Wide Angle: The Kingdom Arrives

Posted on December 31, 2021 by salooper57

In first-century Israel, there was no king – at least, no king descended from David. But people were looking for such a king to come. Apocalyptic books like the ones I mentioned in the last post had stirred people up to expect the king’s arrival at any time.

Into this turbulent scene stepped a man who was larger than life. He seemed to be eight hundred years out of his time. He wore strange clothes, ate a weird diet, lived in the harshest imaginable conditions, and spoke like the prophet Elijah. After four hundred years of silence, a prophetic voice was again speaking in Israel. His parents had named him John, but the country had nicknamed him the Baptizer. We know him as John the Baptist.

He exploded onto the scene. The themes of his message – corruption in the places of power, the need for a national repentance, and, most importantly, the coming of the one who would change everything – resonated with people. These were not new themes; they were as old as the prophets. But in John the old themes had found a new voice. Here was a new prophet, a new Elijah, thundering the word of the Lord once again.

John the Baptist is one of the greatest men of Bible Times. Jesus said of him, “I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John. . .”5 John was suspect in the eyes of the religious establishment, but ordinary people flocked to him. They knew he was right when he said they were wrong and that they needed to do something about it.

When people asked, John told them plainly that he was not the Messiah. He told them, in the words of Isaiah (as Mark has them in verse 3), that he was only “a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” John saw his role in a clearly defined manner: His job was to get people ready to receive the Messiah, the King, the Son of David, whose appearance could come at any time.

He told people, verse 7: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

We learn from Matthew’s gospel that John said something else, something that his hearers resonated to and that we, this far into our Wide Angle study, will recognize at once. He said, “Heaven’s Kingdom is near.”6 The kingdom – the kingdom for which faithful Jews had been waiting all their lives, the kingdom that would crush the kingdoms of the world,7 the kingdom promised to David and his descendants forever – was, John said, about to makes its appearance. And because of that, people had better get ready. They had better repent.

For weeks, and perhaps months, vast crowds of people were going to be baptized by John in order to make themselves ready. Then one day a man John had perhaps not seen for years showed up, wanting to be baptized. Apparently, the possibility that he might be the Messiah had not occurred to the Baptizer, but John did know that he was special – very special. He was uncomfortable with the idea of baptizing Jesus. He said that it wasn’t his place, but Jesus convinced him that it was the right thing to do, so the two of them went down into the river. When Jesus came up (verse 10) he saw (perhaps they both saw) heaven being torn open. They would think immediately of the words of the prophet Isaiah, when he pled with God to intervene, to act on behalf of those who waited for him: “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.”8 And now they saw the heavens rent.

I’m not sure what that looked like to them, but they then saw the Spirit descending on him (it is interesting in the original language: Jesus came up (anabaino in Greek) out of the water and the Spirit came down (katabaino) onto him. Again, they would think of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him – the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.”9 When he saw this, John must have realized that Jesus was the Promised One. He immediately began directing people to Jesus. In fact, Jesus’ earliest disciples came from John.

In verse 11 we read: “And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.’” These words are very close to those of Psalm 2, which, very significantly, are addressed to the king God was installing on David’s throne.

               5 Luke 7:28

               6 Matthew 3:2

               7 Daniel 2:4

               8 Isaiah 64:1

               9 Isaiah 11:2

Posted in Bible, Theology, Wide Angle | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Wide Angle: Politics and Religion in the First Century

Posted on December 28, 2021 by salooper57

Imagine yourself in a discussion about politics.  Your party is not in power; its representatives are in the minority.  But they are a loud minority.  They are forever criticizing the other party and its leaders and, though you are not in politics yourself, you frequently join in the criticism.

The other party, you like to say, is totally wrong on foreign policy.  They are wrong about national defense.  Their administration is rife with corruption.  They seem to care more about appeasing foreign governments than they do about the welfare of their own people. Members of your party are always saying that they never met a tax increase they didn’t like. You just can’t understand how these people stay in power.

In your region of the country almost everyone agrees with you.  But get out of your region, and other viewpoints dominate, and you find it horribly frustrating.

