Because He Loved Her.

Matthew 1:18-25

He could have rejected her. He could have kicked her to the curb. It was completely in his rights, and socially acceptable, and totally understandable, for Joseph to reject Mary, once he found out the news. 

He wanted a quiet, normal life. He’d done everything right. He’d learned his trade, carpentry, a practical, useful occupation that would bring stability to his life. He was engaged to be married to a young girl from a reputable Jewish family. 

Everything was going according to plan. Go to school. Get a good job. Marry the girl next door. Have two children, a boy and then a girl. Live in a house in the suburbs with a golden retriever and a white picket fence. Follow the rules, toe the line, stick to tradition. And although the outside world was collapsing all around them, what with the insurrections, the end-of-the-world predictions, and the political rebellions, if he just followed the rules, everything will turn out alright. If he just stuck to the script. 

But then Mary comes along. She’s a feisty one. But she’s faithful. She’s tough, a hard worker. She trusts in God. This Mary comes along and everything is upended, all the plans they’d made together, all the plans their parents had arranged for them, gone in one fell swoop. She’s pregnant. They’d never been alone in the same room together, and yet here she is, somehow pregnant. This is not the Mary he thought he knew. This is not the life he’d planned on. And so, Joseph, being a righteous man, planned to dismiss her privately. He’d be leaving her destitute and alone with a newborn baby, but at least then she wouldn’t be stoned to death, at least she’d have some kind of a chance at life. So he stuck with the script. 

A pregnant Mary before their marriage was not part of the plan, so it was time to reset, let her go, start over again. 

What other option did he have? What would life be like if he took her in? Boy would people talk. His reputation would be ruined along with hers. They’d call him a fool, less than a man. No one would buy a table and chairs from this pushover. His carpentry business would fall apart if he couldn’t get customers. What would the leaders in the synagogues think? No. This is not part of the plan. This is not in the script he had written for his life. 

Mary’s been unfaithful; no matter what she says, no matter how much she protests and says this is from the “Holy Spirit”, others will talk, others will see, others will judge. And even if she thinks she’s telling the truth, then that just makes her crazy.There are only two options: she’s either unfaithful or a nutter, and he can’t have either. There’s too much at stake. There’s too much at risk. This is life or death. No. This is too much. It’s best if he just ends this now and moves on. He can’t be a part of this, whatever “this” is. 

Did they have a big fight? Was Mary in tears trying to convince him of the truth? Did she defy him? Did she say, “Take me or leave me, but I’m doing this!” or did she crumple, hopeless, into a ball on the dirt floor, desperate for him to believe, to understand, to know the truth of her situation? Did she try to reason with him? Or did she just accept his rejection? Did she have any hope at all that Joseph would stay? Did she expect him to stay? Or did she just accept that he’d probably reject her, leaving her alone like Hagar in the wilderness? 

Whatever the case, there’s still something that makes him hesitate, that gives him pause. He decides to sleep on it. He doesn’t reject her right away. Instead, he goes to sleep. Joseph decides to take a pause. He decides to wait on it. He knows what he has to do, he knows that he needs to let her go, but there’s something, something in him that makes him take a breath. He’ll sleep on his decision, and then dismiss her in the morning. 

*This next part is kind of hard for me, because God doesn’t send me dreams. God doesn’t speak to me in my sleep, unless God is warning me that all my teeth are falling out or I can’t open my high school locker, or I’m being forced to preach without notes, or I’m failing Calculus…again. No. God doesn’t come to me in dreams, at least not as clearly as an angel speaking to me from heaven telling me to not be afraid. But Joseph gets a dream, a dream telling him to not be afraid. 

You see, he’s scared. Terrified. He’s scared of what will happen to them. What will happen to this baby? What will happen to this plan they’ve spent their whole lives preparing for? He’s afraid. And understandably so. 

The angel tells him not to be afraid. This baby is from the Holy Spirit, that pneuma, that same spirit of God that once hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation. This baby is from the Creator of the Universe, the one who spun all this into being and continues to create today. 

