Veggie Puffs

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

Rev. David Williams; 01.29.12

Scripture Lesson:  1 Corinthians 8:1-13

In the Williams family household, there are times certain songs or videos get caught on endless cycling loop.  They just happen to capture the feel of the moment, and so we have to watch them and listen to them again and again and again.  

Years ago, when the boys were small, that loop seemed to involve endless replayings of Thomas the Tank Engine videos.  This was when the floor of our basement looked like the Magical Island of Sodor after a major earthquake, overpriced wooden tracks and bridges and trains strewn everywhere.  There was a blessedly brief period when we were subjected to the endless singing of Elmo, that little red brand icon whose rise to total dominance over Sesame Street was as brutal and controlling as the rise of Sauron in Mordor.  There is no place for Oscar the Grouch or SuperGrover in a land dominated by the unblinking eye of Elmo.

As my sons age, their tastes have fortunately grown closer to their parents.  And so their latest obsession, the movie/comic/video game Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, well, it’s actually kind of, like, totally epic.  The film, in the event you’ve not seen it, involves a young Canadian slacker, who lives a listless and aimless existence.  In order to go out with the girl he’s fallen for, he must first defeat her seven evil exes in mortal martial arts combat.  So, yeah, it’s exactly like high school as I remember it.

Perhaps my favorite is Evil Ex-Boyfriend Number Three, a bass-playing hipster Adonis by the name of Todd.  What makes Todd particularly difficult to defeat in mortal combat is the fact that he is vegan.  As his girlfriend puts it, “Being vegan just makes you better than most people.”

My boys find this particularly amusing, because it’s a great way to poke fun at their vegetarian dad, the sole non-carnivore in the family.  I have many reasons for my vegetarian diet.  It tends to be healthier, although given that a diet comprised entirely of Mountain Dew and Funyuns would be vegetarian, that is not always the case.  It’s better for the environment, as a vegetarian diet takes one-tenth the amount of acreage to support.  It also reduces the amount of suffering you inflict on the world.  There are lots of reasons to be vegetarian.  

But there’s a challenge we vegetarians face.  In our eagerness to let the world know all of the wonderful reasons to be vegetarian, vegetarians can easily become really remarkably annoying people.  Seeking to do right and to be right with the world can easily morph into self-righteousness and arrogance.  You look out at those who just don’t get it, who lack your depth of awareness, your intelligence, your just-plain-betterness, and your sophistication.  You turn up your nose disdainfully at their obvious inferiority.  

This problem also manifests itself among owners of hybrid automobiles and committed users of Apple products.  

Perhaps it’s because I have those three strikes against me that I find the Apostle Paul’s discussion of a form of early Christian vegetarianism so appropriate.  Here, though, what’s worth noting is that the smug folks weren’t the vegetarians.  They were the carnivores.

The issue for early Christians who chose not to eat meat was not that they were concerned about cholesterol, or that they were worried about the state of creation.  Instead, the issue was consuming meat that had been sacrificed to idols.  This generally isn’t a concern when we stop by McDonalds or Red Robin or White Castle, but back in the first century, it was a real thing.

Meat in the highly dynamic, pluralistic culture of the Greco-Roman world was often...well... “used meat.”    That meant that before it went for sale in the marketplace, the animal involved had been sacrificed at the altar of one of the almost countless gods of the ancient world.  While a small amount of the sacrifice would have been burned, most of the rest of an animal would have been either 1) consumed by the priests/priestesses of whatever god it was sacrificed to or 2) sold to the market as income for that particular temple.  

For some early Christians, this was a major issue.  They’d just converted to the movement that worshipped Yeshua Ben Yahweh, and they knew that they were supposed to only worship one God.   Having rejected all other gods, they were terrified that they might somehow be violating their relationship with Christ and their Creator if they noshed on some BBQ ribs that had been sacrificed to Asherah.

Corinth, being a port town, was filled with temples and altars.  It was chock-full of ancient religions and mystery cults.  For some of the fledgling Christians in the town, there was very real fear that they might accidentally lose their Jesus connection if they ate pagan meat.

