During the next couple of months I’ll be having “office” hours at Tim Horton’s on Salem Turnpike in Norwich.  I’ll be sitting there drinking tea, reading a book, or having a conversation with someone.  Feel free to drop in, say hello, have tea with me, and let me know what God’s doing in your life these days.  I’ll be there from 4-6 pm the following Mondays during the months of April and May: April 19, April 26, May 3, May 10, May 24.

Soli Deo Gloria, Pastor Jim

Disclaimer: This oft-neglected blog is a ministry tool of St. Mark Lutheran Church, giving members an opportunity to catch up on things they may have missed while away and giving everyone else a small cyber-insight into what happens at St. Mark in Norwich, CT.  Sermons are best experienced in the worship service and not over cyberspace.  Please feel welcome to come and join us Sunday mornings at 9:30 or Wednesday evenings at 6:30.  And if you’re wondering which person is the pastor look for the guy wearing a white alb and stole.

Soli Deo Gloria!  Pastor Jim

The metaphor of a wilderness journey for Lent has a lot of biblical resonance.  From the Israelites’ 40 year wilderness school after slavery in Egypt to Jesus’ 40 days before he launches his ministry, the rocky places outside the cities in the Holy Land are the thin places where spiritual realities take form.  Yet almost any wilderness journey will do as a metaphor for Lent.  Those of us who take an occasional trip to wild places know that these places can be life-giving, but you wouldn’t want to live there long term because the wilderness changes you in drastic ways.  If you’ve seen the Tom Hanks movie Castaway or read John Krakauer’s book Into the Wild about the wilderness life and death of 20-something Chris McCandless, you know the wilderness can be devastating over long periods of time.  And if you’ve gone camping or backpacking or canoeing in the wilderness, you know short periods are refreshing.

Lent with its 40 day wilderness sojourn can be refreshing, especially knowing that we get a break on Sundays and that the greatest three days of the Church year come at the end.  But the Lenten wilderness can be tough to enter into when you’ve been in the wilderness long enough already.  The wilderness is different for everybody, but we’ve all been there.  The death of a loved one, depression, divorce, unemployment, fear of failure, waiting for  some good news to come to you.  Wilderness in short bouts can be refreshing and renewing, much like the season of Lent is supposed to be.  But wilderness for a long time changes you.

Stuck in the wilderness of unemployment, you may end up wandering into the wilderness of depression and then the wilderness of fear of failure.  Once you get into the wilderness and stay there for a long while it is practically impossible to get out by yourself because you end up getting used to living there.  You get accustomed to scavenging for food, searching for a water source, sleeping with one eye open for fear of wild animals, and living without interaction with another person.

So if you have been living in the wilderness quite some time already and then the season of Lent comes along and your pastor says, “Welcome to the Lenten wilderness” you’ll probably say, “I’ve been here in the wilderness all along.  I have no desire to intentionally go deeper into the wilderness.  Thank you very much.”

That’s the challenge that faces us this Lenten season.  Yet another year in the wilderness of national economic hardship, high unemployment rates, and government bickering.  Yet another year in the wilderness of Norwich with its depressed economy, foreclosed houses, and partially built hotels along Interstate 395.  And yet another year in the wilderness we call home here at St. Mark where money is short, the furnace causes us problems, the roof leaks, Sunday School is small, and the pews are not as full as they used to be.  Not a week goes by that I do not hear some variation on any of of these from a church member.  “Welcome to the wilderness indeed.  We’ve been here a while.”

And of course, living in the wilderness for a while changes people.  Food is scarce so people slim down, clothing becomes tattered and torn after a while, basic instincts cut in for the sake of extending life as long as possible, and for people of faith the questions of faith start popping up.

Why did God allow this to happen?  We have been faithful, why do we have to go through this?  And like the Israelites asking Moses in the wilderness, “Did you and God bring us out here to die?  We were better off in slavery!  At least we had some food on our tables and we knew what life was going to be like tomorrow and the next day and the next day.  Let us go back to the comforts of slavery.”