Well if Joseph was afraid before, imagine his fear now. It must have tripled. At least. His domestic problems are suddenly diminished to a speck. What is having an unfaithful wife compared to being asked to be the earthly father of the Son of God? 

When he woke up, did he trust this dream? Did he pass it off as a stress induced delusion? He could have, except for that fear that he felt deep in the pit of his stomach, that fear that was still there. That fear that somehow tripled in the night. Angel messengers are always telling their recipients to not fear, but that’s like telling a kid to “calm down.” When has being told to not fear or to calm down ever worked? Was Joseph still afraid, just a different kind of afraid now? 

Joseph is being asked to defy social conventions. Joseph is asked to accept the unacceptable. Joseph is being asked to trust his gut, and his dreams. Joseph is being asked to take Mary as his wife, to stay. “Don’t be afraid,” the angel tells him. “Stay. Stay with the hard thing, the thing that doesn’t make sense, the thing that breaks your heart and then stitches it back together again.” “Stay,” the angel tells him. Stay. 

What makes him stay?

He was in his rights and in his right mind to leave. Everyone would have understood. Everyone expected him to leave. It wasn’t just the practical thing to do; it was the righteous thing to do. Somehow, she’d screwed up - she was either crazy or unfaithful - and what kind of future did that bode for Joseph and his family? He should leave. 

But an angel asked him to stay.

And Mary asked him to stay. 

Suddenly the whole world condensed itself into those two beings — Mary, and an angel. That’s all that was left of his carefully choreographed world, and they’d both asked him to stay.

Why does he decide to stay?

I think the answer is that he loved her. I think he loved her. I think it’s as simple and as complicated as that. I think that he loved her, and so he trusted what she’d said about her body, about her faith, about the course of her life. Maybe it’s just that simple. After he’d received this news, this betrothal, this economic arrangement of dowries and parental agreements, didn’t make sense in any way. And yet he stuck with it. He stuck with her. “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife” the angel had told him. Don’t be afraid to love, even when it doesn’t make sense, even when it looks ridiculous, foolhardy. Even when others will talk, when others will reject you, when others will make your life more difficult. Don’t be afraid to love. 

This is a love story, a story about the love between two people who were supposed to be together merely out of convenience or economic gain, but who find each other, who need each other. And because of their love for each other, our Savior has a home, has a family, has a beginning. I think Joseph loved Mary. And it was with a radical, impractical love. I think, somehow, he was able to drop all his pretenses, all his expectations, all his hopes and dreams for a “normal” life, and simply love Mary. And because he loved her, he took Jesus as his own and loved him. He gives him a name. He adopts him. He makes him his own. 

Because Joseph first loved Mary, Love entered the world with a home and a family and way to survive. 

He chose to trust her. He chose to trust himself. He chose to trust the message of his dream: Do not be afraid. Stay. Stick around. This is bigger than the script he’d written for himself. This is bigger than the plans his parents had made. Bigger than a too-common story of an unfaithful girl and a deadbeat dad. This is a love story. A story about sticking with the hard stuff and the hard people and their hard stories of disappointment and betrayal and heartbreak. A story about loving each other through the hard stuff. 

And when that happens, when we love each other through the hard stuff, Christ is born. When we love each other through the hard stuff, through the stuff that doesn’t make sense, through the heartbreak and the betrayal, the love of Christ is born again. 

Joseph shows us the Christmas spirit because he chose to trust his love. It’s not a spirit full of tinsel and noise, cookies and gifts, but of forgiveness and acceptance. Presence and participation. Listening and dreaming. This is the Christmas Spirit. It’s one of love, the love between two partners making a life together amidst complicated and even life-threatening circumstances. It’s a persevering and stubborn love, one that stayed. 

Immanuel. God-With-Us. Made possible because of a few simple yeses, a stubborn decision to trust and stick with the hard things, a decision to love, to stay.

Thanks be to God.

