Naysayer or Soothsayer?

The Eighth Day of Advent: Sunday, December 10, 2023

Amos 6:-14

Amos must have been a killjoy at dinner parties. This self-described shepherd and orchardist seems to have had nothing good to say to the leaders he called to account with his verbal assaults on their complacency and corruption. I guess we can’t fault him for his pessimistic outlook. He came to life after the once-great Davidic Kingdom had fractured following the death of Solomon. The geo-political split placed Amos not in the Israel of yesteryear, but under the authority of David’s heir, Uzziah, who wore the messianic mantle he inherited in the southern kingdom of Judah. The prophet’s entire life was lived out in this divided national reality in which the Lord’s once unified Kingdom had been reduced.

Undeterred by the widespread belief that God’s eternal blessing and protection rested upon them as his “chosen” people, Amos leveled his guns of judgment, firing salvo after salvo against those he believed were responsible for Israel’s demise. Demise? What was he looking at? Under Uzziah and Jereboam II, the reigning kings of each land, things were never better, peace and prosperity abounding as never before.  But that’s not how Amos saw it.

Employing verbal invective designed to make the rich squirm and the politically favored wince, he not only called out their infidelity to God’s covenant. He lampooned their delusions of divine protection. In fact, he peppered his oracles with a predictive certainty that most found too far-fetched to warrant credibility. Israel is about to be overrun by enemy armies. Most of us will be killed, and those who survive will be shackled and marched into exile to our conqueror’s lands.—scenarios as troubling as they were unthinkable. And worse yet, Amos wanted to drive home the point that all of what was about to transpire was being written by the hand of God, the very God they praised as their shield and savior.

Who would care to listen to such talk? Who would take heed at warnings couched in such gloom and doom—coming, no less, from a rural naysayer out of step with the times. Let’s Get REAL! Hindsight’s 20-20 vision clouds the fact that our reading of Amos at such a far remove from his life and times often prevents us from realizing how strange and fanatical he must have sounded to people convinced that their prosperity and security would continue indefinitely. Only in the postmortem of war and exile did later generations come to realize that Amos had, in fact, seen what others chose to ignore. Amos was, indeed, a troubler of Israel, and as much as his words resonate with some of the social and political realities of our 21st Century American experience, perhaps he should trouble us as well.

In these days of our unprecedented national and individual prosperity, may we not fall prey to the kind of spiritual smugness that rendered our biblical ancestors both blind to Your ways and deaf to Your voice, O God. May we never mistake our sense of blessedness for a pledge of Divine immunity. May we never lose sight of our responsibilities to “the least of these” brothers and sisters who must always be the focal point of our compassion, and the priority of our policies. Amen.

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Alpha, Omega, and All Points in Between

The Ninth Day of Advent: Monday, December 11, 2023

Amos 7:1-9; Mt. 22:23-33, Rev. 1:1-8

A coin bearing the emperor’s image; an allusion to the A and Z of the Greek alphabet; a carpenter’s standard for straightness:   each of today’s lectionary readings impresses me in the way it compels us to not only look with our eyes, but to observe with our minds. While what we believe serves as a penetrating lens through which we can look upon and try to understand the world, sometimes what we see provides us with the focal point through which we form opinions which, in turn, may direct, or redirect, our conduct.

When pressed to divulge his political position in an argumentative trap likely meant to expose him as either for us or agin’ us, Jesus directed their attention to a coin. While taking a routine jaunt around town, Amos spied something he’d seen hundreds of times, but today stopped him in his tracks: a builder at a construction site holding a simple plumb line to a wall. “Ah, that is what God is doing with us.” And introducing himself to readers in seven mainland churches not far from his island imprisonment, the Seer of Patmos included a visual emblem that was both recognizable and authoritative. Alpha and Omega, letters which bookend the entire alphabet so well known to his Greek-speaking readers—could there be a better way for John to describe the God whom he knew had the first and last word concerning the difficult times in which they lived.

We can well imagine how the coin bearing the image of the emperor cut to the heart of the trip-wire question put to Jesus by his antagonists. If Caesar minted the coin, it appears that it must belong to him. But our hearts belong to the One who brought us to life. To no earthly power do we owe this most precious of gifts.

