Christmas Eve 2018 - Jesus Is God's Anchor Baby

I suspect that Israel under the Roman occupation, as it was 2000 years ago, would have not been a great place to have a baby. The Jewish people, living under Roman rule, were on the verge of an uprising, caused in part by the imposition of the census by Quirinius. There was social and political unrest, economic uncertainty, and Israel’s future was precarious. They had already lived through several invasions by foreign powers, they had no God-appointed king of their own, and their religious institution––the Temple in Jerusalem––was run by priests co-opted by Rome. True, there was peace––the great Pax Romana––instituted by Caesar Augustus, but it was the kind of peace that comes from having soldiers on every corner. The Roman Peace was a peace imposed from the outside, not a peace that stems from within. 

So why on earth would Mary have said yes to having a baby under these conditions? More to the point, why on earth would God have decided to come as a baby under these conditions? God could very well have brought salvation and healing to the world through other means. Incarnation, becoming embodied, taking on human flesh and its vulnerability to suffering, its mortality, its limitedness––these are conditions that are totally foreign to the impassible, immortal, unlimited divine. So why would God choose that the Son be born into this human world, into these “foreign” conditions?

Why does anybody choose to have a baby in a foreign place? Many of us don’t have to struggle with the decision of whether to have a baby in another country, away from where we ourselves were born. Most people in the world don’t actually get a choice about whether or not to even have children. At the same time, for those privileged few that do, it’s still not an easy decision. We like to talk about “anchor babies” as if the people having those babies are out to swindle the country or to take advantage of “the system,” but I doubt that deciding to have a baby outside of one’s own country is made quite so callously as that. To have a baby is to have a part of yourself out in the world, and to have a baby in a foreign country, is to have your baby––this living, breathing extension of yourself, of your body and, more importantly, your heart––in a place and among people who might not treasure your baby the way you do. Their values and their customs and priorities will be different. It’s likely they won’t want what’s best for your baby. To bring the embodiment of one’s own hopes and dreams into a world that might not get it, that might even reject it, is not something anyone does lightly.

Having a baby is a commitment to bringing a new life into the world. When the baby is born in a foreign country, it’s also a commitment to that country. It might sound odd to say, but an anchor baby is a symbol of faith. Particularly, it’s a symbol of faith in the goodness of this strange and foreign country. When we get to choose to have babies, as Mary did, as God did, we choose to have them in places that feel safe, that we can trust. Countries with which we are willing to have some kind of long-term commitment. We believe in the place where our baby is to be born, we believe it is worth having a baby in, we believe in some kind of goodness in that place, in its people. It is actually a compliment to a country when people want to have anchor babies there. It means that they see good in us.

Jesus is God’s anchor baby. Something of a provocative statement, to be sure, but one that I think is Good News. The Christmas message is about the birth of the Son of God, the Word of God, the embodiment of God, into a foreign place. It is about the divine being born in human form, into this human world. It is about God choosing to make a future among us. There is nothing more foreign to the divine than this world. And yet God chooses this as the place to be born. God chooses humankind as the community into which Christ will be born. God chooses us to receive God’s anchor baby. 

In sending the Son, God’s own body and God’s own heart, into this world, God is making a commitment to building a future with us. God is showing us that we are worthy of hosting the divine presence. So many of our Christmas hymns say that God sent Jesus to us because the world is a gloomy place, and we are dreary people. And it’s true, the world at times can be a very dark place, but we are not worthless. We cannot be worthless because we are God’s own creation, made in the image of God, created with the light. And because God sees in us whom God created us to be, God sends Christ into our midst, as a sign of hope and faithfulness. Faith in us. Faith that we are still, deep inside, who we were made to be at Creation - people created with God’s light, people whom God, on the sixth day, called “very good.” People worthy of receiving God.

Yes, the world could be a better place. Israel during the Roman occupation two thousands years ago could have been a better place. But the world, and we, are not irredeemably awful. God has chosen us. God has chosen this world as the home in which to be born as a baby, to dwell with us. God has made a long-term, eternal commitment to us, to being with us, to being in our world.

Jesus is God’s anchor baby; God’s choice is to be with you. No matter how worthless the world––or your heart––might feel, no matter what midnight of the soul you might be experiencing tonight or in the weeks or months to come, remember the Good New of this night: God has faith in your worth, God sees you as “very good.” God is committed to being with you––forever––because God sees in you the light of Creation, the light of Christ, and God believes in you. God is “pleased to dwell” with you and has chosen you to receive Christ, the most wonderful of all gifts, and for this we say, thanks be to God. Amen.

