Living the Word: Weeping and Waiting

ADVENT IS QUICKLY APPROACHING as Pentecost draws to a close. The sweeping, turbulent flow of the Spirit’s work in the church slows down. These weeks are marked by attention to widows, pain, and relationships, and to the up-close, daily grind of life. We zoom in. No sweeping theological treatises here, except those that alert us that Jesus’ second coming embodies all that the world needs to be made right and whole. Pastoral care is the emphasis now. Brush off the dust from your toolbox of “reflective listening,” “productive questions,” and “fogging.” This means no sharp dichotomies between what we do in worship and what we do throughout the week. Pastoral. Prophetic. Administrative. These will need to be one hat, as they always should be.

Scripture reminds us these weeks that our preaching ought always to be about care, about counsel, about presence. Why? Because, after all, we preach to people, not aliens. The goal of preaching is incarnation—the kind that enters the world through a teenage, unwed, poor woman’s womb, into a pig trough with animals and outdoor smells. The church’s message will need to be no less earthy, involved, reaching the ground of people’s actual lives. We’ll need to speak to all of the contradiction, heartache, and tears along with the opportunities, transitions, and celebrations in folks’ lives. I pray that our messages take on flesh. O come, O come, Emmanuel!

[November 1]
Is Jesus a Superman?

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44

IN JOHN 11, Mary cries over Lazarus’ death. Later we find Mary Magdalene crying over the dead body of Jesus (John 20:11). Their tears signal the human condition. That they are women is no accident. Scripture puts to the fore those whose tears are trivialized by the status quo.

In Richard Mouw’s When the Kings Come Marching In, a reflection on Isaiah 60, he writes that the most soul-wrenching encounter that happens on the streets of the Holy City “is the encounter between oppressed Christians and their Christian oppressors. ... [T]he sins that have been committed in political history will be publicly exposed in the Holy City. ... [There will be] no simple reversal in the transformed City. No attempt will be made to satisfy our more primitive yearnings for ‘revenge.’ The goal ... will be the glorification of God, the universal recognition that the Lord alone is righteous ... and swift to do justice.”

The political kingdoms of this world glamorize muscle and power. There’s little room for tears. Only divide and conquer. That “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) is the scandal of our God, a symbol of God’s weakness and limits. Yet these two words are some of the most powerful in scripture. In the Holy City where Jesus is king, tears take on a new meaning. They constitute a political reality that flies in the face of the rigidity of worldly power: the politics of solidarity, of identification. Jesus identifies with Mary. Behold our crying, feminine God.

And so the widespread numbness and distance from the tears of black mothers crying over their sons and daughters slain at the hands of police betrays any claims of this country’s decency. It exposes the Jesus that many worship on Sunday mornings in American churches as a “superman.” But this is not Jesus, not the one who weeps.

There is only one Jesus. He’s wailing #BlackLivesMatter alongside the black women leading a movement for our world to pay attention to their tears. Jesus certainly does, in this life and the next. He promises to wipe every tear from their eyes within a new creation constituted by justice and forgiveness, where there is still opportunity for enemies to be made friends.

[ November 8 ]
What’s Jesus Worth?

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44

NAOMI AND her family had the good life. They left behind want in Judah and gained prosperity in Moab. Her life turns for the worst with the death of her husband and sons. Naomi returns to lack. She is depressed and bitter. God is almost entirely silent and distant and seemingly absent in Naomi’s story. God appears completely unreliable and punitive.

And yet God’s covenant and faithfulness to Naomi are embodied in Ruth. Naomi cannot see this at first. Ruth is a Moabite, not an Israelite. Ruth is a woman, not a man. Ruth is poor, not wealthy. To receive God through Ruth necessitates breaking Naomi’s steeped social and religious conventions. Even before the birth of Obed, who can forget Ruth’s impassioned plea of social and religious solidarity to Naomi, “wherever you go, I shall go” (Ruth 1:16-17)? This was none other than the tangible expression of God’s love toward Naomi at this tragic time in her life.

Do we have eyes to turn to God’s word embodied in strange and surprising places and people? If we confuse Jesus with silver and gold, he’ll never be enough. Our identities in Christ will escape us for the mirage of abundance. The words of Kirk Franklin’s famous gospel song “Silver and Gold” take on new meaning with the story of Naomi and Ruth. “I’d rather have Jesus than silver and gold,” Franklin sings. “No fame or fortune, nor riches untold. I’d rather have Jesus than silver and gold.”

