Blogging toward Sunday: Bow before his brightness

by Erin Martin

Matthew 2:1-12
January 6, 2008

For a preacher, the challenge of Epiphany is that it comes every year. The story unfolds as it always does: King Herod, the wise men from the East, gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. By now, the pageant is overplayed. The star of wonder has lost its awe. How, in this over-handled text, can anything new break through?

Yet this year something new did break through. As I read Matthew’s account of the journey of the Magi to Jerusalem in search of the child born king of the Jews, I was struck, not by the aspects of prophecy fulfilled or the astrological phenomenon of the star, but by the wise men’s raw, unrestrained response—they worshiped. Earlier biblical translations read, “When they saw that the star had stopped, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.” The description bends over backward with expression! The NRSV tries to subdue the hyperbole, saying simply they were “overwhelmed with joy,” but that sounds like an understatement. Something amazing happened to the wise men. They had a moment of revelation, a transcendent experience of the divine, and they could not contain their joy. Ronald Goetz writes, “They had lost the composure and reserve of scholars and sages, giving way to an ecstasy of naked adoration.” When was the last time that happened to you in worship?

The celebration of the epiphany is an invitation to praise. It is an opportunity to be so moved by God’s appearing in our midst that we cannot help but “fall down and worship him.” In this case, the task of the preacher may be to just get out of the way and let the people pay their homage.

St. Theresa of Avila in the 16th century asked, “How is it that there are not many who are led by sermons to forsake open sin? I think that’s because preachers have too much worldly wisdom. They are not like the Apostles (or the wise men for that matter), flinging it all aside and catching fire with love of God, and so their flame gives little heat.” What worldly wisdom could we possibly add to the already intense heat and brilliance of God’s loving manifestation to us in Jesus Christ? What if this year we attempted to say little but instead tried to bask much in the beauty of God’s perfect light given to us in the Christ child? What if we just knelt down?

Erin Martin is a pastor serving at Wesley United Methodist Church in Eugene, Oregon.

Confirmed

by Amy Frykholm

I had never been an official member of a church until one Sunday last October.

I was baptized by my father into the Presbyterian Church as an infant, but by the time confirmation came along, I was participating wholeheartedly in a Baptist congregation. While I accepted the Baptists’ offer for another baptism, I refused the “hand of fellowship” for reasons clear only to my 12-year old mind. Twenty-some years went by. I attended Lutheran, Methodist, Quaker, Catholic and Episcopalian congregations. I had crises and renewals of faith, but I never had even an inkling of a desire to officially join anything.

My sense of my impending confirmation in the Episcopal Church was perfunctory and pragmatic in the extreme. Why not? I thought. It will help the priests with their numbers (not that they care much). I’ve already served in leadership roles in this church and it is awkward for everybody that I am not technically a member; I’ve been hanging around for seven years and don’t seem likely to move on soon. My husband asked if he should be at the church for the rite. My in-laws called in to see if I wanted some family support. “No, no,” I told everybody. “This isn’t a big deal. It’s just something I need to do.”

Sunday morning, our collection of confirmands gathered to meet with the bishop before the service. As he gave us the opportunity to express what confirmation was for us, I squirmed a little. One man, a Vietnam veteran in lifelong recovery from posttraumatic stress disorder, said, “For our confirmation class, we had to pick out a story that had meaning for us and I picked the creation story. I picked it because it is like my story. Before I came to this church, I was void and formless. I feel like God moved over my waters and gave me a shape.” Another man, who cannot attend church regularly because of the terms of his probation, said, “This is my family. This is my home. Without these people, I wouldn’t even know my own story.” Another woman said, “This is the first place where I have felt entirely accepted for who I am. My questions, my doubts, my fears—they are accepted.” On and on it went, each person finding very personal poetry to express confirmation to the church. I still felt wordless myself. I’m glad my answer to his question is not recorded anywhere.

But after it was over, after the oil was placed on my head and I had heard the words of confirmation, I came home and remembered something that Stan Wilson had written, right here on Theolog. In chapter 29, Jeremiah gives words of instruction to people in exile: “Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. . . .Seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its shalom shall be your shalom.” In this, I finally understood something about my own story. Among these people, among their stories and heartaches and questions and struggles, I could find—indeed have already sometimes found—my shalom. It isn’t perfect, it isn’t always articulate, but it is, in fact, confirmation.