Advent 4 - The Prophet Mary

Luke 1:39-55

In the 5th century, so 1600 hundred years ago, there was a history-changing debate amongst Christians about what to call Mary, the mother of Jesus. It was very exciting, and full of intrigue and politics and scandals, like all good church debates, and in the end, it was decided that an appropriate title for Mary was theotokos. Which, translated from the Greek, means God-bearer.

Maybe you can imagine why this was a scandal and outrage for certain folks. A young woman, the bearer of God? Sure, we might call her the bearer of Christ, or the mother of our Lord Jesus, which she was also called, but the mother of God? Remember, this debate was happening at a time when women were considered second to men in the eyes of God and the church, because it was Eve who ate the forbidden fruit first. Women were considered the means by which evil entered the human race, responsible for original sin and the great fall. And so, at the time, it was absolutely outrageous to consider that a woman, a young woman of no reputation or status, might host and bear the Word of God, indeed give birth to our very God.

But, that’s what was decided, and since then, we have done our best to rehabilitate Mary so that she is a fit and appropriate woman to be the bearer of God’s Word. We talk about how humble she was, and how obedient and submissive. We talk about how she was a good Jewish girl who loved God. We have images of her looking up to the angel Gabriel with a serene and accepting face, ready to quietly agree to whatever God asks, and we see that God crowns her queen of all the world, and blesses her to be the mother of the Saviour.

Mary becomes our inspiration for what it is to be a servant of God, and at this time of year especially, we might find ourselves yearning to be like her––to be accepting, to be obedient, to embrace the struggles that the world throws our way so that we, too, can be blessed and bear the Word of God for the world.

Except that we’re not very much like that. Or at least, I’m not. It is difficult for me to accept the status quo, to be obedient in the face of injustice, to accept suffering as our lot. I’m neither meek nor mild, if Gabriel had come to me, I would have been like, “What, are you kidding? I have some questions here!”

I wonder, though, if Mary is really as meek and mild as we make her out to be. I’m wondering this because of her words in the Magnificat, the powerful hymn we just heard in the Gospel. We hear these words so often that we sometimes become numb to them, but they really are radical: the Lord has scattered the proud, dispersed them across the land so they have nothing to brag about; the Lord has brought down the powerful from their thrones, thrown them out of their palaces and places of strength; the Lord has sent the rich away empty, stripped them of all their assets and evicted them from their mansions. These are not meek words! Mary is speaking here about a revolution, about a total upset of the system she lives in. Mary is not saying that the Lord helps the poor to get along, or to suffer through their circumstances, or will give them what they need to only survive, she is saying that their situations are completely unacceptable. She is not saying that the rich and powerful are where they are because God has blessed them, instead she is accusing them of unrighteousness. She is not talking about accommodating to her circumstances, or about being submissive to the authorities. She is proclaiming that God is the one who brings about total upset. If we are to take her seriously, Mary’s words are not mild, or accommodating, or obedient. They are radical, subversive, unsuitable.

They are words that could have gotten her into trouble, had the Roman Empire chosen to listen to what a Jewish girl from Galilee was saying. They are words of power. In fact, they are so powerful that during the late 70s, in Argentina, the Magnificat was banned from being sung or spoken (or shouted) in public. While the country struggled under a government that “disappeared” people and burned protestors alive, the Word of God that the Lord will bring “down the powerful from their thrones,” and send “the rich away empty,” was literally subversive. It was banned again in Guatemala in the early 80s, for the same reasons, and it wasn’t allowed to be sung in churches in India during British colonial rule, either. Mary’s words, rather than being the sedate hymn we think of, are the words of a political anthem, a protest chant.

Mary is not so meek and mild after all. In fact, I wonder if we would do better to call her a prophet. Like the prophets who went before her, like Isaiah and Hosea and Amos and Joel, like Miriam her namesake*, God gives Mary the Word to speak to a people suffering under oppression, and she tells them that God is on their side. She is given troubling words to bear to those in power, telling them that their days are divinely numbered. But Mary is even more than the prophets, because she doesn’t just bear the Word of God in her speech, she literally bears the Word of God. God chose Mary to embody the Word, in her body, to give birth to God for the world, in a way that was impossible for the prophets who came before her. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Jesus was who he was, in part, because of Mary. Mary the prophet uttered God’s radical words while Jesus was in her womb, and then she bore him and raised him to live the truth of those words, to be the embodiment of the Magnificat.

