I’m a 90s kid. I grew up on Nickelodeon, Toys R US, Blockbuster Video, TGIF, CDs, the looming threat of Y2K. Many of the cultural touchstones of my teens have passed into the dustbin of history. I recently saw an episode of Antiques Roadshow where a young woman had brought in a binder full of Pokemon cards to have them appraised. And I thought, so this is middle age, huh? The toys of my youth are now valuable collectors’ items. Do you remember Magic Eye posters? I used to love these optical illusions. “Magic Eye” is a brand name. In fact, if you’re feeling nostalgic, magiceye.com is still a functioning website, with the original, 90’s era internet aesthetic, and many examples of their work. The site feels like a time capsule. These images, technically called stereograms, are created of many overlapping pixels in bright colors. But their ‘magic’ isn’t obvious at first glance. Often folks have to be thought how to see the ‘magic’ image hidden in the obscuring chaos. If you stand at a medium distance, relax your focus, so that you’re seeing kind of through the image and refocusing beyond it, suddenly the two-dimensional jumble becomes a three-dimensional image. This optical illusion was all the rage when I was a teenager. Posters, advertisements, t-shirts, virtually anywhere you could plaster a 2D image these digital creations, a testament to computer age technology and human artistry, became the hallmark of an era. But not everyone could see this phenomenon. Some folks couldn’t quite see beyond the two-dimensional chaos to the image within. Some folks could only get there by practice, but then, once they ‘got it,’ it was kind of like having to explain a joke, it just doesn’t have the same impact. I wonder if this Christmas story lands like that sometimes. We tend to live in a world of two-dimensional chaos, pitting us against each other, each side vying for dominance. We are awash in pixelated images, fragmentary information, loose relations, and advertising, private propaganda hoping to narrow our focus even more. And all of this draws us in so close or pushes us away so far, we cannot see the deeper picture, the message beyond, the image obscured by the chaos. So, we come here, and I have the great fortune of being the one to stand up here and try to ‘explain the joke,’ so to speak, to explain how, if you tilt your head just right, and stand a little closer, but not too close, and relax your eyes, you can see a miracle. And then we all leave underwhelmed, coming down from a sugar high, and dreading how early everything is going to start tomorrow. But if you’ll indulge me, I think the invitation in this Christmas story is to something much deeper, more hopeful, and anything but an illusion. Like those magic eye posters, the Kingdom of God is about perception. You have to be taught how to see it, and then you have to practice seeing it, and then you cannot un-see it. It is not obvious to anyone in the story that Mary and Joseph are parents to God in the Flesh, otherwise, I am certain that someone would have found some room somewhere for Mary to give birth. It is not immediately obvious to the shepherds abiding in the fields by night where they should look for this great news for all people, until the angels tell them where to look and that they are looking for a baby in a barn, wrapped in strips of cloth, and lying in a trough of hay. That is not first place I would have looked for Christ the Lord. When this baby grows up, he will tell us that we enter the kingdom of God by repentance, a really churchy word that literally means a change of heart and mind— that is, a change of perspective. And then this grown-up baby will give us the sacraments so we can keep practicing this kind of perspective change. We bring our beautiful, perfect, totally innocent little babies to this font, only to find out that baptism begins with an exorcism and a ritual death. When our conscience condemns us as vile and depraved sinners, enemies of God, we are taught we should come to the same font to remember our baptism and that God claimed us there as beloved saints, pure and guiltless. We bring bread and wine as an offering to this table and it is given back to us as the Body and Blood of Jesus. A bite of bread and a sip of wine become a feast of celebration. And when we begin to perceive the sacred, ineffable mystery, it is transfigured again into a vision of bread on every table, blessed, broken, and given for all to eat. And the whole point of the practice of these holy mysteries is to teach us how to see through and beyond a flattened-out reality to the depth within the obscuring chaos. We can see in the vulnerable babe of Bethlehem that God has drawn near to us. Paula D’Arcy says, “God comes to us disguised as our lives.” And this is the Good News of Great Joy for all people. God comes to us in every hurt and disappointment, in every joy and exclamation; in every sigh and every sorrow; in every baby and every meal; in matter and in spirit. And that is how stereograms work. Two 2D images at slightly differing angles are placed side-by-side, and when the eyes relax and focus beyond the images they merge into one image with new depth, they reveal reality in all its dimensions. That is the story of Christmas; the merging of two images from slightly differing angles to reveal what is real, and that this reality includes us, with all our joy and sorrow. So, as the shepherds came to the manger, come to the altar. You will find there the flesh and blood of Christ. Ponder these things in your hearts. Come and worship, then go and tell. This is good news of great joy for all people. And when you can see it, you will not be able to un-see it. Amen.