Blogging toward Sunday: Out of Egypt

by Erin Martin

Matthew 2:13-23
Sunday, December 30

Time is being stretched in the gospel narrative. With several allusions to the wise men, we look forward to next Sunday’s celebration of Epiphany. With the several allusions to the Exodus we also look back to the Israelites held in bondage in Egypt. With the future, the present and the past seemingly all at hand, how do we draw out for our congregations a message from the manger?

The echoes tell us everything. When Joseph is warned in a dream to flee to Egypt, we naturally think of next week’s nocturnal warning to the wise men to go home another way. When Herod murders any child two years old or under, we hearken back to Pharaoh and his deadly edict. Danger is everywhere. Even at his birth, Jesus is shadowed by destruction. Sister Margaret Eletta Guider calls it “living in the shadow of the manger.” According to Guider, we see the fragility of Jesus’ life, not only on the cross at Calvary, but also in the stable. From the beginning, Jesus is at risk.

He’s a threat to power, and threats to power almost always result in violent attempts to wipe out those threats. In the manger scene, Jesus is King from day one. Shepherds and wise men alike adore him, but the human authorities don’t want to share their thrones. King Herod forbids the adoration of anyone except him. In the Exodus, Pharaoh refuses to be weakened by the loss of his slave laborers, and, in our contemporary context, the United States government refuses to yield in its War on Terror. Will we ever learn?

Several weeks ago, President Bush announced that the administration’s policy toward Iran would not change despite the release of a U.S. intelligence report indicating that Iran had suspended its atomic weapons program back in 2003. As Yogi Berra said, “This is déjà vu all over again.” History has a way of bending back again and again to violence. But the good news of the gospel is that in the birth of Jesus, the reign of the “Prince of Peace” has been inaugurated. As Christians, we serve an infant king whose life on earth will disrupt the violent pattern of history and reveal to us another way.

Jesus’ exile in infancy and his journey out of Egypt are painful reminders to us in the church that often we are too often part of the violence. For the sake of our security, we pay tribute to the “powers that be,” and the result can be deadly.

A couple of months ago, I went to see the movie, In the Valley of Elah. It’s a complex and powerful movie that doesn’t offer easy answers to the unraveling chaos in Iraq. I was deeply affected by the movie, and by the director’s inscription that came at its close. On the screen was a photograph of an Iraqi child’s dead body (a part of the movie that is crucial to the plot) with the words, “For the children,” beneath it. Rachel still weeps for her children. She refuses to be consoled, and this Christmas, so should we.

Erin Martin is a pastor serving at Wesley United Methodist Church in Eugene, Oregon.

Voter ID

by Meg Cox

When I went through the quadrennial ritual of renewing my driver’s license in October, the most painful part of the process was admitting I’d put on a few pounds.

Good thing I’m a self-employed licensed driver in Illinois, I thought, because if I lived in Atlanta, didn’t drive, and had an hourly job with nonnegotiable hours, I’d be in a fix. If I wanted to vote in 2008, I’d need to dig up my birth certificate, order and wait for a copy of my marriage license, make plans to ditch work, and arrange transportation outside the county to get an ID.

John Tanner, head of the Voting Rights Section at the Justice Department, apparently wouldn’t have any problem with that. In fact, if I were elderly as well as white, he might use me as Exhibit A. “It’s true that she could have a hard time getting an ID,” he might say, “but black voters wouldn’t be as affected because they die first.”

The Exhibit A story is just hypothetical. But “they die first” is a direct quote.

Back in 2005, Georgia closed the Department of Motor Vehicles offices in many of its counties (including Atlanta’s Fulton County), then passed a law requiring state ID to vote. The law needed to pass muster with the Justice Department, and career staffers said it was racially discriminatory. Tanner overruled them. Why? Though it might affect elderly people disproportionately, he recently told the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles, it wouldn’t affect black people so much because “they die first.”

Tanner was called on the carpet for these remarks in hearings before a House Judiciary subcommittee in October. He apologized for his “tone” but stood by his position.

