So there’s this one small detail we’ve been leaving out. The good news of Jesus Christ comes as the free gift of grace, and that sounds exactly like this: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mk. 1:15). We’re quite happy to talk about the swinging door of the Gospel, but how is it that we so often avoid mentioning the threshold of the Gospel?

Since grace is free, it is assumed, we mustn’t associate our faith with any costs, any requirements, anything on our end that might be expected of us and so nullify grace as grace. But the fact is: grace is free only because we cannot afford it. Its value is, in fact, infinite, because it is based on the immeasurable worth of Jesus Christ, and him crucified. It’s true, God isn’t looking for us to give him any-thing. He’s looking for us to give ourselves.

Grace is spilt blood, not melted ice cream. We should acknowledge, then, that while there is nothing of worth we can offer in exchange for the grace of God it is only so because God is not looking for us to barter with him with little pieces of our lives and pocketbooks. That’s no different than the old bartering system of sacrifices and burnt offerings, the one Zechariah was employed by. But the stakes were being raised from sacrificial lambs on the altar to the sacrificial Lamb on the cross. Herein lies the heart of the Gospel. The Gospel reveals that God doesn’t want our “goods and services”—as though God were in need of anything at all, as though everything weren’t already his (Ps. 24!)—but rather he wants all of us, and so he gives us all of himself.

God has removed the barter system altogether. He wants to remove the distance that that economy creates. He wants us for us because he loves us—like a father but more than father—and only when we are awakened to that basic truth will we be bold enough to unfetter our desires to want him back. We want nothing less than all of God. That is why desire is always stronger than satisfaction (Rolheiser), why the end of every pursuit reveals only a new beginning. All symphonies remain unfinished (Nouwen). Life is more like jazz than Brethoven’s 9th. This is why the sober heart prays along with A.W. Tozer, when he said, “I want the whole presence of God Himself, or I don’t want anything at all to do with religion… I want all that God is or I don’t want anything at all.” 

That’s just a soul daring to tell the truth. But when it comes to loving God, we are our own worst enemies, because we continue to try to barter with God. We do “this and that” for God hoping to appease him. We tithe little pieces of our lives as though God were in need of our support. And in so doing, we find ourselves constantly negotiating with our conscience over what is “enough” for God, being tossed about between our own unrighteousness and self-righteousness, wondering why we never feel wholly at peace with God, with one another, and with the mirror. The reason is simply this: nothing is enough.

But Christ is enough!

 So what does this have to do with repentance? With Zechariah? 

Repentance does not mean “do something differently,” or even the popular definition, “turn around.” It means, quite simply, “change your mind.” Zechariah was going to have to repent, because his whole priestly bartering system was about to be rendered obsolete. Christ was giving us all of himself. All altars would be closed for business. This Lamb would need no assistance, nor assistants.

So think about what we’re doing when we cheapen the idea of repentance, minimizing the cost of discipleship, making it out as if people can nickel and dime their way to God because, well, grace is “free.” What we are doing is inviting people back into the barter system and denying them the truly free grace of God, the only grace that brings true freedom: spilt blood, not melted ice cream. As Bonhoeffer, “When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.” Therein lies resurrection freedom.

But it’s not even Christmas yet, so we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. For now, we need to think about changing our minds. How can the Church rediscover the language of repentance, calling people to “Repent, and believe the Gospel”? Because as long as the Gospel doesn’t require repentance, as long as it is something we can fit into our budget, the good news just isn’t good enough. And in that case, we need to stop selling ourselves short, and selling others short, and reclaim the cost of discipleship: it will cost you not a penny less than the life of God. 

“A voice cries out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isa. 40:3).

“Elizabeth was barren and both [she and Zechariah] were advanced in years” (Lk. 1:7). The days were tired. Evening never came soon enough.  It’d been a long life under Roman rule. It’s not that they were ready to die. It’s just that they were not ready to start a new life. It was time to slow down. They were at peace with God, they’d lived faithfully (cf. Lk. 1:6), and the burdens of the priesthood would soon be carried out by the next generation. Zechariah had spent these latter years training up young men, seeing in their faces the son he never had. He’d already grieved that unanswered prayer, for now Elizabeth was both very barren and very old. And then God answered it (Lk. 1:13).