For others, that was just absurd.  And it was to those others that Paul directed this section of his letter.  Paul was in regular contact with members of the Corinthian church, so he knew how they talked.  He knew the sayings that were passed among the smarter Corinthians, the more theologically nimble Corinthians, and more worldly wise Corinthians.

Those sharper souls were convinced they had nothing to worry about, and had summarized their lack of worry into a few pithy phrases.  Paul mirrors those phrases back to them in this little section of scripture.  “All of us possess knowledge.”  “No idol in the world really exists.”  “There is no God but one.”  “Food will not bring us close to God.”

In reflecting those sayings back to the Corinthians, Paul is not rejecting them.  In fact, Paul is showing that he believes exactly the same things.  For those whose grasp of the faith was strong, and who understand that from that strength they are free to eat and act and live in ways that stand beyond the grasp of others, Paul says:  “We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.”  He agrees, and shows that he shares their understanding of the world.

What he does not share is their willingness to condemn or mock those fledgling Christians who lack the depth of understanding that he shares.  He acknowledges that they are “weak,” sure.  But what he will not do is act and live in ways that subvert what faith the weak do have.  If you love others, you don’t live that way.  Possessing knowledge is not enough.  As Paul puts it, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

Though he concedes the “correctness” of the stronger position, he refuses to commit to doing anything other than being supportive and gracious to those who do not hold it.

The task of every Christian, even in disagreement, even when you know you’re right, even when your absolute correctness is utterly and empirically provable to any halfway sentient being, your task is to love and to build up.

It’s a challenge that has faced pretty much every era of the two millennia of Christianity.   Lately, that struggle between perspectives has manifested itself in the argument between conservatives and progressives about what the appropriate response of the church should be to same sex relationships.   In the Presbyterian church, that argument has been going on for the last twenty five years.  This last month in Orlando, a group of two thousand conservative Presbyterians began taking the first step towards creating a new denomination.  The Presbyterian Church (USA) seems closer than ever to splitting apart.

Whether the conservatives are the strong in faith and progressives are the weak or vice versa is a matter I won’t take up here.  As a Prius-owning vegetarian Apple-phile, my own biases may be showing a bit on that front.  But no matter what theological certainty grasps us, no matter what our practice, our call as followers of the Nazarene is and will always be to build up the other.

In our compulsively adversarial culture, that’s a difficult thing to admit.  We don’t want to yield.  We don’t want to set aside our strength, and seek what grace lives in those we consider weaker than ourselves.  That doesn’t mean being silent about what we believe.  But what it does mean is never seeking to wound, and never seeking to destroy, and never causing another to fall.

All may have knowledge, but we are called not just to know.  Knowledge alone can puff us up, as empty of grace as a Cheez Doodle is empty of nutrition.  Instead, we are called to look to all, and to love, and to build up.  Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.

The Present Form

Poolesville Presbyterian Church
01.22.12; Rev. David Williams




Scripture Lesson: 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31


Over the past several years, one of the recurring threads of chatter

in the Williams family minivan on the way to swimming or tutoring or

music lessons has been about how human civilization will come to an

end. Apparently, it comes down to one of two options, and there is

some debate as to which one will win out in the end.




Option number one, of course, is the zombie apocalypse. This scenario

involves mindless animated undead roaming dead-eyed through

the land, oblivious to anything but the tasty, tasty brains of the few

living human beings still struggling to get by. Conversation around

this end-times option typically involves discussion of potential

causes and survival tactics, along with the recognition that given how

people drive in traffic around here, it may already be well under way.




Option number two is the robot uprising. The first sign of this event

will come when our Roomba retreats under the sofa and makes

growling noises, and will be finally confirmed when Siri 2.0 informs

us that she’ll be asking the questions now. While our planning for

the zombie apocalypse involves waiting it out in a hardened shelter,

the Williams family plan for surviving the robot uprising involves one

simple mantra: side with the robots.




Then there’s Option number three. That involves the arrival of the

K’tall harvester fleet in low earth orbit, and this one we prefer not

to talk about. Don’t want to start a panic, after all.




