Taylor Mertins

Willie Jennings says that Joy is an act of resistance against despair and its forces.

Again, it’s not living in denial, it’s not pretending things are better than they are.

The joy we speak of in the church is the knowledge that, like the crowds who gather to hear J the B, we really are a brood of vipers. Seriously, according to the witness of the Word we’re all on the naughty list. But the axe is lying at the root of the tree because God is cutting down our sin and using it for the divine bonfire the banishes the darkness forever.

John the Baptist appears in the middle of nowhere and says to the gathered people, “Here comes the Lord! Get ready to change direction, be surprised, all shook up, and turned upside down. Hills are coming down and valleys are filling up!”

In other words, when J the B shows up he says, “You can’t stay the same!”

God is up to something! God is on the move! And God is going to get what God wants. We, of course, can certainly put up a fight and make a mess of the whole operation. But God’s cut-and-fill operation is already among us...

Jesus is reminding us that no matter how broken things seem, nothing is so broken that God can’t make something beautiful out of the brokenness. There is no soil so ruined that God isn’t willing to toss another seed on it. There is no sinner so sinful that God can’t make a saint out of them.

Frederick Buechner said that the grace of God is the declaration that beautiful and terrible things will happen but we need not be afraid because God will be with us, always.

Advent, as we’ve been saying, is the time when time gets confused. We look backward, forward, and everywhere in between. But one thing that endures through time is the hope we have in the Lord. It’s that hope that sustains us through what is coming upon the world. The time being really is the most trying time of all, but we can look straight into the darkness because we know the dawn will break from on high.

It’s interesting, I think, how almost no one in the New Testament self identifies as a Christian. In fact, the label of being a Christian is a public one. That is, it is applied to those in the church by the world because the world can’t make sense of what the church is doing.

Today we take the practice of generosity as rather ubiquitous, particularly at this time of year, but in the first century it was inconceivable. And so, when people outside the church saw these individuals who were selling their possessions to help the poor, and people opening up their homes and tables to those who had no homes and had no food, they couldn’t wrap their heads around it. What kind of people would do such a thing?

People who worship the King named Jesus.

By the power of Christ, through cross and resurrection, we are forgiven. More pertinently YOU are forgiven. That’s the heart of the gospel and it’s why people like me won’t shut up about it.

But when I tell you you’re forgiven, whether from the pulpit or at the table, it’s not because you’ve somehow wiped your slate clean, or gotten all your ducks in a row. I am simply encouraging you to open your eyes to what you already have.

To become what you already are: forgiven.

The great gift of ministry is that I don’t have to stand day after day, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. Instead I get to share the Good News, “your sins are remembered no more,” and then I get a front row seat to the power of the Gospel at work.

Grief isn’t something to be fixed or gotten rid of. To deny our grief is to deny our humanity. The best we can ever do for others in their grief is just be there, to manifest the love that refuses to let them go. And the best we can ever do when we experience grief is exactly that - experience it. Weep and be angry and let it happen.

Because that’s what Jesus does.

Jesus, knowing full and well that he can make all well, still weeps at the grave of his friend. And it’s not just the tears, Jesus gets angry in his grief.

There is nothing in this life that we experience that is beyond God’s knowledge. God knows our sorrow and our grief and our anger. When Jesus raises his clenched fist, when he lets the tears go, he does so with every person who has ever known loss.

It's as the old hymn says: What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share.

Jesus grieves, and Jesus grieves with us.

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.

At tea time, everybody agrees.

I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror.

It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.

Who knew Taylor Swift was so Pauline?

Even with all the accolades, all the money, all the power, all the influence, she sings of a life that is simul justus et peccator.

In Paul’s letter, as he gets his Swiftie on, sees his own inner anti-hero, he crescendos to these words: “Wretched that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

And notice, Paul doesn’t ask “What will deliver me?” There’s no program of spiritual development or improvement that can overcome this inner turmoil. There is no what that can deliver. There is only a who.

And the who has a name: Jesus.

The proclamation of the Gospel is that Jesus jumps into the pit with us to show us the way out. Jesus climbs the hard wood of the cross on our behalf. Jesus rewrites our biographies so that they mirror his own. Jesus stands to be judged in our place. Jesus baptizes us into his death so that we rise into his life.

To put it rather pointedly: Jesus becomes the sinner atop the cross so that we become saints in him.

That’s why Paul can make such a bold declaration like there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death. To use language from Taylor Swift, even when we’re left to our own devices with prices and vices that end up in crisis, they are no match for the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Preaching is foolishness, Paul says, because lofty words of wisdom and grandeur do not bring us closer to God. Instead, God comes close to us. So close, in fact, that we have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us.

Which means who only really know who we are in relation to, and because of, who Jesus is. We can develop and put on all sorts of identities and qualities. But our primary identity, the outfit with which we've been clothed, is Jesus. We live in Christ and Christ lives in us...

God’s grace is unmerited, undeserved, and untakeawayable.

The offering plate is too small for God’s gift to us. God doesn’t give us 10%. No, God gives us everything. The whole kit and caboodle. For God is the gift.

This is the Gospel, the goodest part of the Good News: God gives and gives and gives. God seeks and seeks and seeks. God forgives and forgives and forgives.

The strange theological truth is that the world does revolve around us. I know that’s a dangerous thing to say, particularly in a time in which narcissism is on the rise and the evidence of our destructive tendencies toward Creation are all too apparent… But there’s an important distinction - the cosmos is ours not so that it might serve selfish ends, of course, but that, through creation God might delight in us.

Perhaps that’s why God tells our first parents to have dominion over Creation and not domination. Domination would mean we get to do whatever we want whenever we want. Dominion is different. Dominion is a responsibility for this wondrous gift we’ve been given.