To most of us in this room, a “Hail Mary” is an idiom for a last-ditch effort, a long shot, a fingers-crossed, eyes-closed, hold-your-breath attempt to win the game, sav e the day, avoid a dreaded outcome in the last possible second. You don’t have to be a sports historian or an Oxford theologian to understand where the name “Hail Mary” comes from. The idea being that, as the player throws that final pass toward the in zone, the player is asking Mary to make intercession to Jesus to make the play successful before the clock runs out. It comes obviously from the prayer to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that begins “Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.” If you learned this prayer in a Catholic school or in a Catholic confirmation setting, you might not realize that it is almost a direct quote from the archangel Gabriel in Luke 1, when the archangel announces that Mary will conceive and bear a son. The angel’s greeting in the King James version is “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” All of this makes us Protestant types a bit uncomfortable. We don’t pray to Mary or the saints, taking our intercessions directly to Jesus himself. “We don’t need no intercessor!” Mary belongs to the Catholics and the Orthodox, even the Anglicans and their American progeny, the Episcopalians. But not the Lutherans. Mary is a bit player in our minds, a plot devise, a supporting actress since Jesus can’t give birth to himself, since babies need a mama, and little boys need their booboos kissed, and preteens need to be reminded to bathe, and teens need someone to fret over their whereabouts. But then we tend to grant an honorary, sentimental status to our mothers, like dowager queens, we might still call her Mama, but we can wipe our own faces now, thank you. And yes, this is what I’m wearing! Like our own Mama’s we make it a point to spend time with Mary at Christmas, but most of the rest of the year, we need some reminders to reach out, and even then we put off calling on her because, well, we know it has been a while, if we have called at all, and frankly, I just can’t deal with all of that right now. If the Catholics have a better relationship with Mama Mary, the Orthodox are Mama’s favorites. While the Hail Mary is mostly comprised of language taken from the Gospel of Luke, the Orthodox heap praise and honor on Mary that makes us Lutherans cast each other a side eye and theorize that maybe this relationship is a little unnatural; like Norman Bates keeping Mama in the house. They even have a special name for her, Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Mother of God. A portion of one hymn of praise to Mary, the God-bearer, is as follows: An Angel, and the chiefest among them, was sent from heaven to cry, “Rejoice! to the Mother of God!” And beholding you, O Lord, taking bodily form, he stood in awe and with his bodiless voice he cried aloud to her such things as these: Rejoice! You through whom joy shall shine forth! Rejoice! You through whom the curse shall be blotted out! Rejoice! You, the restoration of fallen Adam! Rejoice! You, the redemption of the tears of Eve! Rejoice! Height hard to climb for human thought! Rejoice! Depth hard to explore even for the eyes of angels! Rejoice! For you are the throne of the king! Rejoice! For you sustain the Sustainer of all! Rejoice! Star that causes the sun to appear! Rejoice! Womb of the divine incarnation! Rejoice! You through whom creation is renewed! Rejoice! You through whom the creator becomes a babe! Rejoice! Thou bride unwedded! I mean, we all love our Mama’s, but this seems like a complex. If all this talk, and prayer to and adoration of Mary is just some ancient infatuation, some foreign cultural familial obligation in which we are too well-educated to participate, then we are off the hook. We can visit at Christmas, and other than that, keep her packed away is bubble wrap with the rest of the nativity set. But then, I think today’s gospel lesson invites us to something more. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit at the sound of her voice, greets Mary with praise as the prenatal John summersaults in joy. Elizabeth repeats the words of the angel, “blessed are you among women.” Elizabeth calls her “the mother of my Lord,” which in the Greek is very close to the word Theotokos, the Mother of God. As we look back to the moment of the angel’s announcement, the angel says the Spirit of the Lord will “overshadow” Mary, the same language used to describe the power and presence of God resting on the ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, the innermost room of the temple, a place so holy that only the high priest could enter, and only once per year. Maybe, instead of thinking the Catholics have overstepped and the Orthodox have a mommy issues, maybe we Lutherans could reconsider our position. Maybe instead of seeing ourselves as more theologically evolved than these ancient traditions, we see ourselves as teenagers who think we are too old to be asking Mama for help or advise. Maybe we can hear her story again, not as the supporting actress, but as our own family history, as the story of our own flesh and blood. The blood that won our salvation, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, first flowed in her veins. Before Jesus would feed us with his body Mary fed Jesus with hers. Maybe a change of perspective could lead us to see Mary not as an authority we have outgrown but as a wise, elder friend. Maybe we see that the Catholics and the Orthodox aren’t kiss-ups or weirdos but older siblings who found a friendship with this wise, elder friend when they each realized that they too were called to be God bearers. Overshadowed and overwhelmed, Mary sought out Elizabeth, a wise, elder friend who could guide her through what it means to be a miracle mother, to understand what she must endure, to prepare herself for the labor to come. And as Elizabeth blesses Mary for believing what the angel had promised, the Gospel continues with one of the most famous passages in the New Testament. But the English translation hides an ambiguity in the original language. The English says, “And Mary said,” presuming, as the Church generally has, that what follows is Mary’s song of praise. But the original Greek reads “And she said.” And since Elizabeth was the one just speaking, it is somewhat unclear whose song this is. One the one hand, that uncertainty could breed some anxiety, even entrenched camps arguing for one side or the other. Instead, I believe it invites some room to wonder— if this is Elizabeth’s song, then the coming of the God-bearer brings the rejoicing of a weary world. If we too are called to bear Christ into this weary world, what rejoicing there will be when we have shared in this labor! Mary is not a supporting actress. She is a wise, elder friend, a miracle mother, a guide to help us understand what we must endure, to prepare us for the labor to come. She is an archetype for the Church, the ark of the new covenant, the first among the redeemed, the new Eve, mother of a new humanity. When we have gone out with haste to bear this Christ into all the weary world, then maybe this no-longer-weary world will sing praises of gratitude to the Bearers of God even as they worship God; maybe their souls will magnify the Lord because of those who labored to deliver the good news. Maybe the no-longer-weary world will rejoice in the restoration of fallen Adam and the redemption of the tears of Eve because of the new creation conceived and delivered in us by our baptism. When we learn from Mama Mary how to live lives overshadowed by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit surely all generations will call us blessed and worship the God of Israel because the strength of God’s arm has been revealed though our work for justice; because the powerful among us have stepped down to make room for the lowly; because the rich among us have divested their wealth to fill the hungry with good things. Hail, Beloved, full of Grace, the Lord is with us! Blessed are we among the Children of God and blessed is the fruit of our sacred yes. Holy Beloved, bearers of God, pray with us sinners, now and in the hour of our liberation. Amen. 