We follow Amos’ eyes to the plumb line wielding contractor, bringing home the prophet’s metaphorical point: Israel is out of plumb, out of line, out of balance with God. And whenever that happens to buildings, they must be brought into alignment, or demolished.

And looking in on John of Patmos as he gathered his collection of terrifying revelations about what is, what was, and what is to come, we understand why he wanted to give them the stamp of Divine authenticity. These aren’t my words, but those revealed to me by God himself, who alone is the beginning and the ending of all that is.

Within these Advent scriptures we are charged to not only be hearers and doers of the Word. We are challenged to be “see-ers” of God’s word as well. And that spiritual sight, or insight if you will, often comes in the simplest of packages:  a coin, a weighted string, an alphabet. We would do well to pray for eyes that can see beyond and beneath the obvious to discern the hand of God moving upon our times and within our hearts.

Open our eyes, O God, to see beyond our looking, to perceive beneath our sight, and to behold Your presence within those people and objects we might dismiss as ordinary. For You are not only the start and finish of all things in this world, You are the inside and the outside, the depth and breadth of all Being and all of our being. May we never overlook what eyes of faith have the capacity to understand. Amen.

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Prophecy without Profit

The Tenth Day of Advent: Tuesday December 12, 2024

Amos 7:10-17

“Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows but Jesus.” The sorrow that oozes from this African-American spiritual links the broken spirit of the enslaved with the sufferings of the One embraced as Savior. Amos could have easily joined in this refrain, as might any number of the Bible’s other prophets. Those compelled to serve as God's mouthpiece for their times were rarely honored or appreciated by those on the receiving end of their take-no-prisoners verbal assaults. For the Word of the Lord that they proclaimed announced judgment, warfare, and exile with little that their audiences, or we who try to understand them today, would consider Good News.

So what are we to make of this prophet named Amos, so many years, millennia in fact, after he first gave utterance to these words he believed came to him directly from God? And why do we turn to him for inspiration during Advent? Isn’t this season to be one that calls us to watchful anticipation of the coming of the Christ? And isn’t that supposed to focus our attention on earthly peace, goodwill to all, and the fulfillment of every child’s wishes? Judging from the way Amos was accosted by Amaziah, the priest of Israel, many of his countrymen must have thought much the same. If you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all. That was the gist of their complaint against him. No prophet of God should speak anything but news which builds up the King who rules at his behest. So take your cynicism elsewhere.

It was bad enough that Israel’s king had to endure the taunts and curses that Amos dared to level against him. But why should the rest of us have to put it with him? After all, the man wasn’t, in the strictest sense of the word, an Israelite. Amos hailed from the tribe of Judah, that remnant of David’s once unified kingdom that had been severed from Israel for well over a century. He was therefore a prophet without portfolio in Israel, and, with no backers supporting his missionary venture into what was then a foreign country, his efforts yielded no profit, only hostility and grief.

Thought to be the first among the Bible's prophets to leave a written account of his public utterances, Amos stands large among all of the prophets who followed him, each risking life and limb to see that God's voice would be heard in their times. And while his book is small in comparison to those left by Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel who succeeded him, the clarity of his message and the courage he mustered in proclaiming it at that time and in that place have continued to inspire prophets into the present, including the courageous men and women of the Americn Civil Rights movement who found so much of their voice echoing his.

What, then, are we, in our time and place, to do with Amos? Dare we actually listen to him? Listen to his clear and uncompromising insistence on political accountability and integrity. Listen to his fearless and unwavering courage in calling out those who bore the greatest responsibility in upholding God’s covenant. Listen to his unfailing confidence that God’s justice and truth can never, and will never, be long supplanted or replaced by any of our lesser, self-serving priorities and agenda. And, if we can bear to hear him out, speaking not in a tense relevant only to the past, perhaps we will perceive God’s voice speaking through him, and in him, to us in this day when the Lord so much yet to say to us.

O God, may Your voice speak to us from prophets of old, reminding us of Your abiding presence in our world and calling us to a higher accountability on behalf of all of Your children, and all of Your creation. Amen.

