the section we might more usefully translate “you have heard…and I say to you.” Jesus is fulfilling, not abolishing.

Second, Jesus’ words are addressed to us more as a parish than as individuals who happen to be in a parish. So the question they’re repeatedly asking: How do we live together in ways that support hearing and responding to these words?

Third, Jesus ends the section with “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That’s not about our being sinless. Recall the Beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” Jesus recognizes that we’ll always need mercy. And later in the Gospel: “Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times’” (18:21-22). What’s the point, then? It’s a replay of Ps 111-112’s insight: imitate this generous God. And we might recall Vince Lombardi: “Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

We need, Jesus tells us, to up our game; this third section (vv. 21-48) provides examples.

Two more things and I’ll close. Paul’s contrast between God’s wisdom and the wisdom of this age maps in interesting ways on Jesus’ words. The wisdom of this age regards the Beatitudes as folly. Ditto Ps 112. This world’s wisdom: happiness consists in imitating the carnivores, the more powerful and brutal the better. That can generate a lot of fear, so Ps 112’s implicit call to nurture our fear/reverence of God as a sort of vaccination remains relevant.

Second, there’s important tension between this week’s “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” and last week’s “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (5:11). It’s not that the disciples’ different actions are eliciting different responses; it’s that they have little control over the response they’ll receive—as Jesus had little control. His actions were celebrated by the crowds pretty much until Holy Week. John Howard Yoder nails it: “The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship between cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.”[1]

How to pull this together? I think Matthew would be happy for us to return to Ps 112:

Hallelujah!
Happy are they who fear the Lord
and have great delight in his commandments!

[1] Cited in Hauerwas, Matthew, p.72.

“Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God” (4th Sunday after the Epiphany, 2/1/2026)

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Readings

Each of these readings deserves its own sermon. This time around let’s wonder about three things. First, the Beatitudes as a rereading of that last verse in Micah. Second, Paul on wisdom and folly. Third, that phrase in Paul’s letter, “the message of the cross.”

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah’s audience (Isaiah’s audience—they were contemporaries) was justly very proud of the temple. Solomon had built it, had spared no expense in building it, and it was breathtaking. And as long as the multiple sacrifices and festivals stayed on schedule, it was easy to assume that the Lord found it breathtaking. So prophets like Micah had the thankless task of reminding the people that while worship (including prayer) was essential, it was not the only essential thing. In characteristic prophetic hyperbole: “what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” And over the centuries we’ve periodically needed this reminder: worship is essential; it’s not the only essential thing.

(Parenthetically, we might hear today’s psalm, Psalm 15, as a reminder, in the temple, to remember the prophets’ teaching.)

Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God: we can hear Jesus’ Beatitudes as sketching out what, with Jesus’ coming, that looks like.

The Beatitudes, the beginning of what we refer to as the Sermon on the Mount, are set just after the calling of Peter, Andrew, James, and John that we heard last week. Matthew sets the stage: “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan” (4:23-25)—and then our text.

Why’s that important? Coming at the Beatitudes cold (“Happy are the poor in spirit, those who mourn…”) one might be tempted to call the local asylum: one of your patients is loose. But after that long list of folk Jesus has touched, it’s possible that he knows what he’s talking about. That’s important for us as hearers. We’re not meant to come to the Beatitudes cold. If Jesus hasn’t touched me in some important way, they’re not the place to start.

Micah set up his summary with “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you.” Jesus sets it up with “Blessed/Happy are…” Translation of the Greek makarios is a challenge, the English versions opting for ‘blessed’ or ‘happy’, both of which have drawbacks. ‘Blessed’ can suggest something disconnected from real life; ‘happy’ can suggest something fleeting. It helps to notice that it’s the opening word in the Book of Psalms: “Happy are they who have not walked…” We might say it’s about describing a truly human life.

Most of the beatitudes focus on character as seen in conduct, the merciful, the peacemakers, etc. The beginning and ending beatitudes focus also on the vulnerability tied to that character. While in a perfect world good character would produce good fortune, we’re not in a perfect world, so good character carries risks. As Ben Sira put it “My child, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for testing” (2:1). So “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” not because that’s how the world works, but because, as Jesus has been proclaiming, “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” As Jesus has been proclaiming, underlined in the last beatitude which shifts from “Blessed are the…” to “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” So the Beatitudes are news, tied to Jesus’ arrival, rather than timeless truths.

And the thing about news (worthy of the name) is that it guides the conduct of the wise. Snow’s in the forecast—so leave the sand and shovel in the trunk. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”—so that’s the character we want to encourage. Parenthetically, here, as in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, the focus is first on the community (the parish), then on the individual. What sort of community are we? What sort of community are we becoming?

And the community/congregation is integral to when/how these futures happen (“they will be comforted…will inherit the earth…will be filled”). Only in heaven? That would make “inherit the earth” meaningless. “They will receive mercy” only from God? Jesus’ teaching seeks to mold us into congregations in which the Beatitudes are experienced to be true in our dealings with each other. (“Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times’” (Matt. 18:21-22). The Beatitudes are news; let’s respond wisely.