This is the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, A day of rejoicing Set inside a penitential season. Our first reading begins Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! We go from Zephaniah to Isaiah: Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. And Paul picks up from there with this letter to the Philippian church: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. So, by the time we have reached the Gospel for this jubilant day of rejoicing, we are expecting at least a similar amount of exuberance from the Gospel text for this Sunday. If we think back to last week’s readings, This week’s reading picks up where that one left off. John the Baptizer has appeared on the scene. His father burst into song at his birth, And Luke uses the language of Isaiah, Both to tell us how this John will be the forerunner of the Messiah. So, After all this build up, And all this talk of rejoicing at the coming of the Salvation of Israel, we finally get to hear John in his own words: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” It kind of reminds you of that old Sesame Street bit, Which one of these is not like the others, Which one of these just isn’t the same? John is the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness. John is the leveler of mountains, And the straightener of paths. John is the bringer of the good news. So, why does John sound more like a crazed bible thumper Preaching destruction and unquenchable fire? And how are we supposed to rejoice in this dire warning? I think we can begin to draw a closer connection Between John’s preaching and John’s commissioning If we look at the response to John’s preaching. John goes into all the region around the Jordan Preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John’s message is that the ax is already at the root of the tree, Ready to fell every tree that does not bear fruit And throw it into the fire. The crowds ask, What then should we do? John tells the crowds "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Tax collectors ask John, “Teacher, what should we do?” John tells the tax collectors, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers ask John, “And we, what should we do?” John tells the soldiers, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages." John imagines the community of the baptized looks different than those who have not been baptized. This is John’s mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. The community of the baptized will prepare the way of the Lord by repentance. Now, On the surface this may not sound super “Lutheran.” We don’t often talk of doing things, And we often lean on a definition of repentance That means more of a change of mind and heart Than on the change of one’s behavior. But this repentance To which John calls the community of the baptized Is mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. One notable Lutheran spoke of repentance in this way. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, In his book The Cost of Discipleship Spoke of cheap grace. Cheap grace is an understanding of the grace of God That leads a person to believe that the life of discipleship Requires nothing of them. Back when I was a fundamentalist, We would have called this fire insurance, A “Get Out of Hell Free” card That allows a person to escape eternal damnation And then go about their merry way. In contrast, Bonhoeffer speaks of costly grace, The sort of understanding of the grace of God that elicits a grateful response. The kind of gratitude that asks And we , what should we do? It was this kind of costly grace That led Bonhoeffer in his day To resist the Third Reich And ultimately led to his execution At the hand of the Nazi regime. In John’s day His message or repentance and forgiveness Came to the people of Israel, And John warns, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” John warns that their access to the history, To the covenants, To the promises Does not preclude them from call to repentance, From the call to be about the mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. John says, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. John says, Don’t fool yourself into thinking That God’s faithfulness Depends on you. God’s faithfulness Is your salvation. The call to repentance Is not a call for your help But an invitation For your cooperation. John says, Bear fruits worthy of repentance, Because the ax is already at the root of those trees That do not bear fruit. And those fruitless trees will be cast into the fire. This sounds like terrible news, Until you read that Jesus is the bringer of the fire. John says, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire .” Jesus is coming, Says John, And he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit And with fire. Luke mixes his metaphors a bit here Telling us through John, That Jesus comes with a pitchfork To gather the grain into the barn And throw the chaff into an unquenchable fire. It would be easy here To overlook John’s warning And presume ourselves to be insured against the coming fire by the waters of our baptism. But this would be a very cheap grace. We won’t be saved from the fire to come, but through it. Jesus will burn up the chaff of us and gather up our grain. Jesus will transform our fruitlessness into firewood. And, having been saved through the fire we, like the crowd, like the tax collectors, like the soldiers, ought to ask, “And we , what must we do?” The Spirit is inviting us To be about the same, mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. We, like the crowd, can give away our second coat and share our food. We, Like the tax collectors, Can refuse to consume more than we must. We, Like the soldier, Must decline to abuse our privilege. We must work for the peace that is not the absence of conflict But the presence of justice. We must live without covetousness. This season of Advent, While the rest of the world Is overcome with consumption And deludes itself With a bland sentimentality It calls the “Christmas spirit,” We must be about the mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening work that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. This is the Christmas spirit. In fact, This is the Christian Spirit. So, Rejoice, you brood of vipers! Shout aloud, Sing for Joy. One is coming who will baptize us with fire and the Spirit and all flesh shall see the salvation of God! Amen. 