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A topsy-turvy Kingdom

The Eleventh Day of Advent: Wednesday December 13, 2024

Matthew 23:1-12

I think most of us peer into the mysteries of the Bible hoping that we will find some justification for what we believe and how we live. That isn’t a selfish or delusional aspiration. It reflects our nature as men and women longing to be accepted by and acceptable to our Creator. But what qualifies us to be counted among the saved, the redeemed, the favored by God? The answer to this is sometimes not only hard to take, but more difficult to follow.

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew encapsulates the upside down, topsy-turvy way Jesus tried to re-orient his disciple’s understanding of power, leadership, and service. It remains one of the most perplexing of his mandates for us to fathom. Set in the body of teachings associated with his final week in Jerusalem, his remarks offer blunt critique of the scribes and Pharisees in their assumption of spiritual authority. Long on preaching about acceptable conduct before God, their behaviors to the contrary exposed them as both inconsistent and insincere. While claiming to be teachers they proved themselves to be guides unworthy to be followed. No wonder that the name “Pharisee” and hypocrite have long been used interchangeably in our Christian vocabularies.

Matthew depicts Jesus seeing through both their pretenses of righteousness and their protestations of his gospel message. And in doing so he flips all of our customary understandings of power: those who are truly great are those who serve others…those who wish to be honored and esteemed must be humble and lowly in spirit. When we hear these words in church we usually nod in agreement. But if we dared utter them at work or in our social relations, who would ever believe us? When was the last time we saw them modeled by those who command center stage in popular culture, or in politics, or the business world, or among our most successful athletes or most highly adored entertainers? Jesus’ valuation of greatness may strikes us as idealistic in today’s world. More likely it sounds rather foolish. How out of place did he appear when he was trying to convince his disciples that there was a better way, a higher way, for them to live.

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God…” rouses us to aspire to that which is eternal and ultimately triumphant. But does it also convince us that the upside-down ethic of sacrifice and servanthood  is, in fact, both the means and the end by which we must walk each day if we are to be in Christ? If we can answer yes with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, then maybe, just maybe, we we will find ourselves not far from the Kingdom of God.

As we peer into Your word and listen to Your voice, may what we see and hear put us in our place, not as miserable wretches deserving of condemnation, but of fallible and sinful children wanting to be loved in spite of ourselves. Amen

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In the Worst of Times

The Twelfth Day of Advent: Thursday December 14, 2023

Revelation 2:8-17

Few books in the Bible stir our curiosity or confound our certainty more than Revelation. It is fitting that it comes at the very end of the Christian canon, given its maledictory curse on anyone daring to add or detract from it. And is there anyone who has tried to make sense of its visions of sevens and its out-of-this-world images who longs for a sequel rather than hankers for a concordance? John’s apocalypse, as this enigmatic book is more properly called, seems by intention and language to have been meant for those with ears to hear and eyes to see among the small communities of Christians living in seven geographically proximate cities within epistolary reach of a writer held in political detention on the Aegean island called Patmos.

Today’s lectionary reading hones in on short messages addressed to two of those churches, and each underscores the challenge we face interpreting this book. What is John saying to the Christians in Smyrna when he uses terms like The first and last…Synagogue of Satan…the devil is about to throw some of you into prison…crown of life? And to the followers of Jesus in Pergamum, to what or whom do…sharp two-edged sword…Antipas…Balaam…Balak…Nicolaitans…sword of my mouth…hidden manna…white stone refer? If ever there was a portion of scripture that requires scholarly elucidation, this is it. Given the brevity of this devotional reflection, I’ll not try to unpack what obviously requires much thought and textual excavation. I will instead focus on the two meanings that I think make this text so valuable for us right now, reading it as we are during an Advent season nearly 2000 years after its composition.

