Ash Wednesday at St Mark Church in Norman, OK

March 5, 2003

Joel 2:12-18 + 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2 + Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

The first words of this great and holy season come from God himself. It is Joel who gives voice to the longing of God, who calls us together and asks us to look up from the cares of this day, the troubles of this year, and the long season of violence and disaster that seems to have settled upon us.

It’s as though a thousand voices were moaning and crying, weeping and lamenting, groaning and sobbing out of disappointment and fear, loneliness and sorrow. One voice is heard above all the others, one voice that says: Come back to me.

The media loudly tempts us with glamour and pleasure, The culture calls us to wealth, power, and independence. Pride seduces us to look out for number one. Fear whispers in our ear that there might not be enough, “keep it” “save it” “hold it.” Pleasure lures us to eat, to drink, to pleasure in another because it makes us feel good and there is so much pain. Envy beckons to see what others have without thought of our own gifts. And anger roars inside us ready to lash out at the simplest offence.

Above all that din one voice calls to us: “Come back to me.” One prophet reminds us that our only recourse is to God. Only God brings peace, quiets the noise, and stirs our Joy. The prophet speaks of a trumpet call and he rallies us to action. Notice that the call is to all of us, the whole church, not just one or two here or there. This season is no lonely struggle for individuals; but a collective, common effort of all God’s people. The struggle against sin is not one we win alone, for our victory is found only in our oneness in the Body of Christ. Just as each one’s sins affect the rest, so do each one’s good works bring hope and comfort to all.

It begins now, our forty days of renewal, our time to make simpler these complicated lives that pull us in every direction at once day in and day out. Lives that seem to have no focus, no direction, and no centers are lives that cause others to say: “Where is their God.”

Now it begins with one voice: “Come back to me.” It says. “Come back to me with all your heart.”

The 8^th Sunday in Ordinary Time at St March Church in Norman, OK

March 2, 2003

Hosea 2:17-22 + 2 Corinthians 3:1-6 + Mark 2: 18-22

Pharisees get a bad rap in the Gospels. Consequently, we are not inclined to listen to what they have to say much less why they say it. Gospel writers use them as a tool to reinforce the sayings of Jesus, and that works well, but sometimes what Jesus has to say does not overturn or reverse what the Pharisees say, but simply reinforces it from another direction. I think today’s encounter with the Pharisees could be heard in that way with a little more attention to the motives of these Pharisees.

Far from being self-righteous moralists saving their souls by scrupulous personal behavior,

Pharisees are trying to create a common culture that would support fellow Jews in living their religion in the hostile environment of pagan Roman culture. They understood that the identity and the survival of any minority is the firm cohesion of members and preserving their clear distinction from others. Their whole focus was to confirm, establish, and maintain the identity of Israel. They believed that doing so rested upon the faithful and strict observance of Jewish law especially the laws that distinguished them from the Romans. They believed that the Jewish people were God’s people that they lived in Covenant with God and were therefore different from if not better than the Romans, and to keep their privileged status, they had to keep all the rules of the covenant. Pharisees believed that ones identity as a member of God’s chosen people was best found in obedience to God’s law. Nothing wrong with that thinking !

We are about to enter into the season of Lent. Forty days of identity search. It begins with an outward sign that you can wash off, and probably will within hours of its being imposed: a cross of ashes on your forehead. Everyone who sees that cross will know your identity and know where you’ve already been that day. But once it is cleaned away, who will know and what will they know? That is the question posed by this Gospel, an appropriate question to raise three days before Lent begins.

In years past, people knew our identity by what we ate on Friday by how we began a meal in public with the sign of the cross, as much as by where we went to church. These days, it is probably worth asking the question: How would anyone know we were disciples of Jesus rather than disciples of Alan Greenspan? How would they know that we live by Gospel values rather than peer pressure? How would they know that we believe that we have been made by God from the dust of the earth and will return to that dust one day?

The Forty Days that begin this Wednesday give us time to consider those questions and others like them that concern our identity as children of God and Disciples of Christ Jesus. Sacrifice, fasting, and prayer are the time-honored ways of sorting out and confirming our identity. Until we know who we are, no one else will either. Those ancient and well-proven ways provide for us our identity and give us the courage to make more public witness to the truth of that identity by the choices we make, the causes we claim, and the style of our life in relationship to this world and its inhabitants.