Paul, as we heard, pays attention to what the message about the cross does to words like ‘wise’, ‘foolish’, ‘strong’, and ‘weak’. The way of the Beatitudes, executed supremely by Jesus, looks foolish and weak to the world, then and now. The meek will inherit the earth? Or, as Stalin put it, “The pope! How many divisions has he got?” So the Corinthians need to realize that being baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection overhauls the meaning of ‘wise’, ‘foolish’, ‘strong’, and ‘weak’. These “I belong to Paul/Apollos/Cephas/Christ” games need a second look.

That’s something we have trouble hearing. We categorize: there’s culture, economics, politics, religion, etc. “Christian” goes in the religion box, so leaves the other boxes undisturbed, leaves the meaning of ‘wise’, ‘strong’ etc. in these other boxes undisturbed. Or, worse, ‘Christian’ becomes another argument for whatever cultural, economic, or political positions I already hold. It’s easiest to see this in others. Putin invades Ukraine; the Russian Orthodox Patriarch declares that it’s God’s will. No. To be baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection means a mental asterisk on words like ‘wise’, ‘foolish’, ‘strong’, and ‘weak’ as I learn from Jesus how to use them.

So much—too briefly—for Paul. But what of “the message of the cross”? In today’s reading Paul focuses on what it does to words like ‘wise’, ‘foolish’, ‘strong’, and ‘weak’. But that’s not all, or even primarily, what the cross is about. So let’s pull back the camera. Micah: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Well, why is that good, why does the LORD require that? Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God: that’s what reflects God’s character, that’s what fits with God’s creation. And that, combined with the suffering it often attracts (think the Beatitudes, Jesus’ performance of the Beatitudes, “the message of the cross”) is how the LORD heals this world.

But that’s not the end of the story. Toward the end Paul writes “He [God] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” That’s more than Jesus messing with our use of ‘wise’, ‘foolish’, ‘strong’, and ‘weak’. That’s our walking in the way of the Beatitudes, the way of the Cross, to participate in the healing of our world. We keep remembering Jesus’ story not because he’s back there and we’re here, but so that his story becomes our story.

So, as we come to the altar, let us remember:

When we come to receive the Body and Blood we’re asking God to work in us so that we—and others—experience the Beatitudes in our common life.

When we come to the receive the Body and Blood it’s to receive Jesus as gift and to become the Jesus-like gift for others.

Fear and Light (3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, 1/25/2026)

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Readings

Today’s readings: such a mixed bag! The Gospel continues Epiphany themes—more on that later. The reading from Isaiah: presumably selected because Matthew quotes from it. Psalm 27: perhaps because it’s ‘light’ (“The Lord is my light”) echoes the light in Isaiah and Matthew. 1st Corinthians: well, this is when the lectionary wants us reading 1st Corinthians. Nevertheless, because all the texts are talking about the same God and the same humans, there are some interesting connections.

Today’s psalm: besides the light image, an exploration of what to do with fear. The psalmist celebrates God’s deliverance in the past, but there are still enemies out there. Verse 10: “Hearken to my voice, O Lord, when I call; / have mercy on me and answer me.” Then there’s the psalm’s last verse, omitted by the lectionary: “O tarry and await the Lord’s pleasure; / be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; / wait patiently for the Lord.” The Lord’s timing only sometimes matches our preferred timing, so patience is necessary. What to do with fear? Acknowledge it, but don’t give it the steering wheel. God has been faithful in the past; God will prove faithful in the future; we can bring even our fear before God. Recall the saying attributed to Winston Churchill: “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Speaking of fear, our Gospel begins with “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested.” Matthew doesn’t mention it, but John the Evangelist tells us that there was a period in which John the Baptist and Jesus were baptizing in the same region (Jn 3:22-24). You never know how narrow or broad these sweeps are going to be, so Jesus, prudently, leaves Herod’s jurisdiction. Galilee is not safe, but safer.

Matthew then pairs Jesus’ move from Nazareth to Capernaum with a citation from Isaiah. Why? Well, probably for at least three reasons.

First, one of Matthew’s recurrent themes (one of our Epiphany themes) is that this Jewish Messiah is good news for the Gentiles. That’s important to the mixed Jewish/Gentile congregations for whom he’s writing. So the phrase “Galilee of the nations” in Isaiah is important.

Second, Matthew, like John, likes that light image. John the Evangelist has Jesus saying “I am the light of the world” (8:12); the quote from Isaiah is Matthew’s equivalent. It’s also a setup for what we’ll hear in the next chapter, toward the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world” (Mat 5:14). Back in the first chapter the angel said to Joseph “he will save his people from their sins” (1:21); that’s about empowerment.

(Let’s stay with that for a moment. Matthew doesn’t waste time between “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light” (4:16) and “You are the light of the world” (5:14). It’s the same move made in Isa 61:1ff which lies behind the first three beatitudes in Matt 5:3-5, from “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me” (61:1) to “to provide for those who mourn in Zion…  They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations” (61:3-4; italics mine). Easy to focus on the benefits of salvation, but without an equal focus on being empowered and sent (John 20:21), we miss the point.)

