Something I learned from Game Change

I recently read Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. This is an insiders account of the 2008 race. The biggest revelation to me was how narcissistic and messianic John Edwards, a man I supported as VP in 2004, acted. The revelations in this book make me come close to being glad the Democrats lost in 2004. If John Edwards had become anything more than a figurehead VP the country would have been in trouble and the “democratic brand” would have been permanently tarred with the notion that our candidates cheat on their spouses. Instead now in 2008 we got a family-mans family-man a loving father and a humble husband. Thank God!
Other revelations include: how very brutal running a national campaign is, how freely candidates use the F-bomb (this is probably related to the first revelation), and how poor of a job McCain’s team did vetting Sarah Palin.
But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about Obama for a moment. On two separate occasions then Senator Obama realized his staff was taking too much control of his campaign. In both instances he brought everyone together, brought in some outside voices and eyes, and shook things up. Both times, when Obama’s campaign became Obama’s campaign, things worked out the way he wanted them to.
I wonder if, as president, Obama will be bringing his staff together along with some of his old friends from Chicago and elsewhere outside the beltway and shaking things up? Perhaps we will see a rejuvenation of the executive branch soon. Perhaps we will see a good jobs bill pass quickly and a reconciled health care bill signed soon.
I think Obama's shake up moment may already be in the works. I think the Obama’s question and answer session in which he eviscerated the opposition at their own retreat here in Baltimore is an example of a renewed President taking his position back and doing what presidents do—preside.

Bill Watterson' first interview in 15 years

As some of my readers know I've been a Calvin and Hobbes fan since before I knew that Hobbes wrote Leviathan and Calvin wrote Institutes of the Christian Religion. :)

"With almost 15 years of separation and reflection, what do you think it was about "Calvin and Hobbes" that went beyond just capturing readers' attention, but their hearts as well?
The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.
I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can't explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don't think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once."

I'm on Amazon.com!

So... for the heck of it type in Chris Halverson on Amazon.com. My book shows up!
Peace,
Chris

Sermon: In Baptism God sees Christ

In Baptism God sees Christ

Greetings in the name of Jesus.
This week Pastor Gregg and I received a letter in the mail not for us. It was addressed to heaven, and I guess the post-man in some confusion, delivered it to St. John’s.
The letter contained a job application and a resume.
For the sake of easy access to this resume you can turn to a copy found as an insert in your bulletin.
Name: Humanity

Permanent Address:
Garden of Eden

Present Address:
Throughout the Earth

Email Address:
HU__man@yahoo.com

Experience:
Several millennia engaged in war.
Regular attempts at Genocide.
Withholding coats and stealing money. (Luke 3:10-14)
Constant judgment of others along with self-justification.

Education:
BA in Sin
MA in Hubris, with an emphasis in Disobedience.

Internship:
Has interned under the likes of Gandhi, Moses, and Jesus, but just as often under the likes of Genghis Khan, Hitler and Pharaoh.

Employment:
Gardner—dismissed after failing to follow the rules.
Murderer—have been successful at this occupation since the time of Cain and Abel.

Skills:
Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony

So of course Pastor Gregg—being the conscientious and responsible man that he is—had the Vicar put in a call to Heaven right away to get things straightened out.
I explained to the angel Michael that there had been a mistake, that we had accidently received Humanity’s Resume.
But Michael responded. “Oh, God received Humanity’s resume. It read quite simply, “Jesus Christ. Your Son, the Beloved, with me you are well pleased.”
“But,” I sputtered, not wanting to disappoint my supervisor, “I have it in my hand.”
“Chris,” replied Michael, “Don’t you remember Galatians. Baptism is putting on Christ and being made a child of God. In Baptism God sees Christ.”

Lord God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts me acceptable in your sight. Amen.

Please turn with me to the 18th through 20th verse of Chapter 3 of our Gospel of Luke found on page (_____) in the pew bible.
“So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.”
By the time we get to the Baptism of Jesus, John has been removed from the story. By the time the dove comes down, John has been brought down. By the time Jesus is proclaimed Son of God, his cousin John has been put in jail by Herod.
Now, there is a historical reason for Luke removing John the Baptist from the story of the Baptism of Jesus.
At the time of Jesus John the Baptizer was a potent figure in his own right. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote around the same time as Luke and Matthew, wrote more about John the Baptist than he did about Jesus called the Christ.
You see, when you are proclaiming Jesus the Messiah and the son of God, as Luke was, it doesn’t necessarily help your case that another group of people who are passionate about another man, John, can say, “well, our leader baptized your Messiah and son of God.”
So, historically the reason Luke sticks John in prison before Jesus is baptized is because he wants to focus on Jesus and downplay John.
But my theological imagination has another explanation. John the Baptist disappears at Baptism because in Baptism God sees Christ.
Even John, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” Even the one preparing us for a time when, “Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Even the one who prepares us for the time when, “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Even the Baptizer, in Baptism, fades away, because in Baptism God sees Christ.