The Challenge of the Pharisees speaks to us today, about how we are to preserve our identity in a world that is hostile or indifferent to the values of our faith and the Gospel of Christ Jesus. What we shall do, and how we shall observe these forty days are matters that shape that identity and remind us who we are. These sacraments, customs, prayers, fasting, and almsgiving are for us what the Law was for the Pharisees. The observance of these customs are what keep us together and faithful to the one who has lived among us and remains among us in the sacramental life of the church. A little patch here, a little fix now and then is not going to keep us faithful to the Gospel we have been given and the life we are promised. What is required says Jesus, is that we abandon whole ways of thinking, adopt new ways of living, and embrace a life that will never leave in doubt who we are and where we are going.

The 7^th Sunday in Ordinary Time at St Mark Church

February 23, 2003

Isaiah 43:18-22 + 2 Corinthians 1:18-22 + Mark 2:1-12

When the crowd clears and the dust settles, there is nothing left here but a hole in the roof angry scribes have slipped off soon to confront this man from Nazareth for his blasphemies. Jesus has also slipped away from the mob and goes looking for disciples. The owner of the house is probably having second thoughts about his guest while he looks for roof repair. The crowd has gone back to whatever it is they do all day, but not quite the same. And somewhere in Capernaum there’s a party going on. Five friends are celebrating an event that has changed their lives fulfilled their fondest dreams, and confirmed the bond of their friendship.

Not simply a piece of Mark’s development of the connection between healing and forgiveness, or his unfolding of the identity of Jesus, this is also the very human story of the power of faith and friendship. The paralyzed man has lost his health, but not his friends. We are left to imagine what went on between the five of them: whose idea it was, and whose faith in Christ Jesus led them onto the roof, but we are not left to imagine the consequences. These twelve verses tell us as much about the power of friendship as the do about the power of Jesus. They speak about forgiveness; the finest gift friends can share.

Jesus enters into that friendship with them, and by his presence the very love of God is made visible through the love of these friends. Jesus does not so much DO something here, as CONFIRM something that is already at work. The relationship between reconciliation and friendship has been opened as clearly as the hole in the roof. A little while later, Jesus will address those who gather around a table with him, and he will call us “friends”. This Gospel calls us to celebrate again our friendships, reminds us that they are moments of grace and power for new levels of relationship to God, and they are in fact, sacramental; bringing us what we truly need.

The network of all our human relationships springs to life from the friendship of a husband and wife. The event Mark puts before us confirms what we have discovered again and again in our own lives: The beauty of friendship is in its power to forgive, to reconcile, and provide a sense of security and well-being. It is an experience that brings us to praise God,

to look again at how we view our church, sin, and grace; and where we find the power for reconciliation and renewal that leaves us with praise in our hearts and on our tongues.

A hole in the roof……

A mat abandoned somewhere on the way to a celebration…..

little reminders of what has happened to us and what we shall become through friendship in faith and in Christ Jesus. What we proclaim this winter day is the power of human love and human relationship that Jesus Christ has come to reveal and affirm.

The 6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time at St Mark Church in Norman, OK

February 16, 2003

Leviticus 13:1, 2,44-46 + 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1 + Mark 1:40-45

The ancient world lived a much more integrated life than we have. The dichotomy between the natural and spiritual was not so clearly drawn. God was not shoved off to heaven. Demons were not shoved into hell. Illness was not nearly as clinical as it is now. The ancient culture in which we find Jesus experienced the body and the soul as more interdependent than we would like. Our “post modern” even “post-Christian” culture is more comfortable with a fragmented view of self. I say, “post-Christian” because I believe that this very separated, broken existence where the human and the divine are pulled apart, where the body and soul are distinct, where the sacred and the secular are clearly different is the very antithesis, the very undoing, or opposite of what the Incarnation is all about.

There is a way of seeing the work of Jesus as a work of integration, a work of confirming the wholeness of life and the unity of that life in the source of life, God. The Gospel Mark puts before us today is just such a ministry. It is a ministry of restoration, a ministry of healing. He sends the man to the priest. The deliberate connection of healing, cleansing, and faith are not incidental to this event. The details in this story have sacramental implications. The healing and cleansing of this man is a spiritual event just as much as it is a physical one. In fact, we are left to wonder if it could have been possible had one of these elements been absent.