As the voter ID issue is heating up in the news (what with these congressional hearings and the Supreme Court’s agreement to hear a voter ID case), Tanner’s remarks aren’t the only bizarre aspect of the debate. If you’d like to bone up on the subject, I recommend the Washington Post article Justice Dept. Voting Chief Apologizes but Persists, by Dan Eggen; the New York Times article Supreme Court to Hear Case on Voter ID Law, by David Stout; and two related Century articles that I authored, Access Denied: The Problem with Voter ID Laws and Hypothetical Fraud: Behind the Firing of David Iglesias.

Meanwhile, I’d like to ask Tanner why he doesn’t seem bothered by a law that makes it harder for elderly people to vote—whatever their race.

In God's name

by Jason Byassee

“When I die I shall see myself as I’ve never seen myself before, I shall see myself in the light of God’s truth. That may not be very comfortable at all. Sometimes I feel afraid of it . . . All can do is trust that God already sees that truth and already loves me. So even when I see myself in the most unattractive light, God is still love. Can I accept that? We’ll see when I die.”

Those are the words of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England. This interview is more interesting than other interviews with him on homosexuality, or on the crisis in the Anglican communion: this one is personal. If these and other soundbytes in a 15-minute publicity trailer are any indication, the upcoming 2-hour CBS primetime special, In God’s Name, will not only be worth the time—it will also be spectacular (9-11 p.m., December 23).

Filmmakers and brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet, French-born New Yorkers, interviewed 12 of the leading religious leaders in the world, many of whom live in places that provide spectacular background scenery. Together their faith communities make up some 4 billion people. As a journalist myself I wonder how on earth they got these people to sit down with them. The participation of Mark Hanson, head of the Lutheran World Federation, based in Chicago, is understandable. So is the Dalai Lama for that matter—he may be exotic, as the Buddhist leader in the pajamas who frightens the thugs in Beijing, but he’s not exactly press shy.

But the participation of Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, a prominent Sunni Sheikh in Cairo, surprised me; of Yonna Metzger, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, and of Patriarch Alexei II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who barely speaks with other Orthodox leaders, let alone other Christians or secular journalists. A few shots of Pope Benedict leading prayer and playing piano suggest that the filmmakers may have even gotten quality time with Papa Ratzi. Each of these leaders answers deeply personal questions, and there’s B-roll footage of them with children, wives, walking the streets of their cities, or at worship.

Sikh leader Joginder Singh Vedanti speaks of an Indian army attack on his temple in 1984, when he and several dozen survivors sat among the dead and waited their turn to be led away and shot. “I knew I was going to die,” he said, describing his final prayers. “But then they let me go.” His face shows bemusement—like Lazarus fresh from the grave, as we Christians would say.

Patriarch Alexei reflects on the demise of “hostile atheism,” especially in Russia, alongside footage of Orthodox priests marching in parade with Russian army soldiers in Red Square (separation of church and state has yet to catch on). “The dictators wanted to break religion . . . but what came out of it? There are no longer dictators or hostile atheism . . . It hurts to think of how many priests, monks and regular believers were murdered for their faith in Jesus Christ. But there are still many believers who build their life based on God’s law. That is why God will save us all and the church will serve him until the end of time.” His eyes squint with determination at that last eschatological promise—a tiny gesture that makes me believe him.

The most difficult interviewees to watch on this trailer are the Americans: Hanson and Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention (perhaps because their clothes and B-roll footage of Chicago and South Carolina are less exotic). Hanson speaks with pride of nailing an “on strike” sign to the door of the seminary in protest of U.S. policies in southeast Asia. Page professes his belief that “We do not live in a playground, we live in a battleground. I believe in the reality of spiritual warfare. I believe God and Satan are constantly battling for the hearts and souls of men and women.” Coming just after the Dalai Lama’s profession of respect for all religions, since they all benefit millions, this comment from Page seemed especially childish. It is unfortunate that both of the Americans sounded the notes of culture war entrenchment.

The film looks at what affects us all: our reason for being, our views of death, how those beliefs affect our families, our communities, our most intimate selves. The program’s glimpse inside such prominent lives is rare and wonderful.

