The Life of the Word

The scriptures referred to are John 1:1-18.

In his autobiography Becoming Superman, Joseph Michael Straczynski tells of growing up in a family so dysfunctional that the word Dickensian utterly fails to describe its misery. His grandmother was a sociopath. His mother was chronically depressed and unable to show affection to her children. His father was an often unemployed alcoholic who psychologically and physically abused them daily. They moved nearly 2 dozen times in his childhood, adolescence, and college years, mostly to avoid bill collectors—and a big secret. What kept Joe Straczynski sane were words. It started with comic books and went on to short stories and novels. He would read everything twice, once for enjoyment and the second time to pay close attention to how the authors used words to create the characters and plots and worlds in which they took place. And so Straczynski began to write, first for himself, and then for school plays and the school paper, and then for city newspapers, and then radio, and then animated TV series, and then live action series and then comic books and eventually for movies. Today he is an award-winning writer, whose films have been produced by Ron Howard, and directed by Clint Eastwood and Sir Kenneth Branagh and which have starred Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, John Malkovich and others. And it began with a love for story and words.

Today's gospel reading is the introduction to the story of Jesus as told by a beloved disciple tradition says was John. And it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” I have gone into the philosophical meaning of the Greek term for “word” before. Let's just look at it this way: words make sense of things. When we are overwhelmed by an event or emotion we often say, “There are no words.” A key part of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is naming the thoughts and emotions you are experiencing so as to recognize them and deal with them. In the ancient world knowing the name of someone, even if they were a god or a spirit, gave you some control over them. Adam names all the animals and that is part of God's intention that he rule over the world as his vice regent.

In contrast, nameless things terrify us. The undefined is outside our control. The fascination with Jack the Ripper comes to some degree from the fact that we don't really know who he was, and probably never will.

So in the beginning was the Word, who was with God and through whom everything was made. The Word, who is also God, makes sense out of the world. In the Genesis creation account, which John is obviously referring to, what we know about God is primarily that he is creative, and orderly, and that he takes delight in his creations and pronounces them good. John is going beyond that. And he is doing it by using 5 key words to describe Christ and therefore God.

Verse 4 says, “In him was life...” John uses the word “life” 38 times, tied only with the book of Proverbs for most appearances in a single book of the Bible. As for connecting God's words with life we find this elsewhere in the Bible as well. The most obvious example is when God creates life by merely calling it into being. But God's Word, in the form of the scriptures, also gives life. As Moses says to Israelites, “...humankind cannot live by bread alone, but also by everything that comes from the Lord's mouth.” (Deuteronomy 8:3) This is true in 2 ways. By following what God says about not murdering, not stealing, not committing adultery, taking a day off, etc. you will increase the odds of having a long life. But getting into God's Word, and letting his living Word, Jesus, get into you will revitalize your spiritual life. With his life in you, you will grow in wisdom and understanding, in strength and character, in peace and love.

Verse 4 continues, “...and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Light appears in John 16 times, more than any other gospel. He contrasts it with moral blindness. Jesus' words and life act as a beacon to those who are disoriented by earth's ethical darkness. And, similarly, Joe Straczynski's grim existence under his drunken and abusive father was brightened by the Superman TV show in the 1950s and later by his discovery of Superman comic books. A TV episode where Superman took a crippled girl to the fair and protected her from mobsters moved him to tears. He wished that Superman was his father. He knew that would never happen but he resolved to become Superman. Unlike his real father, Superman was honest and kind. Joe said he came to love comic books “less for the action and flashy costumes than their sense of morality. The books emphasized the importance of standing up for others, even if doing so meant putting yourself at risk. That ethical core meant everything to a young kid trapped in a family that operated without any sort of moral compass.” Superman was created by 2 Jewish kids and has long been seen as a kind of Messianic character. Naturally some of their religious background would find its way into the character, and thence into Joe Straczynski's life. And in Jesus we clearly see the light of God as a loving and forgiving Father.

Light not only highlights what is good, it exposes what is bad. Jesus shows us not only how to live but contrasts it with how not to live. One path is the way of life and the other leads to destruction and death. To Joe, if his preferred father was Superman, his real father, who killed Joe's pet cats so he couldn't take them on their frequent moves, was his arch-enemy, Lex Luthor. And Joe decided “Whatever he was, I would be the opposite. He drank, so I wouldn't touch the stuff. He smoked; I wouldn't. He was brutal to women; I would strive to be chivalrous. He never kept his promises; I would always keep mine. He blamed others for what he did; I would take responsibility for my actions. With each choice I would try to balance out the meanness and suffering he brought into the world.” He would not let the chaos and darkness that radiated from his father overcome the light that filtered through Superman into his life. The person who is following Jesus should also imitate him in thought, word and deed.

In verse 14, it says, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.” John's use of glory is unique in the Bible. He not only uses glory and related words 41 times, much more often than the other gospels do, he uses it differently. It still means God's splendor and presence but it is revealed not passively, as in the Transfiguration, but in Jesus' work. John builds his gospel around 7 signs that reveal Jesus' glory: his changing water into wine, his healing a man's son and a lame person and a man born blind, his feeding the 5000, his walking on water and his raising Lazarus from the dead. But the most unusual manifestation of his glory is through his crucifixion. (John 7:39, 12:16, 23; 13:31) In the eyes of almost everyone, it was a bloody and repugnant death. But when seen in the light of Jesus' role as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, it reveals the depth of God's love for us. Sacrificing himself to save the people of the world is a glorious thing.

