291 In-Between

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “In-Between”, originally shared on December 27, 2023. It was the 291^st video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We are now in-between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Christians live in-between lives in many ways, and in some ways we do not. Today, we’re going to find out what they are.

   Today is the third day after last Sunday’s Christmas Eve. It’s also the third day of the 12 days of the Christmas season that lasts until January 6th. It’s also the fourth day before next Sunday’s New Year’s Eve, the second Sunday in a row in which we will celebrate a major evening holiday in addition to morning worship. Today, we’re going to find out what all those numbers mean.

   We celebrated Christmas Day two days ago. For an increasing number of people in our world, that’s it. Christmas is over. The presents are opened and put away. The tree already seems a little out of place, and it will be gone by the end of New Year’s Day, if not sooner.

   Even for some Christians Christmas ended on Christmas Eve.  “We didn’t have a Christmas Day worship service because, well, it’s a lot of work and we weren’t sure people would come for a Sunday morning worship service as well as a Christmas Eve service, much less a Christmas Day service, and people have out of town family and guests to take care of, and we need to put stuff away when we have people to do it, or we don’t care about Church seasons”, and so on.

   Christmas is over, for others, when the season of commercial preparations for parties and presents ends, and then when it’s done, it’s really done.

   In fact, some businesses and TV programs marked the 12 days of Christmas as a countdown to Christmas. So, when they’re over, they’re really over.

  The Christian Church, however, starts the Christmas season on Christmas Eve and celebrates it for 12 whole days, until January 6th, the Day of The Epiphany of Our Lord, as in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”!

   So, now we have Christmas pretty much all to ourselves and those with whom we share it.

   There’s no more holiday stress. The long nightmare of expectations and over-indulgence is over.

   Now comes the Christmas blessing and we open our hearts to receive it for 12 whole days.

   BTW, the cost of the 12 gifts listed in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” went up 2.65% this year to $45,523, according to PNC Bank! Or, if you bought them online, $52,024. Or, if you bought the items over and over each day as the song suggests (that's 364 total gifts) they will cost you over $200,167! 

   You know, those exotic pets like turtle doves, geese, and French hens are expensive, increasing the most, largely because of increased labor and food costs. 😊

   So, barring that expense, continue to have a Merry Christmas for 12 days and don’t be embarrassed for celebrating Christmas as a Christian. Be counter-cultural. Don’t take down your Christmas tree, your lights, or your decorations. Leave them up until January 6^th, and be a witness when you are asked why, or when you get funny looks. 😊  As Jesus said, in Matthew 5:14-15,

   ¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵ No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

   Be bearers of that light.

   John describes it in terms of the birth of Jesus, in the Gospel of John which some churches will hot have heard read on Christmas Day if they didn’t gather for worship, in John 1:3-5,

³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

   In Advent we considered our lives lived in-between the first coming of Jesus in his birth to save the world and the second coming of Jesus at the end of history to judge the living and the dead.  

   In Christmas we consider our lives lived in-between this world and the next.

   But it’s difficult to live in the in-between.

   In 1884 there was a third political movement called the Mugwumps that was often positioned between the Republicans and the Democrats. They were comically criticized as having their “mugs” on one side of the fence and their “wumps” on the other.

   Of course, where you fit on a political spectrum depends on who’s spectrum you are on. I consider myself a moderate, but some on the right consider me a lunatic leftist while some on the left consider me to be a raging conservative. It seems like someone is always mad at me.

   I’m OK with that.

   I think that our positions should be based on our principles and that our principles should be based on our beliefs, and then where they fall, they fall. Moderation in all things, including moderation.

   I don’t think that our positions should be a kind of moderation that’s based on pleasing everybody.

   We should not always expect to be popular.

   Jesus said, in his sermon on the mount, in Luke 6:26,

26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

   It’s often said that we are in the world, but we are not of the world. We are in-between. How do we live that?

   By holy living that is not being nice but is being redefined by God.

   By worship that is not just checking the boxes but is focused and engaged and directed toward the one true living God.

   By doing justice that is not defined by political attachments but by doing God’s will.

   How do we talk about that?

   By looking for common ground to communicate, not by pandering to the world by looking like it.

   By being a community of people that loves Jesus as our Savior above everything else, including family, not by being a community that is based on smug self-righteousness using religious language.

   By being a people set apart that, a people who provides clear differences and alternatives to being of the world, not by appealing for popularity while pretending to have an outsider status.

   Paul writes, in Romans 12:2,

2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

   As we stand between celebrations, preparing now for living in a new year, let us stop and consider what it means to be alive in Jesus Christ.

