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"Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down!" The cry goes up from the prophet and the people of Israel in Isaiah 64, the Hebrew Bible lection for this first Sunday in Advent. This lament has been echoed by individuals and entire peoples throughout the ages: "We need you, God! Where are you, God? Come down and intervene NOW, God! Enough is enough!" The cry goes up from the borders of Texas, from Somali refugee camps in Kenya, from medical facilities in Liberia. The suffering cry out for mercy; the needy for relief; the threatened for safety. A homicide detective in one of my husband's churches said that many times when entering scenes of unimaginable horror and carnage, he could only choke out this prayer, "Lord Jesus, now would be a good time to come back." Advent is our time to reflect upon God's coming. Several years ago I was with my family at one of Disney's Christmas parties at Walt Disney World. The highlight of the evening was a trademark Disney fireworks spectacular and, to our amazement, one of the fireworks depicted the manger with the baby Jesus. My young daughter and nieces were very impressed but my immediate reaction was, "I don't want fireworks of the baby Jesus (no offense, Ricky Bobby); I want to see fireworks of Jesus coming back large and in charge! I long for those fireworks!" Mark 13, our gospel text for the day, tells us that there will be indeed be fireworks when Jesus the Christ comes back large and in charge: " The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory."

It's Reign of Christ Sunday, Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Christian year. Today we reflect back upon the mighty acts of God proclaimed every Sunday of this year. We celebrate that, because Christ emptied himself of the authority of God and humbled himself to the point of death on a cross, God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name. Therefore every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth should bow to him. (Philippians 2:6-10) He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. (Revelation 19:16) The Church through the ages has gotten a lot of mileage from this regal imagery. The royal pageantry, the cathedrals, the robes, the brass, even the crown: "All hail the power of Jesus' name, let angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown him Lord of All!" This powerful imagery captures our collective imagination. I grew up with and must confess I love this imagery. It still stirs my heart and makes me want to throw myself prostrate before the throne, lost in wonder, love, and praise. Yet I also know that all images have their shortcomings and grow stale with overuse. I know many have challenged this king image because it can inaccurately describe the full reign of God. Some call it patriarchal and offensive. Others claim that there have been so few good kings that the image has been irreparably damaged. Volumes have been written about how Jesus undermines and redefines our very understanding of kingship.

As Christians, we only have three things that God requires of us: love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, love our neighbor as ourselves, and make disciples of Jesus Christ. To make disciples means to be witnesses of Christ in order to bring others into a relationship with Christ.  At the end of Matthew before Jesus ascends to the Father, Jesus' last words to his followers were not, "Go and find a comfortable church and have covered dish dinners." His last words were not, "Go and sing the songs you like in worship. Jesus didn't say, "Try to do some good every once in a while." Jesus said, "Go and make disciples!" This is called the "Great Commission," not the "Great Suggestion." The church is the only institution in the world that exists for those outside of it. Unfortunately, many churches don't even see it as a suggestion. Instead, it has become the "Great Omission." As the church has turned inward over the last 30 or 40 years, it has lost sight of its mission to make disciples. This is one of the reasons why the mainline church is struggling to grow. The stats don't look good. The mainline church overall is not replenishing itself with a new generation of disciples. We are not reaching the younger generation. Fewer and fewer churches are bringing even one new person to Christ in one year.  What has happened? Why can't the church today be like the early church? The answer comes through something that AW Tozer said long ago: "If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the Church today, 95% of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament Church, 95% of what they did would have stopped, and everybody would know the difference."

Happy Birthday, Church! That's right, today is our birthday! Today we celebrate the day the church was born by the power of the Holy Spirit! Today we celebrate the day when God's power exploded through the church and officially began its mission of making disciples. Thousands of people were in Jerusalem celebrating the day that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Disciples were gathered together in a house. Suddenly, it happened. Wind and fire swept through the disciples. Everybody was amazed and astonished. Many thought a fraternity party was taking place even though it was only 9 o'clock in the morning. A huge crowd gathered around Peter as he preached and said, "God has given us the Holy Spirit!" Three thousand people confessed Christ and were baptized. Boom--the church was born! Happy Birthday, Church! Now, if we were really serious about all of this, those of us who attend worship on Pentecost Sunday would wear party hats and blow noise makers. We would pass out cake and have a big party. Pentecost really should be the third great holiday of the church, next to Christmas and Easter. But most churches treat it as just another Sunday. This says a lot about the attitude of the modern church. I remember being invited to a birthday party. It was for one of the kids in the church I served. They had the party at home and invited a bunch of kids over. It was quite a scene. They had a big blow-up jumpy contraption in the front yard. They hired a clown to make funny balloons. The place was saturated with decorations and banners. There were excited kids running all over the place.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.   It was the first prayer that I learned--probably the first prayer you learned too. And not without reason. It's rhetorically sound, in that it makes good use of parallel structure and rhyme. It acknowledges the distance between God and the prayer that sociologists claim marks all human prayer. And it can be customized, or at least mine could, by adding the imperative "bless" at the end of the prayer and then listing those who needed blessing.

