God's Empire Does Not Deport Its Citizens

January 25, 2026, First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y. 

[Church cancelled because of severe snow storm.]

If the stories told in the fourth chapter of Matthew were rewritten as a Netflix mini-series, there would be four episodes;

Episode One: Jesus in Galilee

Episode Two: Jesus Declares the Empire of God

Episode Three: Jesus Calls his Followers

Episode: Jesus Preaches and Heals

Jesus in Galilee

Before Episode One begins, a voice says “Last season on Matthew Four” which featured John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness, the birth of Jesus, the baptism of Jesus, and the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Again, four dramatic episodes.

As episode one of season two begins, Jesus receives the bad news that his cousin John the Baptist (portrayed by Jim Gaffigan) has been arrested by evil King Herod (played by Danny Trejo). This means John’s prophetic voice is silenced and no one doubts Herod will find a way to kill him. Jesus, played by Timothée Chalomet, is now the main lead in the epic of Matthew Four. Jesus withdraws to Galilee, to the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, and settles in Capernaum.

The mere mention of Zebulun, Naphtali, and Capernaum would bring back bitter memories for most people reading Matthew in the first century. “The names,” writes Warren Carter, Professor of New Testament at Phillips Seminary in Tulsa, designate tribal allocations of Canaanite land that God had sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had shown to Moses (Deuteronomy 34:1-4), and were assigned by Joshua (Joshua 19:10-16, Zebulun; 19:32-39). These covenant-evoking names frame the land as divine gift yet this land is now occupied by imperial powers.”

Matthew’s mention of these place names remind us these places were a gift from God, are again being ruled by Gentile imperialists, and the people sit in darkness. But soon they will see a great light, “and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” (Mt 4:16).

The darkness is a ruthless empire with Herod as its puppet, an empire that scoffs at the One God of Israel and places crushing burdens on God’s people.

But Matthew declares God’s people “will see a great light,” and Jesus has come to usher in the Empire of God.

Jesus Declares the Empire of God

“From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near.’” (Mt 4:17)

We tend not to think of God’s reign an “empire,” although the word Matthew uses – basileia – can mean empire, kingdom, of reign.

“The Gospel imitates imperial language and structures (God’s dominating power),” Warren Carter writes, “yet redefines them as the subsequent scene of Jesus’ healing and liberating power displays (Matthew 4:23-25). The Gospel envisions God’s empire/kingdom as already established in the heavens. It is now being extended among humans in Jesus’ activity (‘your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’)”

The people who accepted Jesus’ call to “repent” knew that citizenship in the Empire of God didn’t mean the Empire of Rome would stop harassing them. But they knew that repentance meant choosing God’s rule over the tyranny of the Emperor. And they knew there might be times when they would have to choose between God and the Emperor at great risk to their lives.

That risk, to varying degrees, must be taken by all of us who have become citizens in the empire of God. Some might risk ridicule when they explain their faith to colleagues, or threats when they intervene with bullies who are taunting women wearing hijabs, or menacing people thought to be gay or trans. We may not always have the courage to do it. But we will always know in our hearts that God’s justice requires it.

Complicating that knowledge, there are times when God’s empire chooses to protect itself with behavior that clearly offends God.

For too many years to count, some Roman Catholic prelates sought to protect the church by covering up the behavior of pedofile priests by sending them to other parishes. Their rationale was that if these misbehaving priests gave the church a bad name, that undermined and might even cause people to reject the Gospel of Christ. It’s a strange and twisted reasoning that the Holy Gospel is more important than several hundred young victims of pederasty. And attempts to cover it up didn’t work because offending priests resumed their predatory ways in new parishes.

I hasten to add that the vast majority of priests are good and Godly men who preach Christ’s essential Gospel and seek to “these little ones” and all parishioners from danger.

And of course it goes without saying that most church groups have shared the guilt.

When I was 28 years old I was appointed director of communication for my denomination. I was green and uneasy about being a spokesperson for the whole church, but I knew my commission was to tell the truth and let the good news of our mission speak for itself.

Then one morning the general secretary called me to his office and greeted me with a pained expression on his face.

“We’re going to need a press release immediately,” he said. He explained that a high-ranking and very well known member of the staff had been caught in predatory behavior with a female member of the church board.

“He’s out, of course,” general secretary said, “but we can’t let our churches know why. I need you to write a press release saying Harry is utterly exhausted by his tireless commitment to mission and I have relieved him to take a well-deserved rest.”

Um, okay. So my first major press release would be a lie. I could have protested, of course, and point out that people are going to find out eventually, as they did when Harry became pastor of a large church and resumed his abusive behavior.