And we can say that Jesus' self-sacrifice is also a manifestation of God's grace. According to the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, grace “connotes favour, usually by a superior to an inferior, including but not limited to care for the poor, deliverance of those in distress, and other acts of compassion. Such beneficence is given freely, and thus can be requested, received, and even withdrawn, but never claimed, coerced or possessed.” I like a definition of grace I once heard: “Grace is God's unreserved, undeserved goodness towards us.” While John only uses the word “grace” 3 times, all in our gospel passage, the same article points out that “the fourth evangelist everywhere highlights the significance of God's love for an unperceptive, intractable, and undeserving world.” Still Jesus does not give up.

I wasn't originally going to use an example from Joe's life to illustrate God's grace in action when I remembered a striking incident in his adult life. Joe was at a low point. He was blackballed in the TV industry for being difficult; ie, doing great work that got ratings and being unwilling to compromise his vision of the series he created. And he was running out of money. One morning he heard a group of outdoor cats crying in his backyard. They were clustered around a landscaping pipe missing its cap. At the bottom of the pipe was a kitten. Joe couldn't reach it and it moved away from him further into the network of pipes. He called plumbers; he called animal control; he called the fire department. “They dug a massive trench, pulled out a cypress tree, cut into one of the pipes, and used a mirror to look around. There was no sign of the kitten, who had moved as far as possible from the commotion.” They left him with the wreckage and a still mewing kitten lost somewhere in the bowels of the pipe network. Not even a can of tuna could draw the cat out. He started calling plumbers again. At 3 am, one arrived and used a plumber's snake with a camera to locate the kitten: “wedged in tight, half covered in water, he literally had to raise his mouth out of the water to mew.” They used the snake to prod him into backing out while Joe jumped into the trench, reached in and managed to pull the kitten out. Remember how Joe's father would kill his pet cats every time they moved? This one Joe was determined to save, trench, tree and expense be damned. Buddy became his boon companion for the remaining 15 years of its life.

God in Christ was determined to save us, regardless of personal risk. Jesus stood up for others, for those the world considers inferiors, though it cost him his life. He went through hell. And the reason those in power tried to silence him was because he spoke the truth. And the truth was not pretty.

Joe Straczynski always knew his family had secrets. His father in particular had a very big one, which turned out to be one of the reasons they moved so often and why his father once changed his name. I won't spoil his book, which you really should read, but it was Joe's experience of how secrets can destroy families that led him to dramatize the story of a lone person tried and punished for seeking the truth. The film, Changling, was the result and the success of this powerful true story finally vindicated Joe Straczynski's integrity in seeking the truth and writing his stories.

The truth Jesus tells us sounds ugly at first. It is that we are our own worst enemies. Monsters and aliens need not apply. Evil comes from the heart. (Mark 7:21-22) External rituals, however religious, cannot change that. What changes us is the truth, which can, if we live by it, set us free. (John 8:32) And what is the truth?

Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) Jesus is the Word that makes sense of the world. As C.S. Lewis wrote, you cannot say anything either good enough or bad enough about life. That's because God gave us a world full of good gifts which we have proceeded to abuse and use against each other and against ourselves. And then we use the gift of our intelligence to create systems which keep such practices in place and to justify the evil we do to ourselves and to others.

Jesus came to shine a light on that and to show us through his life that we could live differently. We can be compassionate, merciful, a healing presence, and peacemakers, while still speaking truth to power. We can show grace in our dealings with others and demonstrate the presence of God in how we act.

But we can feel inadequate to the job. So we need to let the Spirit of Truth, as Jesus calls the Holy Spirit in John's gospel, live in us (John 14:17) and guide us. (John 16:13)

Joe Straczynski's experience of religion was not good. The nuns in his schools mistreated him; he got kicked out of a youth commune where he later lived when he exposed the pastor for taking advantage of female parishioners. Yet, filtered through Superman, this is what he learned: “Being kind, making hard decisions, helping those in need, standing up for what's right, pointing toward hope and truth, and embracing the power of persistence...those were the qualities of Superman that mattered to me far more than his ability to see through walls. Because all of us can do those other things, can be those things; we can be Superman whenever we choose.” Which is why he called the story of his life Becoming Superman.

Christianity is ultimately about becoming Christlike. As someone pointed out, we may be the only Christ some people see. So as Jesus is God's living Word, let us be the living expression of who God is: just but merciful, giving and forgiving, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable as necessary. Which is why Jesus said that following him involved taking up our cross. He never promised it would be easy. But he will be with us every step of the way and he will never forsake us.

“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God...” The light of the world calls us to be the light of the world. (John 8:12; Matthew 5:14) Let him live in us so that we too may be full of grace and truth. And may every thought we entertain, every word we utter, every action we take glorify the God who is love, as we grow daily in becoming Jesus.

Foreshadowing

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 9:2-7.

Recently I have seen 3 stories with intricate plots. One was the HBO series Game of Thrones, based on an unfinished series of massive books teaming with characters and subplots. Another was the HBO series Watchmen, a continuation to the mind-blowing graphic novel about costumed heroes. The third was Knives Out, a movie that both embraces and subverts the Agatha Christie type of murder mystery.

A lot of people who were big fans of Game of Thrones at first became increasingly upset with how the TV series developed after going beyond the source novels. A lot of interesting subplots were dropped or hastily resolved. And many felt disappointed with the finale which, among other things, did not seem to fulfill one character's prophesied fate.