   We were dead in our sin, but now we are made alive. We have already passed though death in our baptisms. Paul writes in Romans 6:1-4,

1 What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

   We are, ourselves, both saints and sinners. We are both under the religious Law and freed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

   We are in-between in so many things. But not in our passion for Jesus, for holy living, and for sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are warned against this in an image of the last days, in what the Spirit is saying to the seven churches in Revelation 3:14-16,

14 “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation:

15 “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. 16 So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

   Of all the resolutions for the New Year that we could be considering for making next Sunday, I would encourage all of us to consider one based on last Sunday. I would encourage us to open our hearts to receive new life and renewed life in a living relationship with the one true living God, to be publicly passionate for God in lives defined by God’s in-between time.

   Christ is born. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

290 Still Advent

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Still Advent”, originally shared on December 20, 2023. It was the 290^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Advent may be shorter this year than usual, and that’s a problem. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   I grew up in Wisconsin where it’s said that there are four seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Road Construction. 😊

   This year, there are some that seem to feel the same way about Advent.

   Advent is the season of the Church year of preparation for Christmas.

   Advent means “coming”. We celebrate both the first advent of Jesus at his birth and prepare for the second advent of Jesus to judge the world, when everything will be made new in its perfection.

   For some, it’s all too much.

   I often think of Pastor Ingqvist, at this time of year. He is the pastor in humorist Garrison Keillor’s mythical Minnesota town, Lake Wobegon, who began an Advent sermon with a proposal something like, “This Christmas, I propose that we resist the temptations of our world to make Christmas about the things that we can buy. Let’s make it less about the gifts we give and more about the gift God has given us in Jesus Christ.” And just then his gaze fell to the row in front of the pulpit where his five children were mouthing words at him. “No! Dad, no! No!”.

   I get that children find that Advent is too long to wait.

   Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas, and for some grown-ups that’s too long to wait. Though I’ve seen some clergy online who are inexplicably arguing for a seven-week Advent season!

   This year, though, some churches will be cutting Advent to three Sundays instead of four. Why?

   Because this coming Sunday is The Fourth Sunday in Advent. It’s also Christmas Eve.

   Some churches are afraid that no one will show up in the morning, I guess, so they have canceled the morning Advent service and will only have a Christmas Eve service.

   And, even if churches have an Advent service in the morning, I know that some people will feel that they have too much to do, so they’ll shorten Advent themselves by skipping it.

   Why is that a problem?

   First, it raises questions about what we value.

   Christmas is a peak time for visitors, and they are the least likely to hear about any changes in the regular worship times. When they arrive in the morning and find no worship service, or one that is greatly diminished in attendance, it creates an impression that worship times are flexible and are set for the convenience of the congregation’s members.

   This year’s dilemma is like the issue raised in the question, “Should I force my children to go to church?”

   Some people will answer, “No. I was forced to go as a child, and I hated it. I want my children to decide for themselves.”

   It’s not an uncommon response. But it begs some questions like, “Do you force your children to eat nutritious meals?” “Do you force your children to go to school? To do their homework? Or, to get enough sleep?”

   Children can tell the difference between what is important to their parents and what is not.

   Children learn some of their most important lessons by example. That’s why it’s not just important for children to go to church, it’s important for them to worship with their parents.

   I don’t think that parents should use threats or physical force, but instead communicate a common identity.

   It happens through parents who by their words and deeds say, “We are a family, and this is who we are.”

   The whole Church is the Christian community, but every congregation doesn’t need to be a large community.

   I often think of the Anglican vicar who thought that what his congregation needed was a 6:00 a.m. prayer and Holy Communion service. Most of his colleagues were skeptical. “Who’s going to come to church at 6:00 in the morning?”, they asked.

   A couple of months later, a few of them asked him how it was going.

   “It’s going great”, the vicar said.

   His surprised colleagues asked, “How many people come out for a 6:00 a.m. prayer and Holy Communion service?

   He answered, “Well, me, and my mother, and the two maiden sisters who come to everything, about a trillion seraphim, a quadrillion cherubim, and all the hosts of heaven!”

   We are important and necessary to one another. We are a people set apart. We need one another to build one another up, to share one another’s burdens. To bear a common identity. And we are being rooted-on by the whole heavenly host.

   This is who we are.

   Second, it removes an opportunity to hear a lesson about Christmas that many of us seem to have forgotten.

   One of the most popular contemporary Christian Christmas songs in the past several years has been one called, “Mary, Did You Know”. I’ve sung it. I’ve found it moving. Maybe you have too.