By this time, Zechariah’s mind was no doubt made up about a few things. He knew that the world’s treasures were peddled in smoke and mirrors and that human innovation, with all its willful gullibility, is never more than a new arrangement for the same old empty promises. When he was young, life was charged with possibility. His favorite book of the Bible was Joshua. People had called their generation the “Joshua generation.” But he eventually realized that every generation gets called that. It’s has something to do with hope, maybe also regret. 

Truth is, Zechariah had long given up on that naïve faith in the future, or at least that a new future could begin today. His favorite book now was Ecclesiastes. It resonated. It’s not that he had lost faith in God. Indeed, he had faith the strength of an old growth forest, unmovable by the winds of change. It’s just that sometimes God is in the Wind (cf. Jn 3).

Are you sure you’ve got the right address? Zechariah says, in effect, to the angel Gabriel: “How shall I know this? For I am an old man…” (Lk. 1:18). Gabriel is annoyed. “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God…” (Lk. 1:19). How will you know? You will know when an angel who stands in the presence of God comes and tells you. That’s how you’ll know! So Gabriel silences him.

It is impossible to know why Zechariah doubted or exactly what the nature of the doubt actually was. Age was certainly a factor. But he seems to have more than just a question about fertility odds. Gabriel said that his son would “be filled with the Holy Spirit…and come to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children…” (Lk. 1:15-17). Zechariah was a priest. He knew where that line came from. It’s the very last line of the Old Testament (Mal. 4:5-6), which, for Zechariah, was not yet “Old.” It was just kind of….“on hold.” For it to become “Old” would require it being fulfilled. And given the nature of the prophecy, if that were being fulfilled, everything was about to be fulfilled.

Zechariah had spent his life learning how to believe that God’s promised future would happen—in the future. And in a moment, that future was beginning right now. Maybe the Joshuas of the world are ready for a revolution today, but today Zechariah would do well to have his knees replaced. He identifies more with Methuselah than with millennials. At this stage, it’s time to die quietly trusting that God will fulfill his promises sometime in the future. But God is no respecter of our daytimers. So Zechariah would have to reframe all he’d ever believed. The time was at hand.

For nine months this teacher of the Law will be unable to speak. He will be removed any ordinary social roles. He’ll have some alone time. Maybe he’ll may start reading Joshua again. More importantly, his priestly duties–teaching the Covenant, service at the altar, temple staff meetings–all those things will now be put on hold, because all those things were not growing “Old.” 

It’s no wonder that when he does open his mouth for the first time after nine months it is no longer as a priest but as a prophet: “Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying…” And out came in concentrated form the announcement that all of God’s promised future was at hand (Lk. 1:67-79). The priesthood was being silenced, because the Lamb preparing for the slaughter would need no assistance at the altar. The old institutions were passing away, behold the world was becoming new (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17).

Sometimes the Lord shakes up our world (a change of frame) to prepare us for repentance (a change of mind). Often these times of reframing are necessary, because all too often we frame God right out of our world. It’s easy to believe in the God of yesterday, it’s easy to believe in the God of tomorrow, but it’s hard to believe in the God of today. It’s hard to believe that God can speak today, answer prayers today, change our hearts and our habits and our homes today. But God will always, and will only, work in our lives and our world today.

“Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, today is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2).

Even the day Christ comes back, the second Advent, will be a day like any other, a day we call today. The question for us, then, does our faith frame the living God in a yesterday that is always gone or a tomorrow that is never here? Have you talked to God—have you listened to God—today?

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…” (Heb. 3:7, 15). 

Lo, in the silent night
A child to God is born
And all is brought again
That ere was lost or lorn.
Could but thy soul, O man,
Become a silent night!
God would be born in thee
And set all things aright.

~ Author Unknown

 

“And an angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah, standing to the right of the altar of incense.Zechariah was troubled when he saw the angel, and fear gripped him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John” (Luke 1:11-13).

They’ve been waiting. They’ve been remembering. They’ve been preparing. And now they are expecting.

But let’s be honest, this wasn’t expected (Lk. 1:18-20). Even though it was an answer to prayer (cf. Lk. 1:13), it wasn’t one of those prayers you really expect God to answer, like a ‘traveling mercies’ prayer, or that wildly daring one about food being miraculously transformed into “the nourishment of our bodies.” This was a specific prayer. That’s the kind of prayer that leads to trouble, because as soon as you start asking God for things to happen that don’t ordinarily happen you have to start looking God in the face—and that’s where you’ll have to return to ask why it hasn’t happened yet. Specific prayers are fighting prayers.

