Luke’s version of Jesus baptism tends to be familiar to anyone who’s spent much time in church. John the Baptist is yelling at the crowds. Jesus comes along and submits to the ritual, and then a lovely little vision transpires with rays of light and fluttering birds and a supportive parental voice echoing out its love for this individual. It’s sort of a tidy tableau that confirms Jesus’ divinity and then allows us to move on to more important things. For a 1st Century listener, however, this scene is raw sedition.

For the last four Sundays, we here at St. Andrew’s have been taking heed to Advent’s warning: Love is coming. Love—fiery, jealous, all-consuming, and unquenchable Love—draws near, intent on reasserting its reign. This raw and raging Love returns to reestablish our wayward world in its glorious and terrible image.

We look to Mary’s song and hear her rejoice, but have any of us ever really paid attention to what she says? The Magnificat certainly is a song of joy, but it’s a joy found in relief, in escape from oppression and in light of desperately needed kindness and acceptance.

For our ears, it can be difficult to hear anything particularly good about what John says, with his threats about trees being chopped down and burned. But the truth is, John isn’t making threats—nor is God menacing anyone with an axe, for that matter.

Last week we tried to shift our understanding of Advent, redirecting our expectations from the culturally ingrained distraction of readying the house for a baby Jesus to more clearly recognize the reality of this Season, the purpose of which is, in truth, preparation for the Day of the Lord, which is not a pleasant thing.

Generation upon generation has understood Advent as the time we prepare for Jesus’ birth, but that’s not really what we’re supposed to be doing right now. Look at our Bible readings. Each year people complain that the Sundays leading up to Christmas are all filled with doom and gloom—Jesus droning on about “the end of the world” and then John the Baptist warning about vipers and axes and flames.

Humans might be the only earthly creatures that ruin their present existence, health, and happiness by speculating on the future. “Look at the birds of the air.” They continue to survive, even if they don’t have a formal plan for where their next meal will come from.

Christendom wasn’t simply a historical era but the broad adoption of Christianity as the state-sanctioned religion—the union of Church and State—or as I would term it, Church as Empire, Empire being the formally legislated or culturally demanded authorization of oppression—even overt violence—which attempts to ensure both physical and mental conformity throughout a populace.

A happy St. Andrew’s Day to you all—sort of! Those in the know probably recognize that we’re holding this celebration a little early, seeing that the real St. Andrew’s Day takes place on November 30 each year.

This morning we’re going to talk less about our texts and more about our service itself. That may seem an odd choice on All Saints Day, but I promise that we’ll get there.

Job is something of an oddity within the broader Hebrew Bible, not really fitting into the historical books or the prophetic writings. It’s generally grouped with “Wisdom” books, but the text itself directs the reader to question the wisdom we hope it provides.

In both ancient Hebrew and Greco-Roman culture, Wisdom always appears as a woman. Most natural phenomena or psychological constructs, which people then discussed using the terminology of gods, required both masculine and feminine representation in order to maintain a balance between the extremes any single idea might contain. It’s odd, then, that Wisdom has no partner to stand beside her.

Theologians have a history of focusing our attention on the famous piece of fruit, but the first real damage or harm that comes to any person in the story is when Adam blames Eve for his choice to eat. Eve then blames the serpent, and we’ve all just bought into that initial family tradition ever since.

God doesn’t play favorites. Everyone in a given area gets the same sunshine, the same rain, the same heat, the same cold. God provides the same food and the same water, making it available for all to use. Humans are the ones that decide who should receive the benefits of the things that God provides and who should go without.

...James’ epistle is often set at odds with those of Paul, largely due to our historic interpretations of the texts that set them into the false dichotomy of “faith versus works.” Once we reclaim the understanding of the term behind “faith” as “faithfulness,” the supposed conflict evaporates.

And that brings us back to our Gospel, where we find Jesus going out of his way to liberate God’s work and presence amongst the people of his day and, eventually, throughout history itself. Jesus, the incarnate Christ, lived as God’s active presence in early 1st Century Palestine. But that presence has never been restricted to one particular time or place, nor was it contained within any one of his miracles.

There’s a tendency among American Christians to interpret certain portions of the Bible with extreme literalism. We then often choose either to ignore other sections or to write them off as some sort of spiritualized metaphor. “God is love”—along with the verses surrounding it—generally falls within that last group.

Although it pardons an offense, forgiveness—even forgiveness directly from God!—does not and will not eliminate repercussions. An action sown will reap its harvest, and one sin’s aftereffects often spread harm far beyond the guilty party. God may have put away David’s sin, but despite his confession and turn toward God, everyone with any connection to the king—from royal family to the nameless slave laboring in the kingdom’s farthest reaches—will be forced to bear aspects of David’s curse.

in our day, it seems impossible to avoid looking at the tale of David and Bathsheba. This is a deeply ugly and troubling story, and I’m going to deal with it as honestly and straightforwardly as I can. That means we’re going to have to deal with challenging topics, including sexual assault.

…”the quest to find true unity within God’s anointing…is part of our journey of love. We make the choice to accept one another where we are and for who we are, not as a passive means of preventing conflict but as an active expression of love. When disagreement arises—which it will—we offer one another the benefit of the doubt and trust God to lead and guide each of us through the direction of the Holy Spirit.”