No, you are not a Republican living in the South or in the Midwest.  You are a Jew living in the Galilean region of first century Israel.  Since the Roman occupation in the forties, there has been a growing divide between the liberals who dominate the South and the nationalist movement in the North, where you were born and raised. 

When you were young, you learned to read and write in the synagogue and the rabbinical school, and now you and your friends love to read the inflammatory books that have been published in the last few decades.  They predict the downfall of the dominant party and the emergence of a leader – a messiah figure – who will renovate the country’s morals and put an end to government corruption once for all.  Because of the Roman occupation there is a profound absence of free speech, so these books had to be written anonymously.  So the authors wrote under the names of the heroes of ancient Israel – names like Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and Ezra. 

These books contained a strange blend of hope and despair.1 Their authors dreamed of the overthrow  of the collaborators, the liberation from foreign powers and the emergence of a great national leader.  He is described as the king, the Son of David,2 and was expected to drive the Gentiles – the Roman oppressors – out of Jerusalem, and expel the corrupt national leaders from the country.

One of these books includes a prayer: “May God cleanse Israel . . . the day he chooses to lead in his anointed one” (his Christ).3 Others of these book promised the advent of a divine being who existed before coming to earth.  He is called Messiah, the righteous one, the chosen one, and the Son of Man.4

There had been no prophetic voice in Israel for over four hundred years.  Some people were saying that the prophetic age had come to an end.  But you – and thousands of Galileans like you – still hope for the promised prophet, the one like Moses, and the promised King, the descendent of David, to come.

When you were a child, there was a serious uprising in Galilee, led by a man named Judas – Judas, the Galilean, people called him. Thousands of people thought that he might be the one, the one who would cleanse Israel.  But the uprising was crushed, and Judas was killed.  But the nationalist feeling continued, especially in the north.  That part of the country was a pot almost at the boiling point.

Do you have the picture? First century Israel was very political and very religious, and there was no separation between the two. In that time, the political ideologues were the religious extremists – very much like the Taliban in Afghanistan now.  These extremists loved the four national treasures of Israel: the temple (how it irked them that the other party – the corrupt Sadducees – controlled the temple; the Torah (they knew it well and regarded those who didn’t as uneducated rabble); the promised land (they had a fire in their belly to expel the foreigners and regain possession of it); and the king.

               1Martin, Ralph P.,  New Testament Foundations, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,  1975, p.  106

               2 Psalms of Solomon 17:21

               3 Psalms of Solomon 18:5

               4 The central section of Enoch

Posted in Theology, Wide Angle | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Saving Grace: Christmas on Main Street

Posted on December 25, 2021 by salooper57
Approximate viewing time: 13 minutes

This brief message examines what the grace of God looks like – grace that was once wrapped in swaddling and laid in a manger.

On this Christmas day, may God grant you: presents under your tree, family around your table, friends in your thoughts but, most of all, the love of Jesus in your hearts!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Christmas and the God of Surprises

Posted on December 25, 2021 by salooper57

Christmas is proof that God loves surprises. According to the prophet Isaiah, God had promised to bring light to people living in darkness, joy to replace sorrow, and freedom from the burden of oppression. He would do this by sending someone to rule with justice and spread peace everywhere. What is surprising about that? That the someone he was sending would be a baby.

God is good at surprising us. We expect prompt solutions, monumental events, and endless hype. We choose immediate results over lasting ones. God does not. He solves the world’s problems by sending a child.

An apocryphal – but insightful – story has been told about a person who complained to God about the pandemic, about racial injustice, about income inequality, and human rights abuses. “God,” he said, “you made us. You are responsible for this mess. Why don’t you do something?”

God replied, “I have done something: I have sent you cures for disease, for racial injustice, for income inequality, and for human rights abuses.”

“God, how can you say that?” the person replied. “We have no cure for the pandemic, or for racial injustice, or income inequality—and human rights abuses occur more frequently now than ever before. How can you say you have sent us cures for these terrible ills?”

God replied, “I sent people to bring you the cures to all these ills – and more beside; but your society keeps terminating them while they are still in their mothers’ wombs.”