On the other hand, Watchmen not only felt like the spiritual successor to the original story, everything it set up paid off. When rewatching the series with my wife I picked up on how many things that eventually took place were in fact foreshadowed by earlier events and conversations. When the biggest plot twist was revealed it was no deus ex machina. It was hiding in plain sight.

Similarly Knives Out played fair, giving us all the clues as it went along. If you paid close attention and interpreted things properly you had a chance of solving the mystery, even though the plot made some impressive twists. And if you didn't see it coming, when everything was explained, you were satisfied when the truth came out.

Why am I talking about these things on Christmas? Because the event we are celebrating tonight is the first big plot twist in the story of God's plan to save us. It took a lot of people by surprise, and many didn't believe it. But if you pay attention to the clues and the foreshadowing it all makes sense.

Each of the stories I mentioned began with a problem. Each really started with a death that affected the lives of others. That kicked off the main problems to be resolved: finding a just king, establishing a just society, deciding who got a fabulous inheritance. Along the way there was treachery, bravery, love and self-sacrifice. And we find all of those in the story of God's mission to save us.

The problem God has to solve develops in the first 3 chapters of the the first book of the Bible. In chapter one God creates everything and pronounces it good. And he creates human beings in his image. Chapter two flashes back to the creation of humanity and gives us more detail. It shows us paradise and the first two human lovers. Chapter three shows how the humans use the good gifts God gave them, intelligence and free will, to make bad decisions and then to cover that up. Death is introduced into the world, and distrust, between man and God and between the humans. The former paradise becomes corrupt and violent and so God reboots it. He makes a covenant with Noah and tells him humanity's part of the agreement is never to murder. Because human beings are made in God's image. They have inherent worth.

But humanity continues to misuse and abuse and at times neglect God's good gifts and each other. So God chooses a man, Abraham, who trusts him enough to leave his home and civilization for a distant land God promises will be his. And God works through Abraham and his descendants to shape a people who get God's message about who he is and what we should be. God chooses Abraham's second grandson, Jacob, and his twelve sons. When their descendants become slaves in Egypt, God liberates them. He makes a covenant with them. If they love and obey him and love their fellow human beings, including those who are in need, they will be a great nation and God will be their king. An anointed priesthood is to keep the people true to this covenant.

Eventually the people demand a regular human king like the other nations. Warning them first about the dangers of giving someone such power, God grants their request. Samuel anoints David, who becomes the archetypal king of Israel. But his flaws and those of his son Solomon lead to a later splitting of the kingdom into two. God anoints prophets to reiterate his message of loving him and loving each other. He promises dire consequences if the kingdoms don't do this and restoration and forgiveness if they do. And he promises to send a Messiah, a king he himself will anoint who will rule with justice and mercy. The people don't listen. Their kingdoms descend into idolatry, greed, injustice and debauchery. And eventually each kingdom suffers defeat and exile.

Once again God brings his people back to the promised land. But they are no longer free. They are subjugated by first one and then another of the empires around them. Now they heed the words of the prophets and they earnestly desire the promised Messiah, God's Anointed One. And the rabbis study the passages about him in the Hebrew Bible. They see that it all started way back in Genesis chapter 3, where God tells the tempter about one of the offspring of Eve: “he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15) So, a wounded savior. Later in Genesis, before there was a kingdom of Israel, Jacob prophesies “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs; the nations will obey him.” (Genesis 49:10) And Micah predicts the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, David's city. (Micah 5:2)

Our passage from Isaiah tells us the Messiah will sit on David's throne. But it says a lot more. It gives us important clues to his identity in the names he is called.

The first is Wonderful Counselor. This is a good thing for any king or ruler to be, someone who is extraordinarily wise. At the time of Jesus such rulers were absent. Herod the Great was a paranoid and violent king, who killed his sons and wives to keep his throne. Augustus was a politically astute emperor but it was fatal to be on the wrong side of his ambition. The adopted son of Julius Caesar, Augustus killed the natural son Caesar had by Cleopatra. Augustus did bring stability to the empire but as Roman historian Tacitus wrote, “There had certainly been peace, but it was a blood-stained peace of disasters and assassinations.” Later, during Jesus' ministry, the governor of Judea was Pontius Pilate, a brutal ham-fisted soldier who was eventually removed for slaughtering the people he was governing. The ruler of Galilee was Herod Antipas, one of Herod's surviving sons, who had John the Baptist beheaded for criticizing his incestuous marriage to his brother's ex. The emperor Tiberius started out well but, as Tacitus wrote, “...he was infamous for his cruelty, though he veiled his debaucheries...Finally, he plunged into every wickedness and disgrace, when fear and shame being cast off, he simply indulged his own inclinations.” In a world ruled by such evil hot-heads, small wonder people yearned for a wise and cool-headed king.

The next 2 titles Isaiah attributes to the Messiah are startling: Mighty God and Everlasting Father. This goes beyond hyperbole. Why would a merely human Messiah be called Mighty God and Everlasting Father if he were not also divine? The traditional Jewish take on these titles is that they are merely throne names and do not describe the person holding them. And yet Daniel says of the Messiah, “In my vision at night I looked, and there was before me one like a son of man, coming on the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14) God gives him glory and sovereign power and an eternal kingdom? Sounds pretty god-like. By the way, “Son of Man” was the designation Jesus used most frequently for himself. So we could dismiss these titles, Mighty God and Everlasting Father, as mere words or we could see them as vital clues.