Keeping it generic helps us preserve a professional distance. Nobody’s personal space is violated. Nobody has to expect much from anyone. Praying for God’s will to be done in Elizabeth’s life is one thing, but praying that God would put a baby into Elizabeth’s barren womb is quite another. The answer—yes or no—will be empirically verifiable now. Everyone’s personal space is violated, God’s, Elizabeth’s, and the one standing in the gap between them trying to build a bridge between heaven and earth. Prayer like that has no social boundaries. That’s why most of us don’t pray like that. We’d rather just agree to live parallel lives and avoid the discomfort that often comes at the intersection.

God answers prayer. God does not answer prayer. Both statements are true. Word it however you want to try to soften it or stick up for God—“God answers every prayer, just in ways we don’t understand”—but that does no good. That’s just an excuse to never look God in the eye. Nor is it true that if a prayer hasn’t been answered the problem is the faith of the praying person—the problem is that God didn’t answer the prayer. The only thing worse than people who smear every prayer into an enigmatic “yes” are those who lie about the unambiguous “nos.” I’ve heard people talk about prayer as something that only needs to be “claimed,” as though God had no say in the matter, as though God were not a Person. I’ve heard people lie about God answering prayer. I’ve seen ministries based on that lie. Those ministries are not about God acting. They are about people acting like they are gods. They are about people reaching up into heaven’s treasury and grabbing whatever the hell they want—if only their faith is tall enough. But human faith gets little larger than a mustard tree. And sometimes God doesn’t answer prayer. People who say God answers every prayer are people who have never prayed.

But Zechariah prayed. And he prayed at the intersection. That’s where my mother prays too. Zechariah prayed for a son to be born who could not be born. Elizabeth was barren. My mother prayed for a son to be found who was irreversibly lost. No enigmatic yesses were possible. God would answer her prayer or God would not. And for at least twelve years, from the volatile ages of 10 to 22, he did not.

I once was preparing on a sermon on prayer and texted my mom (because that’s what sons do when they need something from their mom—they text them) and asked her what prayer life was like “when I was going to hell in a hand basket. Please email response” Below is an excerpt from she wrote:

Subject line (all caps): “NEVER CONSIDERED FOR ONE SECOND TO HELL IN A HAND BASKET” (reprimanding tone noted).

…I knew God wanted you more than I did. So, while I was extremely concerned, sad, and experienced many sleepless nights, I never really landed on the thought you would be lost. My prayer life deepened so much during that time to the point of wordless groanings and moanings that cannot be uttered (Rom. 8). But I knew God was faithful…

The curious thing about my mother’s unanswered prayers is that they did not have a distancing effect but a deepening effect. With each unanswered prayer she dug down deeper into God’s heart, so as to say, “Fine. Then I’m moving in—and I’m bringing all my burdens and my baggage with me. And I’ve got A LIST of names. Deal with it!” Her prayer moved from trusting to entrusting. Truly, my mother has no boundaries. There is no personal space in her life. She’s like a bridge with a winch on it. Some people have a prayer closet. She has a prayer lasso. Seriously, spend a day with her and you’ll know what I’m talking about. I tried my hardest to go to hell. My mom just wouldn’t let me (cf. Jude 1:23).

I once heard my father in-law say, “When you don’t see the hand of God, just know you can trust the heart of God.” The only people who say things like that are people who actually pray—because it makes no ordinary sense. As humans, there is no other way to determine how to trust someone, because hands are expressions of the heart. But this or that answer to prayer can never communicate the depths of God’s heart. And it may threaten to brings us only to God’s hand. That’s what happened to the Exodus generation. They starting out “groaning” into God’s heart (Exod. 2:23-25) and quickly ended up “grumbling” at God’s hands (Exod. 16). So God reserves only one place where his hands can be called the perfect expression of his heart (Jn. 1:18). It’s the one place he commands everyone to look to see his heart right through the center of his hands. It’s at the intersection, where Christ closed all the gaps. That’s where God prays.