The wilderness is a tough place to live for an extended period of time.  It’s fun for short camping trips, but long periods in the wilderness are definitely not like staying at the Holiday Inn with comfy beds and continental breakfasts.  The wilderness can be refreshing for short 40-day sojourns with breaks on Sundays, but the wilderness for long periods is uncomfortable.  And if you’ve been in the wilderness for a long time you naturally either adapt with basic instincts taking over or you cope by telling yourself, “well, it could be worse.  This isn’t so bad.”  That’s the natural way of doing things.

But the Biblical witness to times in the wilderness says something utterly different.  The Biblical witness tells us the wilderness is where we encounter God.  The Biblical witness tells us the wilderness is where we receive our call to mission, our purpose, from God.  The Biblical witness tells us the wilderness is where we can be honest with ourselves and honest with God.  It tells us we can scream at God, cry with God, laugh with God,  ask questions of God, and call out to God.  It is a place for frank and unrestrained conversations between God and God’s people.

Yet the question always arises when people discover they are in the wilderness, “I’m not sure how to be frank and unrestrained when I talk to God.  Where do I find the words?”  And most pastors say, “Look to the psalms.”  Because the psalms are frank, unrestrained conversations between God’s people and God.  Some are prayers and praises that soar to the heights of spiritual devotion.  Some arise from the deepest pain and distress and display the depths of human misery, anger, and frustration.  A few are complacent and self-congratulatory, and a few others are militant and chauvinistic.  The psalms reflect the emotions of faith.  They rejoice in the times of abundance, they wallow in times of scarcity.  They give voice to people in the wilderness who may feel they have lost their voice or lost God’s ear or feel they cannot hear God’s voice.

Yet at the heart of the psalms is the conviction that God is one to whom all can speak and one who will speak even if we need to listen silently for a time.  And our psalm today gives a strong account of that.  In a short fourteen verses, the psalmist speaks of confident trust in God (The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?), doubt in God’s listening abilities (Hear my voice, O Lord, when I call; have mercy on me and answer me), anger at God’s absence (Hide not your face from me, turn not away from your servant in anger…), and back to confident trust in God (This I believe – that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!  Wait for the Lord and be strong.  Take heart and wait for the Lord!).  Yet through it all, through the changes of life, the wavering between trust and doubt, anger and love, the psalmist knows that God is one to whom he can speak.

The psalmist knows that, because that is what God has promised to us.  We can call out to God during the times we are in cities and in the wilderness, because God has promised us that God is for us, that God will hear us, and that God will speak to us even if we must wait a while.  So that is what we cling to in the cities and the wilderness.   We cling to God’s promises even when God’s face may be hidden, because God promised us that God is for us.  We even, like the psalmist, remind God of God’s promises just in case God forgot because God promised us that God is for us.

It has been said that Martin Luther once wrote that if God came to his doorstep tomorrow and announced that on second thought God was not going to save him, Luther would respond, “Too late, I have your promise.”  In Luther’s trademark lack of humility it is an appropriate response.  For God has taken us up and promised us that we will not be abandoned.  And like Brother Martin and the psalmist, reminding God of that promise is also a way to remind us of what God has promised.  Even if our time in the wilderness has been longer than 40 days, God has promised to not abandon us.  Even in the wilderness of Lent or in the wilderness of our lives we can confidently speak of God’s promise with the psalmist, “This I believe – that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of living!  Wait for the Lord and be strong.  Take heart and wait for the Lord!”

Soli Deo Gloria, Pastor Jim

Disclaimer: This oft-neglected blog is a ministry tool of St. Mark Lutheran Church, giving members an opportunity to catch up on things they may have missed while away and giving everyone else a small cyber-insight into what happens at St. Mark in Norwich, CT.  Sermons are best experienced in the worship service and not over cyberspace.  Please feel welcome to come and join us Sunday mornings at 9:30 or Wednesday evenings at 6:30.  And if you’re wondering which person is the pastor (since I don’t wear a clerical collar much), look for the guy wearing a white alb and stole.

