The notion of Satan, of some sort of concentrated personification of evil, no longer makes sense within our rational worldview. But in lieu of Satan, most of us have little in the way of explanation for how and why things so often go so terribly wrong, for why the world so often rebels against the ways of God. We place an awful lot of the weight of evil on individual actors–on bad eggs, as it were.

Simon and Andrew didn’t seem to have a lot to leave behind–they were throwing their nets in from the shoreline so didn’t have boats. James and John, though, had a business complete with boats, and employees–not to mention their Dad, Zebedee–whom they left standing beside the boats while they scurried off down the beach following this decidedly odd Rabbi–disappearing into the distance as Zebedee stood dumbfounded. Rich or poor, though, both sets of brothers left everything that was familiar behind in order to go after a stranger who called them to follow.

Wherever we find ourselves when the question “who do you say that I am” comes our way, Jesus’ question is the critical question of our faith–and it is one each of us has to answer individually and collectively as the Body of Christ we call the church.

Repent literally means: “to turn around.” To set one’s face in a different direction. To face, in the case of John’s repentance, toward the Holy. And then, necessarily, to confront the question that seems to eternally confound humanity. The question: what does the Lord require of you?

People have legitimate concerns about the complex issues of immigration policy and border security, but rather than address these concerns with intelligence and compassion, our government has chosen to regress to a primitive appeal to our worst instincts as human beings.

Despite all the paintings and carols that depict a rosy and serene scene, I have to believe the holy family was tired, afraid, and bewildered. And if you look at the sweep of human history this sense of bewilderment and fear is a recurring theme.

So many people are just waiting for things to change. Wanting things to be different than they are. And the combination of wishful thinking and the imagined virtuousness of patient waiting means that we wait, and wait, and wait. And all this waiting just doesn’t seem to get us anywhere. So why on Earth would we devote a whole church season to it? Is there really any wisdom in waiting?

Christian hope is not pie-in-the-sky, reality denying hope—it is instead knowing deep in our bones, that, evidence to the contrary, God is working in the world and God’s dream for the world will be fulfilled at some point in time. We may not see any evidence of it right now, but we hope, because we know that God is with us, in us, and desires to work through us. We know that the world, darkness, does not have the last word. We know that light always begins to seep into the cracks

While we might all easily get on board with this prescription for salvation, we also can’t avoid the inconvenient message that assures us that we will all be judged, maybe less by what is in our hearts than by what we have actually done in our response to others. And, keeping in mind the selection from Micah today, we can also reasonably conclude that when the Son of Man returns, he is going to be really pissed.

Indeed: the Biblical witness contends that no creature nor place on this Earth, no place in all the galaxies of this universe, is remote from God. And depending upon how you look at it, this is either very good news, or very bad news. Because there are no secret corners where sin goes unobserved. And there are no caverns of desolation where love cannot reach. God is with us in everything.All of it.