Prayer is like a tuning fork. A tuning fork is tuned to one key, and only one key. It will vibrate if it gets close enough to something else vibrating in the same key. This is called resonance. St. Augustine once said, “You have made me for yourself, O Lord, and my heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.” He was talking about resonance. Whether it knows it or not, the heart is trembling in its longing for a gracious God. That trembling feels like fear–and it should, considering–so we don’t expect to find any resonance with God. But it turns out, a gracious God is the only God there is. God has one Word to so say to this world, and he wrapped It in swaddling flesh to say it. In so doing, that enfleshed Word became receptive on our behalf. In Christ, we are tuned to the key of God. But it has always been there, at the center. David heard it. David’s salvation didn’t come by asking God “into his heart.” It came by storming his way into God’s heart. David took up residence there. Where else could he go? The Law condemned him. But God didn’t. That’s why you can hear the Gospel resounding before it even sounded in Psalm 51. Resonance.

God uses prayer to bring us close enough to himself that our hearts get in tune with his, because that’s how he changes our hearts. He shakes the grace into us. In time, it’s the life of prayer itself that proves God is gracious and can therefore be trusted with everything, even and especially with our sin. He’s a God who found a place for sinners right at the center of his heart. We come to know God’s heart when we resolve to bury ourselves inside it, baggage and names in tow. Eventually, no set of circumstances can drown out that piercing sound of infinite grace and the island of peace it creates (Phil. 4:4-7!). Even when the answer is still no, even if I am being marched to the sepulcher, even when the sun forebears to shine—Even so…Amen.

But then, one day, God answers—because God does answer prayer—and the circumstances are changed. Zechariah’s world is changed. Elizabeth is expecting. And frankly, he’d stopped expecting it. Zechariah will have to reframe. But that’s tomorrow’s word.

For now, amen.

“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much” (Lk. 16:10).

Waiting. Remembering. Preparing. Such was the life of Zechariah the priest, a man who was faithful in a very little who was about to be given very much. Waiting—because it was still “in the days of Herod, king of Israel” (Lk. 1:5), a king who ruled more in the manner of Israel’s Pharaoh than Israel’s Liberator (cf. Mt. 2:16; Exod. 1:22). As long as Herod was Israel’s king, Israel’s King had not come. Remembering—because that was his priestly duty. The priests were tour guides of Israel’s memory. But Israel’s memory was not a museum, because it was not filled only with what God had done but all that God had promised to do. So the priests were called to be the living memory of God’s promised future. They were called to remember, and so prepare. 

There are different ways of preparing. It depends on what you are preparing for, a certain future you are anticipating. A person who prepares for a race runs. A person who prepares for a dinner cooks. A person who prepares for a test studies. Martha Stewart once prepared for the future she was anticipating by selling her shares in a stock. 

I suppose by a certain stretch of the imagination Zechariah’s preparation was something like Martha Stewart’s. He’d been tipped off. He knew where to put his stock, and where not to. He knew not to put any stock in the kingdom Herod was trying to build and prepared instead for the one God had promised to bring. 

That way of preparing is about the “little things,” being faithful in the “very little” of today because God is taking care of the “very big” of tomorrow. Believing that allows us to enjoy the freedom of living a small life: we don’t have to build and collect and store up for an apocalyptic winter; we don’t have to fight our way to the top; we don’t even have to be angry about who is at the top, because the very top of this world is still only the tip of a footstool that belongs to another world’s throne (Isa. 66:1). And the One seated on that throne has promised to bring that another-world to this one (Rev. 21). 

If God is in charge of all that, we are free to just live little lives that seek to honor him. Zechariah lived like that. He wasn’t known around town for much of anything. Just another priest, not even the”high” one. But he was known by God. Luke said he was “righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the statutes and the commandments of the Lord” (Lk. 1:6). He prepared for the future by living for the One who promised to bring it. 

If faith were an arrow, it would not be pointing up. That is the popular way to think about faith, likely because up never leads back down to earth, where my boss and my habits live. Faith is far more comfortable in the clouds than it is on Monday morning. But faith is a forward arrow (Heb. 11). It doesn’t point to an ideal. It points to a path. Jesus didn’t say fly away with me. He said follow me. He said, “Lo, I will be with you on Monday” (Mt. 28:20, paraphrased). Faith is found in the “little” things, like my attitude at the office, or at home where only my family and God have to put up with me. That’s where my faith lives, or not. If we are going to prepare for the coming of Christ, it won’t be up there with my exceptions but down here with my rule. It’ll be on Monday. Jesus is coming back on Monday.  