This says something true about God. When intervention is needed, he sends a baby. God has done this time and again. He sent the child of promise, Isaac, to prepare the line through which blessing would come to all the nations of the earth. He sent the child Samson to turn back the enemy, the child Samuel to guide his people, and the child John to call a nation to repentance. And finally, he sent his own son, born of a virgin, to redeem and renew the world.

At last, the divine rescue, for which God’s people had been waiting since Isaiah’s prophecy, had come. But the hosts of heaven sang praise; they did not make war. The King of Heaven did not thunder, he cried, cried like a baby. But the cry of that baby shook the gates of hell.

The Christmas surprise is not that a conqueror comes, nor that his government increases, nor that he rules from David’s throne. The surprise is that he conquers people’s hearts from Bethlehem’s manger and saves their souls from Calvary’s cross.

That there is a savior in the City of David is no surprise; people had been expecting one for a thousand years. That the savior was wrapped in swaddling and lying in a manger is ineffable mystery. That he came to rule is not surprising; it is the same old story a thousand tyrants have told. That he allows men and women to choose whether he will rule them, that is a surprise. The Mighty God came not with shock and awe but with cooing and crying, not with irresistible force but with grace and love.

At Christmas, we love to repeat this story. But it is important for us to remember that the story did not begin in Bethlehem with its manger, nor did it end at Calvary with its cross. It did not even end in Jerusalem with its empty tomb. It could not end there because it has not ended. The story continues still, and we are a part of it.

A surprising and glorious future lies before us, the outlines of which we can see only faintly. For the one born in Bethlehem is the Son of Man, the Second Adam, and the future of humanity lies in his manger. He is, as St. Paul put it, “all creation’s firstborn.”

At Bethlehem the bridge that reaches heaven touched earth. Nestled in the hay of that manger lay the genesis of the new creation, the firstborn of a fulfilled humanity. What this means is that the God who surprised us at Bethlehem, at Calvary, and at the garden tomb, has surprises still in store for us.

(First published by Gannett.)

Posted in Christmas, Theology | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Wide Angle: Christmas, in God’s Time, in God’s Way

Posted on December 24, 2021 by salooper57

It’s time to zoom out and consider the Christmas story from a wide-angle viewpoint. After four hundred years of radio silence, heaven re-established contact and sent messengers (that is the meaning of the Greek word we translate as “angel”) to prepare the way. Headquarters shined a beacon (the star of Matthew 2:2, 7, and 9) to lead the allied agents to the place. God then thwarted the enemy’s attempts to discover the king’s location and assassinate him.

Operation Bethlehem was the first stage in a multi-pronged offensive. Heaven was on the move, and the long-awaited king had arrived.

What can we learn from this? We can learn that God’s timing is not our timing. If you remember, the prophet Isaiah had foretold this day: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever” (Isaiah 9:6-7).

I imagine Isaiah thinking that this prophecy would come true in his day. Perhaps he said to God, “If ever the there was a time for you to keep your promise, it’s now. There is war on our doorstep, suffering in our future, and our king is imperiled.” Yet hundreds of years would pass before David’s heir would appear in Bethlehem.

Such a thing was, from Isaiah’s point of view, unthinkable. The need was now! But he could not see what God saw. During those intervening years, Alexander the Great spread Greek culture and – more importantly – Greek language across the western world. Greek became the trade language of Africa, Asia and Europe, and that made it possible for ordinary men from Galilee to carry the news of the king and his kingdom across the globe.

In the decades before Jesus’ birth, Mighty Rome came into its own. The Empire was the greatest road builder that had ever been seen. Their roads made foot travel over great distances possible for the first time. The iron fist of Rome also put an end to the petty wars that were continually breaking out from India to Britain. The ensuing time of peace (called the Pax Romana) made it possible to cross previously closed political borders with the message of the kingdom.

The right time awaited only Caesar Augustus’ infamous census to bring the right people to the right place at the right moment so that the promises could be fulfilled, and a king could be born in Bethlehem of Judea. God’s timing is not our timing; it’s better. It’s perfect.