Soli Deo Gloria!  Pastor Jim

The past two weeks I have been thinking and praying about Paul’s beautiful metaphor for the Church: the Body of Christ.  It is a metaphor that so fully encapsulates my understanding of the Church that when I think of activities in our congregation whether they be annual meetings or bowling parties or weeding gardens, I see in my mind’s eye this image of a healthy body working together with our many gifts for the common good.  And it is a metaphor that so fully encapsulates my understanding of the Church that when I hear of and think of discussions that lead to hurt and pain taking place in congregations and in the ELCA or even among other denominations, I see in my mind’s eye this image of a body sickened by disease and sometimes not even knowing that it is sick.  The Body of Christ here on earth is where I start with when I think of and pray for the Church.

But that metaphor has been tragic for me the past 12 days.  One cannot turn on a news station and avoid the countless broken, bruised and dismembered bodies and over 110,000 confirmed dead bodies lying amongst the rubble in Haiti.  My very body aches at the sight of such tragedy and pain.  And I know that I am not the only one.  People throughout the world who ache at the sight of such a tragedy have given over $335 million and the members of this Body, the ELCA, have already contributed over $1.6 million to ELCA Disaster Response that has been distributed to Lutheran World Relief and other agencies helping in the aftermath.

Yet that tragedy came close to me at the death of our friend Ben who died in the earthquake as a building collapsed on him and his last words were “God’s peace to us we pray.”  The tragedy of broken and dismembered bodies became abundantly clear on Friday afternoon as Terra and I watched a live stream of Ben’s memorial service on the internet.  We watched as what appeared to be hundreds of people gathered together to proclaim Christ crucified and risen, to worship, to comfort, and to sing at Luther College.  In a building that for four years I attended worship up to eight times a week, a building that still holds the title home congregation for me, we watched friends from college and seminary mourn and grieve, laugh and praise, for nearly three hours.  And as Ben’s uncle and godfather spoke I was struck by his profoundly faithful and mournful question, “How do we go about living without Ben?”

“How do we go about living without Ben?”  It was the question on the lips and the hearts of a gathering of the Body of Christ at Luther College and throughout the world by internet that included the likes of Rafael Malpica Padilla, the director of the ELCA’s Global Missions, and Peter Mayer, the Lutheran guitarist and Jimmy Buffett front man, and Marty Haugen, the Church composer, and Renee, Ben’s wife, and all of his friends and family.  The Body of Christ that had gathered both personally and virtually was grieving the loss of such an amazing limb.

And I realized, although we ask that question “How do we go on living?” so often at funerals, it is not the only time that we openly ask or feel what life would be like without a limb.  We who knew and love Ben will continue to ask that question as we remember moments with him, hear his music, and even feel his presence as if he were still here: a phantom limb attached to a dismembered body.

You may have heard of phantom limbs before or known people who have a phantom limb.  A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated of missing limb (even an organ) is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts.  The majority of the sensations are painful and a phantom limb can even feel the pain of hot coffee or the change in weather.  The pain can become severe with stress and anxiety.  It is the brain working to make sense of lost stimuli, a part of the brain no longer receiving information from the hand, so another part of the brain takes over.  The phantom limb can be so active that the pain can be unmanageable.  And treatment is to help the body to adapt and cope with such a drastic change.

Yet bodies that have lost limbs are not the only things that can feel the phantom presence of loss.  We, the family and friends of Ben, who gathered personally and virtually feel Ben’s presence, a phantom limb of the Body of Christ.  Yet with time and with treatment we will adapt to such a drastic change.  If we do not adapt to his loss, then we will flounder and be overcome.