Zechariah was caught “walking blamelessly” through everyday life as he headed to the office that Monday morning. You can tell it was a Monday because Luke says “his division was on duty” at the temple (Lk. 1:8). Duty is Monday talk. That day the lot fell on Zechariah to go into the temple to offer prayers and burn incense. And when he did he saw an angel. The angel told him his barren wife would give birth to a son. He was to name him John. It was an exceptional moment. But Zechariah didn’t arrive at that moment because he was having an exceptional day. He hadn’t specially prepared to receive a miracle from God that day. It wasn’t at a healing conference or a prayer retreat. He wasn’t on a pilgrimage away from ordinary life. He was on duty. He arrived at this exceptional moment because he was living by his everyday rule: to be prepared for God to come on any day of the week, especially the first day of the week.

—

Maybe that’s why Zechariah was chosen to be John’s father. Maybe all history was waiting for a father like Zechariah to raise a son like John, because John would have a special assignment. The angel told Zechariah his assignment would be to “make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Lk. 1:17). Like father, like son. 

“A voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord!’” (Jn. 1:23). 

“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Deut. 8:11-14). 

Barney: “Have you seen my shoes? I need to put them on before I go home.”
Me: “You are home, Granddaddy.”
Barney: “No I’m not. This is just where I’m staying until I go.”
Me: “But…I understand.”

My grandfather was a minister for 64 years. He began showing signs of dementia many years ago. Since my grandmother passed, his mind has been slipping more rapidly into the void. Watching his decline, I have learned that the world of humanity consists in memories. I’ve also learned that memories are married to names. When one is lost, so the other, and whatever piece of the world went with them.

Of all the names that have fallen into that inglorious abyss, which includes mine, it was saddest to see my grandmother’s go. Never again will I get to hear the story about the first time he saw her, standing on a sidewalk in a white dress: “She looked like an angel.” Never again will I get to see her memory become wet in his grieving eyes only to be consoled back into laughter by yet another moment shared still in his mind. She was always visible as a glow in his face, even under the hanging weight of his grief. But now there is neither glow nor grief. That part of his world and that part of his face are gone. And I suspect that if it were up to him, he would welcome the grief back in endless waves if only he could salvage that glowing memory of his long forgotten angel. But she is lost to him.

But she is not lost! And she is not lost to him forever. Because the one Name that still puts color in his face and fills his mouth like lead is the Name of the One whose hands first joined them together. And His grieving hands are as stubborn as nails that refuse to let go of the dead. So my grandfather may not have my grandmother’s hand anymore to hold, but he still daily folds his hands in prayer—and he has never forgotten in whose Name his prayers are made. That world still belongs wholly to him, and he wholly to it.

So perhaps in this way, he has forgotten nothing. For those who remember where they are going, not even a single drop of the past will be lost. 

This Advent, may the Lord of Life marry our memory to the Name above every Name who has married himself to the lowest of every low. May we remember where God has come, lest we forget where we are going. 

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

“Be ready for action, and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed is the slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives” (Lk. 12:35-38).

Waiting is hard work. Jesus described it here as the kind of work that allows us to hear. Like the children pressed against the bedroom door on Saturday morning waiting for mom and dad to get out of bed, it’s a kind of anticipation that draws you into the work of listening. The blessing in the parable comes to those whose work is proved simply by opening the door–they had heard the knock from the other side.

This kind of listening is hard work because our kind of world is hard of hearing. 

We live loud lives: wake up, screen on, eat and run, text and drive, bounce around, fast food, back home, screen back on, plate on lap, back to bed, earbuds in, wake up; rinse and repeat. We have one-click shopping. Pay phones have gone the way of the dodo. The Internet doesn’t make you wait through that intergalactic fax machine noise anymore. Now, it could be that all this on-demand efficiency is evidence of a culture that has discovered all that satisfies the longings of the soul—and made it all extremely available. Or it could be just the opposite. It could be an indication that we have found exactly nothing that satisfies our longings. It could be an indication that we’ve just resorted to an abundance of stuff that does not satisfy. 