And for some this is a scary prospect. Some of us have assumed ourselves to be Abraham’s ancestors by our own merits. Some of us, because of birth or upbringing, class or race, church membership or seminary education, presume we are automatically on God’s good side. But that simply isn’t so, because in Baptism God doesn’t see our self-righteous deeds, God sees Christ.
For others of us this is an unprecedented gift! For some of us have assumed ourselves to be the brood of vipers by our own merit. Some of us, because of birth or upbringing, class or race, church membership or seminary education, presume we are automatically the sons of snakes and not the children of Abraham. We do not see ourselves as worthy of God’s love, let alone God’s parentage.

We shutter as trees in the wind as we await the ax and the winnowing fork,
We are like a piece of pottery precariously placed on a slim window ledge, waiting the iron bar and the unquenchable fire.
But that simply isn’t so, because in Baptism God doesn’t see our sins, God sees Christ.
I remember one constant refrain I heard when I did my Chaplaincy internship at Altru Hospital up in North Dakota two summers ago. I was so often confronted with sick people anxious about the end. No matter their background they would ask the question, in one way or another,
“am I a son of Abraham or a son of a snake?”
Have I done enough to get to heaven? Has my church attendance or born again experience, or good works been enough for God?
And I can say in response that God is able to raise up children from stones.
For in Baptism God sees the very Son the spirit descended upon as a dove.
The very son that in his prayer and in his baptism a voice from heaven called beloved. The very son with whom God was well pleased.
In Baptism God sees Christ.
This is affliction to the comfortable and comfort to the afflicted.
To the proud mountains and haughty hills it is humility,
to the valleys that sag in sorrow this is salvation.
God doesn’t read our resume, he reads Christ’s. In Baptism God sees His son Jesus Christ.
Baptism is God’s unconditional yes to us, for in Baptism God sees Christ.
Baptism is the Holy Spirit coming to us and saying as it was said to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” For in Baptism God sees Christ.
Baptism is putting on Christ and being made a child of God, for in Baptism God sees Christ.
Baptism is an event so powerful it kills us and makes us alive again, for in Baptism God sees Christ.
Baptism is the raising of every valley and the lowering of every mountain, so that all flesh is enmeshed in the body of Christ—both Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, for in Baptism God sees Christ.
Baptism is a great exchange, our resume is made right, because in Baptism God sees Christ.

And if our resume, our past, becomes that of Christ Jesus, our present and our future shift and become a calling.
Baptism is a continued calling. A calling to die daily to sin. A calling to drown sin every morning, and to remember our baptism every time we step into the shower or wash our face.
When we wipe the condensation off our bathroom mirror and see ourselves we are reminded that in Baptism God sees Christ.
It is also a calling caught up in the question “do my neighbors see Christ in me?”
It is a calling into a life where we are seen by others, and hope, and pray, and strive, that, in seeing us they see Christ. It is a calling to be little Christs to our neighbors.
In Baptism God sees Christ, but do our neighbors see Christ in us?
This is also a question for the Church, the body of Christ, do our neighbors see Christ in us?
For that matter do our fellow church members see Christ in us? Do our actions and words reflect the reality of God seeing Christ in us?
Do we act in order to keep our doors open, in order to maintain lofty and drafty structures?
Or do we act in order to open our doors to all who may take refuge in the Body of Christ—in order to continue the mission of our Master the beloved of God?

And on this Sunday primarily focused on Baptism, but secondarily focused on stewardship, it is relevant to ask “are we giving of our time, talents, and possessions, in a way that reflect our new resume and the fact that in Baptism God sees Christ?”
Do I give even a fraction of my countless hours in front of the TV and on the Internet keeping track of national political gossip and international current events, to furthering God’s kingdom? Can my career or my hobbies translate into acts of love and kindness for the least of these? Of my thousand dollars I make a month do I put 100 dollars of it toward the work of the Church?