Friday night after Ben’s memorial service I found myself thinking that we too, St. Mark Lutheran Church, this Body of Christ, have phantom limbs.  We feel the presence of lost limbs moving and gesticulating.  The phantom limbs may not be so obvious at first but they are here and they are active.  These phantom limbs can at times distract and overcome us with questions of “How can we live without…”  These phantom limbs begin moving when we focus on our losses.  “Remember when Christmas Eve worship was packed.  There were folding chairs all over the place.”  The phantom limb moves.  “Remember when we had to rent space at Park Congregational for Sunday School.”  The phantom limb moves.  “Remember when we had two pastors or when Pastor Storek was here or when we had an intern every year.”  The phantom limb moves.  “Remember when…”  “Remember when…”

A person whose body is overcome by the movement of phantom limbs struggles in life, family and friends overcome by the death of a loved one struggle to figure out how to live, and congregations or even an entire Church stuck in remembering the past looses perspective on the present and the future.

But there is treatment for phantom limbs.  People who suffer from phantom limbs can sometimes be treated with a mirror box.  A box of mirrors that gives artificial visual feedback that allows the patient to “move” the phantom limb, and to unclench it from potentially painful positions.  Through repeated treatments some have experienced long-term improvement because their brains have been re-wired from loss and pain to health and wellness.

Yet for people of faith, the Body of Christ, our treatment is one of remembrance worked by the Holy Spirit.  We remember the loss of limbs through death or inactivity or merely leaving the congregation, yet the treatment for these lost limbs is not to dwell on this kind of remembrance or even to blame the limbs for leaving.  Because if we dwell on this type of remembrance or cast blame on others then our phantom limbs become clenched in painful and grotesque manners.  Instead the Holy Spirit’s treatment is found in the remembrance of faith, a type of remembrance of God’s love and presence and grace that calls us out of the past and to live in the present and hope in God’s promised future.

Yet like most treatment for bodies there are improvements and setbacks… two steps forward, one step back we, the Body of Christ, go.  Within this past year I have seen the Holy Spirit working.  Last year’s annual report was filled with language of need.  “We need more members.  We need more money.  We need more volunteers,” we said as our phantom limbs clenched tighter.  And this year’s annual report is filled with language of hope and promise as our phantom limbs find release.  The question of need still raises its phantom limb here and there, but generally we have moved to the hope of salvation and the celebration of God’s abundance

The treatment this Body of Christ is going through is working, but all wellness and wholeness comes slowly.  We are finding peace and wholeness in God’s love and presence, but lest we forget our treatment and the doctor who treats us we are constantly called to remembrance when we gather together:

• “Remember your baptism,” we are told when we make the sign of the cross in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  “Remember that you have been washed in the freeing and loving grace of God.”
• “Remember the salvation story,” we are told at the Easter Vigil and indeed whenever we read or hear the stories in the Bible.  For God is the one who saves, who gives life, who calls us into the promised and hoped for future,  who freed the heart and tongue of our friend Ben as he lay under that collapsed building, who frees the Body of Christ from the phantom limbs that haunt.
• “Do this for the remembrance of me,” we are told each time we gather at the table of life.  For Jesus is the one who died to give life, the one whose life, death, and resurrection we remember not because it haunts us so, but because it frees us from those that would haunt us and calls us into mission.

“How do we go on living?” we ask as phantom limbs gesticulate and clench amongst us.  And we respond, “we go on living because we belong to the One who gives life and not death.  We go on living remembering the one who doused us in life-giving water.  We go on living remembering the one who died so that we might live.”  By the work of the Holy Spirit our brains are being re-wired from loss and pain, to health and wellness, life and love.  The Body of Christ has countless phantom limbs.  But the God who created this Body of Christ says throughout the past and in the present and into the future, “Let the phantom limbs be unclenched.  Let the Body of Christ be freed.  Let the Body of Christ be well.  Be well.”

For worship on this glorious wintry day we used the alternate first reading and the alternate psalmody.  We Norwich Lutherans dove into the Apocrypha!  Martin Luther would be happy.

Here’s the readings for the day.  And here’s the Emily Dickinson poem that I referenced.

