Emergence

November 27, 2022 - January 8, 2023

The liturgical year turns over now, from Luke’s to Matthew’s timeline and agenda. During Advent (“Arrival”), we await the coming of the Christ – as a child, as a messiah, as our redeeming Savior. We’ll let Matthew’s gospel show us the various preparations of Jesus’s heritage, his family, his own life, and the hearts of his neighbors for the work to which he was called. 

In the Christmas-to-Epiphany weeks, we’ll see the world’s response to his being here – good news for some, dreadful news for others. 

Isaiah’s prophecies will drive our own hunger for the redemptive work of God in our hearts and in our world.

Bruised reeds, smoldering wicks. The prophets foretold the coming of God’s agent into the world to reveal God’s plan for humanity – and God, who could have sent an avenging army, or a demolition crew, sent instead a quiet and even secretive emissary. What does it say about our own imperative to be heard and seen, that Jesus smallened himself to match the prophecy of Isaiah’s quiet servant?

The women in the genealogy: Jesus is made of them. I think we’ll just go for it again: the signature sermon about the scandalous women among Jesus’s ancestors, and how it informs our understanding of his identity to know who they are. 

John and the question of Jesus’s identity: who will he be? John imagines the coming messiah as a fiery reformer, but it’s a dove (not a raptor) that lights on Jesus for God’s own designation. We’ll contemplate his baptism, and our own, and think about how baptism changes people into the people God knows them to be. 

The prerequisite is hospitality. There is a posture toward neighbors that is tight-fisted and hard-hearted, everyone minding their own business…and then there’s the posture of open-door welcome. The latter is imperative for the receipt of the gospel, apparently. Where do we seek, find, and share that level of welcome?

God is with us. The birth of Jesus takes place in a framework that requires Joseph to rethink his status as a devout, law-keeping, religionist. From the beginning, in other words, Jesus’s arrival has pressed against religious convention, requiring us to be imaginative, humble, courageous, and open in order to be faithful.

Curiosity is a virtue. We see it again and again in scripture: those who greet God’s presence in the world with open-minded curiosity are rewarded for their inquiry. The astrologers from the east are not converted to Christianity; they return home with no expectation that their “homage” will become religious devotion. Thus they are integral to our understanding of Jesus’s identity as a cosmic savior beyond the bounds of Christian adherence.

What are you afraid of? Herod is “frightened” (2:3) of Jesus’s identity, and thus imagines violence as a solution, the elimination of Jesus’s presence from his world. But what God has ordained cannot be erased. Think of the attempts at “erasure” of LGBTQ+ folx – book-banning, prohibiting medical care, threats to roll back marriage equality, and more. These will not work; even if violence ensues, God’s purposes will not be thwarted.