Advent Blog 2 - John the Baptist (and a couple of random thoughts)

John the Baptist
or, Simeon and John the Baptist and the sweet essence of vindication


This is, if you are a church goer, John the Baptist Sunday in the life of the church. Technically, it is the second Sunday that the lectionary (or the traditional readings for Sundays of the year) prescribes for John the Baptist. He's so important to Advent he gets two Sundays this year.



People unfamiliar with the Gospels or the story of Jesus, at least according to Luke, are sometimes surprised to learn that Luke's Christmas story does not begin with Mary, Joseph, Gabriel, and Jesus. Nope. It begins with Zechariah, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist.



The scale and scope, the shadow and influence of John cannot be understated. He is present in all four gospels, depicted as the progeny of Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and the great prophets who are sent to prepare the people for the coming of the reign of God. Heady and hearty stuff. John is outsider and insider; he is prophet and proclaimer; he is baptizer and castigator; he is good news and maker of trouble.



Classically he is depicted as someone pointing the way -- the archetype for paintings of John in the ancient and medieval world is of a figure pointing -- pointing the way to Jesus, to God's reign. "Prepare" he tells them and us. People get ready (thanks Curtis Mayfield) there's a train coming, you better get on board!

While I can't write about all that John has meant to the church, I can ask an existential question: how many of us would never find truth, understanding, or meaning if someone didn't point us to it? Show us the way? Give us directions?

I met with a group of Pastor's two weeks ago to talk about Advent sermons and Christmas Eve sermons. These are old friends from college and various parts of North Carolina, each of them smarter and wiser than me. I was taking notes like a man possessed. One of them said, "You can't get to Jesus without John."

Yep.

How many of us would never have found truth, justice, meaning, learning -- any character or faith forming stuff -- without somebody to show us the way?

We can't get here from there without guides, mentors, teachers -- the saints that the Holy Spirit provides.

Feel lost this Christmas?

Let me ask what may be for some of you a tough question: If you do feel lost, who is it that you have trusted as your guides? Are they trustworthy? Are they pointing you to greater truth?

I hope you have good guides.

In Luke's Christmas story Mary would need a guide. Surely she had her cousin Elizabeth and her mother to give her advice on the birthing part. But I have never thought she truly understands what Jesus will mean for her, or the world until he is born. This is where Simeon comes in.

While John is just a baby Simeon gives his master's class to Mary, and he points her to the end of the story just as surely as she is standing there at the beginning of it.

Read Luke 2: 21 - 35, and focus in on 35 where Simeon, long promised by God that he would see the Messiah before he died, says to Mary: "This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too" (NIV).

While I think it likely that Mary understands the blessedness of the calling to be the mother of Christ, I don't think she grasps the depth, the difficulty, the trials that such a calling will entail. Simeon points her to it. Simeon guides her. No it is not pleasant. But it is necessary. One wonders how mistaken she would be if he were never there.

In the end Simeon is vindicated for his faith. He sees the Messiah.

John will be too. Even with his life on the line John is still pointing others to Jesus, guiding others to the truth (see Luke 7: 18 and following verses).

John's vindication comes when the tomb is empty and when righteousness is merited by God's graciousness, when Jesus commands the church to Baptize, and when repentance, renewal, and regeneration become the calling cards of the church.

The messengers and the believers in the story of Christmas receive their vindication. They are proved correct.

The story is not so pretty for those that doubt and shun and who think they can go it alone, ignoring the words of the wise.

"You can't get to Jesus without John."

I'd one up that and say that you can't get anywhere alone.

Do you side with those vindicated or do you pass the time with those who won't stand for anything long enough to be vindicated (or not)? Who are your guides? The guides through Advent and Christmas are Simeon, Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Gabriel, Anna, and John. That's pretty good company. That they are the church's guides, well, that gives me, for one, great comfort.

Random Thoughts

I just downloaded a copy of Mitch Albom's book, Have a Little Faith. Though I know Albom, I had never heard of the book (turns out it is a best seller). I saw him on Craig Ferguson the other night. What an interesting book. It has really touched me so far. I have a feeling it will be a topic for future blogs. A little taste of the book for today. Here Albom is writing about a request from his childhood rabbi, Albom writes:

"In the beginning, there was a question. It became a last request. 'Will you do my eulogy?' And, as is often the case with faith, I thought I was being asked for a favor, when in fact I was being given one."

Many of you ask, from time to time, for copies of my sermons. Text editions take time to produce and I am always weary that I have misquoted or misconstrued somebody whenever I publish one of them. You can find them on the sermons page of our church website, going back to 2004. I don't put them up every week, but I aim for 6 - 10 per year that I am happy with. In recent days I have posted the following:

May We Come In? Never Underestimate Christmas.

Terry Coley's Memorial Service Remarks

Out of This World

The Calling of Giving and the Light of Sharing

Sometimes some of you want to know what I am reading. Here is a brief list of books I am carrying around in the book satchel (kind of like that European man purse, only burlap, from the Progressive insurance commercial -- it makes me feel more intellectual than I really am):

The Reason for God - by Tim Keller

Accompany Them With Singing - The Christian Funeral - by Tom Long

Preaching from Memory Into Hope - by Tom Long (this book is so good...)

The Joy of Ministry - by Tom Currie

The Pastor as Minor Poet - by Craig Barnes

Have a Little Faith - by Mitch Albom

Home - by Marilynne Robinson (her book Gilead should be required reading...)

What am I asking Santa for this Christmas? Leavings - by Wendell Berry

Lastly two prayer requests: in the above group, my friend Kathy (who is just about the smartest pastor I know) quoted an older article from the Wall Street Journal about pastors on Christmas or Christmas Eve and the anxiety that comes with the event. Her quote was from James Forbes, a man who was for nearly two decades among the best and most influential preachers in America. His quote: Christmas always made him nervous - "you don't want to screw it up," he said. My thoughts exactly. Say a prayer for me. The second prayer request: I have for many months now, been planning a book to write. My problem is a lack of time and the crush of obligations that prohibit the writing of a good book that has a chance of being published somewhere by somebody. I start to write it, begin to fear that I'll never finish, and stop. Lately the ideas for the chapters have been waking me up at night. That is usually a sign that I should begin writing. I could use your prayers, if you'll offer them.

4 Advent and Christmas Blogs - Never Underestimate Christmas

This is an edited version of my December Newsletter article for the Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church. This is the first of four Christmas Blogs that I am posting this year.

“That time He was creating not simply a man but the Man who was to be Himself: was creating Man anew: was beginning, at this divine and human point, the New Creation of all things….The miraculous conception is one more witness that here is Nature’s Lord. He is doing now, small and close, what He does in a different fashion for every woman who conceives.” C.S. Lewis, Miracles

I think Christmas might be risky for us. As I age, I am less and less intimidated by its consumer nature. I used to think that the consumer-driven fancy all around us (Christmas carols and songs started on one Raleigh radio station this year on November 15th!) could not be beaten. I don’t want our family to get lost in the wrapping paper and forget about the manger. But I have talked to enough really good parents, and strategies abound about how to keep Christmas in check. “At our house you got three gifts because Jesus got three gifts.” “We have our children give away one unused toy for every toy they receive.” There are ways to at least keep the greed, the glitz, and the glitter in check. I am all for that. No, I do not think Christmas is risky for this reason; at least not as dangerous as I once had thought.

Christmas I think is risky for two reasons. For one, Christmas dares us to hope. It renews possibility. Christmas throws caution to the wind. The Man who was and is God with us is nothing like caution. God risks Himself to show us love. And if God can do this, God who made time and moved mountains, God resolute and all powerful, then it strikes me that others may follow suit. The relationship long broken might be repaired. The job long lost may come back. It is easy to risk nothing and lay fallow in hopelessness. The soul that risks hope is a soul that dares disappointment. Expect nothing and you cannot washout. The second reason is related to the first. We know that the reality of washout looms. And so we only invest the hope for change that we think we can afford. “If I hold a little back, it won’t hurt so bad when it doesn’t happen.” Ever think like that? Me too. We limit. We hold back. God does not! In Jesus, babe of Bethlehem, God is all in! As C.S. Lewis writes above, this is “one more witness that he is Nature’s Lord” the “New Creation of all things!”

Never underestimate Christmas. It is like underestimating God. What new thing will God do for us this Christmas? What darkness be pierced? What light be shone? What wound made clean? It strikes me to expect nothing is to, in turn, be able to see nothing. The soul that hopes for naught is blind when the object of fruition shows up. Or, on more than one occasion I have thought that the Shepherds were able to see God in the poverty of Jesus because their souls had been focused by the hope they had long held dear. They didn’t underestimate Christmas. Nor should we.

Happy Christmas. Happy hoping. Happy expectations. C.S. Lewis’ most enduring quote for Christmas has long been: “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become the sons of God.” May the grace implicit in such a promise give you hope-filled, and soul-full nights this Christmas and beyond.

Keeping Confession

What do you hear when you read the word, CONFESSION?



Do you hear Jon and Kate and Eight and laying it all out there for the tabloids?



Do you hear Dr. Phil, admonishing a husband who does not compliment his wife, or a wife who does not tell the truth to her husband?



Do you hear tell-all novel, tell all memoir -- Confessions of a Shopaholic, Confessions of a Teen-Age Drama Queen, Confessions of a Superhero, Confessions of a Manhattan Nanny? -- that is supposed to reveal the inside dirt, inside secrets of a life different than your own?



Do you see a priest in a confessional booth, and a sinner pouring her heart out to him?



Do you hear Usher (Usher - Wikipedia)singing in the background -- These are my confessions? Usher is a modern-day crooner -- a cross between Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson, and his song about confession is about a boy coming clean with a girlfriend, telling her all the secrets of his past to set the record straight, that she might not be shocked when she learns his secrets? Here confession is airing out the laundry.

Do you imagine one of the many myriad of websites where you can post your confessions secretly? Most of them are pretty torrid and, quite frankly, sensational to the point they are difficult to believe. Thus, I won't link you to any here. Many of them are pretty tame, though, ranging from: "I hate my job and I don't work very hard" to "I have a crush on my best friend's boyfriend." You get the idea. Confession here is a chance to get off the chest a guilty pleasure ("I eat at Burger King at least every other day and when my mom asks me about it I always lie") or a small peccadillo ("I took the last donut and when my wife asked me where it was I blamed it on our daughter").

I wonder, do you think of St. Augustine's Confessions (Augustine's Confessions) - his landmark work written 1600 years ago which is both an admission of his faults as a fallen man and his statement of faith in Christ as a redeemed sheep of Jesus' fold? It is a tough book to broach, but worth the read because it places the two concurrent understandings of confession side by side.

Understanding one: confession is admission of wrong, guilt, or involvement. If you like shows like the Closer this is the point of the drama itself -- to make a confession happen. This is the understanding that our culture has hyper-developed.

Understanding two: a confession is an expression of belief, beliefs which can and should be affirmed and shared. Think creeds. The Greek word was omologia -- the "words we hold in common" or the "faith we profess."

If we, as Christian people, believe, as a confession of faith that Jesus forgives sins then the whole point of confession is to confess the former in trust of the latter -- offer our sins to Christ (understanding 1 of Confession) in order that we might be made whole (understanding 2 of Confession). They are not mutually exclusive. They are interdependent, if you will.

Trouble is, when I survey the landscape, I see too many cultural messages that want to divorce the two.

The culture around us seems to be saying, "It is ethically right to admit guilt and confess shame, but to confess faith is an intellectual embarrassment." It is as though the human heart knows that from time to time it must be cleaned (see Psalm 51) but we have no idea which "detergent" to use.

If you are reading this today and feel trapped in shame, my suspicion is that your spiritual claustrophobia has less to do with your willingness or unwillingness to confess the wrong than it does with incomplete understandings about why you are confessing in the first place.

C.S. Lewis once wrote about a "great divorce" between God and humanity. One of the divisions I see, and I think many suffer for it, is a divorce between admission and belief, between confession and profession, between confession of sin and confession of faith. They are not mutually exclusive and they were, as far as I can tell, never intended to be.

May God grant you strength as you keep your confessions.

Thoughts on the Responsibility for Proclamation and the Call to Share

Driving in the car last week, my almost 8 year old asked me, "Daddy, do you think people who hate God are sent to hell?"

"No, not at all," I answered. And then, as I am also the pastor at the church my son attends, I asked, "But where did you hear that? I don't think you ever heard that from me."

He also didn't tell me where he heard it, but I have a guess. In our relatively small town he is known as my son. This means that people ask him God questions, rightly or wrongly, from time to time. Most of the kids here go to church and there is more than one flavor of really tough fundamentalism around here. Sundays in Eastern NC have a fundamental tune on the air. The air is thick with warnings of death, damnation, and calls to repent. Don't get me wrong -- this is not a "we are good, they are bad" statement. I have several fundamentalist friends, and they are among the most faithful and decent people I know. When I write "tough fundamentalists" I simply refer to those who preach judgment more than grace, and whose sermons are more about the devil than they are about Jesus. From listening on the radio, and watching on cable access, we have our fair share of these kinds of folk.

Now, I believe in repentance and the need to be honest about sin, but I think that pastoral or church ministry that abuses the fear of hell or the fear of inadequacy before God is dangerous to the last. The church of Christ cannot be a church of followers who employ fear to motivate. How can we make the people fearful of the judgment of God when in nearly every occasion (from the angels who announce Christ's birth to the scene where Jesus calms the storm) his message to us is "Do not be afraid"? Why do so many churches offer helpings of fear when Jesus seems to go the opposite direction?


This reminded me of a piece I wrote week before last for our church's newsletter. It is about the responsibility of proclaiming a good word well, without giving the temptation to abuse that privilege more than its due. Here is what I wrote (you HMPC members may recognize it)....


All this week I am preparing to go and speak to High Schoolers from all across our Presbytery at Camp Don Lee in Arapahoe, NC. It is a daunting task. To try and hold the attention of 100 or 150 high school students for 3 or 4 hours over two days…well….

It strikes me though that the message I am hoping to bring them will be compelling on its on merits, and through this merit we just might grab their ears, touch their hearts, and plant a few rows of transformative growth. That does not mean it is easy – it means it is worthwhile, it means it is worth the work. There is nothing more exciting or more humbling as a pastor than the thought that words we say and rows we plant might live for a time beyond us, dwelling in the souls and minds of those we share them with, used by the Spirit or the soul to help the hearer become a doer, the boy become a man, and the girl a woman. I suspect teachers and professors feel this dual mantle – exciting work, humbling enterprise – just as we do.

This of course, means that we had better get it right. Nothing serves the fiefdom of sin more efficiently than a lie propagated as truth or a preacher who takes theological advantage over his or her hearer’s inexperience. Imagine the shame of exploiting the spiritually vulnerable? It makes me shudder. With the zeal and the opportunity comes the mantle of responsibility. Suffice it to say that I feel a tinge of that pressure, I am aware of that mantle, each Sunday in the pulpit and each time I assume the lectern. “Please God help me get at something right, and let me do no damage in the process.”

October and November are the months we talk about a calling, a claim, in our lives to share. At your church, we talk about sharing with the church, in order that we might get it right – we might maintain a ministry, a mission, a history, and a future in the year to come. What we are hoping to “get right” is a proclamation in hopeful and joyful love that nothing can snuff out God’s light. Isaiah, the prophet, is resolute in this claim and we want to take our worship and our words and align them with Isaiah.

Will we talk about money in that process? Yes. It is necessity. But I am reminded of words that my good friend Haywood Holderness, a retired Pastor in Durham, has often shared with me. “Our job is help people do what their hearts are telling them they are supposed to do anyway – share.”

Light rises, according to Isaiah (Isaiah 58), when allow our capacity to share today to overcome our fears and anxieties about what may come tomorrow. We don’t give to get. We give to say that we trust the light more than we fear the gloom.

This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I will be addressing the Youth about all the changes in our world, and how the changes can engender hope or fear. God calls us to hope. We sometimes choose fear and our task is to align our lives with God. How does God do this? God does this through call, covenant, community, commitment, and continuity. None of these is possible without a commitment to sharing. Dare we not store up the light for ourselves alone and forget the mantle of call, the proclamation of community, or the freedom and light which only comes from sharing.

Jesus as King

"It's good to be the king."

Readers of this blog born before 1990 just may remember Mel Brooks' brutally funny portrayal of King Louis XIV in his movie "History of the World, Part I." Brooks' king is rich with gold, servants, women, and wine. He is lazy, cozy, dripping with lace. He is irresponsible - moving from feast to feast, party to party, girl to girl. He is also a fool and he doesn't know it, but the joke will be on him by the end of the film. Comedic irony might best describe him - everyone is laughing at and not with and the preposition makes all the difference.

Often kings are anything but comic. They are tragic.

I have just about decided that King Lear ought to be required reading or viewing (perhaps I should say experiencing?). The tragedy of succession has him. Which daughter to pass it all onto?

With the scepter of power comes the mantle of responsibility - to country, family, and perhaps even God. Odysseus is often the loneliest sailor of the bunch.

Think being the King is easy? Ask Saul or Solomon. How about Hezekiah or Esther (the Queen)? Want to read real tragedy? Just read study the story of David and Absalom.

The old adage has usually been: "with great power comes great responsibility" (this is credited to Franklin Roosevelt in a speech near the end of his life during WWII; and to Stan Lee, the creator of Spiderman; and also to Jesus at Luke 12:48 - at least a paraphrase of it).

I might say that with great power comes great obligation, great ambiguity, and great pressure to perform and achieve. This is particularly true when one yields power with a conscientious conscience and a compassionate heart.

One of my favorite portrayals is Helen Mirren in the movie, The Queen. Playing the reigning Queen Elizabeth around the time of Diana's death, Mrs. Mirren captures perfectly the ambiguities of duty, country, faith, power, and obligation. Following Diana Spencer's demise the Queen soon realizes that to say nothing is not an option; the country is reeling from the auto accident which has killed its favorite daughter. She also is painfully aware that to say too much is to over inflate what she perceives as the impending martyrdom of a former daughter-in-law who abandoned two sons and forewent duty itself. What is the queenly thing to do?

Or how about Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth I and Elizabeth The Golden Age - more daring movies. Surrender the nation to the Roman Church and to Spain, or attack the armada in a near doomsday move? Do nothing and be destroyed or set sail and watch the country die at sea? There is no reward but to risk -- and nothing is guaranteed. So she is ultimately stuck - duty demands to protect the people but she cannot guarantee their protection. So she risks it all and the English Navy -- thanks in part to fortune -- wins the Battle of Gravelines. History smiles upon Elizabeth, but not without many terrible tolls and costs.

Maybe it is not that great to be the king (the queen) after all?

The past two weeks we have looked at our church here in Tarboro at the three-fold office of Jesus as proposed by John Calvin. It is a way to mark Calvin's 500th birthday and a way to think about our Christology -- to share what we believe and think about the person and Lordship of Jesus Christ. Calvin's idea, and it was fairly unique to Calvin, was that Jesus is for us our prophet, our priest, and our king.

What do we mean when we say Jesus is king? Do we ever say Jesus is king? King of what?

Just consider the hymnody - the words of so many of our songs about Jesus (and this list is completely inadequate):

• "Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the new born king!"


• "Joy to the world, the Lord is come - let earth receive her king!"


• "Rejoice the Lord is King, your Lord and King adore! Rejoice, give thanks and sing, and triumph ever more!"


• "Come Christians join to sing, Alleluia, Amen! Loud praise to Christ our King! Alleluia, Amen!"


• "All glory, laud, and honor, to thee Redeemer King!"


• "Born thy people to deliver, born a child and yet a king. Born to reign in us forever, now thy gracious kingdom bring."


• "Shout to the Lord, all the earth let us sing! Power and majesty, praise to the King! Mountains bow down and the sea shall roar at the sound of your name!"

On and on. The idea of a king has been rejected by Americans for over 230 years - and yet we give kingship praise to Jesus, many of us, on Sunday morning.

I am reluctant to say much more or to go on much farther on this line of reasoning, but suffice it to say for now, only these things:

If we are to be Christians, at all, then Jesus is our Lord. He is a King of faith, a King of glory, a King of grace and we ought to respect, honor and adore him for this Kingship.

But, we had better recognize that Jesus is not an ordinary king -- ordinary kings hoard land and wealth, preserve their lives, protect their own interest, and sometimes think of their peoples. History is replete with them.

Jesus seems the opposite -- his is our King, yet he gives everything away while hoarding nothing. He offers his life as sacrifice, preserving not a single breath. He puts nearly every one's interests in front of his own. He always thinks of us.

It is as though in becoming the counter-intuitive king Jesus is able to transcend all other previous kings and be called, as Handel so beautifully penned it, king of kings, Lord of Lords (which Handel borrowed from Revelation 11 and 19).

This interplay - between the Jesus who is to be the king of kings and the servant who will offer his life in anything but a typically kingly fashion can be found at Matthew 21. In and around the story of Palm Sunday we find Jesus at his most kingly. On one hand welcomed like a conqueror, adored by the crowds. On the other, offering himself a willing sacrifice.

Do kings hoard or do they give? Do they keep or do they share? Judged in the light of Christ most kings, even with the benefit of history, look pale indeed.

Healthy Tensions / Healthy Questions

What healthy questions do you find yourself asking, from time to time or all the time? What healthy tensions do you live in?

My friend, James Goodlet, the Presbyterian Campus Minister at the University of Alabama writes a blog too. It can be found at Presbytide, and it is one of blogs that I follow from time to time. This week James writes about being a "church nerd." At its core his blog (published today)is about the healthy questions, the healthy tensions that exist between loving the church and being saddled with the stigma of church. His last two paragrahps are telling, and I am going to quote him directly. Writing about a conversation had with a student, where the student reports talking to friends who are "taking a break" from church, James writes:

The other thing that gets me is this whole “taking a break” thing. I know how it is. Heck, I lived it. I loved me some Bedside Baptist in college because Pastor Pillows almost always brought a good word. But what exactly are they taking a break from? Sunday mornings? Church altogether? Organized religion? I can tell you one thing… they ain’t taking a break from talking church or Bible or philosophy or religion. Those kinds of convos happen all of the time in the life of a student. So why can’t those kinds of discussions happen in campus ministry? And, if they did, would students show up? Or is the stigma of being associated with the Church too much to overcome?

See all the tensions in there; see all the questions in there? Pastors live with tension -- intellectual, theological, spiritual, psychological, pastoral -- all the time.

When should I speak, we wonder?

When should I act, we brood?

I know that she knows that she is dying, and I know that she knows that I know, but should I call today or wait one more day to see if she'll call me because I don't want her to be intimidated because if I call she'll finally know that I know and I am not sure that she thinks I am supposed to know how sick she really is? This is how we pastors sometimes think. Thought processes that are rife and ripe with real tensions.

Tension: how do I work to preserve the goodness of the church from the past, while equipping the church for the future?

Tension: if we don't paint the building then the building will become a bigger distraction than it already is and if we do paint it we will spend money we could spend on something else -- and perhaps the 'something else' is more righteous, faithful, or impactful than the paint we are spending the money on in the first place?

Tension: how do I tell that guy that his life is shambles because he loves hate more than he practices love?

Tension: if God can do anything, then why won't God do everything that we ask?

I hope this makes sense. Pastoral ministry is full of questions and tensions.

My best guess is that pastors are not alone in living this way. Most people live with a lot of questions and with a lot of intellectual, vocational, and spiritual tension. What I love about James's blog is that he is wise enough to know that the tension of the questions he is asking about his call, his students, and his church, has him. It is inescapable. It is not to be solved; it is to be lived through. And those are two very different things. Wouldn't life be a tragedy if we could just skip to the end? Indeed. Living through and in our tensions and questions might be the seed-root of the best forms of wisdom.

There is a verse from Proverbs that I don't often reference because it hits very close to home for some. It is Proverbs 20:21: An estate quickly acquired in the beginning will not be blessed in the end.

What happens when things come too easy? What happens when we get answers too quickly? What happens when the tension-free living, the laissez-faire existence we long for, is precisely what is given to us?

My friend Donovan gave me a Fred Craddock (you church nerds will know him) sermon on CD several weeks ago. Craddock points out that God punishes Solomon in a far greater way than almost anyone else -- God gave Solomon everything he ever wanted. "Imagine," Craddock says on the CD, "to gag on your favorite pie."

I don't want to gag. I want to enjoy. But savoring the sweet pie filling means dealing with the doughy tension of rolling out the crust, which is never easy and always messy and prone to tearing (at least in my kitchen).

Healthy questions, healthy tensions, might be the recipe for the succulent wisdom we all so desperately desire to feast upon.

Jesus as Priest

What do you think of when you think of when you think of the word priest?

1) A bicycle riding, slightly error-prone man in a clerical collar?

2) A mysterious man whispering prayers and incantations over a strange ceremony?

3) A devil-battling exorcist who journeys into realms and places dark and evil?

4) A power-crazed, truth concealing bishop who conspires to hide the centuries-old conspiracy?

5) A pedophile (I don't even like to type that word as it is unfair and unsettling)?

For better or worse, most of us who do not associate with priests all that often have our understanding of them influenced by outside forces. In the case of the incomplete listing I've offered above: 1) Mitford/Jan Karon; 2) Folklore and fairytales; 3) The Exocist or the movie about Emily Rose; 4) The DaVinci Code / Dan Brown; 5) the headlines of the past few years.

I think it safe to say that none of these depictions I have offered describes very well any of the priests I know. Just like pastors, priests are often misunderstood and maligned. Just like pastors they are given far too much credit and far too much blame - sometimes simultaneously.

The priests I know, Anglican/Episcopal and Roman Catholic, are courageous, intellectual, funny, and ardent servants of our Lord. None of them are like the punchlines (e.g. "A rabbit, a duck, and priest walk into a bar....") of the jokes which dog them. None of them are like the anti-heroic, overly religious, zealots of Southern Gothic novels; nor are they much like the tragic depiction of Graham Greene. Nearly all are humble. And nearly all want to serve their function on behalf of God -- seeing ceremony, worship, and liturgy done well; being a voice of mediating grace on behalf of those seeking solace, forgiven-ness, and love.

This week in my sermon I'll be focusing in on John 17. If you have never read this, stop reading my blog, don't worry about my sermon and go read it. It is Jesus, I would argue, at his most priestly. Here Jesus mediates between people and God. Here Jesus asks intercession on behalf of the world. Here Jesus begins the process of offering himself in the stead of so many others. Here Jesus prays for the world and for his fledgling church -- just as a priest would and does.

The sermon on Sunday takes a second look at John Calvin's concept of the three-fold office of Jesus. Jesus as prophet (I preached on this last Sunday), Jesus as priest, and Jesus as king.

When one considers that in Calvin's church there were four officers -- doctors, pastors, elders, and deacons, and none of them called priest, this may make the above nomenclature (prophet, priest, king) seem a little odd. The question is, then why does Calvin do it -- use the term priest? Why use the term priest in describing the "what" that Jesus does for us, the people loved by God and saved by grace?

I think that most of us misunderstand priests -- us meaning English speaking, Protestant, North Americans. Most of us don't know that many. Yet the word priest appears in the New Revised Standard Version of our Bible 576 times. And it very well may be true (though I have no idea how we would prove it) that the majority of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world still go to church and mass to learn from someone in the priestly office, to receive the sacrament from he or she, their priest, and to hear the words of grace proclaimed by someone they call "Father" or maybe even "Mother."

Maybe this is a good time to educate ourselves, move pass the punchlines, properly evaluate the headlines, and get beyond the fiction about the priests in our world and in our communities. Maybe as we look to understanding the priestly office of Jesus we might understand those in our lives who mediate grace, who guard over ceremony and orthodoxy, and who stand for the faith when so many others are sitting down. In my mind, this tricolon of roles defines the role of the priest as well as any. In my mind this understanding makes the priestly role a role worthy of aspiration.