Third, in the minds of some, Jesus’ association with Galilee counted against him being the Messiah. From John’s Gospel: “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?” (7:41). And here, I think, Matthew is relying not only on the text he quotes, but on the continuation of the text. The reason for the light and joy Isaiah describes: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (9:6). Galilee is precisely where we should expect the Messiah’s presence to be felt. Matthew sees the situation Isaiah faced prefiguring the situation in Jesus’ time, and builds on it!

Moving on, I think it’s helpful to have Handel’s “For unto us a child is born” ringing in our ears as we read the calling of the disciples, because it gives a sense of the authority of the one doing the calling. One commentator (Boring) sees the story as discipleship stripped down to its essentials. Why are we disciples? Jesus called us.

Circling back to today’s psalm and the beginning of the Gospel text (“Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested”) notice what Matthew leaves implicit. With the combination of Roman occupation and compliant local elites, no occupation is safe, but fishing is usually safer than most. Jesus calls them to leave that, and today’s gradual hymn reminded us of the consequences (“Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless in Patmos died. Peter, who hauled the teeming net, head-down was crucified” [The Hymnal 1982¸ 661].) “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”

After the other readings, the 1st Corinthians reading is almost comic relief. Jesus, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” has called us, and here we are, driven by our fears to seek status through one-upmanship. “’I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’” Almost comic relief, because whatever Corinth needs, it isn’t more darkness, and Jesus really needs those folk to be light.

So perhaps our lessons suggest an additional piece of advice to “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” That would be: “Going through hell doesn’t cancel the need to repent.” Matthew summarized Jesus’ message in today’s reading: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” It’s easy to postpone repentance until we’ve—say—gotten rid of the Roman occupation. But that simply guarantees that if we get power, we’ll use it as destructively as the Romans did.

“The Lord is my light.” Let us, with patience, allow that light to continue to do its work within and among us, the work that we know needs doing, the work about which we’re clueless. And we can do so with confidence, for the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace has promised to be with us always.

How the Lamb takes away the sin of the world (2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, 1/18/2026)

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Readings

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John the Baptist’s proclamation continues to echo in our worship. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; Therefore let us keep the feast.” And often immediately afterwards we say “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.” Today’s Gospel together with the other lessons give us an opportunity to wonder about what we’re saying at every Eucharist.

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” How does the Lamb do that? Not, obviously, like the soaps in the TV ads: one swipe and it’s gone! How does the Lamb do that? A full answer would mean a very long sermon; let’s simply notice some elements in our readings and liturgy.

In our Gospel two disciples hear John and follow Jesus. “They remained with him that day.” We might wonder: does taking away the sin of the world start with friendship? We might recall: the “greatest and first commandment” (Mt 22:38) is not “You shall obey the Lord your God” but “You shall love the Lord your God.” Hard to imagine love without friendship! In our context that’s encouragement in our times of prayer/reading/reflection to hang out with Jesus, to waste time with Jesus.

We need that friendship also because we’re vulnerable, with many reasons to fear. Recall our first reading: “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” The speaker is described as “one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers.” And while today’s psalm (Psalm 40) celebrates God’s faithfulness in the past, it’s equally concerned that that faithfulness continue. Had we read more of the psalm:

For innumerable troubles have crowded upon me;
my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see;
they are more in number than the hairs of my head,
and my heart fails me.
Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me;
O Lord, make haste to help me.

Earlier in the psalm: “Happy are they who trust in the Lord!” True. Equally true: without that trust, this “takes away the sin of the world” project grinds to a halt. That’s one of the reasons Paul talks repeatedly in our second reading about strengthening: “He will also strengthen you to the end…”

In other words, this “takes away the sin of the world” project turns out to be deeply participative. Recall those words at the Fraction: “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; Therefore let us keep the feast.” They’re from later in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where he’s dealing with an issue in congregational life. Since Passover is immediately followed by a period in which yeast is verboten, Paul plays off the image:

“Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1Co 5:6-8).

Malice and evil: in a world without the Lamb, completely rational responses, for there the Golden Rule is “Do unto others as they do unto you—and do it first!” But the Lamb has arrived, and Paul wants us to remember which world we’re living in. In the Lamb’s world we can risk sincerity and truth.

And, continuing to speak of the Eucharist, recall these words of institution: “This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Forgiveness of our sins, yes. But recall the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” So, equally, Jesus Blood shed to create a people who forgive. Taking away the sin of the world: breaking the endless cycles of retaliation and payback with forgiveness.

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” It’s not magic. It’s an invitation to friendship, and in the context of that friendship to learn—as often as necessary—that our fears need not set the agenda, that Jesus’ way is “none other than the way of life and peace” (BCP 99).

Be Patient? Third Sunday of Advent, 12/14/2025

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Readings

A child of my age, I resonate with Ambrose Bierce’s definition of patience, “A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.” So, James’ “Be patient” is not what I want to hear.