Stubborn Joy

Matthew 11:2-11

Luke 1:39-56

My boys are going crazy for Christmas. Insane. Absolutely bonkers. We’ve gotten and decorated our tree. We’ve bought presents and wrapped them and even gone to see the new Frozen movie. They have an Advent Calendar gives them a little piece of chocolate each day until Christmas. Their energy is through the roof. They are full of anticipation: A break from school. Presents. Time with Grandparents and a gaggle of cousins. We’ve had to give warnings and count to three more than we’d like to, the noise level is off the charts, and the energy is through the roof. But they’re so full of joy about what is to come. Their Joy is sometimes annoying, a little out of control, but also sometimes contagious.

We celebrate Jesus’ birth during the darkest time of the year. Not because this was probably Jesus’ actual birthday, but because Christmas is a light in the darkness, a joy in the midst of sadness and despair. Today, we light our pink candle of Joy to remind us that there’s still joy in the anticipation, in the coming of the not yet. The kids show us the way. And Mary and John are here today to tell us of this joy, even in the midst of their own struggles and hardships. They proclaim a light in the darkness. They point to the Christ, who is the one to come, who has come, and who will come again. 

This is sometimes hard to see. Even John the Baptist had a hard time seeing it. Even John the Baptist, who was to prepare the way of the LORD, wasn’t so sure that Jesus was the one. He’s stuck in prison, facing his own death, and Jesus isn’t doing what John thinks a Messiah should be doing. He’s not riding through Jerusalem on a white horse to free the captives and destroy the corrupt government. He’s not gathering a huge army with which to overtake a system of oppression. Instead, Jesus is sending folks out two by two to heal and proclaim the good news to the poor. He’s meeting people and healing them one by one. He’s eating with outcasts and tax collectors. It’s a revolution of quiet actions and peaceful protests. It’s a revolution of healing person by person, slow and quiet like the coming of the sun after the longest day of the year.

He’s not the military leader that everyone expected. Where’s Jesus with his militia come to bust John out of prison? Why isn’t Jesus planning an attack on Herod or a tearing up of Rome or a systematic dismantling of the powers that have oppressed the Jewish people for decades? John had his doubts. And so do we.

Is Jesus really the one who is to come? Sometimes this is so hard to see. There’s so much bad news everywhere. It's the bad news that’s so easy to find. 

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of the shooting in Newtown. The life expectancy in the United states has gone down for the second time in three years. We have lost more children to gun violence this year than active military and police officer deaths combined. Children are dying of the simple flu at the border, and Greenland is losing its ice sheet at accelerating rates. Measles has come back. Our government is wrapped up in impeachment proceedings while food stamps are cut for our poorest families. Where’s the good news? Where’s the joy?

Jesus tells Johns disciples to simply report what they see. Just tell the story of what’s going on around them. And this might mean they need to see a little differently. They might need to have their own blindness healed so that they can see what is happening, what is truly happening, beyond all the corruption and the hunger and the suffering and the trouble. They might need to light a candle in the darkness so that they can see and hear and feel the good news of the coming of the Kingdom of God.

The blind do see.

The lame really walk.

The deaf can hear.

The dead are raised.

The poor have good news brought to them.

There is good news. We just have to find it in the stories.

These stories are hard to find in the darkness. But they’re there. Hidden in all the bad news and devastating statistics are stories of people who are being healed, who are seeing things anew, who are hearing a new word, who are being raised from their own lives of death and depression and poverty. The stories are there. We just have to light a candle and look for them. We just have to step out of our doors and outside our comfort zones to find them. They might look a little different from what we expect, but they’re there. Ordinary people are traveling to the border to provide care and meals and water to those in need. Greta Thunberg was just named Time Magazine’s person of the year. Dozens of people are finding hope and paths out of addiction in our own church building. 

And you’re here, in the midst of your own struggles, to find a little light and a little hope in this dark season. The stories are there. We just have to look for them. Sometimes we have to be healed of our own blindness in order to see them, but they’re there. 

And sometimes, like John, we need a little help. We need others to point it out for us, sometimes in neon lights, “LOOK! the blind see! The deaf hear! The dead are raised and the poor are given good news!” Sometimes, as Fred Rogers used to say after a tragedy of unfathomable proportions, we have to find the helpers, because there are always helpers. 

I find so much hope in the fact that John struggled with a little bit of doubt. 