We are occupied and preoccupied with stuff that keeps us busy enough to never have to confront the hollowness we discover in the silence. Perhaps we’re afraid to press our ear against the door and do the work of listening, because the first thing we hear when we listen is precisely nothing. And when that is what we hear, we have to wonder if it is because nothing is there on the other side. We have to wonder whether God is dead or we are dying. And this makes us restlessly anxious. So we fill our lives with things do, places to go, a world to produce, a world to consume, a world to possess. And so in our efforts to consume an abundance of satisfaction we are consumed by an abundance of distraction.

But shouldn’t the Church look different than the world in this regard? Shouldn’t Good Friday shape our hopes and desires more than Black Friday?

---

The slaves in the parable who opened the door did so because they heard the knock, but the reason they heard the knock is that they were “waiting for their master to return.” It’s no surprise that our culture celebrates our Christmas but wants nothing to do with our Advent. Whatever we might think Christmas is about, Advent assumes it is about one thing: waiting for our master to return.

Christmas is only worth celebrating because Christmas is coming again.

This means the one thing Advent happens to be about involves the two things our culture knows nothing about: having a master and having to wait. But that is surely because our culture, with which we are all too often complicit, has given up waiting on the things we long for most deeply. Perhaps if we allowed ourselves to listen to the size of our longings—for universal peace, for boundless joy, for belonging across all tribes, tongues, and nations, for the reunion of all lost sons and daughters, for wholeness of a broken world and every broken heart, our longing for that all-embracing ache that lies at the center of human experience for we know not what–perhaps then we would begin to understand that we do not have the raw materials within ourselves to satisfy ourselves. And neither does the whole world and all that is in it. And when we can recognize that, we will have no choice but to wait. In that case, blessed will we be when our Master finds us ready to greet him at the door. 

Yes, we are dying, but no, God is not dead!

And that is indeed why we need Advent as much as we need Christmas—without the waiting, the listening, of Advent, we may never hear Christmas arrive on the other side.

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

—

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadows put to flight.

O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery and night.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

“Be ready for action, and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed is the slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives” (Lk. 12:35-38).

Waiting is hard work. It may be the hardest kind of work. Jesus described it here as the kind of work that allows us to hear. The blessing comes to those whose work is proved simply by opening the door. This is the work of a special kind of waiting. It’s called listening.
But isn’t this an awkward way for Jesus to talk about his second coming? How odd would it be if when he got here he knocked before coming in?

[Knock, knock]

Slave: “I’m in the middle of something. Your name please?”

Master: “Oh, I beg your pardon. It’s the Alpha and Omega, who was and is and is to come. You can call me Almighty for short. I’ll answer to ‘God’ too. May I come in, please?”

We probably all imagine—and probably prefer—the more imposing image of Christ returning in all his glory, something that does justice to the name tag. The manger approach is nice and all, but we’re hoping for a little more fireworks next time around. This may be because that’s the kind of Christ we want our enemies to have to face (since he’s clearly on our side), but more so because that’s the kind of Christ that can’t really be missed—he’s easy to see. In that case, we are free to live our loud lives without listening for him to come—wake up, screen on, eat and run, text and drive, bounce around, back home, screen back on, eat again, lie down, earbuds in; repeat.

But what if he is coming then for those who are listening for him now?

It’s one thing to agree to wait for someone to come and raise us from the dead after we die—not much to lose there—but the men in the parable were not waiting on just anything or anyone. They were waiting for “their master.” The Bible says that when Jesus returns every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord (i.e., Master of all). But there is nothing particularly special about bowing down to a guy with a giant sword shooting out of his mouth whose eyeballs are on fire (John said he’d kind of look like that, Rev. 12-20. By the way, John only saw him after he heard his voice—“I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me”, Rev. 1:12. John, like the guys in the parable, heard the second coming before he saw it too). At any rate, at that point I doubt any of us are likely to quibble over which guy in the room is really in charge. This parable is not concerned with who will recognize that Jesus is the Master when he arrives. It is concerned with who will recognize him as their Master in the meantime. That’s why it spoke of the men who were listening for “their Master” (Lk. 12:36) before he arrived but then spoke of “the Master of the house” once he was there (Lk. 12:39). Jesus is Master of the house regardless of how we feel about it on any particular day, but we are free to live as though he were not, at least until he returns…

Now most Christians like pretty much everything about Jesus. The one thing we do tend to struggle with is the part about him being the Lord, that whole Master-slave bit. It just doesn’t seem very democratic. It’s not so much that we don’t like the idea of Jesus being in charge of the universe—we want him to end wars and conquer death and all that—it’s just that we don’t like the idea of not being in charge of ourselves. “Your kingdom come, your will be done…” just somehow seems to roll off the tongue a lot easier than “Not my will.”

