Lent and Advent are the most challenging seasons of the Christian calendar because during them we receive the most difficult, demanding, bad news ever to be called good - The Cross. Twice a year our worlds are rocked, our tables are turned, demons are put to wrought, and dead dreams are brought back to life.

Jesus is the reason for this season, and frankly for every season. And lest we domesticate the Lord to mere flannel graphs and perfectly manicured manger scenes, we can’t forget Lent during Advent, the shadow of the cross lingers over the manger.

For, the baby born king we worship here and now grows in spirit and wisdom enough to call the powers and principalities to task. J the B might hit us with some harsh words here in December, but they can’t hold a flame to what J the C says and does. Jesus will not relent to the world. In fact, Jesus overcomes the world.

The promise of Advent is that no matter what stumps us in life, no matter how many dead ends we encounter, God is going to make a way where there is no way. Predator and prey will dwell together. Peace will reign. A child will lead us.

Let there be no mistake, we, all of us, stand on the threshold of God’s kingdom. We never really know from moment to moment when an opportunity will come our way. It’s a mystery, but that’s where the real power lays. The Lord is always out in front of us. God’s futures approaches us, God’s future in which we will all be made new.

We wait with hope by lighting whatever little lights we can, for no light is too small in this ever darkening world.

“Jesus always comes to us in the brokenness of our health, in the shipwreck of our family lives, in the loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our sins. Jesus saves us in our disasters, not from them.” - Robert Farrar Capon

I’ve joked before, though its not really a joke, about how despite the beauty of the wedding liturgy, it would be far more appropriate if the couple made this public affirmation together:

“We are both broken. We have been idiots and we will be idiots again. We are both difficult to live with. We sulk and get angry and hold grudges. We both blame other people for our own mistakes, we’re not very good at compromise, and we are definitely not as nice as we think we are. And yet, we are here together hoping against hope to fight against the loneliness our failings tend to create.”

Marriage isn’t easy, but it might become easier if we realize that our partners are fallible creatures just like us.

Jesus says “Marriage isn’t heaven nor will there be marriage in heaven.” Not because marriage isn’t a good thing, but simply because the goodness of heaven transcends the goodness of everything we can know in our earthly lives.

A saint is simply someone whose life manages to be a crack through which God’s grace peaks through.

God uses music to help us enter the mysteries of life, death, and life after death.

We sing our faith. The words and melodies of our music transcend space and time; they tunes us in to God’s frequencies in the world. Music gives us the space to experience what we believe and how we pray when we don’t know how to put those things into words - music gives us the opportunity to feel whatever it is we are feeling without feeling like we’re not allowed to feel what we feel.

When Robert Jenson said the End is music, he went on to add how that particular music does not end, and so is always our beginning.

One day we, with all of creation, will be transfigured into God’s music. That’s the promise of the story of the Gospel.

Baptism is the gift of God’s living water that never runs dry. And it’s not just a sign of God’s love. It’s a sign of God’s love for the ungodly. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus knows every little thing about us, the good and the not so good. Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves and Jesus still goes to the cross for us anyway. The living water seals us in the Spirit and nothing can ever take it away for, as Paul reminds us, there is nothing that can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thanks be to God.

It’s by grace, and only by grace that Jacob makes it to the well and to the banks of the Jabbok river. It’s by grace, and only by grace, that the conniving, heel-grabbing, con-artist extraordinaire receives the name that names the nation: Israel. It’s by grace, and only by grace, that this flawed and fantastic figure fathers the twelve tribes of Israel and is the many-times great-grandfather of Jesus.

The church is like a well - it is the nexus where everything happens.

We gather, like Jacob, in order to come to grips with what we’ve done and left undone. We are given the promise, like Jacob, that there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any more, and there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any less.

The church also gives us the space, imagination, and wonder to wrestle with the Word. One of the surest signs of the Spirit at work is contention. There’s a reason Jacob is given the name Israel.

Lastly, as Stanley Hauerwas notes, whatever the church is, it is at least the discovery of friends we did not know we had. The church is where strangers become sisters, and others become brothers. God gathers us here together not just to hear a message, but to be God’s message to the world.

From his very first sermon Jesus identifies the work of the Lord with rescue, release, and relief.

And the rest of the New Testament is ripe with such stories! Jesus delivers people from their captivity to demons, illness, loneliness, death, and isolation. The Holy Spirit delivers the disciples from captivity to preconceived notions and literal prisons. And, as we say in the liturgy, God delivers us from from slavery to sin and death and makes with us a new covenant by water and the Spirit.

Yes, Jesus is a teacher and a healer and a preacher, but above all Jesus is a savior.

Jesus saves...

One of the most compelling and evergreen reasons to follow Jesus is that discipleship is playful. There’s a dance to the life of faith and it’s fun, or at least, its supposed to be.

I know a pastor’s whose church’s motto is: We take Jesus seriously, but not ourselves.

Even Karl Barth noted that one of the truest tests of faith isn’t whether or not we can laugh, but whether or not we can laugh at ourselves. I also love that.

But faith is often seen as a very serious endeavor. And for good reason. We’re talking about salvation here. But, if the only thing we ever heart about, or think about, or talk about is the law, all the things we should and shouldn’t be doing, then we will always find ourselves sitting under the shadow of failure, judgement, and seriousness.

And yet Luther, Paul, and Jesus remind us that God always speaks two words: Law and Gospel. Dave Zahl writes, “The law tells us what we ought to do; the Gospel tells us what God has done. The law shows us we need to be forgiven; the gospel announces we have been forgiven.”

There’s nothing more serious than Jesus mounting the hard wood of the cross on our behalf, but the result of that seriousness is the silliness of salvation...