Holy mothers of God

by Kristin M. Swenson

Quick, what do these women have in common: hooker for a day, prostitute, foreigner, adulteress, unwed mother? Hint: They appear in the Bible together, and without them, we'd have no Christmas. If you guessed that they are the only women named in a list of Jesus' predecessors, kudos to you.

Genealogies in the Bible seldom make for good reading. Many's the pious person who, determined to read the Bible from start to finish, sails through stories of creation, disobedience and fratricide only to founder on the shoals of "begats." But those lists of names—Mehujael, Methushael, Lamech, Jabal—so odd to our ears, serve a purpose.

The Gospel of Matthew begins in good Jewish tradition with a genealogy. It is Jesus' family line from Abraham to Jesus' father, or, er, his adopted father Joseph, "the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born." Of the 40 generations listed, almost all are the names of men. This is a patriarchal culture, after all. But five women also appear, although (because?) each is of questionable repute.

The first, Tamar, is the daughter-in-law of Judah… twice over. Genesis tells us that the first two of Judah's sons that Tamar married were killed by God. Judah must have thought that there was something fatal about Tamar, so he withheld his third son from marrying her. This put her in a terrible predicament, since a woman in that ancient patriarchal world had no clout (or anything, for that matter) without connection to a man. So Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute, Judah slept with her and she got pregnant. Judah was angry (how dare his daughter-in-law sleep around), and then she revealed that he was the father. Judah repented and called her "more righteous than I" and Tamar had twins.

Matthew also mentions Rahab, a prostitute who hid Israelite spies, effectively protecting them from certain death. She declared their God to be the true God and kept her promise to keep them secret. When Jericho was destroyed, Joshua and company kept their promise to Rahab, sparing her and her family who "lived in Israel ever since." Matthew describes her as the mother of Boaz, who married Ruth, the third woman that Matthew includes.

Ruth hailed from an enemy people, the Moabites. Nevertheless, her story is one of tenderness and loyalty. After her first husband died, Ruth determined to stay with her Israelite mother-in-law, Naomi. It is Ruth who made the famous declaration reiterated at countless weddings: "Where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge, your people will be my people, and your God my God." But she said it to another woman, Naomi.

Their children have children, begetting and begatting until we get to the great king David. The Achilles’ heel of David's monarchy was his adulterous union with Bathsheba, the fourth woman that Matthew mentions, calling her "the wife of Uriah" to emphasize the adultery. Bathsheba advocated successfully for her son, Solomon, to succeed David as king; Solomon became the great temple builder.

Four women, all with complicated, questionable sexual pasts who do heroic things. The fifth? The pregnant virgin Mary, of course, who stands in a long tradition of eye-brow-raising, wink-wink women without whose intelligence, independence and integrity there would be no God-graced baby, no savior of the world. Or so the Bible says.

Kristin Swenson teaches Hebrew Bible at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Advent on campus

by Susan Olson

The new senior chaplain at my university recently sent out an email informing the staff that we would not be decorating the office or playing seasonal music during the holiday season. Some people were disappointed by this decision; I breathed a sigh of relief.

The decision was based on a desire to make the office space welcoming to students from a wide array of religious backgrounds. I support this whole-heartedly.

Our office has become a quiet space where students can experience relief from the gaudy, noisy Christmas that’s all around them. This applies to Christians as well as to students of other faiths: they can come here to find a quiet space in which to “celebrate” Advent, a season that is in many ways incongruous with December on a college campus.

Instead of a beautiful season of longing and examination and liminality, students find their knowledge being examined by others. They race to finish their coursework, checking off papers and lab reports and exams. Faculty members push through piles of papers, performing mathematical gymnastics, feeding registrars’ hungry databases. December on campus is all about finishing.

Since students are for the most part joyful souls, all these examinations and papers take place before a backdrop of holiday parties and decorations. Mistletoe is draped from hallway to hallway; lights twinkle in windows. Trees and tinsel are everywhere, and the scent of peppermint wafts through corridors. Even though it’s exam time, there’s a push to celebrate early and often. Some of it is pent-up energy. Some of it is trying to celebrate close friendships before exams and vacations. Some of it is just a desire to push back the encroaching darkness.