What good would it have been to be free of this disease, if the man’s relationship to the community had not been restored by the priest he was sent to see. None of the miracles, none of the healing ministry of Jesus happened without faith and talk of salvation. The body and the soul for Jesus are always one. It strikes me as somehow very revealing when I hear people praying for the sick or praying for their own deliverance from illness who given so little thought toward their soul’s illness in sin. We are becoming a people without soul, and therefore without sin.

Moving deep into this Gospel reveals that the issue here is more than a physical malady. The “condition” is human sin in all its forms and all its consequences. Just as much as leprosy can destroy, separate, isolate, and cripple, so does sin. They saw that clearly in the ancient cultures. Yet, we don’t quite get it. In our fragmented existence, keeping the soul and the body apart, we live in denial: denial of our dis-ease with sin, and our ill health as well. Yet we spend billions a year on health-care, and we see doctor after doctor, get our shots (even at church), and see Pharmacies being built faster than banks. We want the body strong and healthy, and we want to live long and happy lives while the soul’s condition is ignored, forgotten, or just left till “later” when we have time or else have nothing better to do.

Given the lengths to which many will go to be cured of a disease such as cancer through surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, it occurs to me that we might be just as challenged to make comparable efforts to be healed and forgiven of sin. The details of this gospel give us the critical outline of a miracle story: (1) the petitioner approaches Jesus requesting healing; (2) Jesus responds with a touch and a word; (3) the cure is affirmed. This is the consistent framework of healing miracles, and the consistent ritual of “Reconciliation”, a Sacrament. We fail to see and recognize this because of our fragmented lives. We fail to see sin as a malady that is destroying our lives just as much as any other illness – because we have lost our sense of wholeness affirmed by the Incarnation. This rift in our selves allows deep denial over the illness of sin. We have reduced sin to issues of sexual desires and behavior, and pretended that violence, greed, fear that holds us back from doing good, and the seductions of power and wealth are not really sins. They’re just not “nice.” Lent is coming, my friends: the time for cleansing and healing. On the very first Monday of Lent we will gather here to begin those days of healing. Every Wednesday of Lent in the evening, and every Friday of Lent at noon there will be an opportunity for you to imitate the faith of the man in this Gospel. Just as he dared to approach Jesus and declare, “If you will, to do so, you can cure me”, so should every one of us be so bold and so full of faith.

The 5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time at St March Church in Norman, OK

February 9, 2003

Job 7:1-4, 6-7 + 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23 + Mark 1:29-39

We have someone with us today who is rarely here. He is a little restless and often on the move. I’ve known him most of my life. He is not always popular, and I think it’s because he complains too much. I suspect he sings off key, whines a whole lot, and hasn’t many friends. His name is Job. He shows up rarely in our liturgical readings, and I think it is probably due to his steady stream of complaining and laments that are not very appealing in the context of celebrations. But he and his story are important to us. Without him and the themes he raises, we would be out of balance and probably deep in denial.

Job brings us a dose of reality. Today he proposes four things that to the honest are undeniable: things are not always right and lovely they need not be this way and can be changed sometimes my situation is intolerable with God things can be better, and I really believe this to be true.

The book of the bible that bears his name explores human suffering. Job himself may or may not have actually historically existed. But his story does, and all share his experience.

Rich in the eyes of this world, he has everything anyone could want: family, friends, wealth, and property. He lost everything that he had looked upon as God’s blessings. He came down with a disease that tortured him day and night. Those around him scoffed at his fidelity to God in the face of all that. They suggested that his sin or someone else’s caused it all. In the back and forth discussions recorded in the book, the popularly held notion that suffering was a punishment for sin gets contradicted, and God’s role in misfortune is not clear. At least, God is not to blame.

We are left to think that perhaps wealth, friends, possessions, and power are not really “gifts” that God give or takes. Perhaps, suffering is not really from God either. What we are left to discover is that Faith is the gift, and that with the gift of faith, we can become creative with everything else.

Suffering is a part of the human condition. The experience of it can either lead us nearer to God or send us running from God in despair and disappointment. It is the same with wealth, friends, and possessions. They can either lead us nearer to God, or drive us deep into selfish hoarding and loneliness. The Good News we proclaim is not an escape from the pain of life as I suggested last week in the context of parenting. The Good News offers a way to transform suffering into the birth pangs of something new. In the end, the Gospel is not given to us to make us good, but to make us creative.