These are, of course, just the sort of silly conversations that one

has when one has kids, but I think there’s a certain fascination with

the end of things that draws our interest. That fascination goes

beyond the sturm und drang, thunder and lighting spectacle that we

envision going along with the end of things as we know them. Much of

what makes the whole end-of-things speculation so fascinating is a

subversive yearning in our day-to-day lives, a yearning that

says...what if everything changed? What if none of the things that

make up the familiar pattern of our existence counted for anything any

more?




While we rarely have these thoughts during the more joyous moments of

life, they are prone to surfacing when things seem particularly

meaningless. If we’re stuck in a long commute or in an endless

meeting that’s going nowhere, we wonder why things must be this way.

If we’re listening to a lecture on a subject that will have no

pertinence to our future, we wonder why things must be this way. If

we’re watching a national political debate that seems more about

posturing and psychodrama than it does about the actual issues facing

our nation, the yearning grows even stronger.




Why can’t things be different? Why can’t the world shake, and shift

the ground out from under us, and suddenly, everything become new?




The Apostle Paul saw the world that way. His view of things didn’t

involve aliens or robots or zombies, but for Paul, every action and

thought and moment was seen in the light of apocalypse. In each of

the seven letters that were undisputedly written by Paul in the New

Testament, Paul appears driven by a similar conviction...that the

world in its present form is passing away, and a new thing is being

unveiled. Apocalypse just means “unveiling,” after all.




If you stretch your mind way back to last week, you might recall that

the trading city of Corinth was renowned for being obsessed with

social status and roles within culture. That set of values worked its

way deeply into the church in Corinth, which meant that Paul spent a

great deal of time trying to get them to get past that dog-eat-dog

mentality. He struggled repeatedly to get them to grasp how deeply

the divisions and distinctions they used to categorize one another

meant nothing now that they had committed themselves to the teachings

of Jesus of Nazareth.




In chapter seven of first Corinthians, Paul dedicates most of the

chapter to explaining how Christian folk should live as they move

through their lives in the world. In particular, he talks to the

people of the Corinthian church about how men and women should live in

relationship to one another. This is where Paul gets into talking

about marriage, and commitments, and the dynamic between the genders.

It’s thoughtful, practical, textured-vegetable-protein-and-potatoes

stuff, right up until the passage I just read. Then, things change,

and what he has to say is a bit difficult for us to hear.




That tends to be the case with a most of what Paul says, actually, but

this little section is particularly challenging. It’s challenging

because while Paul describes marriage with a depth of grace and

understanding, we find him saying bizarre, awkward things like in

verse 29 “let those who have wives be as though they had none.” I

would make a joke about this being Newt Gingrich’s favorite passage of

scripture, but that would be overly political of me. Although if I

said it was also Bill Clinton’s, that might make it more non-partisan.

Best not to go there, I think. Whichever way, it’s an odd thing

to hear the Bible say about the covenant of marriage.




What Paul goes on to say is even harder to hear. Those who mourn

should be as they were not mourning? Those who rejoice, like they’re

not? How can you tell folks who are experiencing the extremes of

human emotion that they should live as if they weren’t experiencing

them? What could he possibly be getting at here?




For Paul, the reason the form of these things meant so little was that

because of Jesus, the world was in the process of being completely

changed. When Paul says in verse 31 that the present form of the

world is passing away, he uses the Greek word schema. That word,

which is the root for English words like “scheme” or “schematics,”

means structure or framework or order.




All those things that give structure to our existence...the

relationships, the work, the school, the kids, the stuff, all of

it...are viewed by Paul as subordinate at best, and distractions at

worst. For Paul, all of them are secondary to the transforming

message of the Nazarene.




Paul heard the words that came from the lips of Jesus in today’s

passage from Mark’s Gospel and took them seriously. When Jesus says

in Mark 1:15 that “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has

come near; repent, and believe in the good news,” Paul takes him at

his word. There is every evidence in the writings, theology, and

teachings of Paul that he sees the apocalyptic fulfillment of the

Kingdom Jesus proclaimed as being not just about to happen, but

actually in the process of happening.