Finally Isaiah prophesies that the Messiah will be the Prince of Peace. All rulers promise peace but it usually comes at the price of spilled blood, that of their soldiers and of the people they conquer. And in Hebrew, the word for peace, shalom, means not merely the absence of conflict but complete well-being. By that definition, it isn't much of a peace if it is won and maintained by shedding the blood of others, in violation of the oldest covenant. But what if the peace were established by the king sparing others and letting his own blood be shed? Such self-sacrifice would usher in a kingdom where people become citizens not by being forcibly conquered but by voluntarily joining out of gratitude and love for such a gracious and giving king.

There are many other prophesies throughout the Hebrew Bible referring to other characteristics of the Messiah. In the 53^rd chapter of Isaiah, there is a long passage about God's suffering servant that says, in part, “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that bought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) At the time this passage was confusing. But after Jesus rose from the tomb, it all made sense, like a flashback that reveals the true plot of the story.

Spoiler Alert: In Watchmen, the HBO series, it is revealed that a god-like being was living among the people in the story all along. It was a major surprise but the clues were there from the beginning. Most of us did not pick up on them. And the secret identity of the god-like being was not at all obvious. Just as you would not expect the Mighty God to manifest himself as the baby of a poor Jewish handyman, to be found lying in an animal's feeding trough. Nor is the path of his life what you would expect. He does not become rich and powerful. He is not acknowledged as a king, except mockingly by his enemies. He never raises a sword; in fact, he tells his followers to put theirs down. He doesn't die bravely in battle but hanging helplessly on a cross, the most painful and shameful death a brutal empire could devise for those they considered traitors. This shocks and dismays his followers, who did not properly interpret the clues.

At the end of Knives Out, the detective explains the evidence and tells us what really happened. In real life, it is Jesus who does this for his amazed disciples. In Luke's account of the two who, heading to Emmaus, encounter unknowingly the risen Jesus, it says, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27) This would be like the murder victim explaining why and how he died. But death cannot hold the Lord of Life. The God Incarnate, who raised again to life the synagogue leader's daughter, and the son of the widow of Nain, and his friend Lazarus, cannot be expected to stay dead himself.

It's a good story but if it ends there, how is it relevant to us? In Watchmen, it turns out the powers of the god-like being can be passed on. And the series leaves us guessing if they have been. In contrast, in the beginning of the book of Acts, God's Holy Spirit, who empowered Jesus, is poured out upon his followers. And they go into all the world preaching the good news of the love and forgiveness and healing found in Jesus the Christ or Messiah. Having witnessed the resurrected Jesus, his followers no longer fear death. They proclaim life everlasting.

But then the story takes a break after the first century of the movement. And it flashes forward to the distant future. After witnessing the death throes of the old creation, we see a resurrected paradise for God's resurrected people. John writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne say, 'Now the dwelling of God is with humans, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.' He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!'” (Revelation 21:1-4) Everything will be wrapped up. Justice will be done. The king will be on his throne. The people will be renewed and live happily ever after with Jesus living among them once more.

But what happens in the gap between the past and the future? What happens now, in the time when we are living? That's what's exciting. The Author has left this bit of his plan for us to work out. Like a movie, we all have our parts. We have all the clues. We know the ending. We have the stage directions to love God and love others, including our enemies and the outcasts of society. Jesus has given us his Spirit, who distributes to each of us the gifts we need to do the job. We are even given freedom to improvise, provided we do not stray from the theme of the story.

And the theme of this story we find ourselves in is love. God is love. He made us in the image of his love. God made us to enjoy and live eternally in the love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yet we decided we could run this world better than the Creator, and we made an unholy mess of it. We have achieved some truly great things and we have perpetrated some horrific atrocities in the process. And we have sewn the seeds of our own destruction. The empires of Alexander, Rome, Egypt and Babylon are now dust and ruins. Only God's kingdom, which starts in our hearts, will endure.

And the God who is love has told us that again and again. He has woven the theme throughout all history. It will turn out as he planned: a world without the pain and suffering and injustice and death we bring upon ourselves. How will he do it?

Never underestimate a God who decides to make the pivotal part of his plan entering into his creation as a baby. A God who lays aside his invulnerability to become vulnerable. A God who builds a kingdom, not on the blood of others, but on his own. A God who goes through hell so we won't have to and who rises to life again so we too will rise to eternal life.

To the worldly wise, God becoming a human would seem a ridiculous risk. To those in power, it looks like weakness. Turning over this project to humans also looks like a risk. But 2000 years ago, God risked it all for us. Surely we can do the same for him.

What's in a Name?

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 7:10-16 and Matthew 1:18-11.

Sometimes an author inserts himself into his story as a character. In his Divine Comedy Dante is the person taken on a tour of hell, purgatory and heaven. In his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer is one of the pilgrims and the only one who gets to tell 2 stories. If you look at a picture of a young Ian Fleming and compare it to the description of James Bond in the books, you will see that the spy is an idealized version of the author. J.R.R. Tolkien set it in stone. He identifies himself as his character Beren from The Simarillion and his wife as the love interest Luthien on their tombstones!