There is a connection between Baptism and stewardship. This connection is discipleship, the continued calling to be Christ’s body in the world, to be little Christ’s to our neighbors. It is the realization that in Baptism God sees Christ coupled with the question: do our neighbors see Christ in us?
Now, understand me, these things don’t go on your resume, but flow from Christ’s resume. These things don’t make you children of Abraham, these are things children of Abraham do. Stewardship is not the tree, but one of the fruits.
In Baptism God sees Christ. God doesn’t see our rough and ratty resume, but sees Christ. We strive to live into this gracious truth that, in Baptism God sees Christ. We hope and pray that when our neighbors see us, both individually and collectively, they see Christ. We hope and pray that we are good stewards of this resume given to us, even as we cling to God’s promise.
In Baptism God sees Christ, do our neighbors see Christ in us?
A+A

A Resume of humanity

Name: Humanity

Permanent Address:
Garden of Eden

Present Address:
Throughout the Earth

Email Address:
HU__man@yahoo.com

Experience:
Several millennia engaged in war.
Regular attempts at Genocide.
Withholding coats and stealing money. (Luke 3:10-14)
Constant judgment of others along with self-justification.

Education:
BA in Sin
MA in Hubris, with an emphasis in Disobedience.

Internship:
Has interned under the likes of Gandhi, Moses, and Jesus, but just as often under the likes of Genghis Khan, Hitler and Pharaoh.

Employment:
Gardner—dismissed after failing to follow the rules.
Murderer—have been successful at this occupation since the time of Cain and Abel.

Skills:
Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony

Watch Night Sermon “Lift up your eyes.”

Watch Night Sermon “Lift up your eyes.”
Greetings in the name of Jesus
(CENTER) I have to admit, before coming to St. John’s I was not familiar with the tradition of a Watch Night service. But after some research I found out it was a Moravian tradition started in Czecklesavakia that became a Methodist tradition when it made it’s away to America. Then, on December 31st 1862—the night before the Emancipation Proclamation came into effect—African Americans, both Methodist and not—gathered together in churches and in homes that Freedom Eve—to wait for the realization of Lincoln’s words, “thenceforward, and forever free,” and Watch Night has been an African American tradition every since.
My choice of Genesis 22 as the scripture to preach from this Watch Night is no accident. Genesis chapter 22 is a piece of scripture that rattles around in my soul. It is in these 19 verses that I spent a year of my life studying before going to Seminary.
And I could tell you a lot of things about this story. I could tell you how the Existentialist movement is based off the philosopher Soren Keirkegard’s reading of these 19 verses while love sick for a woman he never married. I could tell you all the theories about how old Isaac was when he went up with his father to be sacrificed. I could tell you how the Ancients re-wrote this story to fit their understanding of the world.
But I wish to highlight one particular phrase found in verse 13 of the 22nd chapter of Genesis.
“Abraham looked up.”
In Hebrew this is Vayisa Avraham et-A-naiv
Now I remember reading this Hebrew phrase with an Israeli friend of mine--he started laughing. That is because in Modern Hebrew this phrase “Abraham looked up” sounds extremely physical. It is as if Abraham has taken out his eyes from the front of his face and raised them up above his head. “Abraham lifted up his eyes.”
Lets try that once together. Take out your eyes, lift them above your head and say with me, “Lift up your eyes.”
I am not doing this to be silly, instead I want to instill in your muscle memory “Lift up your eyes.” So that when you are celebrating New Years in some club in Fells Point tonight and the MC tells you to “put your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care” your very body will remind you to “lift up your eyes… lift up your eyes.”
Lord God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Amen.
(LEFT)
Abraham is not alone in attempting to practice human sacrifice. He is not even alone in attempting to practice child sacrifice.
I would maintain that humans have a propensity toward sacrifice. We want to sacrifice.
We sacrifice too much of ourselves to nicotine or alcohol, crab cakes or laziness, narcissism or self-preservation.
I suppose this tendency to sacrifice is why we practice New Years Resolutions. We look at the past year and try to combat our greatest excesses of sacrifice, our most extreme habits of destruction.
For that matter we often sacrifice ourselves to our past. We sacrifice a lamb—our present and our future—for the sake of a ram, our past.
For example, in the movie Gran Torino Clint Eastwood’s character, Walt, is a deeply disturbed man, alienated from his children and emotionally scarred from what he did in the Korean War. Throughout the whole movie he struts along full of menace and obvious pain—holding in the burdens of his past.
Yet when he goes to Confession the deep sins he has carried with him are rather mundane. In 1968 he kissed a woman who was not his wife. Not a good thing by any means, but not something to sacrifice your life over either.