Viewed through our wide-angle lens, this story forcefully reminds us of another important truth: that God’s ways are not our ways. Why choose a village almost no one had ever heard of, in a country that few paid any mind, as the birthplace of the great king? Why not Rome or Athens or Alexandria?

And who would ever have dreamed that God would select pagan astrologers to welcome his royal king into the world? I cannot think of a Christian denomination that would make that choice. But God’s ways are not our ways.

And above all, why send a baby? Isaiah had prophesied that God would “shatter the yoke that burden[ed] them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor”; that “Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood [would] be destined for burning, [would] be fuel for the fire.” What great warrior would God send to accomplish these mighty deeds? We would send an Eisenhower, a MacArthur, or a Patton.

But God’s ways are not our ways: he sent a baby. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. . . He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.”

So when God isn’t doing things the way you think they should be done – and when does he ever – will you still trust him? One of the great lessons from this wide-angle view of the Bible is that if we insist on understanding what God is doing before we trust him, we will never trust him. You cannot decide to trust God based on what is happening in your life, but on what happened on a cross. The good news is not that everything is going to work out just the way you want, but that Christ died for us, death has been conquered, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Posted in Bible, Christmas, Encouragement, Theology, Wide Angle | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Wide Angle: Operation Bethlehem

Posted on December 23, 2021 by salooper57

If you remove the Christmas story from the larger narrative that surrounds it, from the promises of God to rescue and renew his people, you still have a nice story but you may just miss the point. This little child is the fulfillment of the great promises. He is the king. Bethlehem is not just an inhospitable town; it is an invasion site. Bethlehem ought to be listed with Thermopylae, Troy, Normandy, and Omaha Beach. With the coming of this child the forces of the eternal kingdom have arrived, and the deciding campaign of the Long War has begun.

The actual arrival of the king is described in Luke chapter two. In our Matthew text, we are told of the events that followed his birth. Look at verse one: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea…”

Judea was the current name of the province, but it had previously been referred to as Judah. Judah was one of Israel’s original twelve tribes and, as early as Jacob, almost two millennia before Jesus, we find that is was from Judah that a king was to come.3 Interestingly, in the years leading up to Christ’s birth, there were prophecies and predictions coming not just from Israel but also from all over the Orient that a world ruler would arise from little Judea.4

Also note Bethlehem. Before the famine on words from the Lord, the prophet Micah had promised that Bethlehem, the home town of King David, would be the arrival site for the Great King who would be his descendent.5

So, “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod…” Stop there. Israel had gone into exile. They lost their land, their temple and their king, the descendant of David. But God promised to return their king, and now they had one: King Herod.

Yes, but Herod was not the promised king. He did not belong to the tribe of Judah, was not a descendant of David, nor did he hail from Bethlehem. Forty years before Christ, the Roman army crushed Israel and most of the Middle East. Rome made Herod’s father, an Idumean collaborator, governor of the province. Later, when the Parthians invaded Israel and placed a Jew on the throne, it was young Herod who led the military counterattack. The war was extremely bloody, but he won the country back for Rome. As a reward, the Roman senate, led by Marc Antony, conferred on Herod the title, “King of the Jews.”

Some of the great names of history are found in this story: Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra (with whom Herod shared a mutual dislike), and Caesar Augustus. It was Rome that gave Herod to Israel, not God, and the people never really accepted him. Herod married a woman from the most important family in Israel, thinking that it would give him legitimacy in the eyes of the public. But legitimacy was something that not even Herod could command. Years later, when he thought that two of their sons were plotting his overthrow, he had them killed. Then he had his wife killed. In the days before illness and age put an end to him, he had a son by his second wife put to death. The man was insanely suspicious, always fearing that someone was trying to usurp his throne.

Back to verse 1: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi [a kind of Persian intelligentsia, astronomers and priests] from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, (verse 2) ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.’”

You can imagine the effect that news had on Herod. The man had killed his own sons and his wife when he believed they had designs on his throne. And now the worst possible news: a legitimate king had been born. So, verse 3, “When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.” When Herod was disturbed, Jerusalem was disturbed, because when Herod was disturbed people died.