That’s my light in the darkness. That Jesus comes to him - even while he’s in prison, even second and third-hand, to tell him that he’s the one we’ve been waiting for. Jesus is the one who will turn everything upside down for us, and in us, and through us for the coming of the Kingdom of God. It’s ok to doubt, because there’s always stories that will come through to tell us to keep hoping, keep holding on to the joy with a stubbornness that won’t go away.

This is Mary’s story, too. Except she’s able to find the story of the coming of the Kingdom of God in her own life. She says, “Because of me - because of how God made me - everything is going to be flipped upside down. Because I’m the mother of Jesus, God has scattered the proud and brought down the powerful from their thrones. And God has lifted up the lowly, fed the hungry, and sent the rich away with nothing but lint in their pockets.” 

Mary is owning her power. Power given to her by God. She’s proclaiming a world changed. She’s positioning herself in history, in the long story of the Israelites full of powerful kings and warriors with their swords and their armies and prowess and political power. This is Mary refusing to deviate from that gift of God’s strength and power and grace and greatness. She’s not the exception to the history of powerful men; she is the culmination. She is the theotokos, the “God bearer” - the fleshy one who brings holy flesh into the world. 

She finds the joy in her own story, a story of difficulty and heartbreak. Just like John’s. They’re both given a rough deal. John lives a life of asceticism out in the wilderness and ends up in prison and eventually beheaded for his supposed “crimes.” Mary’s life is no less difficult. Young and pregnant and unmarried, she gives birth in a stable and then must rush to Egypt as a refugee to escape Herod’s wrath. Then, later, she’ll sit by and watch as her son is crucified in the most horrific of ways.

They both had their moments of doubt, of being unsure of who Jesus is. But they find the light in their darkness and they listen to the stories of their lives - the stories of what Jesus has done and is doing and will still do even in the midst of the darkness. They hold on to a stubborn joy of the Good News of the Coming of God. They hold on to Jesus, even when their life circumstances seem to contradict all that Good News. 

Listen to the good news in your own life, Jesus says. What ways has your blindness been turned to sight? How have you been made to hear? In what ways were you paralyzed, but now you can move? How have you been raised to life? It’s there, in every one of your stories. We can all be Marys and John the Baptists, folks who have gone through our own tragedies and darknesses and disappointments and who have come out the other side to say, “Here I am. Jesus, is that you? How can we know that it’s you?” By listening to our stories, by finding the stubborn joy in our own lives, by seeing things anew, by hearing with fresh ears, by asking our friends for a little help. 

We are asking, “Jesus, is that you? because it’s kind of hard to see sometimes. There’s stuff going on in our world that proclaim the opposite of your coming kingdom. There’s stuff happening in this world that has us floundering in the darkness. We’re in our own prisons, we’re so unsure. Are you the one who is to come?”

And Jesus responds to all of us: “Look around you. Listen to your stories. Listen to your lives. I’m there, even in the darkness, even in your hopeless despair. The blind see. The deaf hear. The lame walk and the dead are raised. There’s good news for the poor.” It’s there, we just have to look hard to find it. There is a stubborn joy of this season.

And like my kids, we can anticipate the joy that is to come. We can look forward, past all of our hardships, beyond all our tough stories, to the good that is to come. Because good is coming. God is coming. We watch and wait. We see with new eyes and hear with new ears. We are in Advent, a time of anticipation, when we open the doors of our advent calendars and deck our halls and prepare for the coming of the Christ child in our midst. Enter in to the joy of the season. It’s there, just look and see.

Thanks be to God.