Actually, James’ “Be patient” and Jesus’ “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” are acknowledgements of problems, and set the agenda for the sermon.

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” It’s not an unreasonable question, and not simply because John’s been in prison for some time. Recall what we heard last Sunday from John’s description of the coming one: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Jesus doesn’t seem to be doing that.

Jesus responds by describing what he has been doing, the description drawing heavily from multiple texts from Isaiah, including our first reading: “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.” The citations from Isaiah aren’t a rhetorical flourish; they’re the argument: Jesus is doing what God promised. Implicit in the response: there is a difference between gathering the wheat and burning the chaff on the one hand and what Jesus has been doing on the other.

Notice that Jesus in his response is doing what he did in the synagogue in Nazareth as recorded by Luke. Reading from Isaiah, he reads up to “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” but omits the following “and the day of vengeance of our God” (Isa 61:1-2; Lk 4:18-19).

Jesus knows that this is both what John does and doesn’t want to hear. Hence “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Of course, it’s not a problem only with John. Luke recalls James and John’s response when a Samaritan village refuses to receive them: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luk 9:54). And it’s been a problem ever since: Jesus and his followers: enacting  God’s vengeance or God’s compassion and mercy (recalling the ending of James’ argument, cut short by the lectionary)?

So that’s one problem, what “the one who is to come” is doing, is commissioning us to do. It affects even our reading of the Magnificat. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, / and has lifted up the lowly./ He has filled the hungry with good things, / and the rich he has sent away empty.” That should give the mighty and rich pause.[1] But following Jesus’ lead we focus our efforts on the lowly and the hungry, a focus that often demands not a little patience.

“Be patient—James writes—until the coming of the Lord.” James is also dealing with a second problem, the delay in that coming. His contribution to our reflection lies in his choice of wording. As Luke Timothy Johnson observes of the verb makrothymein, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament that verb and its corresponding noun are mostly “used of the attitudes of a superiority to an inferior.” “[B]efore the time of judgment, God shows makrothymia; so should the community also share that outlook” (The Letter of James, 313). Contra Ambrose Bierce, we exercise patience from a position of strength, not weakness.

Now, if the delay in Jesus’ coming was a problem for James in the first century, it’s a problem for us in the twenty-first! In the Great Thanksgiving: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” How do I make sense of that delay? Well, in three different ways.

First, were I to push the question, I’d open myself to the same divine response Job got (Job 38-41):

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements– surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? (Job 38:4-7)

And those would be legitimate questions.

The second way is a spin-off from God’s response to Job. We tend to assume that we’re God’s only concern. God spends the last two chapters of the reply to Job celebrating Behemoth (“which I made just as I made you”) and Leviathan (“When it raises itself up the gods are afraid; / at the crashing they are beside themselves.”). We humans are often making a mess of it; the rest of creation, from the hummingbirds to the great whales, are giving exquisite full-throated glory to God.

The third way is more tentative, and takes off from James’ example of the farmer. Some things take time. Crops take months; some things take much longer stretches. Take Yosemite Valley: the time to form those massive blocks of granite, the time for the glaciers to do their thing. So we get the majesty of Half Dome. Or take the Grand Canyon: God introduces what will become the Colorado River: let’s see what that looks like in five or six million years. God is happy to work with long stretches of time.

What if the Creator wishes to explore the potential of this creature made “a little lower than God” (Ps 8:5)? David and his harp: it took time for that technology to develop, and it will take centuries more before a Mozart, a Beethoven, or a Copeland can appear. Or to take a different sort of technology, the centuries to develop the scientific traditions that make possible the achievements displayed in the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Literally breath-taking what we can do together in our best moments.

There is, as Scripture and the daily headlines remind us, more than enough cruelty and suffering to have us crying “Come, Lord Jesus.” Job and these other reflections don’t lessen that impulse, but do make me grateful that I’m not the one making the decision on timing.

To sum up this perhaps strange reflection on our readings, Scripture is clear that the mind is important. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mat 22:37). And sometimes its importance lies in its capacity to recognize its limits. So I am profoundly grateful that Jesus’ blessing in today’s Gospel is not “Blessed is anyone who understands what I’m doing” but “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

[1] Recall the British ban during their rule in India as well as the more recent bans by dictatorships in Argentina and Guatemala. (Source)

“The wolf shall live with the lamb”–and Paul’s readers in Rome struggle to make that work! Second Sunday of Advent, 12/7/2025

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Readings

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” So Paul to the Romans in our second reading. Hope: today’s readings flesh that out in some encouraging ways. Let’s dive in.

Whatever else it is, our reading from Isaiah, an exercise in hope.” A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…” “Stump of Jesse:” that assumes that things have not gone well. Just a few chapters back we heard Isaiah warning Ahaz “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all” (7:9), but Ahaz is showing no sign of that faith; he’s putting his faith in the king of Assyria! Nevertheless, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…” The faithlessness of Ahaz—of most of the kings of Judah—will not get the last word. And what a shoot! “With righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together…” And what is happening in Jerusalem will get international attention: “On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him…” It sounds like what we heard last week from Isaiah (“Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’” [Isa 2:3]). Hope.