When I was in elementary school, we had a tradition in which graduating 6th-grade students would leave a gift for the incoming 6th-grade class. Sometimes, they would leave behind a favorite pen with a bright colored feather at the top. Other times, they would leave behind words of wisdom for how to survive the 6th-grade. But every time, they left something that the remaining students could hold on to as they continued on their path towards graduation. They left a legacy. In the text for today, Jesus says to the disciples, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." His commandments were part of what He was leaving behind for the disciples. They were part of His Farewell Discourse. Soon, Jesus would no longer be physically with them as they knew Him. He was preparing them for life without His physical presence, something today's Christians can relate to. Thus, Jesus emphasized how His followers were to continue the legacy He was leaving: through living a life that He modeled for them and obeying his commandments. But what were the commandments Jesus was referring to? Earlier in the gospel, Jesus tells His disciples that He is giving them a new commandment: to love one another as He has loved them (John 13:34). He goes on to say that this is how everyone will know that they are His followers, by their love (John 13:35). But what does love really mean? Our society is obsessed with the notion of love. It is in our romantic comedies, showing us that in the end true love always prevails. It is in our books, which help us to reflect on the different ways we show and receive love. It is in our music, no matter the genre. We even have a holiday dedicated to celebrating love, as if it is the only day all year where showing our love counts most.

The year is 1940. Hitler has begun his quest towards trying to conquer Europe and systematically eliminate the Jews. Stalin is squarely poised to spread his brand of communism throughout Western Europe and Asia. Apartheid is God in South Africa. Ghana is suffering from resource extraction. Jamaica is crushed under Britain's heel, and John Wesley Work III is arranging the world renowned Negro Spiritual, "Lord I'm Out Here On Your Word." We can never separate one's words from their social location in the realm of human history, and in 1940 Professor Work found himself confronting a country at the brink of going to war. But, more importantly, as a professor at Fisk University, he found himself trying to educate young Black persons on how to survive in a racist country. Yes, Work understood that an educated Negro had a social advantage over an uneducated one, but he intimately understood that one's education means nothing when your very life is at stake. I can hear Professor Work asking, "What do I do as a brother in the struggle to try and encourage a population such as this?" I give them words; I give them a canon. I can hear his lyrical words ringing out: "Lord I'm Out Here On Your Word Lord I'm Out Here On Your Word If I die on the battlefield Lord I'm Out Here On Your Word"[1] Despite the immense social challenges that African-Americans faced in 1940, Work does not give his students words of cowardliness. He does not give them words of retreat. He does not give them words of compromise, but he gives them words of conviction and power. And when I think about these words, I think the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ.

I think part of the human condition means loving a good origin story. We do it with all of our autobiographies and church saints and, particularly, our superhero movies. Batman  Begins,  X-Men Origins. I feel like a primary need of the human heart is to rifle back to the past to find out the place and the time that something or someone big started off. We just really want to know what Bruce Wayne was like before he was Batman. This is just a fundamental drive for genealogy. My oldest cousin is seriously interested in genealogy and figuring out who came from what country and when and how everyone is related to each other and really the story of him as he sees it going back in our family's true history. I think the Book of Acts is the church's equivalent of a genealogy. We go all the way back and find out how we started, the first days of the church, what happened at the very, very beginning of it all for us as Christians. And this is some unbelievably amazing action that we see in the Book of Acts! The revival that happens right before this passage, the first ever "Gospel revival," is described in these big, wild words--there is a wind that blows through, there is imagery of fire, the Spirit is tangible and touchable. People are bewildered and amazed and perplexed, and the crowds think that it's a huge, open-air drinking party because it's so loud and so large and so out of control. Then Peter stands up and gives the kind of sermon that most of us as preachers can only dream of giving. He weaves in the Hebrew Scriptures with Jesus' life, and he is yelling--the text says he is pleading with them--and three thousand people join the young Christian community. This is wild stuff.