Remember that not only miracles and messages cluster around those periods when God acts decisively in history; so does opposition – spiritual opposition. That kind of opposition enters human affairs through some kind of human bridge, in this case, Herod. He sent for his intelligence officers, the chief priests, and teachers of the law (verse 4) and requested operational information.

They told him that the assault on his kingship – that, of course, was not what they said, but it is what he heard – was to originate from Bethlehem in Judea. The powers of darkness had long had free reign in the king; and now see what came of it. He sent the Magi to “go and make a careful search for the Child” (verse 8), but he didn’t tell them that this was to be a “search and destroy” mission.

They did as they were ordered, but when they receive a communication from heaven, they went into hiding. Herod and the powers at work in him were forced to adopt an alternate strategy, a campaignof shock and awe. He sent his soldiers to the vicinity with orders to kill every male child under two years old (verse 16). Killing infants seems to be a favorite tactic of the opposition. 6

But the promised king escaped. God’s promises are not held hostage by evil powers – whether men or spirits. The invasion had been successful, though it was not without casualties (verse 18): “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Now consider this story from a wide angle viewpoint. After four hundred years of radio silence, heaven re-established contact and sent messengers (that is the meaning of the Greek word we translate as “angel”) to prepare the way. Headquarters shined a beacon (the star of verse 2 and 7 and 9) to lead the allied agents to the place. God then thwarted the enemy’s attempts to discover the king’s location and assassinate him.

Operation Bethlehem was the first stage in a multi-pronged offensive. Heaven was on the move, and the long-awaited king had arrived.

3 Genesis 49:8-10

4 Suetonius, Life of Vespaisan, 4:5and Tacitus, Histories, 5:13; both quoted in William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Voulme 1, Westminster Press, © 1975, p. 27

5 Micah 5:2

6 See Amos 1:13; 2 Kings 8:12; see also Exodus 1:8-22

Posted in Bible, Christmas, Theology, Wide Angle | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Christmas Through the Wide Angle: The Line Becomes the Point of it All

Posted on December 22, 2021 by salooper57

The “seed of Abraham” sprouted and “the line of David” came to a point in a dusty corner of the Roman Empire, a place known as Bethlehem. How does the promised king appear in history? It’s an old story and we know it so well—don’t we?

We know about the poor man who was a poor man engaged to a young woman, who became pregnant, but not by him; her pregnancy was supernatural. And they had to go to Bethlehem because of something to do with taxes, and they just made it to town before the baby arrived, but the Bethlehem Inn was full up, and the only place the innkeeper could put them was a stable. And she ended up having the baby there, in the company of camels, cows and sheep.

Later that night the stable got really crowded, because a bunch of shepherds came, and then some kings from the Orient arrived. The kings are also called Wise Men, which begs the question: if they were really so wise, what were they doing barging into the poor girl’s room on the night she had a baby?

We almost know the story by heart: the innkeeper put Joseph and Mary in the … stable. But the Bible never talks about a stable; that idea arose because Luke mentions a manger – a feeding trough for animals – so we assume there must have been a stable. For that matter, the Bible never mentions an innkeeper either.

And how many kings came to see him – three? But there are at least three problems with that: First, the “kings” did not arrive on the night Jesus was born, but many months later. Secondly, Matthew does not call them kings at all, but magi – members of an ancient Persian tribe. And third, their number is never mentioned. We assume there were three because that is the number of gifts they brought. But some old legends held that there were twelve.

And what did the angels sing in the sky over the shepherds? “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will to men.” To start, that translation is questionable; but beyond that the text never says that the angels sang. Rather it says, “They said, ‘Glory to God in the highest…’”

Well, maybe we don’t have the details of the story down as well as we thought, but it’s not details we are after, but the sweep of biblical history, its main themes. But, when it comes to the birth of Jesus, do we really have the main themes down? The way the story is usually told is full of human interest: unwed pregnant girl; young guy who mans up and marries her; arriving in Bethlehem on a cold and snowy night (though it almost never snows in Bethlehem, and the Bible says nothing about it); forced to give birth in a stable. All of that evokes emotion. It makes us feel good to see how God took care of the poor girl and her noble guy. But we might miss the broader themes.