According to the Nazarene and Paul, his most prolific disciple, the

present form was passing away.




Hearing this, we should struggle with it.




We struggle to see how we’re supposed to apply what Paul is telling

us. How are we to actually DO this? It’s a matter of priorities.

Our faith does not demand that we abandon the commitments we have

made. We can be, as Paul indicates, married, or working, or

experiencing the joys and sorrows of life. What Paul asks us to do,

though, is to give primacy to Jesus in defining how those things play

out. In the context of our relationships with others and the world,

we’re asked to live into those relationships in such a way that both

Jesus and the love of God are evident in our every action.




That manner of life is what Paul describes in verse 35 of chapter 7,

where the schema of this world is intentionally contrasted with the

euschemon...the “good scheme” or the “good order” of our relationship

with God. The good form of life requires that we be defined by a

radical love God and stranger, no matter what. Other relationships,

no matter how blessed or significant, cannot crowd that out. The

demands of work and business and the maintenance of our stuff cannot

crowd that out. If we weep, or are in the midst of celebration, that

can’t be crowded out.




That is the new form that is being unveiled. It still is. Let it be

so, for you and for me, AMEN.

Not It

Poolesville Presbyterian Church 
01.15.12; Rev. David Williams 


Scripture Lesson:  1 Corinthians 6:12-20 

 In struggling through my reading and your hearing of today’s text, my first reaction to it is similar to one often encountered by parents of young children as they negotiate the dynamics of our culture.

The family has gathered for restful togetherness on a Friday night after dinner, curled up with popcorn around the glow of lighted electric diodes radiating from a big corner flat screen.  The film for the evening is one remembered from long ago, through the fondly hazy recollection of many years.  The earnest little faces of your younglings beam at the screen as the movie begins, and for a while, all is well.

Then, about ten minutes in, there’s a tickle in your memory.   Did I watch this in the theater?  Or did I see an version edited for televis...

As that thought struggles to surface, you’re suddenly reminded, simultaneously, of two things.  First, PG movies back in the 1980s didn’t involve the same vocabulary that they do today, and second, your memory of the dialog in movies isn’t always quite as reliable as you thought.  

With that reminder, the parents in the room turn slightly white, and the little ones giggle, as one or more of them say with barely constrained glee, “Oooooh!  Daddy!  THAT was inappropriate!”

This is, of course, an entirely hypothetical situation.  Ahem.

And Paul, well, Paul feels inappropriate today.  Yes, it’s scripture, and yes, it’s part of the great sacred story of our tradition, but, really?   Reading through this excerpt from 1 Corinthians 6 feels like that moment after Thanksgiving Dinner when that relative who loves telling off color jokes starts in on the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the oh no, you’re not going to tell THAT joke, and you try to shush him because UNCLE PAUL, there are CHILDREN in the ROOM, but he Just. Won’t.  Stop.

Again, this is entirely hypothetical.

So how to approach this one?  What’s the appropriate illustration for such an awkwardly inappropriate passage?    I mean, there are plenty of images out there for exploring the concepts the Apostle Paul wants us to explore, but very few are what I’d describe as sanctuary appropriate.  Having been tagged by this passage in the cycle of readings, I really do want to cry out...NOT IT!

And so, instead, I’ll do what Presbyterian pastors generally do when they’re forced to deal with a problematic passage.  Let’s take a look at the history and the language a bit more closely, why don’t we?

Paul’s letters to the church at Corinth spring from his deep care for this endlessly troubled community. Corinth was a centrally located trading hub in the Roman Empire, and was legendary for it’s dog-eat-dog, do anything to get ahead, I’m-gonna-get-me-mine mentality.  In part, this was because Corinth was a city recently repopulated by Rome.  Everyone there was new, and unlike the more rigidly structured hierarchy in more established corners of the Empire, the residents of that city were able to rise and fall based on their skills, their abilities, or sheer self-centered ruthlessness. Proving yourself a winner and back-stabbing your way up the social ladder of prosperity was the Corinthian way.