Disclaimer: This oft-neglected blog is a ministry tool of St. Mark Lutheran Church, giving members an opportunity to catch up on things they may have missed while away and giving everyone else a small cyber-insight into what happens at St. Mark in Norwich, CT.  Sermons are best experienced in the worship service and not over cyberspace.  Please feel welcome to come and join us Sunday mornings at 9:30 or Wednesday evenings at 6:30.  And if you’re wondering which person is the pastor (since I don’t wear a clerical collar much), look for the guy wearing a white alb and stole.

Soli Deo Gloria!  Pastor Jim

I’ve heard it said that poetry is not to be understood but lived with.  Poetry has a power to uplift the reader, the hearer, even a community from the miry clay of the ordinary to the lofty heights of the divine.  Perhaps you’ve experienced that yourself in some way or another.  Maybe a song comes on the radio and it sends shivers down your spine.  Or you read a passage in the Bible during your daily devotions and you stop and praise God because somehow a phrase that was written thousands of years ago  felt, in that moment, as if it were written just for you.  Or maybe a painting or a movie or a book drove you to tears because somehow, in someway, your soul was reshaped by it.

When it comes to poetry – any form of poetry, written, sung, visual – it is a mistake to look at poetry with only a critical eye.  A critical eye casts judgment, a critical eye offers suggestions for supposed improvement, and  a critical eye can entirely miss the point of the poem itself.  The best poetry after all is to be lived with as it evokes emotion and wonder and awe, not a desire for an absolute or perfection or improvement.  And the best poetry has the power to make us aware of a consciousness beyond the written or heard word, as if there were another person, perhaps even God, at work in the poetry.

So I’ve been living with poetry this week.  Occasionally with a critical eye but mostly with eyes guided by faith and a heart that longs to see the light shine in the darkness.  I’ve been reading and re-reading the words of the poet who penned the opening verses of John’s Gospel.  Reading and re-reading “A Word made Flesh is seldom” by Emily Dickinson.  Watching the moving poetry of the wind on last Tuesday as it whipped up snow down in Flanders in the early hours before sunrise.  Listening to the poetic words of conservationist John Muir as they were read on Ken Burns’ documentary  about the National Parks.  Instead of relying heavily on biblical commentaries written by people who make a living on writing pages filled with words, I have gone to the poets, people who hardly make a living on writing short phrases filled with space, to seek some insight on today’s beautiful poetry: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Because poets, with their reliance on few words have much to say about the Word.

All of today’s readings, save for perhaps the words from Ephesians, are poetic.  Wisdom in all her power and grandeur is always written about in poetry when she appears in the Bible.  Wisdom is a strong woman, a woman that guides, a woman that saves.  Wisdom, in the Biblical poetry, is a woman who dwells among the people.  And the Word of God in John’s poetry is the same as that beautiful, yet elusive woman, named Wisdom.  The Word of God is strong, full of grace and truth, the Word of God guides, the Word of God saves.

Yet like all wisdom and all words, the Word of God is elusive, not because it does not come amongst the people, but because the darkness is so pervasive.  However, “a Word made Flesh is seldom” as Dickinson says and the poets who have been drawn to John’s poetic introduction to the Word of God that dwells among us invite us not to seek understanding with a critical eye and an analytical mind, but to seek with a loving heart the Word made Flesh.

Today, we are invited to set aside all the darkness that is critical and analytical… all the resolutions for self-improvement… all the desires to pull the world out of the darkness that tears God’s creation apart by war, prejudice, neglect and exploitation… all desires to pull ourselves out of the darkness in our own lives.  Yes, we are invited to live with the Word as seldom as it is in the darkness that we live in.  Because we cannot pull ourselves out, improve ourselves, or figure it all out.  Instead God, through a Word made Flesh enters into our lives and dwells with us, living with us in the darkness.