A Revolution of Shoulds

I’ve got Godspell’s “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” and The Beatles’ “Revolution” songs in my head after reading this week’s lectionary passage. “Prepare the way,” and “get ready for a revolution” are at the heart of John the Baptist’s message. John the Bapist was an eccentric man who has made a mark on our culture and has been the voice crying out in the wilderness, proclaiming that a revolution is at hand. John the Baptist gets highlighted every year in our lectionary, always in the second week of Advent. After the “watching and waiting” of the first week of Advent, we’re a bit rattled and shaken by this crazy man wearing camels hair and eating locusts and calling the religious authorities a “brood of vipers.” It’s jarring. It wakes us up. It calls us to action, even in these quiet waiting days of Advent contemplation. John was a revolutionary. He believed the end of Caesar’s reign was coming, the end of the world as they knew it was nigh, and he wasn’t afraid to be a little eccentric, a little odd, a little strange in order to get his point across. His message: “prepare the way of the Lord, the messiah is coming, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” It was a dangerous and rousing message, one that called the Jewish people back to their Israelite roots, one that reminded them that God is the ruler of their lives, not Caesar. 

John wanted to prepare his people for the revolution that was at hand. He has one foot in the past and one foot in the future. He’s dressing like Elijah, recalling verses from Isaiah, all while he’s preparing his people for what is to come. It’s enough to jolt us out of our winter stupors and get us to slap a political bumper sticker on the back of our cars.

But mostly I just want to stay in bed. The days are grey and dreary. The nights are long. The sun sets at 4:30 in the afternoon. We’re nearing the longest night of the year, and I feel a cold coming on. While everyone else is shopping Amazon and putting tinsel on their trees, I’m resisting my need to hibernate. 

This makes me feel even more tired and lazy. I should get out of bed earlier. I should get outside. I should be more positive and hopeful. It’s Advent after all. 

I just went to the doctor’s for a yearly check up and came home with a lot more “shoulds.” I should drink more water. I should exercise every day. I should eat more vegetables and fewer carbs. I should lose some weight. Add on to all those “shoulds” the “shoulds” that I have roaming around in my brain on any given day, just for the fun of it: I should clean the bathroom every week. I should get rid of my clutter. I should play more with my kids and stop being so self-deprecating and come up with some brilliant plan to grow our church and solve world hunger and the climate crisis. 

          I do a lot of “shoulding” on myself. And a lot of catastrophizing. I tend to think the worst thing will always be the true thing. “I’m a failure,” I think. “No one likes me. I’m fat and lazy and broken and dumb”. And I think in extremes: I’ll never live up to expectations. I will always be sad in the wintertime. We’ll always have financial struggles and we’ll never get to go on a real vacation.

All these “shoulds” and catastrophes and “nevers” and “always” are deep ruts in our thinking, deep trenches that keep us from exploring new worlds and new ideas. Like that Berenstain Bear’s story, where Sister has this bad habit of chewing her nails, and she wants so badly to stop, but she doesn’t know how to do it. So Momma, the ever wise one, takes her out so they can plant some tulip bulbs together. As she maneuvers her wheelbarrow full of bulbs and dirt over the path, she explains to sister that a bad habit is just like a wheel barrow driving over the same road over and over again until there’s a deep rut. The wheelbarrow just automatically finds its way into that ditch, worn through by the repetition and the passing of time. Just like Sister’s bad habit, our way of thinking becomes a habit like a wheelbarrow going over the same ground again and again, until you’re deep in a ditch you can’t get out of. At least, not by yourself. 

So it’s especially jarring for me to hear the words “repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand,” this week, because I immediately think of those guys standing on milk crates and wearing sandwich boards on the sidewalks shouting that the end of the world is coming and that we’re all doomed for hell unless we are sorrowful for all of the horrible things we’ve done and for all of the horrible human beings we are. And there I am again, back in my thought ditch, ready to add on more “shoulds” and “nevers” and “always.” I should feel bad about what I am and what I’ve done. I’ll never be rid of all this guilt. I’ll always fail to be deserving of God’s love. And on and on it goes, and suddenly I’m back in bed, drawing up the covers, hiding from the world and all that darkness. 

          But I want to challenge us, to challenge myself, to think about this repentance stuff differently. “Repent” in Greek is “metanoia” - literally to turn around. It means to change your mind about something, to turn and change how you think. Crazy John the Baptist has come to get us to think differently — about everything. Think differently about our world. About our lives. About each other. Metanoia means to snap out of it. To get out of the rut.