It’s what Corinthians did, to the point that Roman historians and social commentators at the time invariably mention what a heartless, hyper-competitive, uncharitable, and self-absorbed city Corinth was.   Corinthians did not need reality television.  They were reality television.

As tends to be the case in such communities, there was a strong tendency to view other people as objects, as rungs in the social ladder, as convenient stepping stones and nothing more. This approach to other human beings was completely opposed to the ethic of love that is at the center of Christ’s teachings.  As the Apostle Paul struggled to convey that really rather basic principle to the Corinthians, one of the primary ways they struggled with fulfilling the requirements of the Christian life was through their often predatory approaches to one another.

For Paul, this manifested itself most intensely in the way that the Corinthians commonly approached the most intimate relationships in their lives. In this passage, Paul is playing with Greek words in a way it’s a bit hard for us to grasp in the English.  The word that’s translated “prostitute” in verses 15 and 16 in the New Revised Standard version, and translated “harlot” in older English versions, that word is the Greek word porne.  The word “fornication” in verses 13 and 18 is porneian, and has exactly the same root.  The connection between the two, in Paul’s original language, goes deeper than we tend to hear in our own language.

In connecting forms of porneia, Paul is making a point.  If human intimacy was approached as a transaction, in which a partner was viewed as just an object to be purchased, then the new life Paul taught as he spread the Gospel was threatened. For Paul, the purpose of Christian life was to be utterly personally transformed by our connection to the love of God.  Through our connection to that love, which Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13 as the single highest and most important gift shared by all Christians, we are also connected to one another in love, a love that defines our ethical interactions.

The Christian life, if it is to mean anything, demands that we recognize that we are woven up together by the love of God.  None of us are objects.  None of us are things. While this passage is typically viewed as just being about Christian sexual ethics, I think it’s important to realize that while Paul’s point should be well taken in that realm of adult moral life, it goes further than that.

Paul gets so irritated at porneia because it is the form of relationship that is the complete opposite of selfless, compassionate agape love.  That way of being in relationship is diametrically opposed to our connection to one another in Christ.   Porneia is transactional relationship.  Porneia is objectified relationship, in which another human being becomes viewed as less than human.   In response to this, there are things we need to open our eyes to if we’re to live into being the transformed persons Christ intends us to be.


First, we have to recognize porneia in culture.  Our society, like the community that formed in Corinth, is one that is unusually prone to objectification and commodification.  We are, after all, encouraged to think of ourselves first and foremost as consumers.   We are bombarded by images of product, and images of other human beings who exist primarily to provide us with products and services, or sell us products and services. We can easily stop treating them as human, worthy of love.  Instead, they become inanimate means to the end of our profit or satisfaction.

Porneia is not just something that crawls and seethes in the darker recesses of the Internet.   It is a state of mind that increasingly permeates our society, one that needs to be resisted if we are to remain true to our calling to pursue Christ’s Kingdom grace.

Second, we need to recognize the impact of porneia in ourselves.  As Paul tells us in verse 18, porneia is not just a sin against another being.  It is a sin against our own body.   How so?  Paul is often accused, unfairly and inaccurately, of being one of those folks who divide up the spiritual realm from the physical.  But so much of Paul’s teaching is about the transformation of our physical reality, as we shift ourselves into a life conformed to the grace of the spirit of the living God.  The purpose of Christian faith is the transformation of our lives, right here in this world.  Our actions in the now matter.  The way we live and act here in the meat and and blood and bone of our being matters. When we live as if others are objects, things that can be purchased, used, and discarded, then we are living outside of the bounds of the Kingdom of grace that Christ proclaimed.

Living that way effects us.  It changes us.    Those who treat others as not a you, or a thou, but an “IT,” those souls are the ones that most quickly become an “IT” themselves.  That relationship weaves its way into our being.

Don’t be “IT.”   Let it not be so, for you and for me, AMEN.