I had driven by the church a million times so it seemed. It was a squat brick building, the bricks falling off the building, the shingles sliding off the roof, and the rickety stairs didn't seem too safe. The church was surrounded by headstones of saints long gone. Who they were, I didn't know. This church was odd; it seemed out of place to sit next to the front entrance of Lincoln University. Lincoln brimming with life and expectations of twenty-year olds, dancing with the vibrancy that hope brings. And there next to this place of hope sat a beleaguered church, filled with memories long past. It represented, so I thought, the institutional church, falling apart, filled with dusty hymns and creeds. What did it mean to me? That was until one day the minister of that small little church spoke to one of my religion classes. He told the stories of a tiny congregation who in years past heroically secreted away runway slaves; he dared us to imagine the small flock of Methodist ex-slaves, who with Quakers and Presbyterians, started my college. He weaved stories of hope in the past against threats of violence against those who worshipped there. He dreamed of the day that this little church, membership of one woman, who dared to keep this church alive would grow again. He dreamed of the church brimming with students from the college, of repairing the roof, of changing the world once again. What a glorious past! But how could this pastor dream of hope for his flock again in face of their dark situation?

It seems like we live in an age of scandals. Sometime it seems like every other day we are confronted on the TV or in the media with some public scandal. In the United States our public conversation is often filled with celebrity gossip about who is going into who or who's coming out of rehab, which celebrities are sleeping with other celebrities, and so on. If that weren't enough, we hear stories about our elected officials and their private affairs, which also lead to conversations of more scandal. And if the rush of real life political and celebrity scandal is not enough for us, many of us turn to the soaps and tune into sitcom television to get even more scandalous fictional drama.  These realities leave me asking the question sometimes, "What is our fascination with scandals?" What is our fascination with the shocking or immoral things that people have done or are believed to have done? Personally, I've come to believe that our collective fascination with scandals has to do with how entertaining it is for us to watch when the dirt of someone else's life is uncovered. Fair or not, this is the world we live in; and most of us, if we're honest, are guilty.  Given this reality, you'd think they'd be more conversation about teaching people how to handle scandals in their lives, be they great or small. In particular, you'd think that Christians and people of faith would be most invested in helping people deal with and move past dark scandalous days in their lives. Unfortunately, too often this is not the case.  

Easter morning is about the end of life as we know it and the beginning of something new and incredible beyond it. But some people steeped in science, reason and logic find Easter to be just wishful thinking. Easter in their minds is just something for gullible people, and there are certainly gullible people. For example, several years ago The New York Times reported a story about a woman in Florida who sold a grilled cheese sandwich that she had kept for over ten years, because as she began to eat it, she saw among its toasted lines and swirls the face of the Virgin Mary. She sold her sandwich for $28,000 on eBay. It's a true story! Similar religious images have been observed in many forms. Jesus has been seen in an oyster shell, a dental x-ray, a Chihuahua's ear, a tortilla and a Polish pierogi. The latter was sold at a bargain price on eBay, just $1,775. Someone even offered a reward for the return of a stolen cinnamon bun that resembles Mother Teresa. The phenomenon of seeing God's face is so common that it has a name--pareidolia. But the discovery that the woman made at the empty tomb on Easter morning is a far cry from pareidolia and finding Jesus imprinted on a pierogi. The latter is laughable, but the former changed the world. We should not confuse odd occurrences with an event that has become the hinge of history. Matthew tells us that at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to visit the tomb so that they could anoint the body of Jesus with spices and thereby cover over the smell of death. An earthquake occurred. Then an angel appeared and rolled back the stone and sat on it.

  Everyone loves a parade, especially after the last six weeks of Lenten gloom. Palm Sunday--the last Sunday of Lent--beckons to us, "Let's hold a parade." The choir and the congregation sing "All Glory, Laud and Honor," and we wave our palm branches. As a child, Palm Sunday was always one of my favorite Sundays. We were given a palm and we were told to wave it. Finally, we children had something to do in church! So we come to church this day because we love the movement, the noise and all the action. Even dull churches come alive on this festive day. Church becomes a spectacle, and we participate in a parade. Even if we don't understand everything that is going on, we like the fact that a lot is happening. It's like the opening scene of The Lion King on Broadway with actors and actresses dressed like wild animals singing and parading onto the stage. Yet there is juxtaposition. The festival frenzy of waving palms, the marvelous chaos of Jesus entering Jerusalem in a parade, the screaming disciples and braying donkeys will soon give away to the betrayal, the anguish, the abandonment, suffering and death. We who shout "Hosanna" will soon cry, "Crucify Him!" Why does one worship service offer such mixed signals? There's a powerful dissonance on this Sunday--two clashing moods, two differing sentiments, two varying attitudes towards life and towards God. I remember years ago attending a performance of the Philadelphia Orchestra. I enjoy classical music and listening to the soaring harmonies of a symphony. All I remember of this concert, however, was that a new atonal piece of music was performed. It was marked by complete dissonance. Not a note of harmony was sounded. When it was over, I did not clap. Dissonance is difficult, because most of us long for harmony.