Of course the Christianity in Christmas parties here is watered-down. A Hindu student invited me to one of these parties. The invitation was littered with candy canes, angels and ivy. “I didn’t know you celebrated Christmas,” I said. “Oh not the Jesus Christmas, just the American one,” she said. I left hungry for Advent, hungry for the chance to wait for something, to stretch out and yearn.

I’ve been exchanging emails with a student who is discerning a call to the ordained ministry. He’s not from an Advent-observing tradition, but is trying it on for size this year. “It’s hard,” he writes, “to even find a physical place to experience Advent here. Everything’s just so loud and Christmasy.”

“Try hanging out in the chaplain’s office,” I replied. “We aren’t celebrating Christmas here yet—thanks be to God.”

Susan Olson is a chaplain at Yale University.

How comfortable is your religion?

by Amy Frykholm

When I got up to go to exercise class one frigid morning this month, I looked out over the icy expanse of white toward the backyard thermometer: -10 degrees.

Five miles away in the parking lot of a trailer park, other members of my small town were getting ready to dance on the Feast Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In the predawn bitter cold, they dressed in elaborately and lovingly beaded tunics and pants—and, I hope, plenty of layers of wool and Lycra.

As the sun gradually rose and the stars faded, they danced from the trailer park, along the highway thick with commuting traffic, to local Catholic church at the center of town. They held a dedication and then continued to dance all morning, all afternoon and on into the night. In Mexico, they told me (clucking disapproval at how soft people grow in the United States), people dance not just into the night, but all day and all night. Even so, these local dancers dance for more than 16 hours straight. They dance for themselves, for their communities, for La Virgin and the tradition of hope that she represents. They dance literally through snow and ice, through bitter temperatures and dangerous conditions (some outsiders complain of the danger every year, and attempt to prevent the ritual). They dance despite the bewilderment and misunderstanding of their neighbors. They dance though many are far from home.

Americans like their religion to be comfortable. A latte stand at the mega church, please. Cushions for my meditation practice with a nice cup of tea afterward. I head out in the cold morning air and darkness and walk a few blocks to my exercise class. What am I willing to suffer? And what am I willing to suffer for? Would I give what my neighbors gave today for their faith?

Rob Bell groupies?

by Debra Bendis

The line of people waiting to hear pastor and author Rob Bell (Mars Hill Bible Church) snaked around the block. Chicago was his first stop on a national tour. His subject: “the gods aren’t angry.”

The crowd was mostly young adults, and mostly evangelicals. Someone said, perhaps jokingly, of a friend who was late, “Oh he’s probably witnessing to someone down the street.” But I knew enough about Bell to not be spooked. He usually manages to irritate both mainliners and evangelicals.

Bell’s storytelling did not disappoint. His wry asides are worth as much as the main thread of his lecture. “The gods are angry” began with the travails of the first cave woman as she figured out the power of the sun, the rain and other natural forces, and begin to honor these forces. Humans, says Bell, have always identified “gods” and tried to appease them with sacrifices—animals, humans, even first-born children. Through the generations, sacrifice became systematized. Then, with Abraham, there arose the idea of a God who knew humans personally and was even to known to speak to them and direct them. It all led up to the Book of Hebrews, in which Jesus is identified as the one and final sacrifice, the One who has freed us once and for all from having to appease “the gods.”

It was a quick run through human history, but the audience seemed to hear a message of hope about how to get out of the traps they’ve fallen into as they desperately try to appease various gods in their life.

The only thing that bothered me was that, in his eagerness to condemn churches as passé, too rigid, or too wedded to the surrounding culture, Bell overstates his case. He misses the opportunity to urge young adults to become part of a congregation. Hearing about a compassionate God should lead to finding a particular Christian community where one tries to follow that God, and where one risks being known by others.

Otherwise one risks remaining only a consumer of inspiring lectures and a Bell groupie.

Blogging toward Sunday: Hear and see

by Erin Martin

Matthew 11:2-11
Sunday, December 16

The build-up to Christmas bombards our senses—the constant blinking of Christmas lights, the pervasive wafting of pine-scented potpourri, the drone of “sleigh-bells ringing.” No wonder we lose sight of what we’re really looking for in Advent, the signs of the one who is to come.