This hope for what God will do through the shoot drives today’s psalm in more general terms: what God will do through any king. Prosperity, international security: yes. The surprise is that what the king is doing focuses almost entirely on defending the needy, rescuing the poor. From the part the lectionary omitted:

For he shall deliver the poor who cries out in distress, *
and the oppressed who has no helper.
He shall have pity on the lowly and poor; *
he shall preserve the lives of the needy.
He shall redeem their lives from oppression and violence, *
and dear shall their blood be in his sight.

God to the king: you worry about the poor; I’ll worry about prosperity and the other nations. The tragedy of Israel’s history: like Ahaz, most of the kings worried about prosperity and the other nations, with the poor toward the bottom of the to-do list. Gentile rulers—to whom the offer is implicitly extended—have tended to do no better. So the hand-copying of Psalm 72 in the centuries before Gutenberg, also an exercise in hope that someone will take it seriously.

So when John the Baptist proclaims “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” that does encourage the hope that God is doing something about those words from Isaiah and the psalm. He’s baptizing at the Jordan, that river that Joshua and Israel crossed to enter the land. It’s a powerful promise: we can begin again. At the same time, there’s that word “repent.” The problem isn’t “those people.” John’s right there with Pogo: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” That image of wheat and chaff with which our reading ends? The wheat: not those who don’t need to repent, but those who are doing so. So the first of our brother Martin Luther’s 95 theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

Which brings us to our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans. “Abound in hope:” particularly a challenge in the capital of the Roman Empire, whose legions, architecture, and stories had no intention of going anywhere! Virgil, the Empire’s poet, has Jupiter, king of the gods, saying this of the Romans:

“On them I set no limits, space or time:
I have granted them power, empire without end.” (Aeneid i.333-334)

Living among competing narratives is nothing new! So Paul “May the God of hope–not to be confused with Jupiter–fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” How does Paul think this works, particularly “believing”? Our reading is at the end of a section in which he’s dealing with the challenge of Jewish and Gentile believers living together. Some, in faith, keep kosher and observe particular days; some, also in faith, eat whatever they want and treat all days equally. All are tempted to judge, to enlighten the others. While Paul talks about the groups as the strong and the weak, each group would have seen itself as strong and faithful in contrast to the other groups.

Paul: “Welcome one another…just as Christ has welcomed you.” It’s not a call to toleration (too often simply a temporary ceasefire until one of the groups feels strong enough to resume hostiliities), but to actively supporting each other’s different understandings of faithfulness.

Isaiah: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid.” Lovely words, but Isaiah didn’t have to figure out how that actually works. Paul—and the Romans—do. Wolves, lambs, leopards, kids: in God’s faithfulness all thrown together in Rome’s various house churches. Potlucks are going to stay complicated. (With increased awareness of food intolerances in our congregations, we should be able to sympathize!)

And this welcoming one another, encouraging one another, wolves as wolves and lambs as lambs, is a powerful sign that Isaiah’s words aren’t just words, but a world that God is birthing in their midst. So there’s reason for hope. But it’s a hope that doesn’t come cheap. It means the repenting, the turning, that John the Baptist proclaimed, repenting of the natural assumption that our group’s right, that they’re the ones who need to change, that they’re not sufficiently grateful for our tolerance.

Let’s step back for a minute. To the first century Romans Paul writes “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (14:17). But despite the presence of this section in his letter (14:1-15:13) we Christians have been really proficient at finding equivalents to food and drink over which to divide. Within the Anglican tradition, even over the presence or absence of candles on the altar! The problem is that if we’ve got “Welcome one another,” we also have (from Paul’s letter to the Galatians) “if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!” (1:9). Discerning which is applicable in any given situation has never been easy. Nevertheless, this section from Romans is a standing challenge to our tendency to build walls when we should be building bridges.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Not because hope in itself is a good thing; it depends on what we’re hoping for. Our hope centers in prayers like “Your kingdom come” or “Come, Lord Jesus.” How do we “abound in hope”? As our believing shapes our behavior so that our common life offers glimpses of what we’re hoping for, of Jesus’ presence, of Isaiah’s vision: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”

The Day is Near (!) (?) First Sunday of Advent, 11/30/2025

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Readings

Somewhat earlier in Matthew we hear Jesus saying this:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (13:44-46).

The vision of God’s kingdom in our first reading is like that treasure, that pearl. The nations beating swords into plowshares, devoting all that expertise, all those resources, into human flourishing. That, says Isaiah, is God’s future for the nations. The last verse describes it as Israel’s charge in the present: “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!” And perhaps Israel walking in that light will make it easier to get the nations walking in that light.

This theme of the nations doing that, you need to do this organizes Paul’s exhortations in our second reading. He is writing, recall, to the Christians living in the capital of the empire. The reveling and debauchery he alludes to may be issues among the Christians; they’re standard for Rome’s elites. That, says Paul, is the night; the day’s “near,” so “let us live honorably as in the day.” It’s still night; we live as in the day.