Who hasn’t declared with deep conviction what Jesus is worth to them? Yet it takes the poor, the marginalized, those with their backs against the wall to show us that he’s more valuable than life itself (see Mark 12:44).

[November 15]
Prayers of Riot

1 Samuel 1:4-20; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-8

IN 1 SAMUEL, Hannah’s husband Elkanah goes down in biblical history as the worst listener. His is the most self-centered response you can give the woman you love when she is grieving: “Aren’t I enough?” If you’ve had any measure of success in relationships, you’re probably saying to yourself, “What was he thinking?” Thinking is probably exactly what he was doing when he should have been feeling, listening. Less thinking! The saint she is, Hannah turns to God. Yet Eli the priest, like Elkanah, gets in the way. Pastors are supposed to be professional listeners. That’s far from what you find Eli doing. Hannah is not eating; she has been crying profusely. She turns to the “church” for support and care. She comes to express her deepest grief.

This is not the “power-of-a-praying-wife” type of prayer, though. Hannah is bitter. She is without a child, without a compassionate husband, and she’s dealing with “haters” provoking her. Hannah’s prayers are protest. Don’t let her silence fool you. That she is praying silently may be the very indication that her words and disposition, left untamed, might have been too unconventional, unruly. After all, Eli mistakes even her visceral silent prayer for drunkenness.

Martin Luther King said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” So what do we make of the prayers of riot raised to the heavens over the neglect of black and brown bodies in our country? So much of our country remains deaf to these cries. White folks continue to ask the question: What can we do? However, an inability to identify is no excuse for not honoring another’s prayers. May the whole church learn from Eli to pray with pastoral sensitivity for the unheard even if we don’t all understand or agree: “God grant the petition they have made to you” (see 1 Samuel 1:17).

[November 22]
Out of the Fire

2 Samuel 23:1-7; Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37

PENTECOST BEGINS with tongues of fire and concludes with the fire of the parousia, the second coming. How appropriate as we enter Advent, the season of waiting. If we ever doubt that God will also make an entrance the second time around, the prophet Daniel ensures our recognition: “His throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence” (7:9-10).

Contrary to Pilate in John’s gospel, Jesus will not stand from the throne to condemn or engage in the pretense and divisiveness of identity politics (“Are you the king of the Jews?”). No! Jesus’ kingship is marked by truth (John 18:37b), which means that what is godless and false about our lives will not be able to stand, but will wither away in the flames. This is not the callousness of fire and brimstone. Instead it’s the burning hot love of Jesus’ dominion. It takes special care to burn away those thorny places of our lives in order to refine us to be what God intended all along. This is gospel. May it be a message like fire in our bones. So much so that it’ll break loose and set the world on fire with love.

We’ll get a head start on what Jesus will consummate when he returns. Only then will we see this kingdom’s eternality, with a fire hot enough to burn away any trace of selfishness and ego, drawing together a community from all “peoples, nations, and languages” (Daniel 7:14).

[November 29]
You Pray For Me

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

IT’S THE FIRST week of Advent. By now you’ve already given the spiel you give every year about holding off on the Christmas carols. You’ve met the congregation halfway by inviting them to sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” And this is good. Because the posture we want to cultivate from the beginning of Advent is one of waiting, of expectancy. To turn Advent and Christmas into something altogether alien to Christian faith is just as tempting this year as last. We’ll need to remind our people again this year that what we’re waiting for is not presents, nor an 8 lb. 6 oz. baby Jesus, but “‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory” (Luke 21:27).

For many folks the “second coming” is not worth waiting for. They’re expecting weeping and gnashing of teeth or nothing at all. Holiness is the diet while we wait. Not the “who’s in” and “who’s out” kind. Holiness, for Paul, is not marked by finger pointing but by concern and care. Our waiting for Jesus’ second coming should be characterized by joy because of and for our neighbors, and a desire to restore to them whatever it is they are lacking (see 1 Thessalonians 3:9-10, 12). This won’t be a twiddle-your-thumbs type of waiting. We’ll need to be busy building relationships with our neighbors so that this holiness can take shape in us, blameless shape, for Jesus’ return.

Let’s invite our people to sing songs that demonstrate this holiness. Hezekiah Walker’s “I Need You to Survive” might do: “I need you. You need me. We’re all a part of God’s body.”

“Preaching the Word,” Sojourners’ online resource for sermon preparation and Bible study, is available at sojo.net/ptw.