Thinking beyond the individual effects of sacrifice I would maintain Freedom Eve was a response to just such a sacrifice, a national sacrifice of millions of God’s children to slavery. For the sake of an economic system reliant upon unpaid labor millions of people were treated like tools, separated from their family, and forced to suffer countless indignities.
And again the poet Wilfred Owen observed another such sacrifice in his poem “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young.” He wrote that World War One could have been averted if old men—the Abrahams of his time—would simply sacrifice their pride. The poem ends, “but the old man would not so, but slew his son, and half the seed of Europe, one by one.”
And again on the streets of Baghdad and Kabul today
we again see young men—Isaacs—being sacrificed for decisions of Abrahams.
And again on the streets of Baltimore we see Isaac bound up in insane systems that lead to his being stabbed or shot, or stabbing and shooting.
We see sacrifice for Rep, sacrifice for gang affiliation, sacrifice for corners, sacrifice for drugs, and sacrifice for money.
And again I think of children born in this closing decade—these Isaacs—they have never known what it is like for America to be at peace. Yes, I understand just war theory—yes I hear the words of Ecclesiastes “there is a time for war and a time for peace.” But I still believe we are sacrificing Isaac’s innocence.
I still believe being born into a world in which it is the norm to meet violence with greater violence does violence to our children.
(RIGHT) Because we, like Abraham, will sacrifice Isaac, I will say again, “Lift up your eyes.”
Lift up your eyes and you will see the ram caught in the thicket.
Lift up your eyes and you will hear God saying, “I’m not that kind of God.”
Lift up your eyes and read the words of the prophets, “God demands mercy, not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, not burnt offering.”
Lift up your eyes and find yourself at the foot of the cross.
Lift up your eyes and view the new creation in Christ, the reconciliation to God through Christ Jesus, the reconciliation of the world to God’s self.
Lift up your eyes because these sacrifices we try to make cannot compare to the freely given gift already before us.
The sacrifice is already made for us. Freedom has already come for us. Lift up your eyes and see that there is nothing we have to do!
(CENTER) And yet I must hasten to add that the words “lift up your eyes” are not a calling to be “so heavenly minded we’re no earthly good.”
Lift up your eyes is a calling to sacrifice rams not children! As it says in our lesson from 2nd Peter we will still suffer. There will still be weary years and silent tears. Just because Emancipation was proclaimed didn’t mean the Civil War was done, and didn’t mean the Civil Rights Era had come, and doesn’t mean we are where we need to be.
Lift up your eyes means within the struggles of life we have the hope of God wiping every tear and a future in which mourning, crying, and pain are no more. We have a hope and a trust in the faithfulness of God.
So, lift up your eyes in this New Year unbound by sacrifices, for God has sacrificed for you.
Lift up your eyes and see the immense challenges of the world we live in.
Lift up your eyes and still hope that this new year could be a year where we remember that God is so faithful that mistrust is sacrificed, not love,
inexperience is put away not passion,
fear is burn on the altar not hope.
Lift up your eyes and see that ours a God that is faithful.
Lift up your eyes and see that ours is a God of great faithfulness.
Lift up your eyes and sing,
“Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see! All I have needed thy hand hath provided; great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.” (A+A)
Great is thy faithfulness hymn 158—hymn 158.

quote of the Day

"The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up, it's always a cat."-- Ogden Nash

My book is published!

So, my book "An Uncomfortable Bit of Rope and Other Essays on the Binding of Isaac" has been published through Createspace.
It will be on Amazon.com soon, or so they tell me. So that's pretty exciting!
Peace,
Chris

Somalia wants a surge

"Somalia's prime minister has called for an international peace plan like the new US strategy for Afghanistan, saying it would be more effective and far cheaper than current efforts to combat the country's problems of piracy and armed opposition."

Archbishop to Pope: "Here We Stand!"

So, in response to the Pope allowing married anglicans to become Roman Catholic priests Archbishop Rowan Williams has declared that the barrier of unity amongst Christians is the Roman Catholic ban on female clergy. Archbishop Williams is essentially saying celibacy isn't enough, recognizing that the Holy Spirit calls women to the ministry of word and sacrament is a non-negotiable. He is saying, as Luther did so many years ago, "Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me." To which I respond, "Amen!"