Another Road

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

01.08.12; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Matthew 2:1-12

This is a great week to be in the virtue industry.  The moment that

ball drops in Times Square and the odometer rolls over on another year

of our lives, those of us who are in the business of being good are

briefly rolling in gravy.

Because out there in the world, people hope for a life that will be

different in the New Year.  They’ve said that they’re finally going to

get around to doing the things that for some reason they just couldn’t

get around to doing in 2011.  And so we realize that our midsections

are never going to get toned if we eat only Little Debbie Snack Cakes

for breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, high tea, and dinner, plus

that little sumthin’ sumthin’ right before bed ‘cause we’re feeling a

bit snackish.

We’re never going to feel physically well again if our only exposure

to aerobic activity is watching it on ESPN 5 for five hours straight

on a Sunday evening.  Yes, we may be deeply vested in the life

changing banter we get from the beefy guys at the Sportcenter, and

eager to hear their analysis of the results of today’s Extreme

Downhill Waterpolo National Championships.  But calories don’t burn

themselves vicariously, and coupling that with the Little Debbie Snack

Cakes really aren’t doing us any favors.

Now, in a brief moment of culturally-induced clarity, we’ve realized

we need to go down another road.  The virtue industry knows this.  And

so during this week after the new year, our media is always

supersaturated with marketing for diet plans and exercise machines and

gyms.   The ads jabbering in the commercial lulls of the morning news

show my wife watches as she gets ready for work have changed.

During one single commercial break this week, I counted four ads for

diet plans.  There was one in which substantially slimmer pop star

Jennifer Hudson warbled inspirationally as newly slender people smiled

in front of pictures of their former selves.   What she was singing

sounded like Christian Contemporary Music, but given the focus of the

camera, I think the lyrics had something to do with her thighs.  There

was another one in which a middle aged woman who had been surgically

altered to look like Marie Osmond circa 1977 spoke earnestly into the

camera in a room filled with pastel furniture and suffused with warm

light.

And in between those ads, there was another ad, in which young, fit,

and smiling people danced around and waved huge fistfuls of

multicolored Twizzlers at the the camera.  Because after you’ve been

good, well, what harm could a one pound bag of Twizzlers do?   The

problem, of course, is that if you are intending to make a lasting,

deep, and substantial change in your life, consumer culture cannot

help you.

Consumer culture exists to serve up the right now, the immediate, the

quick fix for four easy installments of $19.95.  But it will not

change you, not permanently.  It does not want you to change

permanently.  It wants you back down that same path again next year,

credit card in hand.

Real transformation does not involve going back down that path.   And

welcoming in real transformation is part of the purpose of the story

of Epiphany in the Gospel of Matthew today.  Matthew’s Gospel is told

from a deeply Jewish perspective, and the story of the arrival of the

wise men from the East reflects a completely different tradition than

that of the one from Luke that we retell every Christmas.  From that

perspective, what mattered was affirming how the birth of Christ

reflected an anticipated change in the order of power in the world.

To do this, Matthew relentlessly places the events in the life of

Jesus into the context of Torah and the writings of the prophets.

The arrival of the wise men from the East marked just such an

affirmation.  It’s worth noting that these wise men were not kings in

their likely native lands of Persia or Babylon, despite what we’re

singing today.  The word used for them in Matthew’s Gospel is magoi,

which can be rendered “wise men” but is more accurately rendered as

“astrologer.”  The only other place in the New Testament where this

word is used is in Acts 13, verses six and eight, and there, it gets

translated as “sorcerer.”

As the story goes, when these three wizards in the Jerusalem court of

the Herodian dynasty, it causes a bit of panic.  They’ve shown up to

honor the birth of a king, bringing gold from Griffindor, frankincense

from Hufflepuff, and myrrh from Ravenclaw.  This meant trouble for

Herod.

The Herodian dynasty had been in power since the year 76 BCE.  The

family business was being in power and holding on to power.  Herod

Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee and the province of Perea, had

learned all about the family business from his father, Herod the

Great.   He’d watched his father’s unwaveringly obedient attitude

towards Rome.  He’d seen the fortresses that his father had built

throughout the Judean countryside to insure obedience.  He’d watched

his father execute not just those who opposed him from outside the

family, but also one of his own wives and three of his sons.  Like his

half-brother Herod Philip, he kept power in the family by making a

point of marrying his own niece.  Reading through the Herodian family

tree, the most natural response is “Ewwww.”

The grip that Herod and his literally incestuous kin had over Judah

was powerful, and any change meant a threat to that bitterly won

control.    Yet the negative form of power that Herod embodied was to

be completely opposed by the child who had been born in Bethlehem.

Though the magi first travel to meet with Herod, and are affirmed in

their journey by the reflections of the priests, who recall the

teachings of Isaiah, what matters is that their destination is not the

seat of power, but a humble home far from the center of power.

The movement of these wise men towards Bethlehem was driven by their

ability to observe interpret the signs of transformation.  Having

discovered the true nature of that change in Christ, they continued to

be open to signs of the direction they should follow.  Instead of

being taken in by the hypocritical and self-serving power of Herod,

they listened to the more subtle warnings given in their dreams.

Having left corrupt power behind them, they did not return to it, but

chose another road.

In this season when we find ourselves more aware of the passing of

time and yearning for something new, to move past the powers of the

past that have kept us as broken as the Herodians kept Judah, there

are lessons worth learning from the wise actions of those magi.

Seek the True.  There are countless stars that shine around us and

seek to guide us.  Wealth and power, physical desire and endless

trivial distractions, all of these things shine as bright as the

fortresses and palaces and decadent indulgences of Herod.  They draw

the attention of our eyes, and the hunger of our hearts.

But though we walk those centers of power daily, they cannot offer us

joy.  They only offer more hunger, and more fear, and more grasping.

The bright light of grace and forgiveness offered by Christ is

something utterly different.

Be Attentive.  Be attentive to that place where our loving and

infinitely-creative God is working to transform you.  If you’re paying

attention to your own life, to the places where you’re living into

being the human being God made you to be, then you’ll be more likely

to be aware of those directions you need to travel to encounter real

and living change.   Here, we all need to avoid our attentiveness

being clouded by either cynicism and complacency.

If we’re in a place of struggle or hardship, weighed down by broken

relationships or shattered hopes, it’s easy to give up on the

possibility of encountering deeper joy in life.   Cynicism congeals

like a scab across our spiritual wounds, and we hide behind it and the

dark comfort of its hardness.  From that place, you do not look, and

you do not seek, because you have given up.   If you are not open to

the possibility of a gracious transformation that shines before you,

you’ll miss it.

If we’re in a place where we’re comfortable in our lives, we can

easily drift into a life where we do not grow.  We simply move along

in a blind pattern, repeating the rote actions of our day-to-day, as

thoughtless as an ant following a pheromone trail.  If you are not

attentive to the necessity for growth that comes with real life in

Christ, you’ll just roll on past it.

Be attentive, then.  In order to change, we have to be oriented towards it.

Don’t Go Back.  When you encounter that place of transformation, don’t

go back.  Take another road.  When you’ve encountered transforming

grace, be aware that those places of controlling power in your life

will want you to come back their way.  Addictions and old resentments,

self-loathing and unresolved angers, these things can be eager to

recast control over your life.  Those patterns of thinking cling as

ferociously and desperately to power as Herod.   Don’t return along

that path, and allow the Herods of your own spirit to destroy the

possibility of the new.  Let whatever new grace God has lead you to

encounter change the way of your walk.

This is easy to say, of course.  But translating that intent into

lasting action, not falling back but moving forward, that’s not an

easy thing.  Even the parts of our pasts we most despise are

ourselves, and dying to that self is not an easy thing.  It is not

like a purchase.  Unlike commodified change, change based on a

material transaction, it involves relationship.  It is not done alone,

but by a self changed by faith in God and love for neighbor, drawing

support and strength and guidance from both.

Every moment God has given us offers that potential for change and

transformation.   Be attentive for it, seek what is truly good, and

when you’ve found it, don’t go back down that old dark road.

In this New Year, let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.