Posts Tagged ‘Matthew’

Sunday, April 21, 2013
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Acts 9:36-43

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

That was a week. By the pure volume of news about things blowing up, flooding, people dying, and now earthquakes, this past week will be one that is not easily forgotten. Weeks like that make me happy that I am not a part of the constant, always-on news cycle anymore. They remind me why I got rid of cable.

Yet, even while getting all my news from two-minute YouTube clips and the Chicago Tribune’s tweets, I got enough exposure to know this was going to be a week when I was going to have to prepare something else for my Sunday sermon. And, for as much as I may have like to, I couldn’t just sigh. I had to say something different.

It didn’t start that way though. On Monday night, I wasn’t planning on changing my direction at all. Because we are still in the Easter season … the season of new life.

And I could still talk about the power of resurrection that was seen in those people ripping away at the mess of scaffolding left by the two bombs that went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I could talk about the goodness that was seen in all the first responders and ordinary people that ran toward the broken windows and bodies.

On Monday night, I wasn’t planning on changing direction out of principle. Because, in too many places in the world, Monday’s events alone wouldn’t have been enough to require a change.

By Monday night, more people had been murdered by guns in Chicago than had died in Boston in the same 24 hour period.

By Monday night, more had been murdered in bombings in Iraq and Syria in 24 hours than were killed by guns in Chicago all of last year. And, if I’m honest, I wouldn’t have changed direction because of either of those Mondays.

Wednesday came, and I got caught up in the industrial explosion in Texas, but wasn’t going to change direction for that. I didn’t figure you’d want to hear me talk for 20 minutes about the need for us to hold the owners of that fertilizer plant accountable in the same way we would those who set off the bombs in Boston.

And then there was the storm that began that night and kept on going until well into Thursday. And then there were the floods that followed.

And I pondered changing the text to the story of great flood in Genesis, to point to the faithfulness of Noah and family as they endured the rain and the months of wondering. I figured that would be how long we’d have to wait before anyone was identified in the Boston bombings. And I would have tasked us with remembering the good news that a rainbow is coming. Because, let’s face it, at Holy Covenant we love rainbows. (more…)

Sunday, March 31, 2013
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

John 20:1-18

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I am no good at gardening. If you want a plant to die, entrust it to me. Those “20 of the Easiest Houseplants” things you find on the internet read like an indictment hearing at which I am being charged with herbicide. They’ve all been victims to my lack of skill.

If there was an app for gardening … like, I don’t know, “Cultivating Ninja” or “Angry Spades” … I might be pretty good at that. Sadly though, my Android thumbs offer little to the life that awaits inside seeds and bulbs. It is frustrating to me, because it should be pretty easy. I mean, plants just grow in the wild all over the place ON THEIR OWN.

But something happens when one of those plants ends up in my window sill or on fire escape. I’m pretty sure that is because I just don’t give the plants the time, energy and, yes — even love — that they need.

Because I am the angel of death to every orchid and bean sprout that comes my way, I admire people who can garden. My grandfather is one of those people. Back when I was a kid, he practically lived in his garden. I remember pulling up in my grandparents driveway, and he would emerge from the sunflowers and sweet corn as if he were one of the characters in A Field of Dreams. Behind those tall plants were beans, peppers, tomatoes and all kinds of other things I would never eat back then.

Behind the house, he also kept an ornamental garden. Inside the house, there were wire shelves full of plants. Some of those were old. He was into “heirloom plants” long before I knew what those words meant. To this day, he has — on a coffee table — one that I got in a Happy Meal in 1980. And in the basement, there were tables covered with seeds and sprouts. He’d be down there, in that old farmhouse basement with the dirt floor, doing the delicate work of caring for those fragile little starts at all times of day and night. He’s the first person I ever met that was truly passionate about something. He may be my grandfather, but to most who know him, he’s a gardener.

When describing the place where Jesus was buried, the author of John makes it a point to tell us that Jesus’ tomb was in a garden. This feels like a bit of a stretch. Even if you’re not a terminator of flowers, it isn’t easy to see a graveyard as a garden.