Auteurs enter their films too. In every Woody Allen film he is essentially playing himself and when he is not, another actor, like John Cussack in Bullets Over Broadway, is doing a version of the writer/director. Johnny Depp has admitted that in every Tim Burton film he is essentially playing Tim Burton. The most astounding example of this is hidden in plain sight. In one Star Wars film Mark Hamill was asked by director George Lucas to say a line in a certain way. It wasn't natural for Hamill to say it that way but he realized it was the way George spoke. And then it hit him: his character, Luke Skywalker, or for short, Luke S, was a stand-in for the saga's creator Lucas!

And often the name of a character gives away the fact that he or she is an Author Avatar. (And thanks to tvtropes.com for the term and most of this info!) Philip Jose Farmer often included a version of himself in his science fiction series, denoted by the character sharing his initials. In the TV series Bones, the character Temperance Brennen is a crime solving forensic anthropologist who writes mystery novels about a crime solving forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs. In reality it's the other way around. Simplifying things, in the Chronicles of Amber Roger Zelazny actually named his avatar, a castle guard who is also an amateur author, Roger.

Sometimes authors do this out of ego. In fan fiction, such a character is called a Mary Sue. Originally this referred to female fans of Star Trek who wrote stories and created new characters on the starship Enterprise's crew who were just idealized versions of the writer and who became the most important character in the story, often being the love interest of Kirk or Spock as well as being better at everyone's job and ultimately saving the day. The male equivalent is called a Marty Stu. Weirdly the most famous Mary Sue was Wesley Crusher, the annoyingly precocious teenager in Star Trek: the Next Generation who often saved the ship. Wesley just happens to be the middle name of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Fans call such a character a Canon Sue, because, like it or not, the character is officially part of the series.

Occasionally writers do this for grins, even allowing the other characters to confront and bad mouth them for the lousy way the author treats them. Sometimes, however, the main character is a version of the author because the book is a fictionalized memoir or because it is partly based on an incident in their life. In the Narnia Chronicles Professor Digory Kirke has an earthly life very similar in key points to that of author C.S. Lewis, like having a dying mother.

But sometimes the Author Avatar is there to give voice to the author's point of view. Dr. Seuss did this in several of his books. The Lorax was inspired by the author's horror that some unusual trees he saw and liked in Africa were being cut down. In Horton Hears a Who! the author was expressing his regret for how he demonized the Japanese during the Second World War. And the Grinch was Seuss as well, inspired by how he sat up in his studio on a hill, looking down on his neighbor's gaudy Christmas decorations. On a more serious note the character of Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park voices author Michael Crichton's critique of scientific hubris. And considering how the science fictional ideas of my youth are becoming realities now, perhaps we should listen. As Malcolm says, sometimes we get so enamored with figuring out how to do something we forget to ask whether we should do it at all.

The impulse on the part of authors to insert themselves into their stories can be explained by a concept introduced by J.R.R. Tolkien. Our penchant for creating stories and the worlds in which they are set is a reflection of the fact that we are made in the image of God. As he is the Creator, we in imitation become sub-creators, Tolkien said. And God inserted himself into his creation, long before people thought of this.

That's what we see in today's gospel. God is entering his story. But unlike the Greek deus ex machina, the sudden appearance without warning of a god to neatly clear up story problems, what Yahweh does has long been foreshadowed. Our reading from Isaiah is just one of the passages speaking of a miraculous child and a promised savior. And in today's passage from Matthew it is telegraphed in the names.

Our passage begins by talking about the origin story, so to speak, of “the Messiah.” This Hebrew title, like its Greek equivalent Christos or Christ, simply means the Anointed One. The Israelites anointed their prophets, their priests and their kings with oil to symbolize the anointing of the Spirit of God to equip, empower and guide them. But the prophets foresaw not just another in a long line of oil-soaked religious and royal figures. One day God would send THE Messiah, the definitive one who would save God's people. And while folks argued over which of those offices the Messiah would fill, the odds-on favorite was king. So it is significant that God selects as his father/protector Joseph, a son of David, a descendant of the archetypal King of Israel.

The angel tells Joseph that the child is to be named Jesus. This is the Greek version of Yeshua or Joshua, a shortened version of Yehoshua. It can be translated “Yahweh saves” or “Yahweh is savior” or “Yahweh is salvation.” The basic idea is that God saves people. So God is clearly stating Jesus' role. He is God's agent in saving the people.

The question is “saving them from what?” And we have talked about this recently, how the people wanted to be saved from the Roman empire and that's why they wanted a Jewish king to set up a Jewish kingdom of God. Humans prefer concrete things over things that are spiritual. We look to things like governments, money, and possessions to give us peace and happiness. But it is not in their power to do such things. Good government can ensure a certain level of justice and peace but can do nothing for inner peace. When you lack the basics money can make your life better. But once your physical needs are met, more money doesn't make you significantly happier. Ditto with possessions. Some people are addicted to shopping, trying in vain to fill their spiritual emptiness with physical items.

Jesus voices our Creator's point of view: “The kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) “Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:15) “The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.” (Matthew 13:22) We cannot find salvation in government, money or possessions.

And it's not because these things are bad in and of themselves. They are just the wrong tools to fix our most fundamental problems. You wouldn't use a hammer to repair a headlight nor a plumber's wrench to reprogram your computer. As Jesus said, our problems come from within (Mark 7:21-22) and we need to let our Creator inside us to fix our sinful short-term thinking, self-centered hearts, and self-destructive behaviors.