   But it’s also nonsense, and those who miss worship this Sunday will miss an opportunity to reflect on why that is.

   Here’s how the song starts:

Mary, did you know that your baby boy Would one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy Would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy Has come to make you new?
This child that you delivered, will soon deliver you

   Here’s the reading from the Gospel of Luke that will be read in vast majority of Churches all over the world this coming Sunday, in Luke 1:26-38,

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” ²⁹But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ³⁶And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. ³⁷For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

   Yes, Mary knew! The angel Gabriel told her!

   Hearing the lessons read out loud gives us information like this. It also changes lives.

   The Bible is the primary way that God speaks to us, and we share it with millions of Christians all over the world hearing the very same thing on the very same day in the Church year.

   Third, worshiping at the Sunday morning Fourth Sunday in Advent worship service helps us keep our focus on the blessing.

   We celebrate because we know who has come and who will come again.

   We celebrate the waiting, in which God speaks at in the first advent and at the last.

   We celebrate to keep our focus on keeping awake.

   Our struggle is with this world’s secular imitation of Christmas.

   Our struggle is with patience.

   Our struggle is an opportunity to practice patience as we wait for Jesus to come again. It’s a chance to reject the temptation to cave-in to the world’s “Winter Shopping Festival” that began months ago.

   This is not a burden. It’s a blessing.

   Worshiping in Advent, on the Fourth Sunday in Advent, gives us the backstory to the backstory of Christmas.

   We will be prepared in the morning for what is announced at night.

   I saw a meme in three parts the other day. The first showed advent candles marked “Advent”, the second showed a manger scene marked “Christmas Eve”, and the third showed a stunned guy marked, “Well that escalated quickly!”

   Christmas Eve will remind us that God keeps His promises. Even if it takes a very long time. But just as the Law is needed for the Gospel to make sense, and just as Good Friday is needed for Easter to make sense, the fullness of Advent is necessary for the fullness of the Christ event to make sense in all of its meaning.

   Without it, we are like the woman who had come to that point in her life where her extended family had grown so large that buying Christmas presents for everyone was too much. She couldn’t keep track of what everyone needed or wanted. So, she wrote a stack of checks and filled out a pile of Christmas cards, written to everyone, with the message, “This year you can buy your own Christmas present, with a smiley face 😊”.

   She brought them to the family Christmas gathering and passed them around.

   Toward the end of the evening, she noticed that people were looking at her funny. Something wasn’t quite right but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was until she got home and saw, on her writing desk, was a neat stack of checks, uninserted into the Christmas cards. All that her family members had received from her was a card with the message, “This year, buy your own Christmas present!”

   Something important had been left out.

   It will still be the season of Advent this Sunday before sundown, both in the sense that it is Advent “still” remaining, and that it is the Sabbath, a time to be still so that we can hear the meaning of the first coming of Jesus at Christmas and to contemplate his longed-for second coming for Judgement in the stillness.

   So don’t sleep this Sunday morning, either physically or spiritually. Be awake and be blessed. Be ready, as Jesus called upon his disciples to do in Mark 13:37,

37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

   Because it’s still Advent. 

289 Casting Out Fear

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Casting Out Fear”, originally shared on December 13, 2023. It was the 289^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   There are many good reasons to be afraid these days. And one great reason not to. Today, we’re going to find out what it is.

   There are many reasons to be afraid: rising conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East that could flare up into nuclear war, climate change bringing environmental catastrophe and extreme weather, the growing collapse of the Church in the West, China’s growing military and economic influence abroad and economic uncertainty at home that could lead to open conflict, and in the United States, social breakdown and street-level crime, the challenges to democracy and to civilization itself reflected in campaigns related to the upcoming elections, rising levels of hate speech and hate crime, and the classic California trifecta of earthquakes, flooding and brush fires, and much more.

   There is one great reason not to be afraid, and it’s reflected in the portion of the Gospel of John that will be read in the vast majority of churches all over the world this coming Sunday, John 1:6-8, 19-28. It begins,

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

   John was sent by God. So, was that the key to his fearlessness? As in the words of Psalm 27:1,

¹The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

   Yes, sort of. But there’s more. And there’s a difference between knowing that we are secure in God, and in believing it.

   It is the difference between asking rhetorical questions and in trusting God when it’s difficult to do so.

   Detrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian who, unlike many Lutherans, stood up to and resisted the evils of Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany. He was imprisoned and executed near the end of WWII as the Allies closed in. But, as a colleague once observed, everybody wants to be Bonhoeffer. Until it’s time to be Bonhoeffer.