This is the kind of discipleship Jesus promotes among those who follow him. The Jesus of this Gospel is a creative gift. His work of healing and forgiveness is a work of creation and by his own words, this is why he has come. Suffering people in the Gospel come to Jesus. They are healed and set free. The most burdened life is the one most filled with potential and holds the promise of new creation. The disciple who joins in the work of Jesus, joins in that work, and when it happens lament is turned into praise, complaint becomes thanksgiving, and God becomes companion. When that happens within us, we will have become disciples, and will have Good News to proclaim.

The Feast of the Holy Family at St Mark the Evangelist Church in Norman, OK

December 29, 2002

Genesis 15:1-6; 1:1-3 + Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19 + Luke 2:22-40

One look at the families in the Bible, and you discover there’s hope for us all. Dysfunction is not a social phenomenon of the late twentieth century. That age just gave it a clever name that markets a lot of self-help books. We would like to think that all was well with Abraham and Sarah. After all, they were favored by God, open to God’s plans, and more or less happy to co-operate. Abraham tried to kill his son, Isaac! God had to intervene. Then Isaac had his own problems with his two sons who fought among themselves and tricked each other out of their inheritance. But who could be surprised, their ancestors, Adam and Eve ended up with Cane and Able. They didn’t do so well either!

The families of Biblical History are not much different from the families of our time. Infidelity, abuse, lying, cheating, rebellious children, murder, lonely widows, abandonment, illness, and early death. It’s all there. It’s all in our history. It’s all a part of being God’s people. This annual feast on the Sunday after Christmas can become stressful observance for many especially those who grew up with the Nelson family and the Cleavers as weekly models in their homes as television entertainment. I don’t know about you, but my dad never wore a tie in the house. He wore it to work, but came off just before his shoes when he walked through the door. I never saw Ozzie Nelson lying on the couch drinking a beer! While my parents kept their disputes to themselves and I never saw how they worked out their disagreements, I was keenly aware of the silence and stares that were a part of that process.

The consequence of all that idealism leaves us stranded in these days of single parent families, blended families, extended families, and families of persons not genetically related to one another. For some it may stir up guilt, disappointment, or anger. This feast has nothing to do with that. It invites us to think again about family in a more radical way: to reconsider the relationships of our lives. Famulus in Latin means servant, which would suggest that the real meaning of “family” is that place where one serves another, where places the needs, interests, desires and delights of the other ahead of their own.

Family is the nesting ground of society where each of us learn to live with and love one another discovering who we are and what we are capable of becoming. It is that net-work of relationships that keeps our ego in check, and teaches us to look out for one another. It strikes me that one of the unexpected benefits to rethinking the idea of “family” brought about by the broken relationships of our generations is that we might think bigger than the unit that shares the same address. The whole vision of the “Human Family” is a healthy one. It might inspire diplomats and politicians to think more creatively about how to bring peace to this world, and it might motivate all of us to look out for one another more personally when some of the family are out of work, homeless, sick or hungry.

This feast is no sentimental opportunity to compare ourselves to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It comes as a reminder that there is family larger than those who share the same name or the same genes. Family is not a matter of marital fidelity. It is a relationship of care and service. It is a bond of grace and love. This day speaks to us of God’s family, and invites us to consider our ancestors in faith.

That is the role of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in this feast. We are related to them: to Abraham and Sarah too; to David, Samuel, Esther, Ruth, and Jeremiah; to Simeon and Anna; Peter, Andrew, James, and John. They are our brothers. Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila, and Teresa of Calcutta; Oscar Romero and Dorothy Day are part of our family. They teach us to serve, how to be proud of ourselves, and they teach us the responsibility of love and service as a consequence of being born into the human family: the Holy Family that has God as Father and Mother of us all.

The Solemnity of Christmas at St Mark the Evangelist Church in Norman, OK

December 25, 2002

Most of what goes on in this Gospel story happens at night. So, there is good reason for us to gather here in the night, while it is dark. As the Gospel unfolds the story, night is best time to find Christ the Lord. The darkness is where he is to be found. The darkness is the best time to see. It would seem that our God prefers the night. While thinking of this and praying about it this week, I recalled what we are told happened when Christ died: how the day became as night, how the sun was darkened at the third hour. It would seem that our God is comfortable in the shadows and prefers the night.

But you and I….We like the light and prefer the day. We like the light so we can see in the mirror. We like the lights on so we can be seen. We like the lights on so we can shop, so we can drive, so we can know what’s going on and see what lies ahead. We just feel safer in the day or at least with the lights on. But God still prefers the night. Somehow in God’s plan, it takes short days and long nights for seeds to sprout. Lovers seem to prefer the night with its moon and stars. It’s in the night that we hold hands and reach for another.