Often musicals get a lot of flak. People scoff at how unrealistic it is that characters would simply burst into song in perfectly choreographed routines and no one else in the story seems to be put out by just how odd it must be to witness something like this. A more recent phenomena is the flash mob. This is where a group of people get together, rehearse a routine, complete with song and dance, and then preform this routine in a public space, like an outdoor plaza, college campus, or a shopping mall. Naturally, these events become a YouTube sensation, reaching viral status quickly, as the videos focus not only on the routine itself, but on the slack-jawed confusion of the standers-by. I saw one video of a choir who clandestinely took their seats in a mall food court. With no warning or introduction, a soprano rose to her feet, and began to sing, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” By the third Hallelujah, she was joined by a tenor, who also rose to his feet and began singing. Shortly an alto and a bass joined in. Eventually, entire sections joined in until almost one third of the people in the food court were on their feet, singing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. The video pans the crowd, capturing stunned and confused reactions. People break out their cell phones and cameras and begin to record the sudden jubilation with huge smiles. One woman wipes a tear from her eye as she videos. And one small boy, who has taken to standing in his chair to investigate this heavenly sound, never breaks his enraptured gaze as his mother slips her hand into his. By the final Hallelujah, The food court erupts in thunderous applause. Then everyone retakes their seats. And everything returns to normal. One lady returns to her newspaper. A couple gets up to return their tray. The little boy who was standing in his chair lets go his mother’s hand and sits down to finish his French fries. These first few chapters of the Gospel of Luke Can feel a bit like a musical Or a flash mob. In just the first two chapters, Mary, Zechariah, A host of angels, And Simeon All break into spontaneous singing. Their songs are all about how the promise of God has been fulfilled. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, sings of how the redemption of Israel has been accomplished, how God has raised up a savior from the house of David. But then, Everything seems to go back to normal. After Zechariah sings of a savior from the house of David, John’s ministry begins with someone else on the throne. Tiberius is emperor. Pontus Pilate is governor. Herod is ruler of Judea, Philip and Lysanias each rule their respective realms, And Annas and Caiaphas are in charge of the temple in Jerusalem. Somehow, The day of the Lord has come, And also not yet. John is to proclaim a baptism of repentance, a rite of washing the body to mark a change of mind and heart. John’s ministry is to shave down the mountains, And fill in the valleys; To straighten out the crooked paths, And make the rough places smooth. Despite Zechariah’s song the mountains are still in the way, the valleys are still empty, the paths are all still crooked, and the rough places are still rough. We Lutherans talk about a theology of glory, A cheap grace. The TV-preacher kind of theology where God wants to give out cars and fortune-cookie advise like some cosmic Oprah. “You get a blessing! And you get a blessing! EVERYONE gets a blessing!!!” And meanwhile, wars rage, children die of cancer, fires and floods destroy whole communities. At first glance, all this talk of God’s blessing Like its already here, Can sound a lot like this TV-preacher theology, a shiny, pleasing distraction, but little more than a good parking space as a consolation prize for some very real pain. As though, the Good News broke upon us like a flash mob singing the Hallelujah Chorus while we were just trying to eat our French fries, and then everything went back to normal. We Lutherans also tend to counter the theology of glory with the theology of the Cross. The theology of the cross is a lot less attractive than the theology of glory. Especially in the short-term, where it forces us to look directly at all the pain and suffering of the world. But in the long-term, the theology of the cross deals with the world as it is, with all its mountainous obstacles, gaping emotional valleys, hair-pin paths that snake a 180-degree turn when you’re not looking, and rough patches that seem to rub us raw before they leave us callus and numb. The theology of the cross tells us that the day of the Lord comes like a refining fire and fuller’s soap. The theology of the cross proclaims the baptism of repentance and the forgiveness of sins; that is, the theology of the cross reveals and confronts us with the world as it really is, persuades us to change our minds because of this reality, and it gives us a means to cope with our sense of guilt and a path to making amends. The theology of the cross recognizes that the breaking of the dawn of the tender mercy of God is only good news to those who first sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. And like the dawn, he light has come, and yet, the darkness remains. This leveling of the mountains and the elevation of the valleys is the promise that John has come to preach in the twilight of this new day, to pierce the long silence with the sound of joy, to sing a song of reveille, “Wake up! The Lord is coming, and there is work to do.” John is sent to level the path to the good news, to call sinners to repentance, and to proclaim the forgiveness of sin. John is sent to proclaim the coming of justice which is very good news in the ears of the oppressed, and feels like bad news in the ears of the oppressors. In this season of Advent we are called to heed the message of John, to level the path of the Lord by our repentance, being confronted and persuaded by reality as it really is to change our perception and our way of living in the world. We should neither look for God in seats of political power or high holy places, nor fear that we will be abandoned in the depths of our despair, because in reality, there are no holy mountains and there are no God-forsaken valleys. There is only Zechariah’s song in the reign of emperor Tiberius. There is only Hallelujah in the food court, and “the kingdoms of this earth are the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ!” The Lord lives on the level ground at the foot of the Cross. The level path of the Lord is like the breaking of the dawn, a gentle light that lives alongside the darkness. The level path of the Lord is like the voice crying out in the wilderness, like a single soprano in the food court, awaiting the growing chorus to flood the mundane with wonder. The level path of the Lord is everything seeming to go back to normal, as our eyes strain to adjust to the growing light, and our hearts hum a tune for which we can’t seem to remember all of the words, and our bodies long for just a moment’s more rest. This is our Advent discipline; to level the path between the sacred and the mundane, to sing the song of reveille and wake a sleeping world to the breaking of the dawn of the tender mercy of God. The Lord is coming, and there is work to do! Amen. 