Through Jesus, the Author tells us we have been learning the wrong lessons from his story. We have divorced our love of God from our love of those created by God in his image. A whole chapter of Matthew is devoted to Jesus listing the ways the religious leaders, under the pretense of serving God, do disservices to people. (Matthew 23) That's why when asked for the greatest commandment, he gives two. To do otherwise would be like honoring the Ten Commandments but forgetting the second of the two tablets. It's easy to do certain religious rituals and feel you've done your duty to God; it's much more difficult to act towards other people with love and compassion and forgiveness. But as Jesus says, quoting Hosea, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” (Matthew 9:13; Hosea 6:6)

So as the Author's voice, Jesus tells us the proper way to interpret what God is doing and what he expects us to do. But he doesn't merely tell us, as does the Clive Cussler avatar in his Dirk Pitt novels; Jesus shows us. There have been lots of prophets telling people what God is like; Jesus is going to show us what God is like.

And that's what the last name or title in our gospel highlights. In the first of many quotes from the Old Testament that Matthew puts in his gospel, he takes a verse from our reading in Isaiah. In it God gives a sign that King Ahaz need not fear war but will have peace. A child will be born, possibly Isaiah's, and he will be called Immanuel. Before he knows right from wrong, the threat will be over. Matthew applies that name, given symbolically to that child, to Jesus, for whom it is even more appropriate. “Immanuel” means “God with us.” And that is who Jesus is. He is God with us. But in what sense?

Jesus is God with us as in “he is on our side.” A lot of people think that God doesn't care about us that much or that he is always angry with us. But as it says in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God sent Jesus on a mission to save us. He is on our side, working for our good.

Jesus is God with us as in being our companion. He accompanies us on every step of our journey through life. In the manger, he is with us in our vulnerability as an infant. On the flight to Egypt, he is with us as a child seeking refuge from persecution. In his job he is with us as we work. On the river Jordan approaching John the Baptist he is with us as we face God's plan for our lives. In the wilderness he is with us as we wrestle with who we are and how we will then live that out. With the twelve he is with us as we live in community with friends. In the controversies with his critics he is with us as we try to make our insights heard and understood. At the grave of Lazarus he is with us as we mourn. At Gethsemane he is with us when we suffer fear and anxiety. Before his judges he is with us as we face false accusations. At the whipping post he is with us as we suffer pain. Before the soldiers he is with us as we endure mockery. On the way to Golgotha he is with us as we undergo shame and humiliation. On the cross he is with us as we face death. God is with us in all of those circumstances, through Jesus.

Through Jesus, God experiences our problems and our pain. Through Jesus, God understands our plight, not theoretically but first-hand. Through Jesus, we know God is with us whatever befalls us and wherever we are. And we know that in whichever situation we find ourselves God will save us, as Jesus' name says. Jesus is not only God with us as a shoulder to cry on but God with us as an arm strong to save and to pull us up from the pit. Jesus is God with us, leading us through hazards and obstacles, past snares and stumbling blocks. Jesus is God with us, helping to support us when our cross gets too heavy to bear alone.

Jesus is God walking, not a mile in our shoes, but the whole journey from birth to death. And beyond. On the night before he died, Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you....If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:15-17, 23) If Jesus is God with us, the Holy Spirit is God within us.

In Jesus God comes to us and is with us in our earthly lives. Through the Spirit, we can come with God into new life, life with him. The Spirit gives life and he gives us the life Jesus has in him, eternal life. We can be with Jesus, enclosed in the eternal love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit forever.

We have all this straight from the mouth of  the Author of our salvation, the Author of this story in which we have found ourselves. Yet we have the freedom to choose whether to listen to and go along with what he says or not. When Dorothy L. Sayers created a love interest for her detective Lord Peter Wimsey, she put a lot of herself in that character, Harriet Vane. In the story where she was introduced, Lord Peter clears her of murder and she was supposed to fall in love with him. But Sayers found that it would be unnatural for the character she created, a strong intelligent woman based on herself, to simply be the damsel in distress who falls into the arms of her rescuer and marries him out of gratitude. So Lord Peter's pursuit of her and their courtship played out over the course of 3 novels. Eventually they did marry and lived happily ever after.

We are not the Author's puppets. But having heard his voice and seen him at work in this world and experienced the depth of his love, we have a choice. We can resist him. We can go against the flow of the story. There is no happy ending there. Or we can follow him, Jesus, the Messiah, the true King and God with us, and live with him happily ever after.

When, O Lord?

The scriptures referred to are James 5:7-10 and Matthew 11:2-11.

Every morning at the church I see my computer do an electronic impression of what I did just a couple hours before: an old man waking up. I turn it on and then wait for several minutes for it to actually be ready to do something. The blank screen comes up and then the logo and then a pleasing photographic vista of some exotic location in the world. And then the clock shows up and often bits of info about the picture. And then I click on the picture and hope I see the prompt where I can finally get into the programs. And even when I pull up the internet and my word processing program it only looks like they are ready to operate. Nothing is actually interactive. Because I used to be in radio, writing and timing commercials, I have timed just how long it takes and sometimes it approaches 5 minutes before my computer is anything other than screen shots of the last time I used it. And heaven help me if it starts to download a software update!