Less confident of ourselves, in the night we welcome a companion, a love, a presence. And so it is with our God who comes in the night. The darker the night, the more joyful the dawn. It doesn’t seem too odd that the first to hear the news, the first to make their way are the ones awake in the night, the ones at watch while others sleep, the ones outside while the others take comfort and safety inside.

It’s almost as though you have to be outside, in the dark, to hear this news. Even the ones from the East have to stay up – wait for the night – to see a star. The night and its darkness in which we find this God-made-man, this God, Immanuel, is of course not exactly the night of time. It is the night of our darkness in sin, the night of our darkness in fear, the night of our darkness in loneliness, the night of our darkness in loss and helplessness. As those who survive addictions know, it is not until you hit bottom and have nothing left that you have a future and any hope. Until we get out of the light, we will never find our way to Bethlehem. Until we put out the lights of all the “would be” god’s of pleasure and success, pride and power, we will never find the way to Bethlehem.

We have to get into the darkness. We have to remember that we don’t know the way. We have to reach out for another – grasp a hand in the darkness. We have to trust that it is better not to go alone. The shadows of our lives with the good and the bad, the stuff we would rather hide from the glare of day and the gaze of others, and the past with its sin looks all the same in the dark, and that’s where God waits for us.

The prophet insists that only a people who have walked in the darkness can ever really see. This Bethlehem scene told in the night becomes a story of lovers who meet in the darkness where the eye only sees what one loves and what one hopes for in the deepest part of the heart. Blemishes, imperfections, scars of the past; make no difference in the dark. Like parents waiting and watching for the return of a child who is late in the night, our God waits and watches for us to come home in the night. And so we assemble here in the night just as we shall do in the spring before Easter. It is the best time for those who live by hope for the dawn of life itself. Hope stirs here. The word is out that the Bridegroom has come, as always, in the night.

Be watchful, my friends. Take courage. The darkest of days and night will not swallow us up. There is someone in the darkness, in the shadows. That is the news we share and the truth that gives us Joy. The dawn is coming, the promise of glory is announced. Only one light is needed and it comes from the Creator of all light. Go to Bethlehem – there is no power there, there is no wealth, there is no success nor fame.

Your companions will be suspicious night folk – shepherds. Go while it is dark or when you feel it is night.

This Gospel suggests that if we do, we shall see as if it were the day and call it “Glory.”

The 3rd Sunday of Advent at St Mark the Evangelist Church in Norman, OK

December 15, 2002

Isaiah 61: 1-2, 10-11 + 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24 + John 1: 6-8, 19-28

Our last Sunday with Isaiah provides a powerful and familiar text known and used by Jesus in his own synagogue. The condition of Israel when Isaiah writes these lyrical / poetical words provides no apparent reason for Joy. They come back from Babylon with nothing but memories. What was not torn down was left neglected. What the Romans did not destroy, neglect, wind, sun, and rain ruined. Cultivated fields were overgrown. Flocks not taken away had run wild. There were times when life looked better in slavery and some looked back with mixed emotions. In the midst of that Isaiah rises up with his song. He sings of Joy and stirs their hopes with memories that tell of God’s presence. The heart of this prophetic spirituality is Joy, and his message to us rings out with the same challenge and hope as it did to those first re-builders. His message of joy is timeless and still speaks to any who rebuild their lives. After the death of a loved one, or the death of a relationship following divorce; it’s time to rebuild. After the loss of a job and all the dreams that the job may have sustained, or some terrible mistake ruins hopes and shatters plans; it’s time to rebuild.

It is Joy that makes that possible. Easily confused by a culture that would dope itself on possessions and pleasure, Joy is not the same as happiness – that fleeting, momentary response to pleasure and delight. Happiness comes from happenings that are positive and pleasant. Happiness never lasts. It vanishes in the face of trouble and trial. This is not the gift of the prophet.

Joy awakens in the heart with the presence of God. The Joyful are those who recognize and perceive that presence and “enjoy” the companionship it provides. Those earliest re-builders faced the challenge and the disaster sustained by Joy as the prophet by his own presence and through the power of his words and images helped them remember all that God had done for them. The believer who holds to the promise that God is present in all things, tragedy and sin included, remains joy and hope filled in the face of any disaster.