And that’s not just because of all the sun-faded plastic flowers that fill the headstone vases in graveyards today. Our memories are caught up in how things were when we left them there. It is hard to live in the beauty that is created by those tending to the earth. That beauty is obscured by the past … by what is now no more.

And like Mary, we weep. Now, Mary weeps because she believes she’s the victim of a crime. She had every reason to believe grave robbers had been there and stolen Jesus’ body. The stone moved; the entrance open. (They were meticulous thieves, though, as some of the linens had been rolled up). Mary weeps because the disciples decide to take off and go home after doing very little to solve the mystery. And Mary weeps because she he has been here before … when her brother Lazarus died. Jesus was MIA then, too. (more…)

Sunday, March 10, 2013
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Luke 6:20-31

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Many of you know that I have spent great deal of time doing ministry in Lithuania. Apart from the birth of my daughter, my time in that Eastern European nation may be the most important and formational “God” experience I’ve ever had. In two week doses over a period of three years, I was given a chance to submit my privilege so that others could experience mercy and the beginnings of justice.

Rarely did I experience a moment that failed to humble me: the stories about past struggles; the stigmas of class and race that stuck with them.

Many of the people could tell stories about how their families have been abused by the powerful going back 10 generations. They were Žemaitijans … the country folk … the peasants … literally the “lowlanders.”

Their farms were the marching grounds for warring nations. They were the ones who took the brunt of the blows dealt by Napoleon and the Kaizer. They were the ones the Czar kidnapped and put into his army. They were the ones sent to Hitler’s death camps. They were the ones sent to Siberia by Stalin.

The Žemaitijans … the people from the flat ground … were those who Western Europe and Russia had been walking upon for nearly 400 years. For just as long, they’d been expected to appeal to the powers on high for the humblest of things … things like the basics of food and water, things like a word from their loved ones who were being “reprogrammed” and were imprisoned. Things like traveling to visit family, or speaking their native language.

In Lithuania, the Žemaitijans understood what it meant to be on the bottom of a culture.

Because of this, I was astonished that the Žemaitijans had never thought of Jesus as being a liberator … as someone who was at work to set them free from this vicious cycle of poverty and struggle. Actually, to them, Jesus was the voice of the powerful … the one who demanded their obedience to the state.

So the first time I preached there, I used the text we just heard from Luke’s gospel … Jesus’ sermon that points out blessings of happiness and terrible woes. It is a message full of world-turning, scale-tipping transformation. And they had heard it before. You’ve probably heard it in some form before, too.

You’ve maybe heard it as they had, from Matthew’s gospel in what has become known as “The Sermon on the Mount.” But Luke has this sermon in a different setting.

In the verse before our lesson for today, Luke says Jesus went down to the Lowlands. Jesus went down to be with the people.

It may seem elementary to us, but when those words were said in Lithuania, they understood Jesus in a whole new way. I wish you could have seen their eyes light up when the heard this. They heard their name in the midst of all this. Luke’s Jesus makes it clear: the liberation that God is bringing through him will be one that is rooted where the ordinary people are. In the lowlands. In the Žemaitija. (more…)

Sunday, February 17, 2013
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Luke 4:1-13

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Well, welcome to Lent. If you couldn’t tell by all the references to 40-day journeys in the liturgy and the purple fabric on the table, you probably realized it was Lent by walking around town on Wednesday and seeing a bunch of people with dirty foreheads. It is somewhat ironic that we begin our lenten fast by putting dirt on our face the same day we’re told by Jesus to keep our faces clean when we fast and pray.

Not to say I don’t appreciate the mark of the cross on people’s heads. It makes my job a lot easier. Because I know who to target with my Sunday worship invites. I see a clean head, I swoop in like a ninja. I’m full of grace and hospitality, and I say something like, “You look like you could use a friend about now. I bet you’re feeling alone among all us crazy cross-heads. You should come by my church. I’ll save some dirt for you. Oh, and I can tell you more about Jesus.”