From the darkness of his prison cell, John hears about the ministry of Jesus and sends his disciples to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Without being able to see for himself, John must grasp the larger messianic meaning of Jesus’ ministry through his disciples. Jesus responds with a direct appeal to their senses. “Go and tell John what you hear and see.”

The proof Jesus offers that the kingdom of God has drawn near is the healing of our bodies, the restoration of our senses. The blind see. The deaf hear. The lame walk. The poor hear good news. Unfortunately for John, the only glaring absence in this list of fulfillment from the prophet Isaiah is the release of the captives! John never will go free. But just in case people use John’s imprisonment to question significance of John’s life, Jesus turns to the crowd and asks them, “When you went out into the wilderness to see John, what did you go out to look at?” Three times he tests the crowd’s ability to perceive through their senses the activity of God in the person of John. Finally, in the echoes of Isaiah once again, Jesus says, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.” John is more than a prophet; he is the preparer of the way.

The challenge for us in Advent is to allow Jesus to restore our senses, to have him open our eyes and ears so that we can go and tell others what we hear and see. Admittedly, from the darkness of our prison cells, it can be hard for us to grasp the larger messianic meaning of Jesus’ ministry. That’s the problem with the darkness; we lose our way, becoming blind and deaf to the fact that the kingdom of God is all around us.

In her Advent devotional Night Visions, Jan L. Richardson offers this: “These days bathe us in images of abundance and happiness, but we pray for those who do not find in this time a season of goodness and light. Give us eyes to see into the shadows cast by the millions of blinking lights; ears to listen beyond the carols to hear the anguished weeping; and hearts that long for the liberation your advent truly brings.”

Ultimately, the good news of Advent is that “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isa. 9:2). It’s the increasing light of Advent that can help us cut through holiday haze and prepare to welcome the one who is coming.

Erin Martin is a pastor serving at Wesley United Methodist Church in Eugene, Oregon.

Passion and vocation

by Lou Carlozo

As a writing teacher at Loyola University Chicago, the challenge of passing my best on to students has changed my life. True to the cliché, my kids teach me; they remind me what matters. And here is what matters most: Tap your passion.

“Tap your passion” is the guiding principle of my life; the reason I find myself “tap dancing to work,” to quote Bill Gates, instead of dreading a Monday morning. “Tap your passion” explains why I abandoned the “wage slave” mentality in my mid-20s and, instead of climbing corporate ladders, grew my hair and played in a New Jersey bar band. The enterprise failed miserably, but I would not trade those years for anything, because the “different drummer” I followed kept time with the beating of my heart.

Forget about Rick Warren and his rigid “Purpose-Driven Life.”

Take a lesson from deadline writers, who often must accept an assignment before having every detail worked out. If journalists can train themselves to take a leap of faith every time they are dispatched into the field, so can we all.

Our society has done everything possible to leave behind any complexity that the word “passion” demands. We speak of it in lingerie ads, adrenaline-junkie excursions and bad song lyrics by modern rock bands. But we avoid admitting that passion requires anything of us. The truth is that if you do something you love, you must suffer through trials, heartbreak, betrayal, disillusionment and more.

But when I find myself in the thick of doing what I’m best equipped to do, I consider myself the luckiest journalism teacher around. As the years go by, I’ve learned to abandon my own will and ask God what is demanded of me in any particular moment. I have taken the dung-stench compost of my defeats, dejections and disappointments and plowed it back into my life—letting God turn the mess into fruit on the vine, something true and beautiful.

To find your passion, or re-find it, pray. Keep praying until you see daylight. You may only get enough radiance to see that very next small step. But multiply those steps by a million—each one punctuated by a yes, each one stamping out the word “impossible”—and you will find yourself embarking upon a long, rewarding journey.

Lou Carlozo writes for the Chicago Tribune.

Blogging toward Sunday: Do not be afraid

by Erin Martin

Matthew 1:18-25
Sunday, December 23

We don’t ordinarily associate fear with Christmas, and yet throughout the accounts of the Incarnation, everyone is afraid. Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, even King Herod is terrified upon hearing the news that a child will be born in Bethlehem. What’s so scary about a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger?

Everything, if you are Joseph.