First, I think we can be certain that the words, phrases and symbols used by this John of Patmos were meant to be understood by the men and women of those seven churches he singles out. So whether or not we understand its many scriptural references, like Balaam, Balak, Jezebel, etc., or the names of individuals mentioned, like Antipas and groups like the Nicolaitans, we can be reasonably sure that those who read these words and who heard them read aloud to a congregation understood, more than we may ever be able to understand, what was being conveyed to them. And this is so very important for us to keep in mind. For in these latter days in which we try to unlock the mysteries of this book, Revelation is too often portrayed as a prophecy of things meant only for our time, describing an end of the world for which so many seem to be expectantly waiting. Yet if that were so, why would any of those first-century Christians for whom this apocalypse was written have found it intelligible, relevant or worth preserving as sacred script?

Second, what does speak to me across the centuries of time and beneath the particularities of John’s vocabulary is a message of comfort, correction, and courage that we do well to hear in the trials and tribulations we face in our time. How comforting it is to hear God say to us, “I know…your affliction, your endurance, your fidelity in the face of temptation…” How necessary it is for us who crave so much affirmation of our greatness to lovingly be called to account by our Maker: “But I have a few things against you…” And how uplifting it is to know that God’s promises extend across the ages and beyond the reach of the most sprawling empires, assuring us that: “…anyone who conquers…and is faithful until death”, I will give…heavenly food…a new name…and the crown of life.”  

May John’s message of hope and endurance bolster our faith in this age of so much mistrust and insecurity. Give us, O God, ears that can hear Your voice above the noise and rancor that accosts us at every turn. And open our eyes to see Your presence standing near to comfort us when we hurt and inspire us when we falter. Amen.

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Rethinking Priorities

The Thirteenth Day of Advent: Friday, December 15, 2023

Haggai 1:1-15

Not all prophets were created equal. We categorize three as MAJOR and the rest minor due to the length of their verbosity. We grow accustomed to listening to a few of them speak to us from pulpits in the course of a liturgical year, while the voices of others are seldom heard. Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea and Micah are sure to sing out in Advent proclamation, while Zephaniah and Obadiah, Joel and Habakkuk rarely command our interest. A few prophets have left us an ample supply of quotable verses upon which we have conferred immortality in their literary reference or in their engraving on heroic monuments and consequential buildings like the UN in New York. Whether or not they were held in high regard in their own lifetimes—and few of them seem to have been—these prophets continue to challenge and inspire folks like us well past our remembering or caring much about their personal biographies.

And then we stumble upon Haggai. Owing to his paucity of words—not even two pages worth in our Bibles—that reflect either an economy of verbiage on his part or the disparaging judgment of his contemporaries, he is little more than an unimportant, easily forgotten voice from the past. Yet for a very short span of time, roughly four months of one year in biblical reckoning, Haggai served as the catalyst that spurred a politician named Zerubbabel and a priest named Joshua to get behind his dream of rebuilding God’s temple in Jerusalem. Why was this so important to Haggai? As a member of that lost generation of Jews born and raised as a captive in Babylon following the total destruction of the once-inviolable Davidic Dynasty, Haggai had only known of the glories of Solomon’s Temple from what was told him by his elders. Upon his return to the land of his grandparents, he was shocked to discover that the Jerusalem of story and song was little more than a pile of rubble. Sadly, those granted permission by their Persian overlords to rebuild their ancestral land homeland had not succeeded in constructing anything reminiscent of the glory that once was Zion, the City of David.

As Haggai saw it the problem was not one of manpower nor resources. Both were readily available if proper effort was applied to engaging them. Yet no one sensed the urgency to rebuild as did Haggai. Perhaps they were too busy eeking out an existence to have the time or energy to construct a house suitable for God. I’m not sure what persuasive gifts Haggai possessed as an orator, or whether he knew how to leverage guilt in urging the governor and high priest to get moving on the Temple project. All we can see from the book that bears his name is that Haggai succeeding in lighting a fire under them to get the job done. Now we can wonder how essential was the building of an expensive edifice for the highly sacrificial, meticulously ritualized religious activities of the Jerusalem Temple. But unlike the church buildings and cathedrals we construct to which only a dwindling number of people regularly visit or support, the Temple in ancient Jerusalem served as the unifying center of their community. It was the tangible reminder of an eternal covenant joining them to the God who had called them into being, led them out of bondage in Egypt, forged them into a nation, and remained true to them through national calamity and exile. And now, given the chance to start over, their course of action could not be clearer, at least not to Haggai. If we build it, God will come, and dwell with His people once again, and we will sense the presence of the Lord in looking upon this sacred house.