I searched high and low on the internet for a new image for Mary that would help us to see how radical she was as the theotokos, the God-bearer. And I couldn’t find one. So I’m going to have to ask you to use your imagination. Imagine, if you will, a young woman, loud-mouthed and yelling, with her fist in the air. Imagine her today, at a protest, with a placard protesting tax cuts for the rich and tax increases for the poor. Imagine her walking arm-in-arm with marchers, demanding that a corrupt government leader step down, with her six-month pregnant belly in front of her. Imagine her wild hair, or maybe her shaved head, and that look on her face that tells you she is going to fight to make the world a better place for her child and for all of God’s children. Imagine a young woman standing in a federal building rotunda shouting for the government to withdraw from alliances with arms manufacturers and from corrupt business deals. Imagine Mary, filled with the Holy Spirit, demanding justice for her sisters in the #MeToo era. Imagine Mary, the bearer of the Word of God, as a prophet––risking public condemnation, facing arrest, willingly giving God her body through speeches and protests and marches, in order to say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Now, it may be that you think this version of Mary is kind of outrageous. A loud-mouthed, shaved-head, activist Mary isn’t quite appropriate as the bearer of the Word of God. Maybe a nice girl in a dress with perfectly combed hair who stands in church and sings her hymns might be more suited to be blessed by God in this way. Nevertheless, our original Mary did say these words, and she did say that God looked upon her with favour. No matter how inappropriate we might think it, we know that God chooses “what is foolish in the world to shame the wise,” and “what is weak in the world to shame the strong,” as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:27-28. Mary’s words are God’s words, and God chose her to proclaim them.

If you have ever been told in your life that you are too loud, or too opinionated, or too stubborn, if you have ever been told that you argue too much, that you are too idealistic, that you are disruptive, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.” You are in good company with the prophets, and with Mary, and with all those whom God has chosen to bear the Word of God. If you are “too” anything, take heart––God is not calling you to be meek and mild. God is calling you to be strong, God is asking you to be willing to take on the risks of being a God-bearer, God is blessing you to speak and to embody God’s passion for the lowly, for the hungry, for the powerless.

“And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Blessed are you, as you bear God’s Word into the world, for you, too, are filled with the Holy Spirit and the Lord is with you. Thanks be to God, Amen.

*Many thanks to Morah Jenny for reminding me of Miriam!

Advent 1 - Hopelessness

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; Luke 21:25-36

Well, don’t you feel cheery now? I always find the first Sunday in Advent to be a bit of a slap in the face. A harsh hit of reality at a time when I’d rather be thinking about Christmas and presents and lights and chocolate. It’s already depressing out there, with the sun not coming up until 8:00 and going down already by 4:00. The world out there is doing its best to fight off the mid-winter blues with Christmas carols in the stores, and glitter, and lights in the the yards, and here we are, just beginning the season of Advent with “distress among nations,” people fainting “from fear and foreboding,” and warnings to “be on guard” for the unexpected shaking of the world. We’ve got quite the dissonance going on.

Except that I’m not so sure there is dissonance. That is, I’m not so sure that Advent is out of sync with the rest of the world. Because, honestly, the world is not in a good place right now. Listen to any young person these days, from those in junior high up to those who’ve graduated from university, and you will hear about the desperate situation that the world is in. Sure, this desperation is masked with a bravado, covered over in conversations about Instagram, and Fortnite, and the latest Youtube videos, but underneath it is a deep concern, a hopelessness bordering on helplessness, about climate change, gun violence, sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia. Our young people feel hopeless, and they have reason to feel that way. It’s easy to dismiss their concerns as naive, or idealistic, or dramatic, but their feelings are legitimate. We promised them that world would be better, we told them that the world was a better place than it used to be, but in many ways, it isn’t. Jesus was right, there is “distress among nations,” and the powers of the heavens are being shaken.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t actually talking about now, the year 2018. He was talking about his own time, or rather, the writer of the Gospel of Luke was talking about his time. (I assume it was a man who wrote the Gospel.) Our best guess is that the Gospel of Luke was written after the destruction of the Second Temple, which means after the year 70, when the Roman Empire crushed the entire people of Israel, after a small group of them rose up to fight the Empire. A few verses before our reading for today, the Gospel says, “you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends,” and Jerusalem will be “surrounded by armies ... [and] there will be great distress on the earth [and] Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles.” [21:16-24] This is what happened before the Gospel was written down. There was fighting between Jews about whether to rise up against Rome, and Rome, the Gentile Empire, responded by devastating the entire country. For the Jewish people, it was a time of incredible hopelessness. The entire people faced extinction and they were helpless to do anything about it. They felt the same way our young people, and some of us older folks, do today.

Now we might say, well, look, it turned out alright for them, and things will turn out alright for us, too. God saved them, and God will save us, too. Christmas is coming, the return of Christ is coming, so we just need to hang in there until things get better. Don’t despair, don’t lose hope, God will make everything okay.