But I didn’t have that kind of moral courage. I wrote the press release. I became part of the problem. And I abandoned my role as a member of the Empire of God. I think the lesson here is this: try to be true to your citizenship in God’s Empire, but don’t get cocky.

Jesus Calls His Followers

Jesus’ then calls two sets of brothers to be his followers (Matthew 4:18-22). They are fishermen, embedded in the imperial economy. Rome asserted control over the land and sea, their production, and the transportation and marketing of their yields with contracts and taxes. Jesus disrupts these men’s lives, calls them to a different loyalty and way of life, creates a new community, and gives them a new mission (fish for people). His summons exhibits God’s empire at work, this light shining in the darkness of Roman-ruled Galilee. (per Carter)

The men’s immediate positive response in following Jesus is stark. Readers have imagined previous and extended conversations but such “solutions” destroy the dramatic urgency of the scene. More compelling is to recall the presentation of Jesus in previous chapters. As God’s agent, he is to manifest the light of God’s saving presence and empire/reign. Such initiative and gift are appropriately welcomed with an instant response. (per Carter)

As one who vacillated a long time before deciding on full-time religious work, I am both impressed and shamed by their unhesitating response to follow Jesus. And – Respect. 

Jesus Preaches and Heals

This is the Jesus we know and love: the itinerate teacher and healer. Jesus began his ministry in Galilee by mingling with the poor and curing disease with a power that seemed to transcend the laws of nature and medical science. He made blind people see. He made lame people walk. He cured horrible skin diseases with a glance. He raised the dead.

Father James Martin, a Jesuit writer and scholar, acknowledges that “The most difficult question that the modern, rational, intelligent person can ask about the Gospels may be this: How can I believe that these things really happened? This, in essence, is the question that Jesus poses in the Gospel of Matthew to two blind men who ask Jesus, in so many words, to be healed: “Do you believe that I am able to do this?”

Some Christians attempt to explain Jesus’ miracles by suggesting alternative explanations. They suggest that bread and fishes distributed among the 5000 was the acts of thousands of people sharing their food baskets. Isn’t that a miracle, too?

“To which I answer no,” says Father Martin. “This easy-to-digest interpretation reflects the unfortunate modern desire to explain away the inexplicable and to downplay miracles in the midst of a story filled with the miraculous. Almost one-third of Mark’s Gospel, for example, is devoted to Jesus’ miracles. To my mind, some of the interpretations that seek to water down the miracle stories reflect unease with God’s power and Jesus’ divinity, discomfort with the supernatural and, more basically, an inability to believe in God’s ability to do anything.”

As Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee, we will see many events that will confound us. The Creator of Universes has come to us in the form of a man. And the miracles that follow will be all the more wonderful if we believe God can do anything.

“Power and Riches and wisdom and strength and honor and blessing and glory are his. For the lamb who was slain has begun his reign. Alleluia.”

Amen.

The Baptizer's Testimony

January 18, 2026. First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

 If we only had the Gospel of John, we’d have no idea what John the Baptist looked like.

We may think of John as an eccentric preacher who secured his camel hair wrap with a leather belt while munching on locusts and honey. But all those images are in the other three gospels.

In John’s gospel there is no mention of the Baptist’s parents Elizabeth and Zechariah, no visit of the mother of Jesus to her pregnant cousin, no baby leaping in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary approaches.

In John’s gospel, the Baptist appears fully formed in the wilderness, freshly showered as far as we know and dressed in a clean muslin robe. It falls to the priests and Levites to ask, “Who are you,” and John responds by quoting Isaiah, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”

His testimony made him famous because John appears in sources that are not the bible. In his Antiquities written around 70 C.E., the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus noted John’s prominence in Jewish history:

(John) was a good man and had urged the Jews to exert themselves to virtue, both as to justice toward one another and reverence towards God, and having done so join together in washing. For immersion in water, it was clear to him, could not be used for the forgiveness of sins, but as a sanctification of the body, and only if the soul was already thoroughly purified by right actions.

Josephus misses an important fact about John: his testimony about the coming of the Messiah:

I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One.” (John 1:33-34)

On January 11 many churches celebrated the baptism of Jesus, one of the seminal events in Jesus’ life and in our church year. The Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke, inspire a profound meditation on baptism, the sacrament that marks when our life in Christ begins.

Dr. Cody J. Sanders of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., notes, “the portrayal in John’s Gospel opens space … to address the role of testimony in Christian life, and the role of John as testifier to Jesus’ identity.”