And darkness do we live in.  School children lack food when the go home for the weekend or extended breaks.  This holiday season for many is a time of loneliness, depression, and increased suicide attempts.  If the entire population of the planet were represented by 100 people, fifty percent of the wealth of the world would be in the hands of six people, all of whom are American.  Fifty out of a hundred would suffer from malnutrition, seventy people would be unable to read or write, eighty would live in sub-standard housing.  Darkness do we live in.

Yet although a Word made Flesh is seldom, the Word is with us, dwells with us even if the darkness does not overcome it, even if the Word’s own people do not know the Word.  The Word made Flesh is still present, ever present in the midst of the darkness.

And even in the darkness although a word made flesh is seldom, seldom is not never.  We do not never experience the Word made Flesh.  We do not never see the light shining in the darkness.  We always have the Word of Flesh dwelling with us, full of grace and truth.  Seldom is not never, and the Word of Flesh though seldom experienced fully is always present and always casting light into the dark corners of our lives and world.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God Alone), Pastor Jim

So we’re just going push the party back until Sunday, January 3 from 1-4 pm at the Parsonage. Same idea – Cookies & Pool table provided. Just bring yourselves, a snack to pass, and a friend if you’d like.

Stay safe this weekend and we’ll see you all in church!

Cheers, Pastor Jim

The 7pm service is a Family Candlelight Worship Service for families with children.

The 11pm service is a Festive Candlelight Worship Service with Communion.

All are welcome as we join with the choir of angels in singing to God, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those whom God favors!”

Disclaimer: This oft-neglected blog is a ministry tool of St. Mark Lutheran Church, giving members an opportunity to catch up on things they may have missed while away and giving everyone else a small cyber-insight into what happens at St. Mark in Norwich, CT.  Sermons are best experienced in the worship service and not over cyberspace.  Please feel welcome to come and join us Sunday mornings at 9:30 or Wednesday evenings at 6:30.  And if you’re wondering which person is the pastor (since I don’t wear a clerical collar much), look for the guy wearing a white alb and stole.

The assigned readings for the third Sunday of Advent are: Zephaniah 3.14-20; Isaiah 12.2-6; Philippians 4.4-7; and Luke 3.7-18.

Soli Deo Gloria!  Pastor Jim

Here we are!  It is the third Sunday of Advent, the day known as “Gaudete” Sunday.  The day of Advent when we are invited to throw off our expectant waiting and rejoice because we are over half way done with Advent!  We are to rejoice this day and thankfully our Gospel reading today gives us these words, “So, with many other exhortations, [John] proclaimed the good news to the people.”  Wait, did I miss something?

Something doesn’t seem right, does it?  How in the world do you get to the good news when the first words John even says in Luke’s gospel are calling people names?  You could probably write John’s name calling off if it were in the elementary level of “doo-doo head,” but it seems John has a graduate degree in name calling and uses the derogatory, first century equivalent of calling someone a son of a female canine.

Perhaps you could even write that off, if it were the only biting words that John says, but then John goes on to order the crowd to produce fruit worthy of repentance (or else!) and then takes them to town and tears down all that they held so dear: their religious heritage and the things that had provided them with spiritual comfort and assurance.  “Enough is enough!” John says.

It would be like a wild-eyed person walking into this building.  Calling us names by the most derogatory and insulting name that you can think of and then telling us that our Lutheran heritage is worthless, that our denomination is pathetic, and that we are fruitless, unrepentant, and use our standing as Lutherans as an excuse.  Today’s about rejoicing, right?

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I experienced that I’d write this John guy off.  After all what does he know, huh?  He just wandered in off the street.  He hasn’t seen what good works I do.  He hasn’t seen our community garden.  He doesn’t know that our denomination is known around the world as one that works for peace and justice.  Who does he think he is?  That’s what I’d do.

Except… nobody does that in John’s audience.  There are no more excuses to give, John’s punctured that life raft.  There is no place to hide, they are after all in the wilderness.  John gets to the root of it all and challenges the people to give up their excuses and trust in God, but John does it all in a shocking way and the people are unable to speak.  Maybe they are completely awed because they feel like they are in the presence of a man chosen by God to prepare the way for the Lord… OR… maybe they are too shocked that a guy that wanders the wilderness just shot down everything they held so dear.