My great-great grandfather on my mother’s father’s side was a man named William Riley Johnson. When I was in high school, my mom became very interested in genealogy. S he spent hours researching in libraries, archives and databases; reading books and attending workshops. She interviewed relatives and recoded lineages. On her mother’s side, she could trace her family back to colonial Virginia before the trail ran cold, and if she had been able to link a man named John Shelton to a man by the same name in the same county one generation earlier, she would have been able to trace that line through the barony of Shelton to the time of its creation by Edward II in the 14 th century. But on her father’s side, she knows his father, Hobart, and his father, William Riley, and beyond that, nothing. In fact, save for the census and a newspaper article about his death, Mom could barely prove William Riley ever existed. Through some of these interviews, and deciphering some family lore, Mom came to believe all the answers and missing pieces lay in William Riley’s Bible, now in the custody a cousin, a cantankerous old haint who not only knew all of its secrets, but guarded them like a dragon’s hoard. She believed that she had been charged with obscuring some stain on the family’s honor and not with preserving and passing on family history. She insisted, “you don’t want to know.” And that made my mom crazy. Not only did she really, really want to know, well, now she HAD to know. But we don’t. We lost track of this ogress of a cousin, and therefore the chain of custody of the Bible. William Riley was a Baptist preacher at the time of his death in 1950, and he is buried in the church yard of his last congregation, in a place called Caney Ridge. What could a Baptist preacher have written in his Bible that would make a woman so ashamed that she would prevent even the rest of the family from knowing? We have devised all sorts of theories. Given the sensibilities of the day, and his dark hair, dark eyes, and year-round tan— in a coal mine— we speculated that perhaps he was half black, or half indigenous. We speculated that maybe he had a second family. We wondered if he was a fugitive, if had confessed to some crime or to the love of another man; or if we were all just beholden to some Appalachian cultural peculiarity that would inflame the sensibilities of an old woman but wouldn’t even register in the 21 st century. We still have no idea. The people have all passed, the book itself is lost, and with them the keys to this mystery. And that is precisely were we find ourselves in the scriptures today. We have a Bible, and we have just heard its contents, and yet the foreboding mystery remains. Daniel speaks of a white-robed, snow-haired, ancient judge, seated on some kind of flaming wheelchair attended by thousands upon thousands, opening a book and giving some human-like something everlasting dominion over the whole of creation. Revelation opens by blessing the reader with grace and peace from “the one who was, who is, and who is to come,” along with “the seven spirits” and has Jesus coming back with the clouds, all the nations of the earth wailing at his appearing. Then even Jesus seems to speak in riddles. He stands before Pilate, and says, “Hey, you’re the one who called me a king. But I do have a kingdom.” Pilate says, “Gotcha! You are a king!” To which Jesus replies, “No, I am the truth.” And Pilate says, “Whatever ‘truth’ means.” It sure feels like this Bible holds as many secrets as my lost family Bible. But the stakes seem higher here. My family lost information about our collective past. These passages seem to talk about the future, and missing information about the future seems a lot scarier. I mean, what good is a wet floor sign if you’re already lying in the puddle. The future is scary enough without warnings about it that do little more than communicate, “you don’t want to know.” We are inundated with information but we are starving for wisdom. There are so many news channels, and websites, magazines, newspapers, and social media outlets, all vying for our attention and our allegiance, that we tend to echo Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” We are exhausted from this overload and wish that someone would come along and just fix it, stop all the noise and fighting, tell us what to believe so we don’t have to try to figure it out anymore, and we can finally have some peace. We wouldn’t have to worry about the future if someone else was in charge of it. Throughout history, this has been the response of an overwhelmed