It may seem odd to read this story without the dramatic conclusion in verses 38-44 where Jesus raises the dead man Lazarus back to life. Verse 44 is graphic: The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to [the mourners], "Unbind him, and let him go." Verses 45-57 indicate that people had mixed reactions to this frightening miracle: it led some to joyful belief in Jesus while it led others to conspire to have him executed. In our weekly lectionary, the story of the raising of Lazarus is a prelude to the events of Holy Week. It is another sign of the Lordship of Jesus, but it's also a revealing story about real people who grieve and cry and become angry because someone they dearly love has died. In all this, there are elements of hope, intimacy with God, and deep faith. When Martha and Mary sent for Jesus to help their sick brother, Jesus did not rush to Bethany to sit at his bedside. In fact, Jesus didn't show up at all while Lazarus was dying. By the time Jesus finally arrived, Lazarus' body had already been buried; and the customary 30-day period of mourning prescribed by Hebrew law was into its fifth day. Why did Jesus arrive late? Why did he allow his dear friends' emotions to be tried to the breaking point? The Gospel of John, the only place we find this story, does not give us a clear answer. What the text does tell us explicitly is that the first sister Jesus met when he finally approached the outskirts of Bethany was Martha. She ran out and greeted Jesus with all the grief and anger and love of a close friend in crisis. She also courageously added a statement of deep faith: "But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." When Jesus told Martha that Lazarus would rise again, Martha responded with more statements of faith. Then Martha ran back and summoned her sister Mary, who had stayed home.

I believe the man in John 9 is one of the most misunderstood people in the Bible. Apparently his witness was so powerful, the crowds continued to talk about his story in John 10:21 and 11:37, but we don't even get to know his name. To most of his neighbors and to us today, he is simply "the blind man" or "the formerly blind man." Many preachers use this man's story to talk about "darkness and light" or "ignorance and wisdom," and many Bible publishers add the heading "Spiritual Blindness" to this text, as though the man in this story were a symbolic object instead of a real person. I know what it's like to live in the shadow of powerful labels like that, because I myself have been totally blind all my life. Some of my earliest memories of going to church include the awkward whispers of neighbors who quietly asked my parents or grandparents if there might be any hope that I would see someday. I wasn't ashamed of being blind, but I did often feel humiliated by the attitudes of people who were whispering about me as though I weren't really there. Many people are so afraid of the dark they simply cannot get past the word "blind" to see a real person beyond the label. When Jesus and his disciples first encountered the man in John 9, the disciples assumed the man's blindness was some kind of curse or punishment for sin--and unfortunately this belief still exists in some form today--but Jesus clearly rejected this myth in John 9:3, saying, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him." Some preachers interpret this to mean the man was born blind so that Jesus could come along and perform a miracle for all to see, but this interpretation robs the man of his humanity, reducing him to a mere prop in the story. Even the use of the word "healing" to describe this miracle implies that there was originally something "wrong" or "broken" about this man's blindness, which seems quite the opposite of what Jesus was saying in John 9:3. Although it's true that some people do not enjoy being blind--and I have to admit I myself find it annoying when it prevents me from doing useful things like driving a car--still, Jesus made it clear that blindness does not prevent us from doing God's will.

The Gospel doesn't even record her name, simply a woman from Samaria.  People like her were considered outcasts, inferior, and perhaps not even regarded as a person, but so were many who were attracted to Jesus.  After all, they all look alike don't they?  She was not considered a person in her own right, just one of "them."  It is always easier to ridicule or criticize the "other side" if we strip them of personality or just paint over their individuality by giving them the same personality, with a one-size-fits-all label.  Have you ever noticed the enemy is always "they" and never an individual?  We put a mask on them so we don't have to deal with them. Jesus didn't react that way; he always saw a person, whether a young child or a tax collector, a disabled person with a withered hand, or a blind man, or a blind woman at the well.  He saw more than the mask of their assigned place, the mask they wore to hide behind.  Obviously, there were barriers between this woman and Jesus.  They were strangers to each other and the fear that a stranger creates has always been true.  Remember learning as a child, "Stranger can mean danger?"  They were not of the same gender or ethnic group.  One Jew and one Samaritan separated by almost centuries of hostility towards each other, much the same time as between us and Columbus. Just as Jesus saw the woman and not her assigned role or mask, he would not let her hide there either.  He treated her as an individual.  She had to face herself and not blame others.  What Jesus did that day at the well was to lead that woman of Samaria to face herself.