Metanoia means we should stop “shoulding” on ourselves. Repentance is different from all the “shoulds” that run through our minds. Repentance is freedom from the black and white thinking that includes the “nevers” and the “always.” This isn’t a “turn or burn” mentality, one that says we’d better shape up or else. 

This isn’t a threat of hell and eternal damnation; rather metanoia is a turning back to look at all the ways we’re stuck in a rut, and then asking God to get us out of it. What if these grey days, when all I want to do is hide under the covers, are opportunities for repentance - a turning back to God who refreshes and renews us and burns away all that negative thinking, burns away all our judgments and idols and broken record thinking that spins us and spins us but gets us nowhere? 

This is scary stuff, because this means we might have to enter in to the wilderness of our minds. We might even have to enter in to the wilderness of our worlds — those messy places where boundaries are compromised and things looks a little strange and we’ve got to bushwhack through the weeds to make our way through. Maybe we’ll start eating with the homeless. Maybe we’ll rethink some political ideal. Maybe we’ll recycle a little more or listen a little harder or be more present with the woman at the cash register. Maybe we’ll slow down and rethink our priorities and maybe we will drink more water or eat more vegetables or go for that neighborhood walk. Maybe we’ll do things that don’t make much sense, like eat dessert first or pay a little too much for dinner or donate a little too much for a cause. We’ll speak up for those who have no voice. We’ll start to see the world with new eyes. When we change our thinking, when we finally get out of those ruts, we might look a little weird. Like John the Baptist, we’ll start hanging out with the marginalized and the morally questionable. We’ll start making the people in power a little mad. Suddenly, we’ll stop caring about all those judgments people have of us. Suddenly, we’ll throw practicality out the window. Suddenly, logic doesn’t seem so important, and the world will no longer be seen as a business of wins and losses, gains and expenditures. And Maybe we’ll even be seen as a little harsh, as not “nice” because we were brave enough to live into the truth of who we are. 

          The good news is that we don’t have to repent alone. We get to do it in community, where we’re loved and supported through our transitions, from our “shoulds” and “always” and “nevers”, to new possibilities like “maybes” and “could be’s”, “wait and sees” and “I wonders.” When we get to these new possibilities, the world looks different, it looks new, it’s a revolution. We can be crazy John the Baptists who go around proclaiming that God’s reign is near, that new things are on the horizon, that there’s potential and possibility and opportunity right around the corner. We can call others to metanoia, to turn and see. 

As we wait for the coming of the Christ child, let’s get ready. Let’s get prepared. Not with a bunch of “shoulds,” but with possibilities. Not with “nevers” and “always” but with “maybes” and “I wonders.” This is the story of Jesus, the baby conceived in questionable circumstances, born in a humble barn, child of two working class kids who find themselves refugees escaping death from a malicious king. The nativity story is full of possibility and hope amidst chaos and poverty. And John the Baptist calls us to prepare ourselves for such an unlikely king. Get ready for the one who will turn our world upside down, who will surprise and frustrate, who will judge and cleanse and redeem. Get ready for the maybes and I wonders and could bes. Get ready for the revolution.

          I think I saw John the Baptist just the other day. She was sitting at a bus stop massaging her bare feet. Her hair was disheveled. Her shoulders hunched. She sat next to a shopping cart full of all of her worldly possessions. Still, she was singing “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” as if she were a concert soprano. She didn’t seem ashamed or embarrassed. She wasn’t full of “shoulds” or “nevers” or “always.” She was proud of her voice, of her contribution to the world. It was a contribution that said “maybe,” and “could be,” “wait and see” and “I wonder.” Her presence simply said, “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” “prepare the way of the Lord,” “a revolution is coming,” “Turn around. And see.”

Thanks be to God. 

The Holy Thief

We humans love to accumulate stuff. We are squirrels, squirreling away books and knickknacks, junk drawers full of dried up pens and dull scissors and tape dispensers and charging cords we’ve long forgotten what they go to. We have attics and basements, closets and garages full of stuff. My family and I are in the process of moving, and as we’ve slowly boxed up our necessities and make the multiple trips across town to our new home, we’ve realized that we’ve got a whole house full of stuff that we don’t need. We’ve spent hours and hours sifting and sorting, separating and culling and we still have so much stuff left. It’s a tedious and sometimes painful process, going through all of our junk to determine what we might need someday, and what is just superfluous, a burden, a weight on our shoulders and our cupboards and shelves. 