But what if we were convinced he is a better Master of our lives than “My will?” What if we were convinced that his perfect will is always for our greatest good? What if “My will” has no clue what it is doing? What if there is a STRONG correlation between “My will” getting exactly what it wants and a whole host of problems in the world? What if “My will” is my greatest enemy? After all, “My will” is behind every addiction. It created the porn industry. Every divorce? “My will.” Every affair? “My will” Gossiping? Bullying? That sneaky passive-aggressive stuff? Laziness? Everything associated with the thing called regret? My will x 5. The fall of mankind? Yep.

What if, in fact, we really are not god? What if we actually need a Master? What if the freedom of “My will” is the only thing keeping me from my freedom? Would we then perhaps listen for the voice of another Master?

Perhaps.

By the way, what kind of Master is it that knocks on the door of his own house? I think it’s the kind who comes in after his slave opens the door to him and “dresses himself for service and has his slaves recline at table, and he will come and serve them” (Lk. 12:37). It’s the kind of Master who will set his slaves “over all his possessions” (Lk. 12:44).

The kind of Master who puts his slaves in charge of his house and then knocks when he comes home is the kind of Master who doesn’t need slaves, or anything for that matter, and has no desire to enslave anyone (making him exactly not like any of us)–because everything is already his.

The only kind of Master who knocks at the door of his own universe is the one who created the universe to give it away. It’s the kind of Master whose slaves know they don’t make good gods for themselves or anyone else simply because they are not God, and have thereby discovered the joy of living for a God who is for their good and a kingdom for the good of all, one they don’t have to try in vain to create, where they don’t have to fight their way to the top, always be right, earn their value, pretend not to be insecure, hide how they really feel, worry about belonging… It’s the kind of Master whose slaves know what it means to be free. And they know it because he told them—and they were listening.

“I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in…And I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Whoever has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (Rev. 3:20-21).

Why has so much Christian rhetoric gone the way either of sentimentality or anger, of loving everyone, which is not possible, or hating liberals, which is not permitted? Why have we capitulated to little more than echoing or refuting nothing more or higher than the nightly news? Why is that the news that determines our categories, our moods, our hopes? Why have Christians forgotten how to bring “good news of great joy” (Lk. 2:10) even if we are living “in the days of Herod, king of Judah” (Lk. 1:5). Why have Christians forgotten about Christmas?

Just because it’s a headline doesn’t mean that it’s important, that it rightly demands your attention, that it immediately affects your world, that it can add to or take away from your hope. The news media serves to do little more than to shape our attitudes, and to give us a constant buffet of rearranged words that we use to say the same thing–it’s like Mexican food. There is no nothing new under the sun. We’re just moving around the beans and rice.

…Because the unquenchable fires of the nightly news feed only on the world of decay, a world that requires the new to ever become old, a world that skims atop the surface of time desperately groping at what men identify as meaningful today but what moth will identify as food tomorrow. But Christians have been given a cross staked into history’s yesterday and Life raised up into history’s Tomorrow. That news has pierced the soul of the world, and it is the one thing that remains new precisely because it is the only thing that never grows old. It is the news that the angel heralded over history as “the everlasting good news…to every tribe, tongue and nation” (Rev. 14:6).

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it is bad to be concerned with and aware of the global scene, especially if you are in a position to do something about it–you are probably not–but I do think it is bad to be unconcerned with and oblivious to the local scene. I’m suspicious of a man who decries world hunger but has never offered to buy a local man’s lunch, who endorses love for the world but doesn’t sit down to eat dinner with his family, who rails against abortion but doesn’t teach his son how to respect a woman, his daughter how to respect herself. The fact is, you can’t make your world different until your world becomes close enough to touch, low enough to look in the eye. That is your world. Everything bigger is a mirage. Anything more important is unimportant. And strangely enough, it is in that little insignificant world of yours, with hardly more than an earshot radius, that you will find meaning, purpose and permanence, because it is in that world that you will find God.

Q: “When did we see you hungry and feed you and thirsty and give you drink?”

