I don’t really have any interest here in expounding on this new denomination or the events that have led to its birth.  Given that Protestants have, over the centuries, given birth to thousands of denominations doesn’t make this development terribly remarkable.  What I do want to meditate on a bit, however, is the sermon quotation:  ”The problem is people are going to hell.”

I will admit from the get go that I have not read nor heard the whole of this sermon, and so I am not in a position to comment on the whole of the message that was contained in it.  This part, this going to hell part, is all I want to focus on.  So, let me just make several points:

1.  The quotation probably reflects what many if not most people think that Christianity is really about.  Lots of people think that to be a Christian is all about getting to heaven and avoiding hell, which is reserved for the non-Christians and for the bad, failed Christians.    It is a perspective that says those who follow Jesus (properly) will be led by him into heaven while all the other poor saps will end up in hell.  Which, by the way, is the vast majority of humanity.

2. The quotation does NOT represent my understanding of Christianity, nor that held by many thousands (perhaps millions!) of followers of Jesus around the world.  And, while one can certainly pick and choose passages from the Bible that seem to support the “we’re going to heaven, you’re going to hell” brand of Christianity, a perceptive reading of the Bible will demonstrate rather quickly that such passages do not embody the main point of the any of the biblical books and certainly do not embody the main points of the teaching of Jesus.  An honest, intelligent inquiry into the history of Christianity will also reveal that for most of Christian history, up until just a few short centuries ago, most followers of Jesus did not think that getting to heaven and avoiding hell was the main point of their faith.

3.  The “heaven and hell” paradigm was imposed on the biblical texts and the Christian faith by those who wanted to find it there.  And why would anyone wish to read the texts and the heart of the faith in this way?  The only conclusion I can come to is out of a desire to impose control through fear or out of a desire to experience one’s self and one’s own group as the “chosen few” who get it.  The use of fear to create order is common in human history, and one that churches have not avoided using themselves.  Instilling in people a fear of hell so that they aspire to better behavior can work.  But, it leads to a view of God that is quite distorted.   Who among us would want to cast our children into any sort of hell because they could not figure out how to behave properly?   The idea of God throwing people into hell fails to comprehend the radical nature of God’s love.  A desire to know one’s self to be a part of the “in” group and to know others as being “lost” is a desire that is rooted in the ego and expresses one of the worst tendencies of human nature.  It could hardly be considered a Christian virtue though it is a rather tribal one.

4. Theology does not fall out of heaven fully formed.  The Bible and Christian history contain many threads and strands, some of which churches have made prominent and others of which have lurked in the background.  Theology arises out of the human exploration of and relationship with God, and as such it is always provisional and, to a degree, subjective.  The emergence and persistence of the heaven and hell paradigm in Christianity is a good example of how theology arises.  There was a time when it was not the dominant theological frame.  For several years now, it has been among many Christians, including the most outwardly and materially “successful brands”.  Yet, there have always been Christians who did not fully accept this paradigm, and among many it is now passing away.

5.  What alternative is there to the heaven and hell paradigm?   There is probably more than one.  For me, the alternative paradigm is one of transformation.  Our journey with God is a journey into being as fully human as possible, human in the way God dreams us to be human.  That journey can only happen safely in the context of love.  Rather than seeking to enforce change upon us by imposing fear from outside, God seeks to nurture change within us by embracing us with the radical divine love that is incarnate in Jesus Christ.   The kingdom of heaven (called the kingdom of God in most of the New Testament) is not a place for a few well-behaved, right-believing people to hang out in after they die.  And Jesus never said that it was.  Rather, it is a state of being, and that state is a state of abundant life in a spiritual, not a material sense.  If you want to really get a sense of what this kingdom is like, read the Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel.  The parables of Jesus are really an expansion on those Beatitudes.  And while some of the parables seem to be about heaven and hell, they are really about contrasting a false life with a true life.

St. Paul is often cited when it comes to the heaven and hell paradigm, though wrongly, I think.   He had certain opinions about certain behaviors that seemed to disqualify a person from God’s grace.  A sensitive reading of Paul shows that his thought is more complex.  But whatever we might say of St. Paul, we should not forget that he also wrote these words:  ”For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39).  That comes far closer to capturing the radical depth of God’s love than any talk of going to hell ever will.

In a recent session on the Gospel of Matthew, I found myself struck by Shaia’s interpretation of the baptism of Jesus.  He points out that Matthew locates John’s baptismal ministry at the Jordan River, the place where the people of Israel crossed over from their years of wandering in the wilderness to arrive in the promised land.  John, who is described as having come out of the wilderness to begin his ministry, effectively invites people who receive his baptism to return to the wilderness again.  This point is made clear in Jesus’ own baptism, after which he is “led by the Spirit” into the wilderness.  We are to follow Jesus’ example:  to leave our comfortable and known lives and enter into an unknown wilderness that ultimately brings us to a new beginning, to a new life lived in God through Christ.

But this journey out of the known and familiar, out of our habitual patterns, is difficult.  We are promised new life when we begin the journey, but we cannot see it immediately.  And just as Jesus encountered temptation in the wilderness, so we are tempted to doubt that new life really is possible for us.

For Shaia, what sustains Jesus against his own wilderness temptations – and what will sustain us as well – is the truth contained in the voice that Jesus hears when he emerges from the baptismal waters:  ”This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  (Matthew 3:17).  Jesus knows that he is beloved by God, and this knowledge gives him power as he enters the wilderness of uncertainty and temptation.  It also will give us power in our own wildernesses – if we are really and truly able to believe it.

Sadly, the Christian tradition has often sent a different message.  The various churches have too many times given people the impression that God’s love must somehow be earned, and then told them that they are not possibly good enough to earn or deserve it.  But as Matthew’s Gospel makes clear, this is not the baptismal message.  In baptism, we are invited to enter the wilderness and leave the comfortable and the familiar behind.  We are invited to walk away from the destructive patterns to which our egos so closely cling in order to find true life and true meaning.  The only way this journey is possible is when we know the safety of the beloved.  Then, we are able to have the confidence that, indeed, this journey is possible with God.  In the knowledge of this love, we are truly made free to become the people God dreams us to be.

It is not really a surprising statistic, given the economic situation with which we have been struggling for the last few years.  High unemployment, coupled with debate about whether the wealthy are paying an appropriate level of taxes, have surely served to underline what has been a growing gap between the rich and the poor in this country and a shrinkage of the middle class.  Naturally, as people become more focused on economic distinctions, a sense of tension or conflict can easily emerge.

Reflecting on this put me in mind of a passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (3:27-28):

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

It is rather remarkable that in an age when societal and economic distinctions were far sharper than they are in our own time, and when the gap between rich and poor, privileged and underprivileged was more like a chasm, Paul would be able to write these words.  For him, one of the key transformations that is to happen to a person who embarks on the Christian journey, who is “clothed…with Christ”, is that one no longer sees distinctions among people.  And, indeed, within the Christian community itself, distinctions should disappear all together.  For, we “are one in Christ Jesus.”

Thomas Merton, whose spiritual journey as a monk has become an inspiration to millions, famously had an experience that manifested a version of the same sort of thing that St. Paul is speaking of on a visit to Louisville:

Yesterday, in Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut, suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were, or, could be totally alien to me. As if waking from a dream — the dream of separateness, of the “special” vocation to be different. My vocation does not really make me different from the rest of men or put me is a special category except artificially, juridically. I am still a member of the human race — and what more glorious destiny is there for man, since the Word was made flesh and became, too, a member of the Human Race!                                                                                         From Merton’s Private Journal, March 19, 1958

Merton’s realization of his love for all people, that none of them could be alien to him, and that there really was nothing that essentially separated him from the rest of humanity, reflects this same transformational dynamic that Paul points to in Galatians.  Essentially it is seeing the world with the eyes of Christ, a profound experience of loving one’s neighbor as one’s self and realizing, at a deep level, the oneness of humanity.

And Merton’s experience is an expansion of St. Paul’s insight.  Whereas Paul tends to focus on the way in which distinctions are overcome within the Christian community itself and the oneness that we experience “in Christ”, Merton’s experience makes clear that to see with the eyes of Christ is not simply to realize the unity of those who are in Christ but to also see the unity that transcends even the distinction of the baptized.

As we live in the midst of our own social tensions, I wonder what it would be like for us to take seriously the teaching of St. Paul and the experience of Thomas Merton.  We have become a society that focuses on difference and division.  And, there are some very good reasons why that has happened.  In some respects, that focus is a by-product of pointing to genuine injustice.   As we seek to face that injustice and to transform it, however, I believe we are called to do so from the perspective that we have as a result of our being “in Christ”.  That is, we are called to remember and to see our essential unity.

This coming weekend, we will remember the life and witness of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He was a great champion of the underprivileged, a courageous challenger of the world’s injustices.  It seems clear to me that one of the things that motivated him was precisely this Christ-like seeing of the essential oneness of humanity.  It was this, I think, that was so much a part of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.  May we have this same courage and grace to fight injustice as we hold this vision of the oneness of the human family.

But no such luck with Epiphany.  The first Sunday after January 6 is designated for celebrating the Baptism of Jesus, and so the Epiphany story does get missed by most people most of the time.  Yet, it is well known.  Epiphany is the day when we remember and celebrate the story of the three wise kings who, as told in Matthew’s Gospel, travel from the East to pay a visit to the baby Jesus, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Modern sensibilities tend to get caught up in the “facts” of the story.  ”Did it really happen?”   The more important question is, “Why does Matthew’s Gospel tell this story?”  What is it trying to tell us?

The story of the three kings is employing a rich set of symbols to say something about who Jesus is (as experienced by the early Christian community).  The appearance of the star that guides the kings to Jesus’ birthplace connects Jesus to the cosmos and, in an age that saw the world as flat and heaven (and thus God) as “up there”, it links Jesus to the heavens, to God, indicating that something of great significance has happened and that God is somehow involved.  The fact that the wise kings are described as coming from outside the Jewish community is meant to communicate that this significant event is important not just for the Jewish people, but for all people.  Indeed, given the history of the Jesus movement, one might argue that the three non-Jewish wise guys signify that the Jesus event is not for the Jewish people but for those outside the Jewish community – God truly doing a new thing.  And the gifts which the kings bring have significance, as well.  Gold, of course, is something of great value and has often been associated with kingship.  Thus, the gold emphasizes Jesus’ earthly value and significance.  Frankincense was often used as an offering to the divine, and so it emphasizes Jesus’ divine significance.  Finally, myrrh was used extensively in the ancient world in burial rites, and thus it points us toward Jesus’ eventual death (and resurrection).  Myrrh was also used in healing rituals, and so the gift perhaps indicates a connection between the death and resurrection of Christ and the healing of humanity.

All of the symbolic elements of the story converge in the name given to the day when we remember and celebrate the story:  Epiphany.  The word itself refers to a revelation of divinity.  But it also refers to an insight, often a sudden insight, into the essence or nature of something.  By telling the story of the three kings, Matthew seeks to impress upon us the significance of Jesus for God and for us.   Those who are wise, the story tells us, will realize this significance and be drawn to Jesus.

As we move beyond the Feast of the Epiphany this Friday and into the season of Epiphany, which will take us up to Lent, Matthew’s story also poses for us a couple of questions to contemplate:  What is the significance of Christ in my life?  And, in the spirit of Epiphany, How does my life demonstrate that significance?   For, as the teaching of Jesus makes abundantly clear, it is not enough to claim that Jesus is significant.  We are called to manifest that significance in the living of our lives so that it shines like a star, giving light to a world too often darkened by wisdom that is no wisdom.

Of course, it only comes to the attention of a majority of the faithful when it happens to fall on a Sunday, and so this year we have an opportunity to reflect on the Holy Name of Jesus (which, frankly, is much more useful than reflecting on his circumcision).

Relatively early on in the life of the Christian community, the name of Jesus came to be seen and experienced as powerful.  While it was a very common name during the period in which Jesus of Nazareth came to acquire it, Christians came to see it as having the uncommon power of connecting them to everything that they experienced in Jesus, to everything that he represented.  An entire theology and practice eventually arose around the recitation of the Jesus Prayer, which in its longest form consists of the words, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”   This prayer finds it roots in the Gospels [beginning with the cry of the blind man sitting at the side of the road near Jericho, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me" (Luke 18:38); the ten lepers who "called to him,  Jesus, Master, take pity on us' " (Luke 17:13); and the cry for mercy of the publican, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:14)].  But the Christian tradition saw the real power of this prayer as lying in the fact that it included the name of Jesus, and spiritual masters always conceded that, in the end, it was sufficient to shorten the prayer to simply reciting the name alone (though there are a number of shortened forms, all of which include the name of Jesus).  The Eastern Christian churches (the Orthodox churches) in particular found great meaning in the Jesus Prayer and developed it more than any other, but in recent years, it has increasingly found a home among Christians outside the Orthodox tradition.

Unfortunately, mostly because of the activities of Christian people, the name of Jesus is not always experienced as a positive power in the world or in people’s lives.  Sadly, the name of Jesus has been used in the past to justify horrific acts of violence against others, Christian and non-Christian alike.  It has been used to justify all sorts of questionable agendas on the part of religious and secular leaders.  For too many, the name of Jesus became identified with oppression rather than with liberation and transformation.  Even today, some Christian people use the name of Jesus as a club to bash others or to drive a wedge between people and groups.

As we celebrate the Holy Name this January 1, we would do well to pause and reflect on what the name of Jesus means to us and how we use it in our own lives.  Is it a name that draws us closer to God and therefore closer to the transformation of our own minds and hearts?  Or, is it a name that we wear proudly to identify ourselves over against other people?  Is it a name that we recite prayerfully and in humility, recognizing our own need for the grace that the One who bears it seeks to bring to us?  Or do we recite it in order to build ourselves up and point out the deficiencies of others?

Increasingly, public surveys seeking to measure the attitudes of people towards Christians and Christianity find that people think of our faith and those who follow it as rigid, judgmental, opposed to science, moralistic, etc.  We are increasingly seen as a negative force in the world.  And we are largely responsible for that.  Too often, we have mis-represented the name of Jesus to others.  And we have done Jesus and his name a dis-service.

Perhaps in a year when we begin by celebrating the Holy Name, we can dedicate ourselves to being better representatives of it.  Perhaps if we pray the Name better and with more humility, we can live the name better and with more humility, as well.

Happy New Year!

Yet when we get bogged down in this part of the story, we lose the forest for the trees; we miss the point.   While the author of Luke’s Gospel probably wasn’t tripped up by angelic visits and virgin births in the way that people these days tend to be, I don’t think that he intended these to be the parts of his story people would focus on primarily.  I think Luke’s focus was on the answer that Mary gives to the angel:  ”Here am I, the servant of the Lord.  Let it be with me according to your will.”

This deceptively simple answer contains an entire theological world within it.   The God who is revealed in Mary’s response is a God who does not force people to do his will like some petty dictator.  Rather, it is a God who invites, who initiates a relationship and makes a request.  It is a God who seeks to partner with a human being in order to bring about something important.  And the human being who is revealed in Mary’s response is not someone who stands impotent before the power of a mighty God but rather is a person who has integrity and the power to choose and whose integrity and choice are respected by God.  In telling us this story of the annunciation, Luke is making a profound theological statement about the relationship between God and humanity, and the essence of that relationship is revealed as partnership.  Or, what in theological language has been called synergy.   We might sum it up this way:  the work of God in the world is accomplished through a freely chosen partnership between God and human beings.

It is important to note that the Roman Catholic doctrine that eventually arose that declared Mary to be without personal sin came along a very long time after Luke’s story.   Early Christians never held such notions of Mary, and the Eastern Christian churches (the Orthodox churches) have always been highly critical of that particular development.  Why?  Because it removes Mary from the body of humanity, it makes her into some kind of aberration and it implies that a “normal” human being could not have done what Mary did.

Luke, I feel certain, would not have liked that idea of Mary being sinless because it would weaken considerably the statement I think he was seeking to make:  that if Mary could choose partnership with God to accomplish the work of bringing Jesus into the world, then any one of us can choose partnership with God to bring Christ into the world in our own particular way, according to our own particular calling.

As we celebrate Christmas this year, we might ask ourselves, “What is God inviting me into?  How might I give birth to Christ anew in my heart? How might I be invited to be Christ’s hands and heart in the world?”  For, like Mary, we have a royal vocation:  to become God’s partners in the on-going work of healing humanity and the rest of creation.

May Christmas be to you a blessing this year and an opportunity for you to renew your vocation as a bearer of Christ.

Reading this reminded me of a sad legacy of much of Western Christian theology of the last few centuries that encouraged people to view themselves as, quite literally, wretched sinners who ultimately could not overcome their own wretchedness and whose only hope was that Jesus had agreed to save them despite themselves.  It is a theological perspective that ultimately leaves human beings in a dismal state, a state that God, in his mercy, is willing to overlook.  It is a theology that suggests to me that Jesus pretty much has to hold his nose in order to be in our presence.

It is impressive how deeply this perspective has permeated both the internal understanding of Christianity and the external image of our faith.  We have generations of Christians who understand humility in terms of being aware of how wretched they are and who believe that to take pride in one’s self serves only to feed the ego and lead us into further wretchedness.

I find this perspective difficult to reconcile with the Jesus of the Gospels, especially when I consider my own experience as a human being and, specifically, as a parent.  It is clear from all four of the Gospels that Jesus does not feel any need to hold his nose in our presence.  In fact, Jesus embraced those whom his society considered wretched with a powerful and enthusiastic love.  It seems to me that his message to those people was not, “You know, you all are really horrible people, and there’s really nothing you can do about it, but, hey, God is willing to rescue you (but that whole wretched thing isn’t going to go away, because that’s what you are).”  On the contrary, Jesus’ message to these folks was how valuable they were, despite what their society told them.  Certainly, they were not perfect (who is?).  But the fundamental nature of their humanity was not wretchedness but infinite value and worth.

And, indeed, it is this very message that I would want to instill in my own children.  While I certainly acknowledge their mistakes, I would never want them to see themselves primarily in terms of their mistakes or dysfunctions.  I  want them to be able to look past that and see their own value and worth.  Far from being fundamentally wretched, they are fundamentally glorious.  It would be hard to imagine anyone wanting to raise their children to think of themselves in any other way.

So if this is how we would wish our own children to think of themselves, then why would we imagine that God would want us to think of ourselves any differently?  If we went about encouraging our children to think of themselves as fundamentally wretched and to think of their parents as tolerating them and being willing to care for them despite their wretchedness, those children would grow up with serious issues with respect to their mental and emotional health.  To promote such an image of God has led to a great many issues among a great many people with respect to their spiritual health.

In John’s Gospel, God is defined in the simplest way:  God is love.  Love does not behold the beloved as wretched.  Love does not merely tolerate others.  Love sees the beloved in the best possible light and desires – passionately desires! – the best for the beloved.  This is the love that God practices in Jesus.  It is the love that we aspire to practice and to experience in our own relationships.  To imagine that God aspires to anything less is simply wrong.

It begins with the idea that human consciousness is fundamentally structured by violence.  This shows itself in the way in which we define ourselves over against other human beings.  This leads us to create victims, for in defining ourselves over against others we necessarily come to see those others as less than ourselves in some important way.  In perhaps its least destructive form, we victimize others by looking down on them, by belittling them in some way, by saying to at least ourselves (and probably to others, as well) that they are somehow less than we are.  In its most destructive form, we assign blame to others as a way of strengthening our own identities.  Or, as a way of bringing peace or unity to our community.  So, for example, when our society is being pressured by economic, social and political problems, we might seek to create unity and release that pressure by blaming immigrants or Muslims or liberals or conservatives; in other words, by designating a victim. This victimization might even result in a violent acting out against the victim(s).

What is particularly interesting to me in Alison’s work is that he suggests that our consciousness is so profoundly formed in violence – that our need and tendency to victimize others (as I’ve tried to describe above) is so deeply rooted – that we tend to view God from this same perspective, and so we talk about God as also defining God’s self over against others, and we image God as One who (like us) makes victims of others.  This way of seeing God is found often in the Hebrew Bible and, to a lesser degree, in parts of the New Testament, as well.   As I understand him, Alison suggests that this is a misunderstanding of God; for in truth, God is not the One who makes victims, as we do; rather, God is really to be identified with the victim.

And this is a truth that is revealed in Jesus, who comes into the world as God within a human life and who becomes a victim of Roman imperial power with involvement from the Jewish religious leadership of the time.  The crucifixion is an icon of the way in which human beings victimize and is also an icon of God as victim rather than God as the One who makes others into victims.  The startling thing is that, in the wake of Jesus’ death as a victim, comes the Resurrection, in which the victim-Christ is encountered not as the one who wants to exact vengeance from those who made him a victim (which is what our human consciousness, formed by violence, would expect) but rather as the forgiving victim.  And this is a revelation of who God truly is.

When we turn to the Bible from this perspective, we realize that all of those stories of God smiting others and exacting revenge on the enemies of God and God’s people are there not to show us who God is but rather to show us what God appears to be through the lens of our humanity distorted by violence.  Jesus embodies a shifting of the lens, allowing us to see God as the victim rather than the bully or the tyrant.  This insight has the power to lead us into a new consciousness formed in the love of the forgiving victim.

I won’t presume to have presented James Alison’s theology flawlessly.  I have simplified it quite a bit, and I don’t pretend to have yet understood it fully.  But already I see in it a frame that opens onto a deeper and more profound appreciation of the Christian faith.  His book, The Joy of Being Wrong is based on his doctoral thesis and presents the foundation of this thought.  It’s not easy reading but well worth the effort.  He is truly shedding anew light on who we are, on who God is and on what the Christian life and journey are really about.  In 2012, he will have a new resource, including both text and DVD, called The Forgiving Victim, which seeks to present the Christian faith to adults in a new way.

At this point, you might now expect to hear the usual lament about the evils of materialism which have pervaded our society generally and our celebration of Christmas in particular.  And, in a way, I suppose this is going to be the usual lament.  But in a conversation with a colleague recently, it was noted that the material part of materialism really isn’t the problem.  In other words, it’s not really about the stuff that we think we want and need so badly.  It’s really about the “ism” part; that is, it’s really about us and the relationship we have with the stuff.

Recall this particular teaching of Jesus:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honour your father and mother.” ’

He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’   – Mark 10:17-27

At first reading, it would perhaps be tempting to interpret this as a story about wealth and the dangers of wealth (or, in other words, the dangers of having a lot of stuff).  But the story is really not about wealth, it’s about a man who has wealth.  And the problem is not really his wealth; it’s really the relationship he has to his wealth.  Jesus observes that it is difficult for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God because he knows that rich people have a tendency to get rather attached to their wealth, to their stuff.  And it is precisely that attachment that is problematic.  If this particular rich man had not been terribly attached to his stuff, and approached Jesus with the same question, Jesus would have given a different answer – one suited to whatever it was that was keeping this man from experiencing the world as the kingdom of God.  But, as it happened, this rich man happened to be rather attached to his wealth, and it was that very attachment that was preventing him from experiencing the fullness of divine life.

The reaction of the disciples is our reaction:  it is astonishing.  Who can be saved?  ”For God all things are possible”, says Jesus.  In other words, this problem of being attached to our stuff in such a way that we fail to experience life as God’s kingdom can be remedied through a therapeutic relationship with God, a relationship in which our center is shifted from our stuff to God.   Jesus points out that we cannot do that on our own, but that God stands ready to help us – and to forgive us and love us when we find we are not completely successful in making this shift.

It is tempting to distance ourselves from this teaching of Jesus by telling ourselves that we are not rich, so it doesn’t really apply to us.  Within our own social environment, we may not be terribly rich by comparison.  Yet, compared to most human beings living today, almost everyone living in the United States is incredibly wealthy.  If you earned just $12,000 a  year, you would be among the wealthiest 17.6% of the world’s population; 5.4 billion people around the world would be less wealthy than you.  And that rich man who approached Jesus?  He was probably less wealthy than most people living in America today.  So, yes, the story does apply to each of us.

There’s a lot of talk this time of year about putting “Christ” back in Christmas.  Most people think this has something to do with saying “Merry  Christmas” to everyone instead of “Happy Holidays.”  I don’t think Jesus would care much about which option we choose for greeting people in December.  If we really want to put Christ back in Christmas, we can work on changing our relationship to our stuff, and work at grounding ourselves more in God than in the stuff with which we are able to surround ourselves.

For me, the biblical texts about the end of the world and the accompanying return of Christ is a biblically provided path into an overturning of our settled and ordered lives.  We have a tendency to view the world in a rather static way, thinking that the patterns of life as we have come to know them are more or less permanent and the way life has always been.  The apolcalyptic passages of the Bible can remind us that life is not, in fact, like this at all – that in truth, lives and worlds are collapsing and coming to new birth all of the time.  When such apolcalyptic imagery views God as the agent of the “end times”, this is an emphatic affirmation that the impermanent nature of things, the tendency of things to collapse and for new things to arise, is the way life is supposed to be.  Indeed, this impermanence is a sign of the truth that creation is not completed but is constantly in motion.

The references to the second coming of Christ, when viewed from this interpretive point of view, both challenge and assure.  The challenge lies in the overtones of justice which always come with any biblical speculation about Christ’s return.   This event is always imagined as a time when wrongs will be set right, when justice will prevail.  For me, this serves as a reminder that as God’s work of creation continues on, as worlds collapse and new ones arise, there is at the heart of that process God’s constant call and desire that what arises will be more just than what has come before.  We are challenged to be attentive to that call and that desire, to be agents in helping God to bring to birth a more just world.

The assurance that comes with this challenge, however, is the assurance that God in Christ is always on our side.  That is, on the side of the whole human family.  Throughout this whole on-going process of creation, throughout all the collapsing lives and worlds, throughout all the new lives and worlds that arise, Christ is constantly present, holding all of us in the love and compassion of God.  And that makes the process itself, and the challenge to live more justly, something that we can meet with joy and hope rather than fear and despair.

At the end of Advent, of course, comes our celebration of Christmas, of the birth of Jesus in history and also of the longing of the Risen Christ to be born anew in our hearts.  It is not a mistake that the time leading up to Christmas is abundant with apocalyptic images:  for if Christ is truly to be born anew in each of us, there are things in our lives which must be overturned, aspects of ourselves and our personal worlds that must be allowed to collapse so that a truer self, a more compassionate self, a more just personal world may be born – out of which we may act more justly in the larger world we inhabit.

So I invite you to welcome the Advent overturning, that you might be more fully prepared this Christmas to allow the Christ to be re-born in your heart more fully and abundantly than ever.