Let’s address a common trope. Baptism is easy. Testimony is hard.

It is very hard for me, as a closeted introvert, to tell people about my faith. This was a special burden for me as an erstwhile Baptist because so much stress was placed on “witnessing.”

Baptists tend to lob Jesus’ own words at those of us who preferred to silent:

“Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven, but whoever denies me before others, I will also deny before my Father in heaven.” (Mt 10:32-33)

When Billy Graham invited persons in his audience to “get up out of your seat and come forward to accept Jesus,” he had a special admonishment for people who didn’t want to attract that kind of attention. “Remember,” Billy would say as the choir crooned Just As I Am, “everyone Jesus called to follow him he called publicly. If you feel him calling you, get out of your seat.”

And I assure you that Baptists understand the awful tug and pull of conscience as they sit paralyzed in their seat, saying, “I should get up and ask Jesus to be my personal savior. But not yet.”

Most Lutherans don’t experience this dilemma. Whenever someone asks us if we have found Jesus we may respond, “No, because Jesus has found me.” Martin Luther taught us that we were saved when Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected. Jesus is not asking us to make a “personal decision” to follow him. It is the Holy Spirit that enables us to have the saving grace of faith and we should stop worrying about it. If someone says to you, “Hey, when did you get saved,” the Lutheran testimony is this: “I was saved 2000 years ago when Christ died for the sins of the world.”

Another uniquely Lutheran testimony is that we’re not perfect. Martin Luther said that all of us are simultaneously saints and sinners. And he said it in Latin, Simul Justus et Peccator.

John’s testimony about who Jesus is and what Jesus did for the world is one we should emulate every day of our lives. When we are baptized, when the Holy Spirit has ignited our faith, we should tell people about Jesus. This should be as natural to us as dissecting the finale of Stranger Things around the office water cooler or appraising the Yankees with friends at the local bar.

Even so, it remains true that chatting with friends is easy; telling them what you think about Jesus is hard.

The testimony of John the Baptist included a more dangerous note than his declaration that a messianic figure greater than himself would soon follow. I don’t suppose that predicting a messiah disturbed the authorities very much because preachers had prophesied the coming of the messiah for years. What got John in trouble – and this should be of particular concern for each of us – was his habit of speaking truth to power.

This story is told in Matthew’s gospel:

For Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because John had been telling him, “It is not lawful for you to have her” .... But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company, and she pleased Herod so much that he promised on oath to grant her whatever she might ask. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.” ... (Herod) sent and had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, who brought it to her mother (MT 14:1-12)

Do you know important politicians or business titans or church leaders who have abused their power? And have you resolved to confront them about it?

The great Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer left a comfortable position at Union Seminary to return to his native Germany to oppose the Nazi regime. He was accused of being associated with the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and was hanged in April 1945 at the age of 39. How many of us have Bonhoeffer-like courage to openly oppose evil at the risk of our lives? Not I.

In the 1960s I joined a veteran’s group to oppose the Vietnam War. But it was a safe kind of protest, marching with thousands of like-minded people in Washington, singing Pete Seeger ballads, raising my fist in power-to-the-people salutes. But despite sniffing occasional wafts of tear gas, I knew my life was never in danger.

What opportunities do we have today to go to people in power and warn them they are acting against God’s law? And how can we be sure we know what that law is?

We can be sure because we have heard the Messiah whose coming was foretold by John the Baptist:

“In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets.” (MT 7:12)

The notion didn’t originate with Jesus. There is a story told of the great Rabbi Hillel, who died about the time Jesus was a little boy.

One doesn’t have to be a scholar or even particularly religious to know God’s rule for basic human behavior. Do to others what you would have them do to you. This is the rule of love. This is the basis for human decency. This is the source of compassion, of empathy, of kindness.

Sadly, so many people haven’t got the message.

For more than a year it has been the policy of our country to chase, bind, wrestle to the ground, and deport anyone who is suspected of being – as the calumny goes – “illegal.”  Too often this includes our friends, colleagues, spouses, family members, and neighbors who do not possess a Green Card or who are not regarded at first glance as legal residents.

Reports from ProPublica and other sources detail numerous cases of U.S. citizens, legal residents, and even elected officials detained by ICE agents in 2025.

Despite a stated policy that only the worst criminals will be deported, data shows that thousands of people arrested by ICE have no serious criminal records.

According to The Guardian, thirty-two people have died in ICE custody. Some had arrived in the U.S. recently, seeking asylum. Others had arrived years ago, some as young children. Some had been picked up in the administrations’ indiscriminate ICE raids.