The Christmas story of stable and shepherds and wise men and, most of all, of a tiny baby, is part of a broader narrative. God had, as we have seen, made promises: to Abraham, to bless the peoples of the earth through his offspring; to David, that his descendant would rule from his throne forever; to the people going into exile, that he would bring a remnant back to the land and return their king to them. promised to enter into a new covenant with his people and to write his laws on their hearts, changing them from the inside out. He promised to forgive their sins; promised that they would know him, and that he would be their God, and that they would be his people (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

If you remove the Christmas story from this larger narrative, from the promises of God to rescue and renew his people, you still have a nice story, but you may just miss the point. This little child is the fulfillment of the great promises. He is the king. Bethlehem is not just an inhospitable town; it is an invasion site. Bethlehem ought to be listed with Thermopylae, Troy, Normandy, and Omaha Beach. With the coming of this child the forces of the eternal kingdom have arrived, and the deciding campaign of the Long War has begun.

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Christmas, Wide Angle | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Wide Angle: Christmas Broke the Silence

Posted on December 20, 2021 by salooper57

I was flying from Dakar, Senegal, West Africa to Paris. I left Dakar about 11:00 at night, and within minutes the ground below us grew very dark.  We were flying over Mauritania, Western Sahara, and Morocco, where towns and villages are few and far between.  And even where there were towns, there was not always electricity.

I must have been sitting by the window because I can remember looking down into the blackness for long periods of time.  And then I would see a little spot of light – some village in the Sahara – and then back to blackness. 

When we reached Spain, the light of towns and villages became much more conspicuous.  And as we began our descent and drew near to Paris, the world below us was full of lights. 

I see a parallel to that in spiritual realities.  Sometimes people expect to see miracles all around them.  They think that if the faith is true, they should see evidence for it everywhere – a thousand point of light in the form of remarkable healings and nature-defying answers to prayer.  Certainly, such things happen, as Scripture strongly affirms.  But those things usually happen in clusters around significant acts of God in history. 

For example, after the Fall and the Flood there seem to be few miraculous suspensions of the laws of nature.  There are some but they are few and far between, like the lights we saw from above Mauritania.  But as we look over the spiritual landscape that Abraham occupied, we see more miraculous events, scattered around the patriarchs.  Then when God acts in history to liberate Israel in the Exodus, we see many more.  Miracles cluster around Moses, like moths around a flame.

During the years preceding the exile, it happened again: miraculous events clustered around the great prophets Elijah and Elisha.  It was a time of spiritual battle.  The prophets won the battles, but Israel lost the field and went into exile.  Following the exile, miracles became few, and by the close of the Old Testament, some four hundred years before Christ, it seemed that God himself had gone into hiding. 

It was not just miracles that were absent. Messages from the Lord had stopped coming. Heaven observed, you might say, radio silence. The prophet Amos had warned that it would happen: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘when I will send a famine through the land – not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.  Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it’” (Amos 8:12).

Imagine that an alien race sent explorers to our solar system and among the data they wanted to record were electromagnetic wave transmissions. When they first arrived, in our year 1865, they found nothing within their parameters.  But when they dispatched a second exploration team 150 earth years later, the air was full of voices.  In the U. S. alone they found over three billion phone calls daily, not to mention radio and TV signals.

In terms of the biblical story, after the prophet, Malachi, there were no signals, no Voice in the air.  There was silence. But coming to that period of history in which the Son of God was incarnated is like our aliens coming from the mid-19th century to the twenty-first, or like my flight over the desert to Paris. The Voice of heaven once again had much to say. With the coming of Jesus miracles begin happening again, and the word of the Lord was heard once more. All of history either leads to or flows from his appearance on earth.  His life, death and resurrection form a great spiritual divide, the watershed of history, and the province of miracles.

It is also the time of the greatest spiritual opposition in history.  The approach of the King drove spiritual tyrants to take up arms – hence the many accounts of demonized people in the gospels.  We find good and miraculous things happening around the appearance of Christ, but we also find horrific things.  The battle had been joined.