Ok, so that never happens. I’m not that kind of pastor.

But when people discover I am clergy, I do end up talking about Jesus. A lot. Because I am that kind of pastor … which usually gets me into trouble, because I either end up talking about stuff that riles up folk who understand Jesus in a much more narrow way than I do, OR I end up doing something really dumb. Like the time I looked quizzically at a guy at a bus stop in Aurora who asked me “So who is Jesus, anyway?”

And I was like, “Really? Are you serious? He’s only one of the best known names in the world. The church has done a lot of good things and even more of the terrible variety to make sure of that.”

And then he gave me the look that I gave him. I know, not the finest evangelism moment in history. I remember thinking “Billy Graham is not impressed.”

He was serious!

And at that moment, I wished I were part of one of those narrow way denominations, and I had a tract in my pocket. Because it was a really great question. And it wasn’t one I thought I could answer in the two minutes we had. He and I ended up taking the conversation to Twitter, and it was very meaningful. (more…)

Sunday, February 10, 2013
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Luke 9:28-43

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It is probably no accident that the people with the most popularity in our culture are entertainers. They provide us with escapism. They give us a release valve. In a world where so much is up in the air, they are a constant. We know what they’ll do. We know all their moves. We know when the encore is coming. The rhythm of their songs and steps is as calming to us as a mother’s heartbeat is to the child in her womb. Their presence in the theatres and arenas gives us the illusion of an intimacy that makes us squirm with delight. Just watch the footage from that Beatles performance on Ed Sullivan and you’ll see this. Or check out the view counter on Korean pop star “Psy”s YouTube page. Or have a look at how many followers Bieber and Gaga have on Twitter. They aren’t people to us, just performers: numbers on a jersey, characters in a script. Personas. They exist only in the two-dimensional world of the screen, or they are leashed to a guitar cable, or caged behind boards and glass.

And because of this, we make them more popular than educators and physicians … being larger that life, they are bigger than presidents and generals. And yes, in some ways, they are bigger than Jesus. I’d imagine that this image of the entertainer may have something to do with the pushback I often hear from people when we bring the work of personas like Bono and Bob and the Beatles into worship.

This is supposed to be a different space, we say. This is supposed to be the place where people are free to be people and deal with all the complexities that come with personhood. Worship isn’t an escape from reality. It is the space where we deal in realities … both the distorted reality of life and the beautiful reality we are offered in God’s love. But I’d imagine the pushback also comes because we don’t want reality to ruin our escapism. If we are forced to look at the iconic works of honored entertainers with the lens of God’s reality, we may not like what it shows us about ourselves. Former NBA star Charles Barkley famously agreed when he said “athletes are not role models.”

The same thing happens when entertainers step off the stage and into our realities. It messes with our brains. Once, I saw Quentin Tarantino eating a slice of pizza off a cardboard plate in a food court all by himself. And I was shocked. “That’s not right,” I said. Another time, I saw Bill Nye (the science guy) getting into a elevator with what looked to be three top-dollar prostitutes. That’s not right. And there was the time I watched Florence Henderson get sauced two stools away from me at the bar in a hotel lobby. Mrs. Brady, That’s not right. You’re ruining the mystique! Why won’t you just do what we want you to do? Get on the stage. Step on the court. Put on the uniform. Grab the microphone. Entertain us. Do the your little Macarena, or Gangnam style, or whatever it is today so we can all giggle. Play “Piano Man,” piano man. (more…)

Sunday, February 3, 2013
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Luke 4:22-30

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

One of my television guilty pleasures is watching stuff like Antiques Roadshow, and all the other appraisal programs that have followed in its tracks. (anybody else?) I say it is a guilty pleasure, because I recognize there really little that is more absurd than watching “experts” essentially put price tags on a bunch of stuff that is, for the most part, hideous junk. It doesn’t seem too far removed from following a clerk around at the grocery store as they put price labels on the shelves. “Wow, I wonder how much a can of refried beans is going for today. Oh my! .89 cents?! I have three of those in my kitchen!”