Earlier this month, a masked ICE agent shot a woman through her car window. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the woman had “weaponized her car” to threaten the agent, despite public videos showing the agent shooting the woman several times as she attempted to drive away.

How are patriotic Christian Americans to respond to these people in power? What is the truth we should speak to them? What is our testimony?

Some of us may question whether it is appropriate even to raise these questions in worship when we would rather seek God’s solace.

Others will say it is our responsibility of Christians armed with an understanding of God’s justice, secure in our understanding of Christ’s Gospel of unconditional love, and encouraged by the audacity of John the Baptist’s testimony to, challenge the powerful. We must speak out.

Our testimony is this:

This is not what our God expects of us.

This is a sin.

This is wrong. 

This is not America. 

And many consciences s are crying out:

In the name of God, this must stop.

Remember Your Baptism

January 11, 2026. Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

I begin with a confession.

I have been baptized twice.

The first one I don’t remember. I was an infant. I suspect I was held in the arms of our pastor, the venerable Charles Bergner, who sprinkled a few drops of water on my fontanelle and handed me back to my mother.

The second one was twenty years later, on November 6, 1966, and I remember it vividly. I was in the Air Force in England and was going through a born-again Baptist phase. The chaplain, a Southern Baptist, said my first baptism didn’t count because I was not a believer. Wanting to cover all bases, I agreed to do it again. There are no dunking facilities in Air Force chapels so the chaplain arranged for me to be baptized in the Baptist church in nearby Woodbridge town.

It was a cold November that year and the Baptist church had no central heating. The large baptismal pool was filled and a small kerosene heater was tilted near the edge of the pool to warm the water. It wasn’t working. As I stood in my white baptismal robe I noticed ice was forming around the perimeter. When the chaplain immersed me, my lungs froze and I thought I was going to die. When I finally regained my breath I understood why baptism was said to symbolize rebirth from death to life.

It was a memorable and even holy experience and I admit I enjoyed the attention as the women of the chapel brought me a towel, caressed my head, and praised God that another sinner had been reclaimed by heaven.

But now I understand that a second baptism as an adult was unnecessary. The Holy Spirit was powerfully present when I was baptized as an infant and there was no need to be re-baptized.

As a member of the World Council of Churches staff I attended a meeting with Latin American Pentecostals in Costa Rica. An intensely evangelical group, Pentecostals have been aggressive in bringing lapsed Catholics into their fold. But a Pentecostal pastor reported that his church does not re-baptize converts who were baptized as infants in Catholic parishes. “The presence of the Holy Spirit is for all time,” he said. “The Holy Spirit does not expire.”

I do not blame my Baptist Air Force friends for pushing me to be re-baptized because I know they did it out of love and concern for my salvation. I think they thought like Delmar O’Donnell, one of the three escaped prisoners seeking their fortune in the movie Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou, a Coen brothers film based loosely on the Illiad. As Pete and Ulysses and Delmar pass a pond where people are being baptized, Delmar suddenly breaks away and runs into the water. He returns to his companions dripping wet and smiling. The following dialogue ensues:

Pete: Well I’ll be danged. Delmar’s been saved.

Delmar: Well that’s it, boys. I’ve been redeemed. The preacher’s done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It’s the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting’s my reward. The preacher says all my sins is warshed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.

Ulysses: I thought you said you was innocent of those charges?

Delmar: Well I was lyin’. And the preacher says that that sin’s been warshed away too. Neither God nor man’s got nothin’ on me now. C’mon in boys, the water is fine.

It certainly is a stretch to assume the mere act of dunking guarantees everlasting heaven.

How can water do such great things?

“Certainly not just water,” Martin Luther wrote, “but the word of God in and with the water does these things, along with the faith which trusts this word of God in the water. For without God’s word the water is plain water and no Baptism. But with the word of God it is a Baptism, that is, a life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says in Titus, chapter three: “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying.” (Titus 3:5–8)

Luther declares, “St. Paul writes in Romans chapter six: ‘We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life’” (Rom. 6:4)

For Luther, baptism was an essential step to salvation. We’ve read his words in his Small Catechism: “Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.”

The importance of baptism is founded on the fact that Jesus, who was without sin, demonstrated its importance by being baptized himself.

We know the familiar paintings that depict this scene: John standing awkwardly before Jesus protesting he was not worthy to baptize him; Jesus insisting that he do it anyway.

The three other Gospels tell similar stories of Jesus’ baptism. Mark, the writer of the oldest Gospel, writes, “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

That’s the old, old story we love to tell

Professor Mitzi J. Smith, J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia, also sees hidden meanings in Luke’s version of the story.