Luther’s take on the third commandment and the protestant work ethic

“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy… Wass ist das?... We are to fear and love God, so that we do not despise preaching or God’s word, but instead keep that word holy and gladly hear and learn it.”
Notice what Luther does, he moves Sabbath from chronos to logos, from time to word. He de-centers Sabbath praxis into theological doxis, action into theology/thought.
One of my understandings of Sabbath is that it is a time of rest. Now, resting in God’s word is good, but I genuinely think humans are less neurotic and more whole/holy when they have a day off. In short Sabbath is about more than preaching and Word.
When a shift like this occurs it leaves room for people to abuse themselves and others. “Sure I work 90 hours a week, but I make sure to read my bible before I go to bed.” “I pay my millworkers almost nothing and they live in squalor, but on the plus side I’ve built a Methodist Church for them.”
I’m respecting God’s word, but not the rest that God’s word recommends.

“we will see what becomes of this dreamers dreams.”

I remember during the election many on the right dismissed the President as a dreamer, an idealist who would give away the country to foreign leaders if he thought it would make them feel good. Some one the left assumed Obama would be Kucinich-lite, a dreamer that would bring an impractical peace.
Well, now we see what is becoming of this dreamers dream. Obama is straight up Chicago knife fight. He’s a realist, he was very concrete, almost callous, about weighing economic considerations over against humanitarianism.
I was very impressed that he mentioned the arguments of those who disagree with him, as well as that he defended his decision to deliberate and assess strategy before taking action.

Sermon: Prepare to be Unprepared

Greetings in the name of Jesus!
Today is the first day of the season of Advent, which also means it is the first day of a new year on the Christian calendar.
And so I would like to begin by greeting you, brothers and sisters, with the words, Happy New Year!

Celebrating the New Year in November seems awkward,
it seems out of step with the order of the secular world.
That’s the point.
While commercial America has been preparing for Christmas sales since the day after Halloween
it is in these four short Sundays before Christmas that we prepare to commemorate the coming Christ Child.
Additionally we prepare our hearts and minds for Christ’s coming again.
For the next three Wednesday’s we will, along with Holy Nativity Episcopal, be meeting at 6 o’clock to prepare ourselves for Christmas through a common meal, a bible study, a discussion, and worship.
Advent is a time of preparation.
Yet, I hear in today’s scriptures,
and in the collective wisdom of God’s faithful people from this and every age,
the words, “Prepare to be unprepared.”
Let us pray.
Lord God, prepare the lips of the preacher, prepare the hearts of the hearers, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts may be acceptable in your sight.
Amen
“Prepare to be unprepared.”
I must admit when I read about God’s interactions with people in scripture I sometimes say to myself, “I could do better than that.”
If I’d been Monoah, Samson’s father, I would have known I was entertaining an angel in my midst.
If I was Zecheriah I would have known enough not to talk back to Gabriel.
I look at Judges chapter 13 and know that throughout scripture encounters with men of God often become encounters with the Angel of the Lord, which in turn become encounters with God.
So when Monoah’s wife describes the man of God she met as, “like an angel of God.”
When the man’s first words to Monoah are the same as God’s first words to Moses, “I am,”
when the man of God says his name is “too wonderful”
I am truly baffled as to why he wasn’t prepared to encounter God.
Yet, in response to my smug self-assurance I can hear Monoah’s voice being cast across centuries and millennia. I can hear him saying, “Prepare to be unprepared.”
I look at the opening of the Gospel of Luke and am annoyed at a priest who is surprised
No more than that! terrified! when the LORD acts in the LORD’s sanctuary.
I am dismayed at his doubt directed toward Gabriel’s words.
Has he not read of Sarah and Abraham bearing Isaac,
Hannah and Elkanah bearing Samuel,
and Monoah and his wife bearing Samson?
How could he not have been prepared for God’s action
Yet, I can hear an answer to this too.
I can hear Zecheriah’s voice transcending the barriers of space and time. I can hear him saying, “Prepare to be unprepared.”

Prepare to be unprepared because human reality is contingent and human nature is not inclined to prepare.