and exhausted people. Dictators have seized this opportunity to get and keep power. Preachers have seized this opportunity to win converts. Each promise that a time of retribution is coming when everything will be instantly overhauled and from which loyal followers will be immune. Daniel writes of a coming king one like a human, who will be given all power and dominion. Revelation speaks of the coming of the King of kings, when nations will wail, and Jesus will be revealed as the be-all/end-all of time and space. Each write under duress. Daniel is in exile under Nebuchadnezzar. John the Revelator is in exile on the Isle of Patmos. They cannot write openly about their distaste for the current regime or promise their readers that God is the ultimate arbiter of Justice and not the king or emperor; and even if the current regime kills or represses you, God still loves you and asks you to remain faithful. The same goes for Jesus, who is bound as a prisoner, standing before the Roman governor, being questioned about sedition for alluding to some king who isn’t Caesar. So these writers use a literary style called apocalypse, or revelation. This style is like turning over a rock and being horrified to discover all the creepy and terrifying things it had sheltered. These empires insist “you don’t want to know.” Jesus promises “You can know the truth because you can know me.” Sometimes knowing the truth means leaving no stone unturned. Knowing the truth takes work, because knowing the truth is a relationship to reality, and relationships take work. To know the truth, we will have to push through our exhaustion and our desire for someone to just tell us what to believe. We will have to be persuadable, we will have to be able to change our minds; this is literally the definition of repentance. If we are incapable of changing our minds we are incapable of repentance. There are three things we can do to overcome our exhaustion and become acquainted with the truth. First, Turn off the TV, walk away from the computer, and put down the phone. These are the source of your exhaustion. Second, Learn to feel lonely and under stimulated, because trying not to feel these things has made us more lonely and overstimulated. We use TV and the internet to feel informed, entertained, and less alone, and they have made us the loneliest and most misinformed generation in the history of the world. When you are lonely, make a visit, make a call, send a text, write a letter or email. When you need information, find trusted sources in the real world, that hold to journalistic standards of practice and ethics. Subscribe to a reputable newspaper or magazine. Go to the library and ask for assistance. You will never be able to eliminate bias, but you can account for it with professional standards. Lastly, the third thing we can do to overcome our exhaustion and become acquainted with the truth is pray. Having a daily practice of prayer that fits your lifestyle and brain chemistry, and supports your spiritual growth is becoming acquainted with the truth precisely because it is becoming acquainted with Jesus who is the truth. Meditation, contemplation, mindfulness; walking, sitting, writing; breathing, speaking, singing; Anything that builds, maintains, and expands your intimate knowledge of Jesus is prayer. Then ordering your life, your daily or weekly schedule, to account for this regular practice becomes a tether to reality as it is and severs any ties to virtual reality the empire wants to sell you. If you need information about these practices, I am happy to help you find the right one for you. Deacon Intern Sue will also be holding office hours here at the church beginning in Advent to offer spiritual direction in developing these practices. This is the reign of Christ: That we would make room in our hearts and lives for the truth, for “reality with a personality,” for Christ. It means leaving no stone unturned and confronting all the creepy, terrifying things we find underneath— and especially all the things we hid there ourselves. The Bible can feel like one of those stones, an ancient, opaque object sheltering unsettling and unseemly secrets. But our hope is not in the object of the Bible, but the Subject of the Bible, that is Christ, come to reign over a kingdom of hearts as the truth, as reality with a personality. So, come, and live your apocalypse, by a practice of media fasting and prayer, make your life a revelation of the lies of strongmen and corporations. Then Jesus will reign in your hearts and the whole world will know who is the Truth. Amen.