[makes a phone call] “Hey, no tostadas tonight, family. Those beans they have really jumped in value. I want you to put them in the curio cabinet. Right. Between the depression glass and the figurines of the santas driving hot rods. Huh? I don’t know make something else … take the macaroni off the mantle. It’s really depreciated this week.”

It is surprisingly entertaining, though. Some of the pieces are the owner’s pride and joy, and they love them the way only a mother could love a really, really ugly lamp. Some items have been in the family for generations, and they come with a story that grandma told (that turns out to be a lie). Some people know way too much about their stuff. Or at least they think they do. But then the appraiser tells them it is a fake. And each time your jaw drops to the floor along with theirs … their hopes are dashed.

Most of the entertainment comes in watching the tragedy of expectations being reduced to pennies on the dollar.

There was a moment on the British version of the show (watch it here yourself), where an older gentleman brings for appraisal a piece of furniture that is, basically, an elaborate washbasin from a steamship. And he tells the appraiser he paid fifty “old pounds” back in the day for this thing … which is like $7500 in our currency today.

And after going through all the features of this wood-framed toilet, the appraiser tells him that it – to the right buyer at a marine auction – could get as much as 400 pounds … or about $600.

“That’s all?” the man says. “My goodness. I’ve had this with me for 50 years. I’ve never kept anything for that long.” The look on his face was one of shock. He couldn’t believe it. For the better part of his life, he had moved this thing around. He probably told his kids not to play with it. He likely bragged about it and showed it off at parties. He had expected everyone else to see it the way he did. But his expectations were sullied by the truth.

I’d imagine the look on that disappointed man’s face was shared by everyone in the synagogue as they heard Jesus conclude his first sermon back in his hometown. In the scripture we heard today, a continuation of the one we heard last week, Jesus has just finished reading from the prophet Isaiah, saying that – as they were hearing it – good news was coming to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, the oppressed were being liberated, the prisoner set free, and that the Jubilee – the time when God would put everything right – had arrived. (more…)

Sunday, January 20, 2013
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I have found myself hiding the words and images of many more social media friends than I would care to admit during the past few weeks. The divisiveness (at least in my circles) has escalated well beyond what I have ever experienced personally … it is worse than it was when I protested in Wisconsin … worse than when I came out as an ally for the inclusivity of all people in the church and in the partnership of marriage … worse than the November election.

It is to the point where I WANT someone to send me 10 invites a day to play Farmville. I am now HOPING that Twitter notification will be from a spammer trying to sell me cut-rate pharmaceuticals.

I thought I had a pretty homogeneous group of friends. But they got spooked when the center of the national debate was moved to guns. And now, just when I thought it was safe to live in today and dream about the future … it’s impending apocalypse all over again.

This time, it’s more than just memes of out-of-context quotes with a picture of Willy Wonka, and fabricated statistics with exponential graphs. No, this is out of control, primal, reptile-brain paranoia.

The murders at Sandy Hook, and the outrage that followed, have people that I know posting photographs of themselves with their guns as if they were children in the army some junta republic. Educated people are buying into the idea that both the shootings in Denver and Connecticut were masterminded by the White House as a way to disarm the nation and establish an Orwellian dictatorship.

But, the champions of the second amendment are not alone in their paranoia. I have friends who are going out of their minds with worry. They are convinced that Rupert Murdoch … using Fox News as a kind of mind control … is orchestrating a plot to kill the president. Pacifists are talking about arming themselves to have protection from those who might revolt if the US ever got to the point of enacting legislation.

Wealthy progressives and conservatives alike are dreaming about isolationist colonies where they can hide from (or with) the guns and not ever have to deal with each other again.

Dear God, people. What will it take for you to just go back to Instagram-ing that slice of pie? Or posting a video of your cat in a box? If you don’t, your hearts may just explode from the stress of it all.

And I may just have to practice another social media fast this upcoming Lent, because my belief that we can have unity as children of God is fading these days. The clear winner in all this is fear. Fear is dominating us.