We spent this past Thursday being thankful for all our stuff, and then Friday looking for the best deals in order to accumulate more stuff. It’s not a big deal, having all these things, really, until all that stuff starts to overwhelm us, until it becomes a burden. 

But more than actual things is the burden of all the emotional stuff we carry. The hurts and disappointments, the debts and fears, the grudges and the betrayals. We carry them in the attics and basements of our hearts, but they can also overflow into the kitchens and living rooms of our spirits. We hold on to this stuff with tightened death grips, afraid of who we might become if we unload some of that emotional junk clogging our veins.

But there comes a time when we realize what stuff is worth holding on to, and what needs to be let go. Or, sometimes don’t have a choice; stuff just gets taken from us without our consent, and we have to figure out what we’re really made of out of what’s leftover. 

It’s an apocalypse of sorts. Those times in our lives when our world gets shaken, when we feel like all is lost, when it feels like it’s all ending. When we have to get rid of, or when we just lose, our stuff.

Apocalypse literally means, “Unveiling.” And every year, we begin the season of Advent with these cryptic, apocalyptic texts. They tell us to be ready for the day the Son of Man will come on the clouds to judge the living and the dead. They tell us to be watchful. To be awake. To be ready.

The Son of Man will come like a thief in the night. He will come to unveil the truth about our lives. 

As in the days of Noah, people will be marrying and eating and drinking and going about their daily lives and then a wave of water will come and wash them away.

Two will be working in the field and one will be taken.

Two will be working at the mill and one will be left. So be watchful. Be ready. You don’t know the day or the hour. Nobody knows except the Father. 

I don’t think we have to take this literally. There is enough in our lives that take our breath away, enough to make us feel like we’re drowning, to make us feel like our world is ending. Life has enough opportunities to overwhelm us. 

Most of the time we’re in this in-between space: life isn’t perfect, but it’s not horrible. It’s not everything we’ve dreamed of, but it’s not our worst nightmare either.

But the days have come, and will come again, when we experience our own individual apocalypses. When life throws us for a loop and we have to figure out how to survive with a new set of circumstances. Maybe it’s a divorce or an illness, a financial set back or a death of a loved one. Maybe it’s a circumstance we choose, or maybe it’s been foisted upon us without our consent. Either way, it’s a kind of rebirth that involves a painful labor.

In the meantime, we are in the in-between. In the waiting time. The here and the not yet. Christ has come, and will come again. 

We don’t get sweet baby Jesus imagery at the start of Advent; rather, we get these frightening, perplexing apocalyptic texts that harken back to Daniel 7, when the Son of Man will come upon the clouds to judge the living and the dead. “Son of Man” has been interpreted to mean many things, but most commonly, it’s used to simply mean, “one like a human being.” The Son of Man is one like a human being will come like a thief in the night. One will stay and one will be taken. And it’s not clear whether we want to be the ones who stay or the ones who are taken.

Advent is a time of anticipation, a time when we hope and wait for the coming of the Son of man who will come and set everything to rights.

  

       That imagery of the thief is simply to emphasize the unpredictability of when he is to come. The angels don’t know when. The Son doesn't even know when. We don’t know the day or the hour, so we should be ready. There is no predicting, no estimating, no conjuring of the day. No one knows but the Father. This is comforting to me, because it emphasizes an element of unknowing to our faith. It reminds us that uncertainty is part of the Christian journey. Being unsure is part of our faith.

But what if Jesus is more than just sneaky and surprising. What if Jesus is actually a thief who comes along to filch all those things that keep us from truly being human? What if, as Nadia Bolz-Weber suggests, Jesus comes to us in our personal nights to abscond with the things that burden us, that weigh us down, that keep us from being our fullest, most human selves? 