A: “When you didn’t see me on a screen and when you gave me more than your opinions.”

In fact, when God saved the world, the worldwide web didn’t even exist. News feeds were word of mouth, and the words were from mouths that were not miked. It was even more primitive than a landline phone call.

If you want to find God-sized meaning you’ll have to look in human-sized places. I know. I know. Pity the man whose significance is as small as a manger and only as wide as a wingspan. Pity even the prospect of such man. He was a pitiful Man, indeed: his platform as little as a lakeside church, a voice not big enough even to project a Roman vote.

If you want to love a refugee, find one. If you can’t find one without a country, find one without home, or one without a father, or one with a father who may as well not be a father. Jaques Ellul’s axiom is instructive: “Think global but act local.” Do that and you can be guaranteed two things: first, you won’t get any public praise, because public opinion doesn’t care about small things, like persons; second, you’ll be a part of how God is actually preparing the world for global restoration: sending people across the street to bring “good tidings of great joy” in the way He himself did it that first Christmas Day, by making eye contact with a world of refugees.

#iknowitsnotyetadvent #sorrynotsorry #opinionsmadefleshanddweltamongliteralneighbors

Good Grief: Prevenient Grace and the Human Need for Death

Human beings were created for love–to share in God’s life of love and extend that quality of life to a world of ‘others’. The fundamental condition for love is freedom. We call this particular freedom the human will. But the very freedom which makes love possible is precisely what makes love vulnerable, because the freedom of the will to love is precisely the freedom not to, since love can only exist without necessity or coercion, indeed in freedom.

Whatever else can be debated about the fall of humankind and the doctrine of original sin, what cannot be debated is that the human condition is one in which the human will invariably finds itself bent in towards itself, freedom’s liberation from its true object–others–and therefore its essential energy–love. Since the true object of our freedom (others) has been exchanged for the self’s declaration of independence, the energy of our freedom (love) has been exchanged for the power of self-determination. And in this regard, nobody has better articulated the doctrine of original sin than the most formidable critic of the Christian faith, Friedrich Nietzsche, when he wrote that “A living being wants above all else to release its strength; life itself is the will to power.”

When the object of freedom is freedom itself, when freedom is not understood as the power of the will to love but simply the power of the will to act–self-determination as such–then the world is no longer good and indeed must die. Death, in this world, can thus be seen as the necessary first step in restoring the world for love.

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Death, the judgment for this abuse of freedom, is intended to limit the destructive potential of human life and the will to power. However, it also serves to preserve the structure of human life, namely, the desire for oneness and our capacity to love, because the awareness of death has the power to awaken in us love’s eternal longing. It takes the mysterious experience of empathy (the objective basis for love and the subjective suspicion of self-sufficiency) and amplifies it, indeed immortalizes it, in the experience of grief. The nagging impulse to embrace others, however few, only swells in its gravity as the inevitable eclipse darkens final days over clinching hands. Nothing reveals the terrible power of love like the reckless desire to forsake all this world affords and dive into the infinite abyss just to remain with one’s beloved in death. But death affords no withness. So what does it profit a man to lose the whole world and then also his soul?

Thus death preserves the possibility of love in a world bent toward power by revealing the futility of all pursuits of power. It is the governor on the throttle of an otherwise infinite acceleration that drives even the most powerful men to create a place of respite where they can stop pretending, a place to be weak, to love and to grieve. This place is what we call home, which is the only place we are allowed to be human, because it is the only place where grief will find a permanent place to lay its weary head. A man may ascend to the “judgment seat” beyond the reach of even the gods, but Pilate is still under the judgment of his wife (Mt. 27:19).

The deepest human longings are disproportionate to human limitation. And thus it is the awareness of death that turns all human longing for love into the longing for God. It is the gift of sobriety that reveals to us that the true nature of our confused longing to become God is, in fact, the more intoxicated longing to become a small inclusion within God’s universal embrace. We long for a God who will dive into death and bring all life up from the abyss. We long for God who will not merely save us from death but save love from death. We long for a God who can unite all things back together in himself, a God who will restore for us a final liberation from our own power and allow us truly, and un-euphemistically, to rest in peace. We long for a God who will be powerful for us, so that we can be free to love.

Of course, all of this is either too good to be true or grief is God’s prevenient grace.

“In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:7-10).

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