What shall we do with the divisions in our world? Our nation has set tomorrow aside to remember a man who asked this same question. It was Dr. King that dreamt of a life where all of us let faith motivate us and inspire us to become the beloved community he knew we could be. Our table is adorned in blue today inspired by his dream of peace. Yet that dream seems out of reach. (more…)

Sunday, January 13, 2013
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Isaiah 43:1-7

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Growing up with the name Matthew Johnson was a mixed bag. It is one of those names that didn’t really lend itself to many of the insulting rhymes that kids would start on the playground. The best they could do was to call me “Door Mat,” which was never particularly insulting or very funny, so it didn’t stick.

But Matthew Johnson is also one of those names that was (and still is) all-too ordinary. I went through a phase where I wanted a unique name. Or at least a unique character. There were moments when I was jealous of the kids who had an X, or a Z, or a Q, or a V somewhere in those official words that gave them their identities. Oh, to be John Dietz, or Sandy Quinn, or Marquis Xavier … somebody who had to explain how to spell their name more than “Matthew with two T’s and Johnson with an H.”

As I got older, I discovered that, not only were these names of mine common on their own, but they were also quite common together. And, with that, I also discovered that many of the other Matthew Johnson’s of the world were not upstanding individuals.

When I was in college, another Matthew Johnson on campus with me was arrested after being accused of throwing his girlfriend off a second-floor balcony. The newspapers kept calling my number wanting a statement. I told them it wasn’t me, but they persisted. After I suggested that they check their facts before they end up in a libel suit, one reporter told me I should blame my parents for giving me the name, not them.

The next year, yet another Matthew Johnson made it into the police blotter for drunken and disorderly conduct. And I went through the same thing with a reporter from the local newspaper (who has since won a Pulitzer for his work with a daily here in Chicago). “He is not me,” I said. “We have different addresses. We are different ages.”

When Emily and were in the process of making a home purchase, We had to sign affidavits to assert that we weren’t one of the more than 75 married couples with the same names as us that were bankrupt.

And then, when I entered ministry, I discovered there are A LOT of Reverend Matthew Johnson’s out there. Many of whom have a theology that is vastly different than mine. One is even a United Methodist. He and I used to have arguments on Twitter. Talk about surreal. I’d get notifications saying “Matthew W Johnson [even a common middle initial] just mentioned you in a post.” Weird.

But the best/worst case of my name being all-too-common came four years ago when I discovered another Pastor Matthew Johnson had been pirating my sermons from the church’s website and claiming them as his own.

Still, being confused for someone else because of your name is better than not being called by anything at all. And it is better than being called by words that some confuse for names. (more…)

Sunday, December 30, 2012
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 11

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Breathing has always been a challenge for me. My parents tell me this has been the case since the very beginning. I was premature at birth … in-and-out of the hospital for many of the first months of my life. I had extended stays throughout my childhood. Whenever I have a chest X-Ray these days, the physicians are always concerned with the amount of scar tissue I have in my lungs from all those bouts was asthma … and the bronchitis and pneumonia that came after them. I was the kid who was always had an inhaler on my person in spite of explicit orders from the school to go to the nurse to have my medication administered. I could never run as fast or as long as most of the other kids. I learned at an early age that there were some things that other kids my age just took for granted. And that if you weren’t like them, they would call you names. I was the girl. The pansy. The priss. I learned that lung function was also how gender identity was determined.

These days, I don’t think about it much more. By-in-large, I have outgrown the asthma. I also know my limits. I’ve only had a few serious bouts with it in my adult years … the last of which was over a Christmas break back when Emily and I were first engaged. She drove me to the emergency room from my parents house. We joke about that ride now as “the time she almost killed me.”

It was a blustery and cold night, so she cranked up the heat in the car. She thought it would help. Instead, it just suffocated me all the more to the point where I passed out momentarily. When we finally got to the emergency room, I remember sitting on the edge of the bed, mouth puffed up because of the treatment they were giving me, and seeing Emily sitting in the chair, terrified. Later, she told me “It was like you were drowning without the water.”