I wish I could say this teaches me patience but my basic reactions are frustration and resignation. Yet I remember when it took longer and going onto the internet involved listening to the electronic screams of a dial up connection. But things got faster and we got used to instant gratification. Wanna watch a movie? Go to your streaming service. Wanna a hot cup of tea or even a meal? Just pop it in the microwave. Wanna buy something? Do it with 1 click and it will be here in a day or two. So it may be that this has simply conditioned me to think my computer is taking forever to start up. Convenience has obliterated patience.

And we have lost our patience with solutions. We want ideas and technology that fix things magically and overnight. But that's not how the real world works. And in our New Testament reading James, as Jesus often did, uses an agricultural example. The farmer can't hurry the crop and can't speed up the rains. Growth and development take time. There is no quick fix.

It looks like the patience of John the Baptist was being tried. He was in prison for criticizing Herod Antipas. He had to know there was no forgiveness coming from that quarter. And John knew that Jesus was out there baptizing people as he had been and preaching the coming of the kingdom of God. And yet the expected build up to creating a kingdom was not there. Nobody was gathering an army or stocking them with weapons. No one was rising up against the powers that be. Maybe John was anticipating Jesus leading his followers to storm Herod's palace to free him. Nothing like that was happening.

John can been forgiven for thinking that way. In the days of the prophets of old, there was no separation between what we now call church and state, nor was there anything like the Native American tribes who had a war chieftain and a peace chieftain. The judges were often both prophets and war leaders. Moses lead the Israelites into battles. The priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the fray. And John the Baptist has been called the last prophet of the Old Covenant, or to use more traditional nomenclature, the Old Testament. But things have changed. And it is Jesus who is changing them.

To prepare for a revolution, as John apparently thought of the kingdom of God, you get people stirred up about their fears and grievances. You want to get them angry. That's the effect John had. It brought them to repentance but it also got people thinking John might be the Messiah, God's anointed prophet, priest and king. And it may have been rumors of this, along with John's fiery rhetoric about judgment, that was as much a reason for Herod arresting the Baptist as his denunciation of the tetrarch's incestuous marriage to his brother's ex.

Jesus does begin his ministry by saying, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 4:17) John probably thought Jesus would continue where he had left off. But Mark, the oldest gospel, summarizes Jesus' message slightly differently; “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:15) Mark emphasized not only the kingdom and repentance but the necessity to put one's trust in the good news, or gospel.

In his account of the start of Christ's ministry, Luke recounts how Jesus attends the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. When given the scroll of Isaiah to read, he finds the passage that goes, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18-19) This is Jesus' mission statement. He is announcing freedom and healing and God's favor or acceptance. And it is interesting that Jesus breaks off his reading of the first 2 verses of Isaiah 61 just before it says, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” Jesus' ministry is one of good news. This is not the day of judgment.

So John sends some of his disciples who were visiting him in prison to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” And Jesus simply points to what he is doing. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Notice that these are primarily works of healing and restoration and education. But they aren't things associated with preparing for a war on evil. Jesus isn't doing nothing; it's just that what he is doing is not what John expected.

We have said that John is an Old Testament kind of prophet. But his message lacks something they had. Yes, they would preach impending judgment but then they would also preach God's forgiveness and his restoration of his people. John is mostly about the first part, judgment; Jesus is mostly about the second part, forgiveness and restoration. You could oversimplify it and say John is about justice and Jesus is about peace. Justice is about fairness and putting things right when everyone isn't being treated equally. Peace is not merely the absence of overt conflict but the absence of covert or hidden conflict, such as you see in passive-aggressive relationships or in a person's inner conflicts. That said, Jesus is also interested in justice and the instructions John gives to the newly baptized, like don't cheat or take advantage of others, would go a long way towards keeping the peace.

It would be a little closer to the truth to say that John was more focused on punitive or retributive justice, which is about punishing the offender, while Jesus is more focused on restorative justice, which is about making the victim whole. Ideally, restorative justice is also about restoring the relationship between the offender and the victim. Jesus spoke of leaving your gift at the altar if you realize you have to repair your relationship with someone you've hurt and so reconciling with them first. (Matthew 5:23-24) In the Lord's Prayer we ask God to forgive us our sins to the extent we forgive others their sins against us. (Matthew 6:12). And when Zacchaeus is visited by Jesus, he decides to make reparations to those he cheated. (Luke 19:1-10) In that case Zacchaeus is trying to make right the wrongs he did to others.

Which leads to rehabilitative justice, that is, making the offender whole as well. As the saying goes, hurt people hurt people. If the world seems to have treated you unfairly, you tend to lash out at others. We see this in children who are abused or neglected. If they do not continue living their lives as victims, they can become victimizers. Those who are damaged tend to pass that on by damaging others. Jesus realized that and that he is why he spent so much time with those society labeled as “sinners.” In actuality, we are all sinners but we tend to be harsher on people with different sins than ours and especially sins that cause more disruption in society. Thus we blame the loud and obnoxious and violent drunk more than the bartender who should have cut him off long ago, or the system that treats this one very powerful drug, alcohol, differently than other powerful drugs and makes it available to just about anyone in whatever dosage they feel like taking.