What if the thief comes to snatch all the things we hold on to that keep us from being truly human? What if Jesus comes in the night to take our greed and depression, our fear and addictions, our narcissism and consumerism and anxiety and self-deprecation? What if God comes in our humanity to restore us to our humanity, and that means maybe we have to get rid of some stuff? This certainly feels like an apocalypse, because there are things we are terrified to get rid of that Jesus has come to take. Who are we without our depression and anxiety? Who would we be without our busy-ness and constant movement? Who would we be without our addictions or fear or judgment or insecurity? Jesus comes to take it all away from us. All the things that keep us from being who God has created us to be. It’s a peeling away of our false selves, a stripping away of all the stuff that we hold on to that weighs us down. It’s an unveiling of what’s underneath all that junk we hold on to that disconnect us from each other and from God. 

This can be scary and painful. It might feel like our world is ending. It’s truly an apocalypse. What parts of us need to be stripped away? What new heaven and new earth need to be unveiled in our lives? What personas need to be left behind? What parts of you will stay; what needs to be taken?

You’ll be going about your regular life and the rug will get pulled out from under you. Things will come about normally - maybe you’ll be at the grocery store or doing laundry or watching Friends reruns and your spouse tells you they want a divorce, or your kid says they’re depressed, or the stock market falls, or a storm comes by and tears off your roof. It’s an apocalypse, an unveiling of what you’re truly made of. Parts of you will get snatched, and parts of you will be left behind, and you’ll have to pick up the pieces. 

No. I don’t believe that Jesus comes just to take good things away from us. Sometimes good things are taken from us and God has nothing to do with it. Sometimes apocalypses just happen. But I also think there are times when there’s a Holy Thief, that some one or some thing that strips us of things we hold on to with all of our might that actually bring us down, that wear us out, that keep us from being truly human. And the apocalypses in our lives are opportunities for that Holy Thief to sneak in and strip us of the pain and the burdens that we hold on to so tightly because that’s all we think we’re made of. Jesus wants us to be ready to get rid of all that stuff. Be ready for the Holy Thief to come and take the things you thought you needed in order to unveil the true human being that you are - the true human being God created you to be.

Is the apocalypse bad or good? I think it just is. It’s part of life. There will be times when we are stripped of all our stuff and it will feel like the end of the world. But it will also unveil strength and vulnerability and dependence upon God, upon those things that are outside of yourself. 

To one person, the same circumstance could be an opportunity. To another, it can feel like the end of the world. It all depends — were you ready? Were you watching? Were you awake for the rebirth? 

Years ago doctors would put women in a twilight state in order to keep them from experiencing the full pain of childbirth. But Jesus wants us to stay awake. Stay awake to experience the full birth. It will be more painful, but also more miraculous and more life changing. We will participate in our own transformation. We will see the miracle of our own Advents, our own comings, our own unveiling. Christ comes to bring us new life, so stay awake; watch him take your burdens.
The things that make us less than human will be washed away. We’ll be working in the fields or at our desks or in our kitchens and parts of us will be snatched away. And our truest humanity will stay. The Son of Man has come, and will come, and will keep coming to strip us of the things that keep us from being fully human. It is a judgment of sorts - not of our core being, but rather of all those things we hold on to that we can let go of. It’s a refining fire, a separation of the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, the pain from the joy. 

Until then, we’re in this middle, waiting space. We’re in Advent. We go about our daily lives, marrying, eating, working, playing and striving. We’ll keep accumulating more stuff. But the Holy Thief is coming, coming to free us from the ways of being that hold us down, that bend us at the knees, that keep us hostage. 

Apocalypse is just a part of our lives, but if we’re ready, if we stay awake, we can watch as Christ comes to strip us of all our burdens and fears and debts and faults that keep us from our fullest humanity. Be awake this Advent. This coming. Watch and wait. Jesus has come to take away our false selves, our narcissism, our self-hatred, our burdens. Jesus will come to abscond with our addictions and insecurities and our fear. 

Let’s stay awake this Advent. Let’s stay awake and watch what the Holy Thief comes to take from us. It will be an unveiling. It will be a stripping away. It will be a new creation. Like watching the birth of a newborn baby, it will be miraculous. 

Thanks be to God.