   I read a story years ago about Nikita Khrushchev, who was Premiere of the Soviet Union right after the Stalinist era. Joseph Stalin tolerated no dissent and had been responsible for the deaths of between 6 and 9 million people as the result of purges, ethnic cleansing, deportation, starvation, and incarceration in concentration camps. Millions more may have died in WWII as the result of Stalin’s purges of qualified generals (according to an article by Ian Johnson in the New York Review of Books). Khrushchev had been an associate of Stalin, but when Stalin died, he campaigned for Stalin’s job under a platform against the evils of Stalinism.

   He spoke at a large gathering of communists during this campaign and at the end of his speech he sat down and asked if there were any questions.

   A voice from the back of the hall said, “You were there. Why didn’t you do something?”

   Khrushchev leaped to his feet and stretched to see (he wasn’t very tall), turned beet red and screamed, “Who said that?”.

   The room went totally silent.

   Khrushchev relaxed, sat down, and said, “Now you know.”

   What enabled John to stand up and preach in desperate conditions and with resistance from the principalities and powers?

   We get another look in the second section of Sunday’s gospel reading.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” 22 Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said. 24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. 25 They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” 26 John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, 27 the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” 28 This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

   John had many reasons to be afraid.

   He was not the Messiah. He did no miracles. He had no divine power to validate who he was.

   He was not Elijah, who many did believe would return before the Messiah came (Malachi 4:5).

   He was not the prophet predicted by Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15).

   And he had one great reason not to be afraid. He was sent by God. He had a vocation, a calling. God was bringing in the kingdom. The Messiah was coming. John was called to prepare the way. He was a prophet.

   The religious leaders sought to discredit him. He was hated by the local Roman government (and would eventually be imprisoned and executed by them).

   But that didn’t matter. John lived by faith, not fear.

   Each of us, like John, has a calling. It is our “vocation”.

   The root word for “vocation” is the Latin word “vocare” or, “to call”.

   We each have a ministry, a “calling”, to carry out in daily life. And though we have many reasons to be afraid, fear does not define us. God does.

   These are the “how” reasons that John was, and we are, able to stand without fear.

   But they still do not answer the question of “why” John was able to stand without fear

   I saw a meme years ago quoting Yoda in the Star Wars movie, “The Phantom Menace”, speaking to Anakin Skywalker (who later becomes Darth Vader), “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."

   And next to it the apostle Paul was quoted saying, in Romans 5:3-5,

3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

   This is the reason that John stood without fear.

   It is the reason that we stand without fear.

   It is the central reality of the Christian life.

   The Holy Spirit makes all baptized believers into a new Creation. We are born again. Because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

   John writes in 1 John 4:7-8,

7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

   This love is selfless, sacrificial love. It is God at work on the cross.
   And what does this love do? John tells us a few verses later, in 1 John 4:18,

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.  

   “Perfect love casts out fear.” It sounds like fear is something that is alien to us. And it is. We weren’t created for fear. We were created for a perfect relationship with God and harmony with all of Creation. But we rejected God and evil entered the world. How can we return to Eden?

   Can we achieve perfection in love? No.

   Where does this love come from? It can only come from God. We receive this love in the perfect relationship that God gives us though faith in the one true living God. It redefines us.

   As John writes in 1 John 4:19,

19 We love because he first loved us.

   It’s been said that the Bible uses the words, “Fear not”, or “Don’t be afraid”, or something that’s equivalent 365 times. One for every day of the year.

   I can’t say that I have counted them. 😊 But that sounds about right. God has made us new.

   Even when we feel fear, which sometimes is a good thing, we know that there is a foundational level of our existence that is free from fear, just as we can be depressed and at the same time know that we are filled with joy.

   This is a broken world, and it will not be made whole until the Last Judgement and there are new heavens and a new earth.

   Meanwhile, we live in the grace of God. We have been made free. We have moved from death to life. Death has no more dominion over us.

   Jesus said, in John 3:16,

16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

   We could give in to fear, we could go along to get along. We could compromise with the world and justify it as necessary. We are, after all, sinners as well as saints in this world.

   But that is not a part of our new character as reborn children of God.

   As has been said, we don’t know what the future holds, but we do know who holds the future.

   We simply join John the Baptist every day to answer God’s call. We live in the already but not yet perfected Kingdom of God. We live as the people of God called, equipped, and sent into the world to proclaim and point to Jesus crucified, risen, and coming again.

   There are many good reasons for us to be afraid in this world, and there is one great reason not to. Jesus said, in John 16:33,

33 I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”