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Theology, Wide Angle | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Right on Time: A Message for Christmas

Posted on December 19, 2021 by salooper57
Approximate 27 minutes

But they did not wait too long. They didn’t wait long enough. Some of them didn’t wait at all. Instead of trusting God, they took matters into their own hands. They gave up on God, but God did not give up on himself or his promises.

And what about us? If God let his promise to them fail, might not his promises to us be annulled? If his anger smoldered against them, might it not smolder against us? If they waited too long, might we not wait too long?

But they did not wait too long. They didn’t wait long enough. Some of them didn’t wait at all. Instead of trusting God, they took matters into their own hands. They gave up on God, but God did not give up on himself or his promises.

Posted in Bible, Christmas, Peace with God, Sermons | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Faith in the Future: Christmas as a Symbol of Hope

Posted on December 18, 2021 by salooper57

According to Alexander Pope, “Hope springs eternal,” but that spring often gets plugged at this time of year. In ancient times, enemy combatants would use stones to stop up the wells and springs of a city under siege. In this way, they could force their adversaries to abandon their strategic advantage and become vulnerable.

We too become vulnerable when the springs of hope upon which we depend are stopped up. Marriage problems, health troubles, financial pressures, and job tensions are all stones that can stop up the spring of hope. COVID has been a boulder.

Years ago, the State of Maine enacted a controversial plan to generate hydro-electric power. The plan required the Corp of Engineers to dam a river, and that meant evacuating a small town that would be permanently flooded. It took years of hearings and tons of paperwork before the plan finally went into effect. Eventually, the state purchased the property from the town, and gave people ample time to find other places to live.

As soon as the decision was finalized, a fascinating thing began to happen. The once beautiful town fell into disrepair. When things stopped working, machines failed, or windows broke, the people of the town just let them go. One of the residents said, “Where there is no faith in the future, there is no work in the present.”

“Faith in the future” – that is, hope – is crucial. I once spent a few days in a small town in northern Ontario. It was one of the most depressing places I’ve ever visited. I heard a resentful Anglo townsperson complain that First Nations folks were lazy, but conversations with residents led me to another conclusion: people weren’t lazy, but some were hopeless. The two, though very different, look similar from the outside.

When the dissident Russian intellectual Alexander Solzhenitsyn was in the gulag, he became so physically weak and emotionally drained that he wanted to die. The brutal treatment, the terrible conditions, and the hard labor had overwhelmed him. He knew that if he quit working the guards would beat him, probably to death. So, one day he stopped working. He just stood still, leaned on his shovel, and waited for the end to come.

When he stopped, one of his fellow-Christians in the camp noticed. He reached over with his shovel and drew a cross in the dirt at Solzhenitsyn’s feet, then quickly smudged it up before the guard had a chance to see it. Solzhenitsyn later wrote that his entire being was energized by the sight of that cross. It was his symbol of hope.

People quit when they don’t have hope. Marriages fail, not because they are irreparable, but one or both partner is hopeless. Voters who have no hope stop going to the polls. When those struggling for justice lose hope, they surrender to the status quo.

The Christmas season exacerbates hopelessness for some people. The stones – financial pressures, relationship difficulties, job tensions, and loneliness – plug up the spring of hope. The most wonderful time of the year can be the most depressing.

Some people can almost see Dante’s line, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” written at the beginning of December in their calendar. The season most characterized by anticipation becomes for them a time of gloom. It is ironic, but it was bound to happen is a culture that has left Advent’s spiritual springs of hope to wander in the secular wasteland.

People can combat hopelessness during the holidays by refusing to isolate, overspend, or pull an all-nighter wrapping gifts. They can connect to encouraging friends and avoid the emotional pitfalls of the past. But the best thing people can do is to rediscover the true meaning and purpose of Advent.

It is, after all, what people call a “religious” season, and we should not expect to find hope in it if we treat it like a secular holiday. But those who enter fully into it find “faith in the future” or, rather, the God of the future finds them. For them, Christmas, which comes and goes almost as quickly as the cross at Solzhenitsyn feet, becomes an energizing symbol of hope.

(First published by Gannett.)

Posted in Christmas, Spiritual life | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment