The Word Became Flesh (Reflections on Christmas 2, Year A 2026)

 

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us…” (John 1:14a)

I keep telling Brooke she’s the youngest person I’ve ever met. Once upon a quarter century or so ago, I was extending the congregation’s ministry by serving as volunteer chaplain at the local hospital. Sue, one of my parishioners, was in labor and delivery giving birth to her third child. When the nurse gave me permission, I paid a visit to the new mom and dad and greeted the new little girl. Sue was sitting up in bed, apparently no worse for the ordeal she’d just been through. Her husband Mike was seated in a comfy chair holding his infant daughter. He held the tiny bundle in one hand, tucked snuggly against his chest like a running back would hold a football.

I had never seen a newborn quite so new. Little Brooke hadn’t been a citizen of planet earth for half an hour when I peered over her daddy’s shoulder and saw her enormous blue eyes pop open and then just as quickly close again into a peaceful, innocent sleep.

There’s something about a baby that inspires our awe, don’t you think? We must be very quiet around an infant. We instinctively calm ourselves and a spirit of gentleness overtakes us. We must not wake this sleeping child. We must be still. And yet, this very still, swaddled, miniature person has a powerful influence over us. Should a baby spy us and begin to smile or giggle, we’ll smile and giggle back. We’ll experience an innocent, selfless joy.

The wonderful thing about babies is they don’t know anything. They have no racial prejudice. They have no grievance against anyone. They have never wronged anyone, and they have no memory of the mistakes we’ve made. They are little packages of hope, aren’t they? This baby could become someone who brings the world terrific joy or peace or healing[i]. Maybe this child will solve a mystery, cure a disease, or in some way make us all better people. A newborn baby is one more chance for us to get it right.

We are reminded in the gospel lesson for the Second Sunday of Christmas (John 1:1-18) that God’s Word became flesh and lived among us. It seems poignant and fitting that the Almighty Wisdom which in the beginning created the heavens and the earth and all that is seen and unseen came to us in the guise of a helpless newborn baby. In this child we see hope for our future. We see purity. We see forgiveness because all our past blunders and wrongs are completely unknown and unimportant in the eyes of a newborn. Shame and regret are replaced with gentleness and care and concern and longing for righteousness. That’s what God must desire for all of us. So God’s Word became flesh.

I imagine that for some Christmas must be over now. The radio has stopped playing Christmas tunes and it’s time to put the tree out on the curb and take down the lights. The exhausting blizzard of Yuletide activities is over for another year. But, for us in the Church, there are still a few more days to celebrate the Word becoming flesh, to contemplate the arrival of the Christ child, to hold the Baby Jesus in our arms and imagine the newness of the life he brings.

It is significant, I think, that John’s gospel not only takes us forward, but takes us backward. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In the beginning. In a time before there was time, God had decided to love and save the world. God had decided to create and bless and inspire you.

Happy New Year, my friend. May the peace of God which passes our understanding keep your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

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[i] BTW, Brooke is now a grownup and works in a medical lab. She just might change the world. I don’t put it past her.

Home for Christmas

 

It’s all about belonging.

There’s something about Christmas which makes us yearn for togetherness. We really have this idyllic picture of family gathered around the tree opening gifts or gathered at the family table, eating turkey, laughing, getting caught up on time missed. It's strange, though, that the perfect family Christmas celebrations we idealize may not always be the ones we remember. The time we can’t make it home—or when a loved one wasn’t there with us—might be the times which we’ll recall as being the most profound. Wasn’t that first Christmas all about a family far from home?

Although it was over forty years ago now, I have indelible memories of my first Christmas away from home and family. It was 1982, the year I left sunny southern California to attend grad school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. To say I was an impoverished student would be embarrassingly accurate. I had a job teaching undergraduates in my department, a gig which paid just enough, after the UW deducted a third of each semester’s tuition, to cover my rent on a 10 X 20-foot studio apartment. I shared the bathroom with the girl next door and the rest of the flat with an army of cockroaches the landlord never seemed to vanquish in spite of many efforts. After rent, taxes, and tuition, I had fifty bucks left over to see me through the month. Two trips per week to the University Plasma Center (or, as I called it, “The Lugosi Lounge”) to sell my blood plasma at $10 a trip provided just enough cash to buy books and supplies and keep body and soul on speaking terms.

Of course, you might be thinking I could always ask my folks for a bailout if ever my bank account dipped below the horizon. Unfortunately, at that time my dad was out of work, so my parents were just as strapped for cash as I was. They’d promised me an electric typewriter as a Christmas gift, and it was either the typewriter or a trip home. I needed the typewriter, so it looked like I would be spending Christmas with the cockroaches.

Enter my buddy, Rich, my theatre colleague, drinking buddy, and partner in crime (sometimes literally, but that’s another story). I’ve often described him as the Jake to my Elwood and the Ollie to my Stan. We were two natural idiots who could each get into enough trouble on his own, but somehow God or fate or the University of Wisconsin Department of Theatre and Drama managed to throw us together. For reasons Rich chose not to explain—and were none of my gosh-darn business anyway—he was also spending Christmas by himself that year. After I learned there would be no trip home for me, Rich suggested we have Christmas dinner together.

 “Christmas Day or Christmas Eve?” he asked.

“Christmas Day,” I told him. “I’ll be in church on Christmas Eve at the late mass at Luther Memorial. I should probably be sober when I go.”

In the weeks leading up to Christmas Rich and I made plans for our holiday repast. We knew two of us couldn’t handle an entire turkey (although neither of us are particularly picky eaters!) and chicken didn’t seem piquant enough to match the felicitous nature of this holy day. We decided the perfect fowl (in the absence of a goose) would be a duck. I had never eaten duck before, and as far as I can recall, have never had it since. What wine goes best with duck, you ask? Who knows? We washed down our Christmas dinner with a six pack of Heilemann’s Olde Style Beer.

I had just enough spending cash left over from my last trip to the Plasma Center to buy Rich a small gift. He was working at the time at the local PBS station which had a great library of vintage films. I got him a paperback encyclopedia of film history which, not being able to afford wrapping paper, I wrapped in the December page of a desk blotter calendar bequeathed to me by the last occupant of my desk at the UW. Rich looked a little embarrassed when I presented this gift. “Sorry, Griff,” he said. “I didn’t get anything for you.” I told him that was okay. He was cooking the duck and buying the beer, so I figured we were square.

The week of Christmas Rich asked me, “Were you serious about going to midnight mass on Christmas Eve?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I always go. It wouldn’t be Christmas without going to church. It’s a religious holiday after all.”

Rich looked slightly pensive for a moment and then said, “You mind if I go with you?”

Rich had been raised Catholic and went to Catholic school. I don’t know how much of this early education had taken, but I was pretty certain my raucous companion hadn’t seen the inside of a church in years. Nevertheless, on Christmas Eve the two of us, smartly clad beneath our winter coats in suits and neckties as befitted the sacredness of the occasion, walked down a cold and foggy University Avenue to the massive gothic cathedral-style house of worship that is Luther Memorial Church. Luther Memorial is one of my favorite churches on the planet. I still recall the gorgeous stained-glass windows and the massive altar piece with the image of Christ with arms spread in welcome.

Rich appeared a bit nervous upon crossing the threshold. “I hope this place doesn’t get struck by lightning for letting me in,” he said. The church was dimly lit, and candles glowed on tall stands at the end of every other pew. The 11PM worshipers had gathered early, and a carol sing-along was already well underway in the crowded nave. We found our way to a place near the rear. I began to join in the singing with mighty yuletide zeal and a complete lack of awareness of the appropriate key in which the other congregants were singing—an embarrassing fact of which Rich reminds me to this day.

I don’t remember anything about the service or the pastor’s message, but I remember how beautiful the old church looked in the twinkling candlelight, the smell of the freshly cut evergreens on the windowsills, the white lights on the twin Christmas trees. I remember how right it felt to be there.

When the service was over at midnight, Rich and I walked back through the fog. My friend was uncharacteristically silent, and he led me to believe something very private and profound was going on inside. “It’s strange,” he said at last, “how it all comes back. All the words of the songs, all the prayers, all the creeds. It all comes back.” We walked on in silence.

Looking back, I like to think I really wasn’t away from family that Christmas. My companion in bacchanalia was also my brother in Christ.

That new little family in the stable in Bethlehem wasn’t alone either. They may have been far from familiar loved ones and their home in Nazareth, but God provided an army of relatives to join them and rejoice in the birth of that little boy. The shepherds were just as delighted to see that infant as if he had been their own child or grandson or nephew. I like to imagine some shepherdess, some woman who had given birth many times before, might’ve taken motherly care of young Mary and held and rocked little Jesus while Mary rested. Maybe someone offered that family a little loaf of bread or a skin of drinking water. Maybe the gathering in that cave—a cave meant as a pen for animals—was really a family homecoming.

Look around you on Christmas Eve. There may be people you’ve known for years or people you’ve never seen before, but they have all come to worship that little baby laid to sleep in an animal’s feeding trough. That little baby is Emmanuel—God with us. All of us. We are a family united by our need for His grace and love, saved by his sacrifice for us, and wherever and whenever we come together in our love of Him, we are home. We belong.

Merry Christmas, my friend. May the peace of God which passes our understanding keep your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

 

A Scary Responsibility (Reflections on Advent 4, Year A 2025)

"St. Joseph with the Infant Jesus" Reni. (It. 17th Cent.)

 “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20b-21)

God is being good to Faith Lutheran of Northeast Philadelphia this Advent season. I got a text last night from Sue, one of the moms who were formerly in charge of our Sunday school in the days before COVID. She sent me a picture of Joseph, her newborn fourth grandchild. Just two weeks ago Jen, another former Sunday school mom, announced the birth of her fourth grandchild. These births strike me as being a very special blessing, coming as they do in a season when we prepare to celebrate the birth of that special little baby who came to save us all. They’re also a cause of joy because, sadly, our Sunday school kids vanished during the COVID pandemic and never came back. If you’re a Lutheran in the United States, you know the average age of our congregants is somewhere between sixty and deceased. When young mommies with little babies and toddlers start showing up, we Lutherans light up like an inflatable Santa on the lawn of a Philly rowhome.

There are two things which are true when every baby is born—great joy and great (if unspoken) terror. Babies are cute, right? They’re the continuation of the family line and one more chance to believe in the possibilities of the future. They also require a whole LOT of responsibility, they’re totally vulnerable, and they’re one more chance to really screw up another life if you don’t parent lovingly, conscientiously, selflessly, and with wisdom. Bringing another person into this world should scare the living crap out of anyone who even contemplates providing the genetic material which will form a human life.

The gospel lesson for Advent 4, Year C (Matthew 1:18-25) also combines the elements of joy and fear. The birth of Jesus as the one who will save us from our sin is certainly a cause for rejoicing, but, in the world of this text, it’s also an occasion for awe and fear. Mary isn’t married, and Joseph makes the not illogical assumption that she’s been less than faithful to their engagement. If a young girl was caught fooling around before or outside of marriage she could be stoned to death. You have to give Joseph credit for not wanting to see his girlfriend get punished, even if he thinks she’s cheated on him. I’ll bet Mary was pretty shaken by all this too.

Martin Luther really loved Mary, and he liked to quote St. Bernard of Clairvaux who said there were three miracles present in the Nativity story: God condescended to become human, a virgin gave birth[i], and Mary actually agreed to be that virgin. That was a pretty gutsy step for a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl to take, don’t you think? I’ll bet Joseph, once he was convinced this baby would be the Son of God and the Savior of the World, was even more frightened than he was when he thought he had to secretly break his engagement. If he marries this chick, he’s now responsible for the fate of the whole world. I’d be scared. Wouldn’t you?

But Joseph has one advantage the rest of us don’t usually get. He is told unambiguously what God wants him to do. So, being a righteous man, he does a noble and loving thing which his society doesn’t require him to do and even encourages him not to do. He marries this pregnant girl. What’s more, he respects her comfort and doesn’t insist on getting it on with her while she’s expecting (I suspect Matthew may have included this detail as evidence the baby was not Joseph’s but the child of the Holy Spirit. I read it as evidence Joseph was a pretty cool guy who really cared about his lady’s comfort and the health of her pregnancy). The most significant thing, however, is that Joseph names the baby. When he calls the little boy Jesus[ii] he has officially adopted him. According to Matthew 1:1-16, this is what fulfills prophecy and makes Jesus a Son of David.

I never mind when people address me as “Father.” A parish pastor and a parent have one thing in common: we each have complete responsibility for something over which we’ll ultimately have no control. I’m looking forward to baptizing these two new little ones God has sent to us, and I feel hope and joy as I see our Sunday school slowly start to revive again. But I acknowledge our whole congregation has responsibility for these children. In our baptismal liturgy we are all called to support and pray for these little ones in their new life in Christ. But, beyond that, we are charged to represent Christ in honesty and integrity. We are called to be living manifestations of the Gospel who through our words and deeds and love will create a safe, welcoming, and meaningful place for these children within the family of God and in God’s Church. And we are charged with protecting the world in which these children will grow and live. Like Joseph, we have a terrifying responsibility. Like Joseph, we will have to rely on the guidance of the Lord. Like Joseph, we are urged not to be afraid.

Don’t be afraid, my friend. With God’s help you’ve got this. Enjoy the season and come see me soon. 

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[i] If you want to get wonky and into the linguistic weeds here, Matthew is quoting in verse 21 from a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures which reads literally, “the virgin shall conceive.” The Greek translator uses the word parthemus which is, literally “virgin.” The word found in Hebrew Bibles is almuh, which means a young woman. One could assume she is a virgin, but not necessarily. In fact, the context in Isaiah 7:14 implies that this young woman is a young bride pregnant with her first child. Both Isaiah and Matthew are trying to tell us through these birth announcements that God is active in saving God’s people.

[ii] Jesus was a common name back in the day. It’s from the Hebrew Yashua, which is a contraction for “Yahweh Saves,” or “Yahweh Rescues.” 

Go Tell John (Reflections on Advent 3, Year A 2025)

 “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” (Matthew 4b-5)

Many years ago, I had the honor of taking part in the Lutheran/Roman Catholic Dialogue. Our topic that year was “Ministry to the Dying.” Both Lutheran and Catholic clergy agreed on one point: we rarely minister to the dying here in America. Nope. Most folks like to believe they’re going to beat whatever illness or disease they’ve got. They know they’re going to die eventually, but just not today or this week. By the time it becomes obvious they’re about to shuffle off this mortal coil and shake hands with the Lord, they’re usually too out of it for any theological discussion.

Every once in a while, however, we get a chance to minister to someone who knows just how many grains are left in their hourglass. Most of the Christians I’ve met who were in that situation were ready to move on and did so with impressive courage and grace. It’s no longer fashionable to walk these short-timers through the Kubler-Ross stages. It seems much kinder and more worthwhile to review the life they’ve already lived and focus on the highlights.

I don’t know about you, but if or when I know I’m about to check out, I’d like to know my life has had some significance. I always think of that scene at the end of Saving Private Ryan where the old vet stands amidst the graves of his fallen comrades and asks his wife if he’s been a good man.

When we meet John the Baptist in the gospel lesson in the RCL for Advent 3, Year A (Matthew 11:2-11) he’s pretty sure he’s reached the last stop on the line. Prison in the ancient world wasn’t a punishment with a prescribed duration. If you were in jail, you were either awaiting trial or execution, and John had a real good guess which one he was waiting for. You have to feel sorry for the guy. He’s been spending the last year or two telling everybody that Jesus is the Messiah. Now, chained or in wooden stocks, sitting in a dark dungeon with no light or air, he’s got nothing to do but think about his life. He’s starting to worry if he got it right.

But John deserves some credit, too. He’s at the end of his life (a little earlier than he’d planned, of course!) and he’s in a state where he’s confined and can’t get around anymore, he can’t see much, and he depends on others to visit him and take care of him—just like many of us may be some day. He might be doubting if Jesus is really the one, but he never doubts that there will be a one. He never stops believing that God is going to send a Messiah or that God’s people will know a day of liberation. As rotten a time as he’s having, his faith is still present.

He’s fortunate in another way. He still has friends who come to the jail to look after him. In Bible times there was no guarantee a prisoner would even get fed let alone a change of clothes or clean water. John has not been abandoned by either God or his disciples. Granted, these guys aren’t going to be able to spring him from the slammer, but at least they show up and let him know he’s still loved, still valued, and still important to the movement. They may not have the answers he needs, but that’s okay. 90% of caring for another is just showing up.

So these loving brothers (and maybe sisters) of John’s posse head off in search of Jesus to ask point blank if he’s the Lamb of God who is going to take away the sins of the world. Jesus—in typical Jesus fashion—doesn’t give them a straight answer. It seems to me the Lord always likes it when we figure stuff out on our own based on the evidence. “Go tell John what you see going down,” he tells them.

They could, of course say, “Well, Jesus, we see a good and decent (if slightly eccentric) preacher being silenced by a corrupt and incompetent ruler because the ruler doesn’t like what the preacher has to say. We see a gigantic empire swallowing up just about everything so it can transfer wealth to its already wealthy plutocrats. We see and hear the Pharisees talk their pious platitudes while the widows and orphans go hungry and the sick and leprous are excluded from society. We see a lot of crappy things, Jesus.”

But, even if they’d said that, Jesus would remind them. “Look a little harder. Do you see the sick being healed? Do you see the poor being recognized and lifted up? Do you see the dead being raised? The people who had become comatose with hopelessness have started to believe God has a plan for them and God’s kingdom is with them. Have you seen that? Go tell John that.”

Jesus goes on to praise John. “John was the real deal. He was a mensch. He told the truth to the powerful and he didn’t back down. But great as he is, the lowest, poorest, least able sinner in the Kingdom of God is just as precious. Even more precious, because God loves and has compassion for the weak.”

Sometimes it looks like the whole world is circling the drain. Sometimes it seems like nothing you do has mattered. But it has. You may not see it, but God has seen it. Tiny works of charity, infinitesimal deeds of mercy, little seeds of righteousness are growing quietly but surely. We need to see the whole picture, keep believing, and rejoice for what the Lord has already done.

Keep the faith, my friend. Come back and see me again

We're Getting Called Out (Reflections on Advent One, Year A 2025)

 

St. John the Baptist Preaching. Mattia Preti (It. 17th Cent.)

“Therefore, bear fruit worthy of repentance…” (Matthew 3:8)

Back in my grad school days at the University of Wisconsin we had this thing called the Free Speech Platform. On a sunny day—or even on a chilly December day—it wasn’t uncommon to be crossing the main quad and hear a strident voice emanating from the Platform, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, attempting to sway the mass of scurrying students to one position or another.

Notorious among the more frequent speakers was a rotund, matronly woman with a bombastic sousaphonic voice who called herself Sister Pat. Sister Pat bellowed from the Platform dire warnings that the souls of UW students were most certainly on a collision course for Hell should we fail to hear her stirring words and come to repentance. She called the female students “whores” and the male students “whore mongers.” As you might imagine, UW scholars took this somewhat amiss and failed to come weeping to her feet like the altar call at a Billy Graham crusade. They were much more prone to hollering back some rather impolite observance of their own before walking away and ignoring the evangelist entirely.  I once attempted to talk to Pat, but she shouted at me (shouting being, it would seem, her only form of communication) that my lord was Satan and I was doomed to perdition for being a Lutheran and accepting the abomination of infant baptism.

Nobody likes being called out or being accused. That’s the real bummer we face every year on the Second Sunday in Advent when the Revised Common Lectionary confronts us with this freaky mass of zeal and passion, John the Baptist. John comes as Jesus’ advance man, and if we want to get to Jesus, we really should go through John. He’s a bizarre figure outside the mainstream, dressed in animal skins and eating bugs and looking for all the world like the prophet Elijah. Like Elijah before him, John, in our Gospel lesson (Matthew 3: 1-11) is calling out society for turning away from God and warning folks to come to repentance. I guess he had to be more persuasive than old Sister Pat was, because tons of people came out to hear him and let him give them a dunk in the Jordan when they confessed their sins.

Our lesson tells us even Pharisees and Sadducees were curious about John. I’ll bet they only came out to hear this guy because they thought he was a novelty or because they were afraid he might be telling people something which would impugn the power structure the Pharisees and Sadducees so enjoyed. When John sees these bigwigs, he really gives them an earful. He calls them snakes and goes totally Sister Pat on them—telling them their vaunted pedigrees don’t amount to spit and, unless they actually started doing something worthwhile with their faith, there was going to be a lot of chopping and burning in their future.

I think both John the Baptist and Elijah before him saw a nation which had skidded off the rails. Given the borderline psychotic times we live in here in America, we could certainly use a prophetic voice calling us all to repentance. I could, of course, launch into my own screed about the ills of society, but nobody in my pews serves in congress and it’s a long time until the next election. Maybe it’s better if I just stick to churchy things.

I saw this video a few weeks ago on Youtube about why the ELCA is losing members like feathers off a molting chicken[i]. The narrator opined that the communion to which I belong and in which I have been ordained to Word and Sacrament ministry has lost its way. It has embraced cultural relevance and progressivism and alienated more conservative, traditional Christians. Since the controversial 2009 Churchwide Assembly in which the ELCA embraced the ordination of LGBTQ+ clergy and recognition of same gender marriages, a huge chunk of our membership fled to the more conservative Missouri Synod or the new North American Lutheran Church or just stopped going to church altogether. The narrator noted that, even though Missouri Synod membership is dropping like a rock, it hasn’t picked up quite the velocity as has the desertion from the ELCA.

The Youtube pundit went on to suggest that the ELCA’s progressivism has failed to attract newer, younger Christians. He believes that young families feel more comfortable in conservative churches which preach Biblical inerrancy. It seems some people just don’t want to wrestle with the scriptures (or the more controversial sayings of Jesus) and just want to be told what to believe. They like that bumper sticker feeling of “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Being judgmental is so much more enjoyable when you can comfortably say, “We’re right and all the rest of you are wrong.” The Sister Pats of this world must love feeling righteously self-assured.

The guy on Youtube also made the very interesting point that liberal ideas and values are everywhere in the media. You don’t need to go to church to hear them. So why, he asked, would anyone feel the need to attend an ELCA congregation? My answer? For the same reason people came to hear John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan. Maybe the folks came for the entertainment value of hearing this wacky guy preach, but that wasn’t what drew them into the water. They came because John touched their hearts in such a way that and they knew in their hearts they needed to confess and be forgiven and be transformed. Progressive ideas alone don’t bring people to repentance. The hunger for God does.

As Lutherans we begin every mass at the baptismal font to confess our sins and claim the renewing power of Christ. We ask forgiveness for what we’ve done and for what we’ve left undone—for the sin of not producing the fruits worthy of repentance. I find I have to ask myself every day, “Have I really served the Lord today?” In the swirling chaos of this present hour—when compassion, mercy, and generosity are so needed—have I born the fruit Jesus expects of me? Could I be doing more? The Baptist calls to each of us during this sacred time to examine our conscience and wrestle with what our faith means to us. And that’s a good thing.

Even better is the gift of our baptism, the blessing that through our repentance we receive, as Isaiah has said, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.[ii]”

Yup. When the Sister Pats of this world try to call us out, we’ll get defensive. But when we hear John the Baptist calling--calling to receive the love and grace of Jesus--we’ll hear the truth about ourselves and gladly come with both contrition and joy to the river.

Thanks for joining me this week. Have a blessed Advent and keep being the bearer of good fruit.

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[i] This video is calls “Lutheran Collapse,” and you can view it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3N57C1clEE

[ii] Isaiah 11:2.

Yup! We're Still Standing (Reflections on Thanksgiving 2025)

 

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35)

I’ve always loved this story (John 6:25-35). All these well-fed folks go running after Jesus because they think he’s paying off like a broken slot machine. This is just after Jesus has fed 5,000 people and come up with a sizable surplus. This looked pretty good to the crowd, and they’re thinking this Jesus guy might make a pretty good king—especially if he’s going to bust out with free bread! But Jesus is on to these guys. He sees how shallow their motives are. He’s not fooled by their small talk.

(Of course, Jesus understands their confusion when they ask in verse 25, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” He could explain the reason they hadn’t seen him get into a boat was because he’d just walked on water across the Sea of Galilee, but that would be something of a distraction.)

No. Jesus, who, when he had many mouths to feed and what appeared to be not enough food, had the folks sit down while he said grace over what little food they did have. He didn’t lament the scarcity. He knew he was in the presence of God’s abundance. He wanted the crowd to know that too, but they were too willing to make Jesus their provider without understanding he wanted them to develop faith. They were hungering for more, not recognizing the blessing God had already given. Their selfishness betrayed their lack of gratitude.

Why is it, do you suppose, that when we’re well-fed we keep asking for more? I’m always amazed that the phenomena of scarcity and anxiety are much more effective in bringing us to a place of gratitude. Our American Day of Thanksgiving owes its origins to people who were getting their butts kicked by circumstances, but who could turn around and say, “At least we’re still standing.” Those stout pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower experienced a 50% mortality rate before they celebrated their first harvest on these shores. Thanksgiving Day became official during the Civil War when President Lincoln noticed that, even though Americans were tearing at each other’s throats, no foreign power had invaded us, and our crops hadn’t failed. FDR fixed the date for Thanksgiving in 1939 as the U.S. was crawling out from the Great Depression and teetering on the lip of World War II. Each of these milestones saw Americans clinging to survival by our fingernails. What else could we do but offer our thanks to God?

I get nostalgic at Thanksgiving time when I remember that participating in an ecumenical Thanksgiving service was my first official act as pastor of Faith Lutheran 27 years ago. I had been called as pastor on the Feast of Christ the King, and four days later I represented our congregation at the ministerium’s Thanksgiving Eve worship at Good Shepherd United Methodist Church. I remember looking out at the assembled worshipers that evening and seeing only one face from Faith—Rich Aicher. I felt terribly disappointed that no one else from our parish had bothered to come out and support their new pastor. What I should’ve felt was deep gratitude that I had a parishioner as dedicated to worshiping our Lord as is Rich Aicher.

So, for this Thanksgiving I will be repentantly grateful to God and to my congregation. We are small and not wealthy, but we are still standing. There are still small children here who will learn about the love of Jesus, and funky almost-twenty-somethings who are willing and excited to teach them. We are still bleeding money, but not anywhere near as badly as we had feared. We have a roof which doesn’t leak and a new sanctuary organ which we got for free from a Lutheran church which has gone the way of all flesh. We still have VBS in the summer, and great Youth Sunday. We have a new prayer and praise ministry on Wednesday evenings started by a lay woman with a heart for evangelism. A few days ago we invited the whole neighborhood to our church for our resurrected Fall Festival.

(And I’ve got to be honest here. When 19-year-old Emma told me we could bring this pre-holiday bacchanal back from the dead I thought she might’ve been smoking something! The old Fall Festival—which we’d not held in six years— involved an army of Lutheran ladies and took months to plan. Two teenagers put this thing together in nine weeks, and it was sensational!)

All the above are terrific examples of how God has been good to us. Nevertheless, there are deeper, more moving causes for our gratitude. We have each other to love, to pray for, and to share our ministry. We do, in our humble way, the work Jesus commanded us to do. We collect food for the hungry and cook meals for the lonely. We welcome the stranger (We’re really good at that!), and we provide a safe space for local seniors, Haitian Adventists, and alcoholics who want to get their lives put back together. And we gather every Sunday to feast on Jesus, the Bread of Life. We have reason to be grateful.

I’m grateful to this congregation and the years I’ve been privileged to be pastor here. I’m thankful for the children I’ve been able to see grow up and for the little ones who come to kids’ sermon each Sunday. I’m grateful for the faith and support which has been given to me by the people of God in this place.

We are still standing. May God be prasied!

Not a Shakespearean King (Reflections on Christ the King 2025)

 

There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” (Luke 23:38)

Did you have to read Shakespeare in high school? Most American high school students are required to attain at least a passing familiarity with the Bard, and legions of English teachers have heroically campaigned through the years to cram the poetic verbiage of the most accomplished playwright in our common language into the skulls of youngsters weaned on Instagram, addicted to Tic Toc, and possessing the attention span of a squirrel with a concussion.

It must’ve been a little easier back in my high school days. You know—in those bleak, prehistoric times before the internet and the cell phone, back when we actually read books. Having been a survivor of a Missouri Synod Lutheran Sunday school where our only Bible was the King James Version, I took to Shakespeare like Travis took to Taylor. For a guy who lived 400 years ago, William Shakespeare really understood what made people tick, and that’s why we’re still fascinated by the characters he created. He could get under the skin of real people while giving them some pretty fancy words to say.

I think of Shakespeare on the Feast of Christ the King as so many of his plays involved kings and kingly ambition—an ambition which Shakespeare almost always paints with a very dark brush. Throughout his history plays and even in some of the great tragedies like Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear. he shows us men (and sometimes women) who have an unconquerable thirst for power, position, and control. They all seem to be asking the same questions: Who do I have to eliminate in order to be king? Who do I have to eliminate in order to keep being king? The ruthless quest for dominance always leads to copious bloodletting and paranoia.

My particular favorite of Shakespeare’s kings is Richard II. Here’s a guy wallowing in the medieval assumption that he’s king because God wants him to be king. He says,

“Not all the water in the rough rude sea

Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;

The breath of worldly men cannot depose

The deputy elected by the Lord…”

 

The trouble is, this particular deputy sucks at his job, and there’s another guy just itching to knock him off his throne and take over the operation himself. Not long after proclaiming his divine right to rule the kingdom, Richard gets a kick in the pants on the battlefield and has to come to terms with the idea he’s not so divine after all. Changing his tune to a minor key, he declares,

“…within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,

Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if this flesh which walls about our life,

Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus

Comes at the last and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood

With solemn reverence: throw away respect,

Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,

For you have but mistook me all this while:

I live with bread like you, feel want,

Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,

How can you say to me, I am a king[i]?

 

How can we say to Jesus he is a king? Our gospel lesson[ii] for this feast depicts Jesus in a scene more dramatic and tragic than even Shakespeare could’ve imagined. The so-called king is less than a peasant. He’s a condemned criminal, executed for a crime—wanting to be king—which he didn’t even commit. He is beaten, abandoned, alone, reviled, ridiculed by the highest and the lowest in his society alike. He’s become a nothing, and, impaled on a piece of wood as an object of scorn and horror, he can’t even wipe the blood from his own eyes.

What kind of king is this?

There is no triumphant majesty in this king. No gorgeous palace lined with gold, no army to command, no household cavalry or legion of courtiers. This king is not in regal robes. He’s naked, in pain, helpless, and dying. That’s what makes Christ the King different from all others who would wear the crown and place themselves above their fellow mortals. This king, with all the glory and power of the Heavenly Father, has chosen to forsake it all. He doesn’t fear the loss of power—he willingly relinquishes it. He does not rise above us. He comes down to be with us, to know us in our worst, most brittle, fragile, lost, and lonely moments. This king loves us so much that, with his dying breath, he bestows grace and forgiveness on those who would be his enemies and reaches out in comfort to the lowest of the low.

What kind of king is this? The kind we should follow, because all others are just mortals with no divine right to their authority. Their victories and achievements are and have always been temporary. Yet the king who died on the cross lives within us, teaches us compassion, mercy, and humility. He teaches us—or at least, has tried to teach us—gratitude for our shared humanity, a humanity he loved enough to embrace himself. For this we offer him our respect, tradition, form and ceremonious duty.

May we all be worthy subjects of this king. God bless you, and thank you for reading my blog this week.

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[i] William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Richard II (Act 3, Sc 2), courtesy of OpenSourceShakespeare.org.

[ii] Luke 23:33-43