We don’t really pay attention to our breathing. Not even I, someone who has had more challenges with it than most, really think about all that is at work and dependent on something as common as breathing.

It isn’t something we control. It is nearly impossible to focus on breathing alone. It is an instinct; something that just happens for most of us … until it doesn’t, and we drown without the water.

The text we have before us this morning/evening is a fairly famous bit of poetry … it is often read at funerals and is widely paraphrased. Everyone … from the stoic eastern european poets to american folk singers … have taken the wisdom of the polar pairs listed to challenge the comfortable and comfort the challenged. Like breathing, it is a bit of scripture that we take for granted. In fact, many may not even recognize that these words come from sacred text.

That’s probably because Ecclesiastes is one of those books that people only break out for this “There is a time for everything” poem. The stuff that surrounds this is from larger sermon that can be read as quite damning of our particular era in history. (more…)

Sunday, December 23, 2012
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Matthew Johnson, preaching

Luke 1:39-56

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

A few years ago, my involvement with the church allowed me to cross paths with young boy who I will call Bradley. He was a pretty ordinary kid … the kind of that you’ve seen riding his bike to the park. He was the kind of kid who probably lives in your neighborhood, or maybe even across the street from you. When Bradley was nine years old, his mother announced to him over his morning bowl of Fruit Loops that he was going to get a new room. She was an imaginative lady, and tried with all her power to pitch this move as some sort of exciting upgrade … like he was a spy who found a new lair just before the enemy forces swooped into his old one. He could hide his treasures in the pyramids, store his things in the trees like Robinson Crusoe, and have great gadgets like James Bond. But treasure in pyramids just meant keeping his toys in the basement, and the trees were pipes in the laundry room for his clothes, and the gadget was really just a pull-out couch in the den.

Since Bradley’s mother did live in an imaginative world, she never really explained the WHY involving his moving … just the where. In a few of his tantrums, so I am told, the question of “WHY!” would arise with cries of dereliction. And every time, his mother simply said, “This is what families do.”

His dad said even less. Ever since an accident at work had limited his mobility, Bradley’s father let the television do all of his imagining and communicating. And Bradley didn’t really mind.

“I could run around the house while mom was at work and do whatever I wanted, because dad couldn’t catch me,” he reflected to me once on his freedom. “He couldn’t get his chair up the stairs. And if he really got mad, I could just leave. He couldn’t get out of the house without mom’s and my help, so there was never any possibility he would follow me.”

His expectation of life … of every new day … was based in these experiences of his family, and the assumptions about who he was within that family. And then he got his new room. The WHY was answered when Bradley’s uncle John arrived with a front seat full of grandma. She was the reason he was being evicted to the imaginary world of ancient and future action heroes. Eighteen months earlier, grandpa had died suddenly and left their estate in quite the mess. After debts were repaid, the only thing left was grandma, two red, soft-side suitcases and a 10-inch thick family photo album. So, grandma took up residence in Bradley’s room and slept on his twin bed … underneath his Darth Vader bedding and the meticulously placed glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Bradley slept on his spy bed which was cleverly disguised as the couch upon which everybody watched TV.

How do you prepare to lose everything you have known and receive with joy the thing that caused the change? For Bradley, that was his grandmother … and for his grandmother, that was the death of her husband, and for the parents, it was the whole mess. To prepare, you have to have some sort of expectations. To prepare, you have to have an idea of the material that will be covered. To prepare for life changes, you have to be ready of all life’s possibilities. For more than 1400 years, the Advent season has implored the body of believers to prepare itself for the coming of Christ … we have been trying to do so by participating in the past waiting of God’s people in the Promised Land; and we hope to do so in the present waiting for Christ’s return. But, I wonder if the church has just been fooling with us for for the past 1400 years. Preparation? For what of God can we possibly prepare? For what of God’s ways can we adequately study to be ready for incarnation? What can we practice to be ready for grace? I ask these questions in light of the way God has come in the past … like the Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition skit … no one expects it. (more…)