What’s at stake in these two readings? Well, catch Isaiah’s vision or Paul’s vision of God’s coming kingdom and the political differences that can be so important to us pale in comparison. Some of you may have seen Ken Burns’ 12-hour documentary The American Revolution that aired a couple weeks ago. One of its striking themes was the degree to which the revolution was a civil war, with rampant inhumanity on both sides. That represented a massive failure in Christian formation. Disagreements are inevitable; violence may be inevitable. Keeping God’s coming kingdom in mind should mean not keeping a supply of tar and feathers readily available.

When is God’s kingdom coming? Our texts offer two answers. Jesus in our Gospel reading gives one: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Only the Father knows. (Parenthetically, that “nor the Son” was disconcerting enough that while Matthew took this verse over from Mark, Luke simply omits it!) So judging simply from the titles, there are a good number of books not worth opening, web links not worth the click.

But twenty-one centuries after these words do we simply say “Amen!”? Paul’s “the night is far gone, the day is near:” “Amen?” Well, yes. Peter, already addressing the issue, writes “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2Pe 3:8). Whether that resolves the issue is a judgment call. I think not, so my wondering goes in a variety of directions. Clearly God has hit the pause button. There’s God’s answer to Job (chapters 38-41): not simply that God’s ways are several orders of magnitude above our understanding, but that we’re not God’s only concern. God spends the last two chapters celebrating Behemoth (“which I made just as I made you”) and Leviathan (“When it raises itself up the gods are afraid; / at the crashing they are beside themselves.”). We humans are often making a mess of it; the rest of creation, from the hummingbirds to the great whales, are giving exquisite full-throated glory to God.

Then there’s the time involved in creating the splendor and beauty preserved in our national parks. Yosemite Valley: the time to form those massive blocks of granite, the time for the glaciers to do their thing. So we get the majesty of Half Dome. The Grand Canyon: God introduces what will become the Colorado River: let’s see what that looks like in five or six million years. God is happy to work with long stretches of time.

Then there’s the time involved in exploring the potential of this creature made “a little lower than God” (Ps 8:5). It takes centuries to develop the musical tradition in which a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Copeland can appear. It takes centuries to develop the scientific traditions that make possible the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Literally breath-taking what we can do together in our best moments.

There is, as Scripture and the daily headlines remind us, more than enough cruelty and suffering to have us crying “Come, Lord Jesus.” Job and these other reflections don’t lessen that impulse, but do make me grateful that I’m not the one making the decision on timing.

So, “But about that day and hour no one knows” is one answer to the question of timing. But then there’s Jesus’ promise at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:20), which somewhat relativizes the question of when Jesus returns. That, coupled with the exhortations in Isaiah and Paul to live God’s future now, raises the question of how much of that future might contaminate the present.

So, for example, Isaiah’s vision: only for the future? Second and third century Christians argue that it’s being realized now, evidence that Jesus is the promised Messiah. Here’s Justin, writing around 160:

“For, we Christians, who have gained a knowledge of the true worship of God from the Law and from the word which went forth from Jerusalem by way of the Apostles of Jesus, have run for protection to the God of Jacob and the God of Israel. And we who delighted in war, in the slaughter of one another, and in every other kind of iniquity have in every part of the world converted our weapons of war into implements of peace—our swords into ploughshares, our spears into farmers’ tools—and we cultivate piety, justice, brotherly charity, faith, and hope, which we derive from the Father through the Crucified Savior” (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 110.2-3).

How much of God’s future might contaminate our present? We don’t know. The invitation of Advent—of the entire Church Year, for that matter—let’s find out.

How God likes to use power (Christ the King, 11/23/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

“May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power” Paul writes. On this Feast of Christ the King that “glorious power” is worth wondering about.

How does God use this “glorious power”? In our first reading from Jeremiah, “I will attend to you [the shepherds] for your evil doings,” which, as Jeremiah had been warning, meant bringing in the Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem. “Then I myself will gather the remnant”—through the various leaders who brought waves of exiles back to Jerusalem. And through “a righteous Branch” for David—which turns out to point forward to our other readings.

In Zechariah’s song “He has raised up for us a mighty savior, / born of the house of his servant David. / … save us from our enemies, / from the hands of all who hate us.” That sounds like military power.

In the Gospel the “righteous Branch” of whom Jeremiah spoke, the “mighty savior” Zechariah celebrated, is on stage for… the crucifixion? At first glance, profoundly disturbing, and we’re there with the two disciples leaving (fleeing?) Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luk 24:21). It took Jesus’ resurrection and post-resurrection teaching to enable us to see that Friday as “Good.” There, as Paul puts it, God “was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Or, as Paul puts it to the Corinthians “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2Co 5:19). So Jesus’ words (“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”), expressions of weakness, or power? Recall Jesus’ words from John’s Gospel: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (12:32).