Joseph is a bit bewildered by the news of Mary’s pregnancy. He should not have been the last one to know. Joseph finds himself in a precarious position: he’s involved in Mary’s pregnancy, but not “involved” in the normal way. Legally, the baby is his, but he is not the father. He is betrothed to Mary, but she is not his wife. If Joseph makes public Mary’s act of adultery, she could rightfully be stoned to death. It’s situations like these that can keep a man awake at night.

I imagine Joseph lying in his bed wondering where things went wrong. Life wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He was a good man. He thought he had chosen a capable woman for a wife. Now, everything’s a disaster. How can he escape the incredible shame of his situation while at the same time spare Mary’s life? It is into this nightmare that a messenger of God comes to speak a word of grace and peace to Joseph. “Do not be afraid.” While Joseph dreams fitfully, the angel explains that the child Mary carries is more than a child. He is Emmanuel, “God with us.” The uncertainties of Mary and Joseph’s future remain, but the promise is that they are not alone in them. God is sending into the world a savior. The child will be a sign to the world that God is near. When Joseph awakes, his fear is gone, and he can step into his future in faith.

I remember the time when I was most afraid. I was eight years old, and lost in the darkness of the finished basement where my bedroom was. I awoke needing to go to the bathroom, and the impenetrable darkness of the basement meant that I had to feel my way along my bedroom wall then, at the door, turn and head straight along the wall into the bathroom. Somewhere along the way I wandered away from the wall and found myself standing in the darkness frantically waving my arms, hoping for something firm to hold onto. Tremendous fear washed over me, and I could not move. I did the only thing that a child can do—I called out for my mother who was sleeping upstairs. She came to the top of the stairs. “It’s okay,” she reassured me, “I am with you now.” When at last she turned on the light, there I was—standing in the bathroom.

The holidays are the perfect reminder that our lives don’t resemble Hallmark cards. Like Mary and Joseph, we’re part of relationships that are complicated, messy. When our big dreams of family harmony and happiness lie broken all around us, it’s natural to wonder where things went wrong. It is into this darkness that the light of Christ shines, into this fear that the angel reassures us, “Do not be afraid.” God has sent a savior, “Emmanuel.” We are not alone.

Erin Martin is a pastor serving at Wesley United Methodist Church in Eugene, Oregon.

The insomniac demoniac

by Lillian Daniel

Would you read your late mother’s diaries?

Doug Block’s 2006 documentary, 51 Birch Street, opens with a home movie shot of his parents’ 50th wedding celebration, a happy, low-key gathering in the suburban back yard where they raised their three children. They share a few clichés about the secret to staying married, nothing deep, but touching nonetheless.

These home movies might have remained only home movies, but when Block’s mother died suddenly, he began to review the old tapes with new intensity.

Doesn’t every child wonder what went on behind the closed doors of our parents’ relationship? What exactly were they arguing about late at night in the kitchen? Who started the fight and how was it magically resolved by the next morning?

These are questions that most children will never have answered. I know I won’t; my parents are both deceased. Yet even among the living, most parents and children share an unspoken agreement about what to show the world and what to hold close. Adult children may be curious, but perhaps there’s a reason that we don’t dig and pry.

Doug Block found his mother’s journals, boxes and boxes carefully labeled, as though she had left them in order to be read. Her son obliges her: he digs, discovers and displays the family’s dirt. In a delightful irony, even as he is creating a documentary about his parents’ complicated marriage, he is supporting himself financially by making wedding videos (clips of typical American weddings run throughout the film). The clips seem shallow, opulent and far too optimistic when set against the backdrop of 54 years of marriage excavated by this tortured son.

At one wedding, Block is struck by the rabbi who actually appears to be saying something that the couple is listening to—a rare occurrence. He visits the rabbi to ask about the ethics of reading his mother’s journals. The rabbi responds that if it were him, he would want to know the truth. He would read them. But he would not make a movie about them.

If your own family troubles are not enough for you, 51 Birch Street will keep you up at night with its lingering ethical questions, and a story that ends with just enough resolution to make you wonder what really happened. A lot like real life.

By the end of the film, I had stopped watching it through the eyes of an adult child. Instead, I had the chilling thought that now I was one of the parents. What questions will my children have one day? And how will they find their answers?