If this proclamation, that Christ is coming, gives you hope, and makes you feel better, I envy you. I am glad for you, but I envy you. It doesn’t really make me feel better. I’ve seen too many times in history where these proclamations of hope led people to disengage with the world, to sit back and do nothing, to settle in for a nap, as it were, and wait for God to act, while in the meantime things got worse and worse. I’ve seen these proclamations of hope lead to a kind of learned helplessness, which in the end, made the situations worse, not better. While we’re waiting for things to get better, I see refugee children tear-gassed at the border, I see climate change wiping out coastal villages in India and the Pacific and the Arctic, I see mass shooting after mass shooting, and I see people––Christians––doing nothing. I wonder what difference the proclamation that the kingdom of God is near makes to people whose lives are hell here.

Martin Luther is famously quoted as saying, “Even if I knew tomorrow that the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” Luther did, in fact, believe that his world was going to pieces. He lived through plagues, through civil uprising, through religious persecution (both of him and by him). He really thought his world was ending. And my point in saying this is not so to say, “oh, look how wrong he was, and so therefore look how wrong we are.” I don’t think our scientists and our social theorists and our young people are wrong. The human species is in jeopardy. Our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren are going to experience devastation on a scale we cannot imagine. My point is to say that Christians are called to act when faced with hopelessness. To accept the reality of the signs of “the sun, the moon, and the stars,” and then to act.

Jesus himself says this to us, “now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads. ... Be alert at all times.” In other words, don’t curl up into a ball, don’t give up, don’t lie down and pull the cover over your heads. Neither are we to carry on as usual, partying in “dissipation and drunkenness,” being reckless with our resources, being silent in the face of hatred, passively hoping that God will be fix everything in the end. Instead, we are to stand up and pay attention. We are to act, to engage in behaviours that bring about justice and righteousness. We are to prepare ourselves for the coming of the kingdom by preparing the world. We are to plant apples trees, we are to work for equity, we are to protest unfair conditions, we are to hold our governments to account, we are to get up every single day, get out of bed, and act as if the world is going to be a better place because God is with us and working through us. We are to act in hope, even while we feel hopeless. 

We act, not because we don’t trust God’s promises, but because we do. The season of Advent is not a season where we focus on the birth of Emmanuel, God-with-us, to the exclusion of all else. We focus on the birth of Emmanuel, Jesus Christ, and on the reality of the world into which Christ comes because it is into this reality that Christ comes. Both Advent and Christmas are the central times of the year in which we affirm that God does not abandon us in this reality, but actually comes into this reality. Christ comes into the world to be at the border being tear-gassed. Christ comes into the world to be at the mercy of climate change. Christ comes into the world to be among those who have been shot. Christ comes into the world to be with the hopeless in our world. And where Christ is, we go to be also. We go to be with the refugees being turned away. We go to be with the victims of climate change. We go to be with the victims of gun violence and sexism and racism and transphobia and religious intolerance. And we stand up and raise our heads and then we act in hope. We live in hope.

Living in hope means acting as if things are going to get better. Not because they will eventually get better on their own, or because God will swoop down and fix things, but because in our acting, we are shaping the world to come. Our actions determine the future that is going to become the present. We act because we live in the hope that what we do actually matters.

Living in hope means acting so that our day-to-day actions reflect that God in Christ is with us now, here. It means acting with kindness towards those who need it because God is acting with kindness towards us. Living in hope means acting with compassion to those who are all out because Christ is showing compassion to us. Living in hope means acting with generosity towards those who have less than we do because God is strengthening us to live with less. Living in hope means standing up against abuse and bullying and injustice because God is standing up with us.

Living in hope means acting as though, in the midst of our hopelessness about the future, God in Christ is with us now. God who takes on the human condition empowers us to act so that life is “worth living in the present,”* not just for us, but for everyone. It means acting as if the kingdom is not just drawing near, it is not just coming soon, but it is here now. 

In this season of Advent, with the realities of the world as they are, you may feel hopeless, but you are not helpless. God is with you. God is with all of us, and does indeed strengthen us to act. Christ is coming, Christ is here, Christ is raising us up to live in hope. The world is ending, the world is beginning. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Amen.

*I am indebted to the work of Miguel A. de la Torre, in Embracing Hopelessness (Fortress Press, 2017) for this new perspective on hopelessness and hope.

Publications Update

My book, first published in hardcover, is now available in paperback:

Dual Citizenship: Two-Nature Christologies and the Jewish Jesus


My most recent publication, a chapter entitled "Multiplicity and Ultimate Concern(s)," is now available in hardcover:

The Body and Ultimate Concern: Reflections on an Embodied Theology of Paul Tillich