Jesus went to "sinners", the way a doctor used to make house calls on the sick. (Matthew 9:12) Because sin can be seen as a spiritual sickness. And just like a physically unhealthy person is impaired in how they act physically, a spiritually unhealthy person is impaired in how they act spiritually. To fix the impaired outcomes you have to treat the disease. Thus Jesus forgives people their sins and gives them a prescription for spiritually healthy living. The most dramatic example is the woman who is caught in adultery and dragged to Jesus to be stoned to death, as set down in the Mosaic law. But Jesus points out that everyone who judges her is similarly infected by sin and they are too affected to deal justly with her particular sin. When they all slink away, Jesus asks the woman about her accusers. “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. Jesus said, “Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no longer.” (John 8:10-11) I know that some quibble because this story is not found in the oldest manuscripts of John but it is totally in line with Jesus' other actions. For instance, Jesus, who is vocally against breaking the marriage vows, did not make a big scene over the many marriages of the woman at the well (John 4:4-32). And he forgave the notorious woman who washed his feet with her tears. (Luke 7:36-50) Jesus refused to do more damage to those who were already damaged. Instead he forgave and healed them.

When Jesus does sound like John, that is, judgmental towards the sinful, he is invariably addressing those who do not acknowledge their sin, such as the religious leaders of his day. This is Jesus showing tough love, trying to wake them up to their very real spiritual and moral disorders. Jesus saw what psychology has only recently shown scientifically, that those who are powerful tend to feel more entitled to special treatment and tend to feel less empathy towards others. Jesus sought to shatter their smugness and self-righteousness. Maybe the rich man has such a hard time entering the kingdom of God because he cannot bring himself to acknowledge that he is just as much in need of God's grace and forgiveness as the pimp, the murderer, the drug dealer, and those whose sins he looks down on. Without humbling yourself and admitting your sins and asking God for the mercy we find in Jesus Christ, you cannot be healed of your spiritual ills, just as a person cannot be cured of a physical illness without admitting how seriously sick they are and going to the doctor and following the doctor's orders.

In fact, Jesus says there is only one unforgivable sin. He was healing people and his critics said he was using demons to cast out the demons they held responsible for disease. And Jesus cautioned them by saying that blaspheming, or insulting, the Holy Spirit was the only unforgivable sin. (Matthew 12:22-37) They were saying that an objectively good action, healing, was evil because they couldn't believe God was working through Jesus. When you are so morally screwed up that you say that good is evil, you cannot be saved. A doctor cannot save a patient who is so distrustful or paranoid that he sees the doctor's actions as evil. And God cannot save those who cannot see his Spirit at work in making people better. And if you think what is good is evil, then it is a short step to seeing what is evil as good.

For the most part the people saw Jesus as God's agent in the world. But they still thought of the kingdom of God as analogous to an earthly kingdom and they were impatient to see it now. After feeding the 5000, we are told, “Jesus, knowing that they intended to make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.” (John 6:15) So he sends the disciples ahead by boat and in the middle of the night, walks across the water to meet them. When the crowd catches up to him at Capernaum, he says that they are only interested in him because he provided physical food. When he presents himself as the Bread of Life, whose flesh they have to eat and whose blood they have to drink, many stop following him. He says, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of Spirit and life.” (John 6:63) In other words they are still thinking concretely, as if he is endorsing literal cannibalism. They cannot see the spiritual meaning, that he is as necessary to our spirits as food is to our bodies. Just so, they wanted a physical, political kingdom, and could not see what Jesus was really talking about when he spoke of the kingdom of God, which is not from or of this world and which is within the people of God.

I don't think John got it either. He knew the kingdoms of this world were corrupt now. They needed to be changed now. But Jesus knew you need to change people first. The best system in the world won't work if the people running it and participating in it are spiritually blind and morally impaired. They say Hitler made the trains run on time but a lot of those trains were taking people to death camps. Even communities conceived of as utopias collapse because of the moral lapses of their leadership and followers. As Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born from above.” (John 3:3) Only those spiritually reborn can be a part of God's kingdom.

But, as anyone who's had children can tell you, it takes a long time from conception to birth; it takes a long time from the first pangs to the actual birth; and it takes a long time from birth to maturity. So, of course, it takes an even longer time for the whole world to be reborn spiritually. And it takes patience on our part. Especially when we suffer the pain evil brings.

Jesus will come again, when the time is right, when all the second and third and fourth chances have been given and all those who will accept God's love have done so. There will be a time when the wheat and the chaff, the sheep and the goats will be separated. There will be a day when “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be paid back according to what he has done while in the body, whether good or evil.” (2 Corinthians 5:10) No one will be neglected. No one will get away with anything. No good deed will go unrewarded.

Scripture assures us that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1) What does being “in Christ” mean? Paul writes, “In Christ you are all children of God through faith. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” (Galatians 3:26-27) Paul is not talking about literally dressing up like Jesus, the way a fan at Comic Con dresses up like Spiderman or Wonder Woman. Christianity is the process of becoming like Christ. It is asking yourself, “What would Jesus do?” and then doing it. Of course, Jesus could do things we can't. But we are not alone. We are part of the body of Christ. If the situation calls for gifts that I have not been granted by the Spirit, I can call in another who has those gifts. For instance, I cannot do much to get someone housing but I can refer them to Catholic Charities, which has made that a priority here in the Keys. In the aftermath of hurricane Irma, we saw many parts of the body of Christ here: Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Mennonites, and more. They helped rebuild this community.

Jesus was a builder. Jesus was a healer. When John needed to know if the kingdom of God was being built, Jesus pointed to his work: rebuilding lives, healing people, physically and spiritually. And if we are in Christ, if we are clothed with his Spirit, we are to be doing the same work. The kingdom of God is built one person at a time. And it doesn't matter if they are what the world sees as the least, the last or the lost. God made them. Jesus died for them. We serve them.