What does God use power for? Clearly, when necessary, to attend violently to the shepherds destroying and scattering the sheep. But our readings—as well as the rest of Scripture—suggest that God would greatly prefer to use that power, as Paul puts it, “to reconcile to himself all things.” Will God succeed, succeed in turning all enemies into friends? Scripture leaves that question open, much to the dismay of the commentators who’ve tried to find a clear answer in the Book of Revelation. Why does Scripture leave the question open? Perhaps because our desires and decisions also matter. The story is still being written.

What Scripture does not leave open is how God wants us to use that power. Back to Paul: “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father…” This may be why Paul calls love the greatest of God’s gifts, for it is love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Co 13:7).

We have, obviously, enemies, and we want God to do something about them. “Love your enemies” is no easier now than when Moses (Exodus 23:4-5) and Jesus (Matt 5:44) first said it. It may help to recall another of Paul’s observations in that “Love Chapter”: “now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1Co 13:12). That applies both to us and our enemies, so sometimes they’re seeing things that we don’t, that we need to see. In any case, as today’s Collect celebrates, “the King of kings and Lord of lords” is about freeing and bringing together all those divided and enslaved by sin, and calls us to be part of that. (And the weekly General Confession reminds us that “those divided and enslaved by sin” is not entirely in our rearview mirror!)

God’s glorious power. The Holy Eucharist is many-faceted. Today’s Feast and readings might remind us that it, and, precisely, the words of institution, is also a celebration of that glorious power. “This is my Body.… This is my Blood.” Royal words, royal gifts, to empower us to share in our King’s work.

Much of what I’ve been exploring in these texts is captured in one of the prayers buried toward the back of the Book of Common Prayer on p.816. So I invite you to turn to it, stand as you are able, so that in celebration of this Feast of Christ the King we can pray “6. For our enemies” together:

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Praying “Your kingdom come” (23rd Sunday after Pentecost, 11/16/2025)

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Readings (Track 2)

This morning’s Collect focused on Holy Scripture: “Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life…” How might that work with today’s readings?

More precisely, the themes in some of the readings recall that petition in the Lord’s Prayer: “your kingdom come.” How might the readings help us better pray “your kingdom come”?

Our first reading from the prophet Malachi: “See, the day is coming.” The day, the day of the Lord, the Lord’s decisive action. Like many other descriptions of the day of the Lord, the text focuses the Lord sorting things out: the arrogant, the evildoers, “you who revere my name,” each will get their due. (We’re still a couple weeks out from Advent, but this wouldn’t make a bad Advent reading!)

That sounds pretty good: the arrogant and evildoers, “you who revere my name” neatly separated. But our tradition, informed by Holy Scripture, has us confessing at each Eucharist “we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed…” That separation isn’t as stable as we’d like.

When we pray “your kingdom come” it’s pretty much inevitable that we focus on where we perceive God’s agenda and our agenda aligning. And that easily becomes a focus on only where those agendas align, so that “your kingdom come” and “my kingdom come” become indistinguishable. In our polarized national context, it’s easy to see this happening among those with whom we disagree. So the challenge is to stay alert to the possibility that God might have some questions about our agenda. Easier said than done. In the midst of the English civil war, Oliver Cromwell to the Scottish clergy: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” Among the many spiritual disciplines on offer today, that may be one of the more relevant.

What do our enemies want us to hear as we read Holy Scripture? They won’t always be wrong.

What of today’s Gospel reading? The temple in Jerusalem was one of the axes of Jesus’ ministry. Even after his resurrection his followers were worshipping in the temple, like Peter and John that day that they encountered the man lame from birth (Acts 3:1ff). It would have been natural for the disciples to assume that “your kingdom come” could only mean increased glory for the temple. And already it was glorious, “adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.” So Luke is probably underplaying the shock of Jesus’ words (“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”). It’s a warning to us: to pray “your kingdom come” is to write our merciful God a blank check. Our merciful God, so there’s no reason to fear, but also no reason to assume that we know what God will do with it.

Our reading from 2nd Thessalonians is the odd man out, included not because it relates to the other readings, but because the lectionary—justifiably—wants to include some of the letter somewhere, so here we are. No direct connection to “your kingdom come,” but not entirely disconnected. Like the other petitions in the first half of the Lord’s Prayer, it’s self-involving. In Thessalonica, praying “your kingdom come” means I make my decisions about time, talent, and treasure as a member of the community of believers. Following Paul’s example, idleness is not an appropriate response. Where idleness is not an issue, the broader principle holds: to pray “your kingdom come” is to commit to live together in a way that witnesses to the hope of that kingdom.

“Your kingdom come.” Our texts have encouraged us to understand this as playing out in our future. True enough, but not the whole truth. We started with Malachi’s announcement of “the day,” shorthand for “the day of the Lord.” But recall that we refer to Sunday as “the Lord’s day.” We’re already encountering that use in the New Testament. From the first chapter of the Revelation: “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day” (1:10). The core of “the day of the Lord” is in our past, whether we think of it as Easter Sunday, Holy Week, or that whole stretch from the Incarnation to the Ascension. Every Sunday, a celebration of the Resurrection, a celebration of the Lord’s victory as anticipated in Psalm 98.