You and I will likely not be building any monumental structures this Advent, neither to ourselves or to our God. But, in that spiritual way in which we find common cause with biblical ancestors whose footsteps we try to discern and follow, perhaps Haggai’s insistence on making God our priority will urge us to consider what kind of home for God we are making of our lives. What room do we make for God among our personal, financial, familial and social priorities? Or do we find ourselves so overwhelmed with our preoccupations, plans and worries that we have become like Bethlehem innkeepers with no room to spare should God visit us this Christmas.

O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer

Our spirits by Thine advent here

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night

And death's dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel.

Shall come to thee, O Israel. Amen.

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In the Waiting Room

The Fourteenth Day of Advent: Saturday December 16, 2023

Matthew 24:1-13

It is often called the Synoptic Apocalypse, a collection of predictive messages about end-times that is found in parallel form in the first three gospels. Whether we prefer reading it in Mark 13, Luke 21 or Matthew’s more extensive rendering in chapters 24-25, it catches our attention in its stark depictions of days yet to come. Prompted by his disciples’ curiosity about the time table for God’s redemptive purging of evil from the world, Jesus provided them with a collage of what we should expect will take place—someday. But did he intend these to be taken literally or do they point to signs and symbols whose meanings lie in ages and eras now beyond our full comprehension.

Like other apocalyptic writings in the Bible that course through the pages of Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah and, of course, the Apocalypse of John that we call Revelation, these gospel verses puzzle us with their figures of speech, cosmic portents, and gloomy overtones about the future. How long did Jesus envision it would take for this drama to play out? Biblical scholars point out that much of what he foresaw actually did transpire during the first century, reaching a crescendo of fulfillment with the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in A. D. 66. That would coincide with when we believe these gospels were actually written in the form we now see in our Bibles, suggesting that those evangelists who wrote these passages believed they were witnessing his prophecies coming to pass right before their eyes. And it may shed light on what Jesus may have meant when he said that “this generation will not pass away until all of things have taken place.” But the world that has survived that inaugural century of Christianity, and 20 more to boot, seems to be no nearer to or further from the end than it was when Jesus was queried by his followers so long ago.

Perhaps the best we can do is take to heart Jesus’ cautionary note about trying to stay ahead of God in cyphering what the times and seasons may be revealing about a future end-point that we anticipate but can’t pin down. “But about that day and hour know one knows, neither the angels of heaven nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mt. 24:36). After all, the trials and tribulations, wars and rumors of wars which he predicted have been, and continue to be business as usual in every age in which humans have tried to exercise authority over one another.

The metaphor which Jesus used that seems most instructive and helpful to me in this waiting room in which we find ourselves appears in verse 8 of today’s reading: birthpangs. It is often featured in the prophetic speculations of biblical, post-biblical and modern futurists when describing what they think about the “last days” of the human race. While pain and uncertainty may first come to mind when thinking of childbirth, not to be forgotten is the blessed outcome of the birth itself, bringing new life into the world And with that new baby comes much joy, much relief, and much thanksgiving for the miracle that is life itself.

Every era of my own short life has had its share of calamities and tragedies, and they continue unabated as we move through the third decade of this century. But no era has lacked its share of celebrations and triumphs too. Every pregnancy brings us the choice to either fixate on the discomfort and pain of childbirth, or to keep our minds focused on the wonder and promise of the gift that this new soul will become in our lives. I sense that Advent forces us into a spiritual waiting room where we must think through these choices once again. For the birth of the Christ child into the world, and into our lives, is not without pangs, not without consequences to what we believe and how we will, in turn, choose to live.

What Child is this who, laid to rest


On Mary's lap is sleeping?


Whom Angels greet with anthems sweet,


While shepherds watch are keeping?

This, this is Christ the King,


Whom shepherds guard and Angels sing

;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,


The Babe, the Son of Mary.