Human reality is contingent. We are not masters of our own destiny and we cannot know our future.
Other than in the present—in this very moment—we are blind.
Take for example Rom Houben.
In 1986 he fell into a comma and only recently re-awakened.
Imagine all the things he could not have known,
all the contingencies he could not have expected. There was no way he could know history would turn out the way it has.
In 1986 Afghanistan was occupied by the Soviet Union,
now America occupies Afghanistan and the USSR no longer exists.
In 1986 the Mir was launched,
now it’s a charred piece of charcoal in the bottom of the South Pacific.
In 1986 Desmond Tutu became the first black Bishop in the Anglican Church of South Africa,
now he’s an archbishop and one of the most respected clergymen in the world.
In 1986 the Oriels played in Memorial Stadium, the Baltimore Sun wasn’t the only newspaper in the city, and 100,000 more people lived in Baltimore than do today.
Or lets hit a bit closer to home.
Since it is our New Year let’s think of all those things we were unprepared for over this last liturgical year.
A year ago the son of a former president and a descendent of the 14th president of the United States was still in the White House.
Now the son of a Kenyan economist and an American anthropologist holds the office of president. Prepare to be unprepared.
Who would have thought there would be an attempted student led revolution against Iran’s government?

Who would have thought North Korea would be declared “a full fledged nuclear power?”
Who had even heard of H1N1 a year ago?
And who would have thought Michael Jackson would be dead?

A year ago we didn’t know how the ELCA would vote on the sexuality study.
We didn’t know Bishop Knocke was going to retire.
For that matter about a year ago I sent a friend to sneak a look at the worship services of a Lutheran church I applied to do internship at.
She said St. John’s looked like the perfect place for me and couldn’t wait for me to come.
That was St. John’s Lutheran Church in Seattle Washington. Prepare to be unprepared.
But even if we knew what to prepare for we wouldn’t.
No, its not in our nature. Humans are ambiguous, confusing, dizzying, creatures—even as we are declared daughters and sons of the living God.
We are like a child who knows his homework is due in the morning, but assumes there will be a snow day,
even though its only November.
We know it is right to prepare, but would just as soon tell the teacher that the dog ate our homework.
Its like we have a civil war going on inside us.
It is this conflict within us that Martin Luther King Junior called the “schizophrenia of man.”
It is this conflict that author William Falkner says, “alone makes good writing, because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”
It is this conflict that Jungian psychologists call the “realization of the shadow self” and Freudians discuss as the interaction between the Id and Superego.
Robert Lewis Stevenson personifies this conflict in his book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Reformer Martin Luther said of this conflict that we are Simul Justus et pecator, simultaneously justified and sinner.
The Apostle Paul writes, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” In the beginning—at the start of Genesis humanity is made from dirt enlivened with God’s breath. We are a mess of mud and spirit.

And where does that leave us?
If we aren’t able to prepare because we don’t know what to prepare for, and we don’t want to prepare anyway?
We’re in the same place Monoah and Zecheriah were. We have to prepare to be unprepared.
We turn to God. We let go and let God.
Like Monoah we will entertain angels unaware. We will run into situations where our burnt offerings become vehicles for messengers of God to kiss the face of heaven.
Like Zechariah we will have lots cast for us that will lead us to the Holy of Holies and God will be there. We will at times be silenced by the strength of the promise of God.
Don’t mishear me now.
I’m not saying we don’t prepare in this time of preparation—this advent of the Christ.

I’m saying in our preparation we need to be ready for God to do whatever God’s going to do.
In this time of Advent prepare for Christ by entering his word, by reading his scriptures.
But know its scripture because it speaks of God’s faithful actions and God’s faithfulness.
In this time of Advent prepare for Christ by partaking in communion, by eating the bread of heaven and drinking the cup of salvation, and by hearing the most melodious words a pastor can say, “for you.”
But know its God’s promise that makes this meal marvelous.
In this time of Advent prepare for Christ by vigorously remembering your Baptism.
But know its God’s declaration “this is my beloved child” that makes it so.
In this time of Advent prepare for Christ by acting with justice and mercy—as Christ’s body in the world.
But know that as we act God is saying to us, “I was hungry and you fed me.”
In this time of Advent prepare for Christ by loving one another and bearing one another’s burdens.
But know always hear the words of Christ, “where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there.”
In this time of Advent prepare for Christ by sharing the good news.
But know whose news it is.

Yet, on this Advent, even these things, scripture, sacraments, solidarity, and evangelism,
even the birth of Samson and John in barren wombs cannot prepare us for what is to come.
In this barren world, shackled by sin, death, and the devil, we await the birth of God’s son even as we await his return.
Prepare to be unprepared!
A+A

Quote of the Day

"We need you Dick!"
--A Republican at a rally that former Vice President Dick Cheney attended.

I don't know, I just can't see Cheney winning the presidency. However I would love to see him and Palin squaring off at a debate.

A shameless plug for one of my friends

So, one of my friends is in the graphic arts business. She recently did the cover of my upcoming book. I'd recommend her to anyone who wants custom printed wedding/christmas cards etc.