2 With his right hand and his holy arm
has he won for himself the victory.

3 The Lord has made known his victory;
his righteousness has he openly shown in the sight of the nations.

The tomb is empty. Jesus 1, Death 0. Or, more accurately, Death 0, Jesus 1, since this world is God’s home turf.

And so, while the Church is not the Kingdom, it’s the context in which we get a foretaste of the Kingdom. Paul again: “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17). The Risen Christ has showered on us the Holy Spirit, and with “your kingdom come,” we pray that these gifts spread out to the ends of the earth. Amen.

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength” (22nd Sunday after Pentecost, 11/9/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

Today’s readings are, as it were, the soundtracks from three points in our history as the people of God. What is their good news (their Gospel) for us today? Each in their own way are echoing the Gospel as proclaimed in Isaiah 40. That chapter’s first verse: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” Its last verse: “but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (v.31).

In our first reading the prophet Haggai speaks in a profoundly discouraging situation. Some of the Judean exiles are back from Babylon, but the rebuilt temple is a constant reminder of the splendor of the temple the Babylonians destroyed, and Zerubbabel, a Davidic heir, is “governor,” not king. We can sympathize: some of us can remember when the pews were packed and affiliation with a congregation was simply part of being a good community member. So Haggai: take courage, work, do not fear! Why? “I am with you… my spirit abides among you.”

The prophet continues: “Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the LORD of hosts” (Hag 2:6-7). With all due respect to George Frederick Handel’s brilliant rendering of these verses, they’re a problem, because nothing recognizably like this happens in Haggai’s lifetime. Centuries later Herod the Great fills the temple with splendor, just in time for Jesus to pronounce it a “den of thieves” and for the Romans to destroy it! It’s an example of something common even to true prophets: the short- and long-term are conflated. God, as we often observe, does time differently than we do.

Nevertheless, “I am with you… my spirit abides among you.” That’s the comfort Isaiah talked about. Not consolation (as in “consolation prize”), but an assurance that God’s still active that strengthens the hearers. “Those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” So Haggai: “work.”

Notice that that line from Isaiah doesn’t read “Those who see the LORD acting” but “Those who wait for the LORD.” So waiting for the LORD is not like waiting for the mail: it expresses itself in the strength Isaiah describes, in celebrating before the final battle. (That is, by the way, one of the fundamental dimensions of the Eucharist. Isaiah (elsewhere) had prophesied: “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever” (25:6-8a). Every Eucharist foreshadows that feast, that new world in which everyone is welcome, there’s room for everyone, there’s enough for everyone. We celebrate particularly on Sunday, when our Lord took that decisive chomp out of Death.

If that waiting for the Lord is sustained by remembering God’s mighty acts—preeminently the resurrection—it’s equally sustained by the “God moments” in our past or present, often in the form of particular people. It’s what Paul was talking about in last Sunday’s reading:
“We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing” (2Th 1:3). Yes, Cain, we are each other’s keeper, and the choices we make in our dealings with each other nurture or sap our capacity to faithfully wait.

The ending of our reading from Paul’s letter was the inspiration for associating our readings with Isaiah 40: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.”

That reading started with Paul trying to quash the rumor that the “day of the Lord” had already arrived. He works the problem from two angles. First, he recalls an expected sequence of events, perhaps drawing from Jesus’ teaching as recorded in Matthew (24:1ff), Mark (13:1ff), and Luke (25:5ff). Attempts to make sense of this sequence in the subsequent centuries of the Church’s life have not been encouraging. Second, he paints the larger picture: “God chose you as the first fruits for salvation.” There is a rich harvest coming; you’re the beginning of it. That’s a designation every generation can own: for every generation is in a unique situation, and, in God’s generosity, the first fruits in anticipation of a rich harvest. It’s why Jesus told parables like the sower and the mustard seed. “Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the LORD; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the LORD; work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts.”

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.… but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” OK, preacher, how does Jesus’ argument with the Sadducees regarding the resurrection relate to that?

In this way, I think: what makes it hard to believe Isaiah’s words then and now is the same thing tripping up the Sadducees, the assumption that we know how the world works. The Sadducees: if there’s a resurrection it’s a continuation of life as we know it, which leads to absurdities like one woman simultaneously married to seven brothers.

As you may recall, Matthew and Mark also tell this story, and in their accounts Jesus begins his response with “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God” (Mat 22:29; cf. Mk 12:24). Centuries later Hamlet makes a similar point to Horatio in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I find Hamlet’s words a useful benchmark: is that therealization that our encounters with Scripture and God’s power are generating? Sadly, there are too many ways of reading Scripture that narrow our focus, confirm our prejudices. Oh, that our readings more often generated the awe and wonder reflected in Hamlet’s words!

God’s future: not the continuation of life as we know it. As we celebrate in the Eucharist, in God’s future, everyone is welcome, there’s room for everyone, there’s enough for everyone. Let us hear again Isaiah’s words: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.… but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”