God never promised to make or keep us happy. God simply promised to stay with us always. This companionship, this presence is exactly what the Incarnation of God is all about – immediate presence. It is why the Birth of Christ, the beginning of God’s presence among us, is announced as it is time after time: “I bring you tidings of Great Joy.” says the angel to shepherds and to Zechariah. It is why John the Baptist leapt for joy in the womb of Elizabeth. It is why Mary is so exultant, it is why angels and Magi rejoice. They have a spiritual gift bound up with the person of Jesus who is the presence of God. God has come to comfort his people, and all are joined to God in a bond that is unbreakable: unbreakable by sin, by tragedy, by disappointment, by violence, even by death!

Those who believe in what we will celebrate in ten days are the joyful, and they have “tidings” to share. While happiness may evaporate, Joy penetrates, permeates and persists despite everything that can go wrong. That is our song this day. That is our prophetic message. We wrap ourselves in the presence of God who, through, with, and in Jesus Christ is present among us, now and forever.

The 2nd Sunday of Advent at St Mark the Evangelist Church in Norman, OK

December 8, 2002

Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11 + 2 Peter 3:8-14 + Mark 1: 1-8

Our guide Isaiah takes us to Babylon today. The glory of David’s Kingdom and its mighty capital with palace and temple are no more. The once proud and mighty Israel broken into two Kingdoms first by its own internal conflicts over religious right and privilege both are finally reduced to dim memories as the able bodied are marched away from home as slaves of the victors. There in Babylon, some scholars suggest, many were forced to work on the building of a Persian road through the desert east of the Jordan. This one whose words still have the power to inspire great music, lift the discouraged, and restore broken dreams speaks in this place today.

The one who speaks is not off in some distant place of security and comfort. He has worked the long day shoulder to shoulder with those whose struggle he shares. They are building a road in the desert with their bare hands. Rocks, sand, and boulders move when they push. Hills flatten only when they dig. The gift he shares with them is a way of seeing what they do as a way of preparing for God. The Babylonians were building a “Sacred Way” for the procession of their god “Marduk”. Isaiah’s suggestion is that Israel could find its present condition to be a way of preparing for God rather than leading them away from God. Some might consider the road to be for them; their way out. Others could look at this road as God’s route to them.

I suppose the first option assumes that they know where they are going. Knowing the direction, they think they know which way to build. The second option fits a bit more into truth of the matter. These people are lost. If they knew how to get out of the mess they were in, they wouldn’t be there. A long time ago, in Boy Scout Survival wilderness training, I learned that if lost, the best thing to do was to stay put and wait to be found. If not, the one lost would be in greater danger from injury and exhaustion, likely wandering in circles. It seems like sound advise that has some scriptural parallels. It seems to fit this season when we listen to the wisdom of our guide. We are not going to get ourselves out of this life, out of the slavery we find ourselves in because we have chased after other gods, or out of the lonely isolation of our polarized church and society by insisting we are right and others are wrong.

The words of Advent remind us firmly that we are not preparing to welcome “the baby Jesus” but rather the One who comes with Justice and whose power is for the oppressed. We may not use the Word of God to validate our way of life. We run a terrible risk here of hearing the Word of God as victors and achievers. The Word has nothing to say to them. Until we find in ourselves our sin, the things that enslave us, our helplessness, our alienation from one another, and how far we have come from Justice; this season has no meaning, and the Word has no power. The power of Isaiah’s words came from his identity with his own. The good news is not so much a message as it is a people whose glorious redemption manifests the divine. The glad tidings of this season are more than “Merry Christmas.”

The glad tidings of this season is a people who find hope, purpose, and a way to God in what they do. The glad tidings of this season can only be heard by those who know what it is to be lost by those who have been waiting for the Lord, and for those who long for Justice. There is no good news for those who think they have earned their place, their privilege and their rights. The mission of a prophetic people in Advent is to proclaim in word and deed that having been found by God, we are going home. It will best be done by gathering together, going back for, and looking around for any who have fallen or been left behind. These are the days when anything that separates or scatters us, when anything that lets us think we are different or better than another must go.

Nothing short of total transformation in the landscape of our lives will do. We build a road for Justice these days. On that road, Kindness and Truth shall meet. Justice and Peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring from the earth, while Justice will look down from heaven. This road will be best built by tenderness and compassion and faithfulness to the vision.