In true Lutheran fashion, the people have been confronted by God’s law.  It has been pointed out to them that they are incomplete, they have used excuses to separate themselves from God’s goodness.  And what all preachers hope happen after confronting a people with God’s law, they respond and ask, “What should we do?”

Now, I want to let you in on a little secret that we Lutheran preachers have.  In sermons you always preach law and gospel, you always preach our sinfulness and inability to save ourselves and God’s saving goodness and grace and forgiveness.  Sermons are not for beating people up.  To paraphrase Martin Luther, sermons are when one beggar leads other beggars to food.  Sermons may begin with law, but they always end with grace.  So us preaching fools are encouraged to use God-active language.  We preaching fools are encouraged to use lots of sentences that have God as the subject of weighty and active verbs.  God saves us.  God forgives us.  God loves us.  Send the folk out with grace.  Let the light of the gospel, the good news of God that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, be the experience of the sermon so that people go out into the new week ready to serve God in all walks of life and to come back to receive a morsel of that good news again.  Give the people a word of grace that they can rejoice over!

John, though, obviously didn’t get that memo on appropriate Lutheran preaching.  He’s not Lutheran and he’s definitely not a “professional.”  John sets the crowd up to be able to say to them, “What should you do?  You can’t do anything.  It’s all by God’s grace!  God saves.   God loves.  God forgives.”  And with that wonderful set-up, that would make any Lutheran pastor drool because the people are ready to receive God’s grace, John pulls a “Mrs. Johnson,” my kindergarten teacher that reminded us everyday at school in many different ways to “Be nice to each other.”

John is breaking all those preaching rules.  He roughs the crowd up spiritually, he punctures their spiritual lifeboat, he uses his graduate level degree in name-calling to get across a message so-simple that we all probably learned it in kindergarten.  “Here’s your moralistic to-do list, folks.  Give to those who have none.  Don’t be a bully.  Remember to share.  Don’t cheat” says John.

And as soon as he ends that nice little message he’s back to fire-and-brimstone, finger-wagging, and scare tactics.  “You think I’m something?  The one coming after me, I’m not even worthy to be his slave!  He’s coming with fire and holy spirit!  He’s coming to separate the wheat from the chaff and burn the chaff in unquenchable fire!”  And before we get a chance to object to John’s unbalanced preaching and uncomfortable, challenging words, the author comes along to assure us that John was proclaiming the “good news” of God.

So, did I miss something?  How is a simple, moralistic “to do” list sandwiched between two heaps of tongue-lashing, finger-wagging scolding the good news of God?  How can we rejoice in that?!?

The morsel of food that this beggar has to offer today is that the Good News is found in the fact that the fire that John says is coming with Jesus is about saving the wheat, not destroying the chaff.  All the name calling and all the law that John proclaims leads to the the Good News of God.  And the Good News of God that John so bracingly proclaims and shocks us with is that the One for whom we wait comes with fire and the Holy Spirit to tear our lives apart and separate the parts of our lives that keep us from God from the parts of our lives that are waiting to break free to love and to serve God in all things.

All those parts of our lives that hinder us from hearing the Good News of God, the one for whom we wait is ready to tear those apart.  All those parts of our lives that keep us from living out the Gospel in peace and justice, the one for whom we wait is ready to tear those apart.  All those excuses that we build up to justify ourselves, the one for whom we wait is ready to tear those down and vindicate us.

This season and faith is after all about the one for whom we wait.  John is after all about the one who comes after him.  And the one for whom we wait is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and comes with fire and holy spirit.  Not to destroy, but to save.  Not to kill, but to be killed.  Not to take life away, but to give life.  The one for whom we wait is coming with power and might, humility and love.  That is a wonderful reason to rejoice.