Lillian Daniel is pastor of 1st Congregational Church (UCC) in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Blogging toward Sunday: Mature Christians

by Michael Pasquarello III

Isaiah 11: 1-11, Matthew 3:1-12
Sunday, December 9

I’ve been following the buzz surrounding Willow Creek Church’s newest “highly effective” way of doing church, an initiative called Reveal: Where are you? After a generation of numerical “success,” Willow Creek Church has apparently learned that attracting large numbers of people is not the same as forming faithful disciples of Jesus.

We learn this if we listen to John the Baptist during Advent. His preaching summons us to turn our attention away from our own actions and efforts to the coming One who baptizes with the fire of God’s Spirit. Even John, the last and greatest of the prophets, can only take us so far with his call to repentance and claims of the law. Although he challenges us with his austere, disciplined way of life and lean, no-frills style of preaching, only the coming of God will save us from all that stands between us and the fullness of God’s rule of justice and peace for ourselves, our neighbors and enemies.

John shows—and Willow realizes—that self-help religion, or following a program that advocates principles to meet “deeply felt needs,” cannot do the one thing we need more than anything else: the re-creation of our life in God’s image through the gift of sharing God’s holy love.

This is the work of the Spirit who moved over the waters in the beginning, the same Spirit that spoke through the prophets, that rested upon Jesus at his baptism, that was poured out on all flesh at Pentecost and that graciously continues to dwell in the church. It is not a matter of “effectiveness,” of finding the right way of “doing church” or of “being relevant.”

During Advent, John calls us to remember that the wisdom of God became incarnate in Jesus Christ. The heart of this wisdom is to know who created us and to what end we are created. This is why John announces that the One who is coming is mightier than he; so much mightier that John does not even presume to be worthy of untying his sandal. The humility required is not self-prescribed improvement or modification of behavior or attitude adjustment. We are destined for union with Christ in the power of the Spirit, for communion with God by grace.

Without the fire of the Spirit, we are destined for frustration in trying to live according to God’s demands. We can repeat with our megachurch friends, “This is what God wants you to do”. . . .“This is what you need to do”. . . .“Here are five things to remember this week,” but such moralisms ignore that our final destiny and happiness is life in and with God. They impose a morality that can only invite presumption or promote despair; it lacks a hope in the One who anoints and sets us ablaze with the Spirit’s fire.

Michael Pasquarello III teaches homiletics at Asbury Theological Seminary.

AAR: Study in place of worship?

by Richard A. Kauffman

Whenever I attend the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, as I did last month in San Diego, I always wonder how many of the 10,000 or so registrants are scholars of religion but not practitioners of any one religion. I wonder if their scholarship is a substitute for faith—or a scholarly cover for pursuing questions of faith.

If this sounds judgmental, a confession is in order: I went to seminary during the Vietnam War era not to prepare for ministry, although I ended up in ministry; and not even to avoid the draft, although it had that effect. My motivation was my attempt to reconstruct a worldview, since the one I grew up with had been dismantled during my undergraduate years. The formal study of theology was my attempt to rediscover God through an intellectual pursuit.

There is a place for the academic study of religion. A mature faith is certainly an informed, self-critical one. Furthermore, outsiders can see things that insiders overlook. But studying religion apart from a personal commitment to faith and involvement in a faith community strikes me as analogous to studying the institution of marriage but never getting married.

At AAR/SBL I gravitate toward speakers for whom theology or scriptural study isn’t a mere academic exercise, but a consequence of a life of worship and discipleship. This time I heard a passionate and rousing address by N. T. Wright on the place of God in the public sphere. People crowded the room, sitting in the aisles to hear Wright’s wisdom. I also attended a panel discussion on “Reading Scripture with the Church.” It was heartening to hear Amy Laura Hall (Duke University) imply that the fact she teaches Sunday school makes a difference in her work as a Christian ethicist, and Stephen Fowl (Loyola College in Maryland) report that almost everything he publishes he tests first in a congregational setting.

The subject matter of religion is not simply an “It,” to use Martin Buber’s terms, although it can be approached that way. The subject matter is a “Thou” who can’t be firmly grasped through the mind alone, but requires the affections and the will. As Swiss theologian Fritz Buri once said, we can’t speak responsibly about God unless we’ve first spoken with God.