“Before Jesus has done anything,” she writes, “before he begins his public ministry in Luke, the voice from heaven publicly announces, ‘I am well pleased with you’ (3:22b). The only thing Jesus has done so far is to humble himself by submitting to be baptized by a man who describes himself as unworthy to untie Jesus’ sandals and who has lived in the margins of society.

Perhaps this demonstrates God giving value to the lowliest in a society where wealth is concentrated in the top 1–2 percent. Maybe this God gives value, purpose, belonging, and a sense of dignity and worth to persons born into social statuses relegated to the bottom of a society. This divine affirmation and confirmation will allow Jesus to unapologetically speak truth to power, to stand in the midst of hostile crowds, and to stand firm before religious and political leaders.”

Thus Jesus’ earthly ministry begins on a high note, with God placing him among the most common people of his time while instilling him with a power and authority that will change the world forever.

And it all begins in water, that is, “a life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit.”

As preachers all over the world are admonishing each of us today, 

“Remember your baptism.”

Come on in. The water is fine. 

God Made Flesh

 

January 4, 2026. Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

Maybe he wrote it and maybe he didn‘t, but he gets credit for it on coffee cups sold at the JFK library:

“There are three things that are real,” said John F. Kennedy, “God, human folly, and laughter; the first two things are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third.”

It’s an above average thought for your morning coffee. God the incomprehensible. Folly the impenetrable. Laughter the consoler.

For most of us, God is indeed beyond our comprehension. In our efforts to understand we often trivialize God, as when we call God “the man upstairs” or when we think of Michaelangelo’s powerful image of the white bearded old man reaching out to Adam. Strangely, this very image used to portray God in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, a film that asks one of the more penetrating theological questions: “Why does God need a starship?” For non-Trekkers, another amusing stand-in for God was George Burns in the 1977 film, Oh God!

I was blessed, growing up, with three excellent pastors who succeeded one another in the United Church of Morrisville, N.Y. None of them held me accountable for comprehending God.

That was fortunate because I’ve never been able to fully figure out God or even ask an intelligent question that might bring me closer to an understanding.

I must have been 10 or 11 when I first wrestled with the concept of infinity. I put the question to my mother: “When did God begin?”

I’m sure Mom narrowed her eyes and squinted at me. She always squinted, in part because she loved questions like that and because by, 1957, she was legally blind.

“Why don‘t we ask Mr. Irwin?” she suggested, referring to our pastor, Jack Irwin, whose intellect Mom admired.

Jack was an extraordinary pastor in what I once regarded as an ordinary hamlet in Central New York. During his pastorate in Morrisville he was preparing for his doctorate in philosophy at Syracuse University, so he probably thought of God in Kantian or Kierkegaardian terms, seasoned with occasional Nietzschean aphorisms.

But all he said to me, when I was 11, was, “God always is. There has never been a time when God wasn’t, and there never will be.”

That is one of two full sentences I can remember from 1957 (the other being a headline from My Weekly Reader that was almost as un-packable as the concept of the Trinity: “Welcome to the International Geophysical Year!”) so it clearly had an impact on my youthful brain.

Perhaps God never intended us to fully comprehend. The great Orthodox Metropolitan and professor Kallistos Ware said, “It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.”

Indeed, we feel the mystery and wonder in the opening words of John’s Gospel: 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

One of my favorite theologians, Dr. Cody J. Sanders of Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minn., offers this perspective on the mystery:

“The prologue of John’s Gospel cracks the lens with which we are tempted to engage in any too-small reading of the Gospel by directing our attention toward a cosmic space-time reality. Unlike the Lukan narrative that often shapes our imaginations in the Christmas season, the Second Sunday of Christmas plunges us into the deep time of the primordial Genesis creation narratives with John’s opening words: “In the beginning…”

“Give yourself over to this reshaping of space-time reality … Enter the cosmic realm of God’s dwelling, no longer confined by temporalities or geographies. A realm before there was a world. A time before chronology. A history before history. This is the beginning of the Good News, cosmic in scope and timeless in scale.”

No one has ever seen God but we do get glimpses of the cosmos that stretch our minds to the fullest.

During my Baptist days I was a teen counselor at Pathfinder Lodge, a rustic church camp on the shores of Lake Otsego. James Fenimore Cooper dubbed the lake “Glimmerglass” in his Leatherstocking stories and it’s true that the water sparkles in the summer sun. Campers hiked, swam, canoed, and enjoyed smores around campfires every night.

One of the weekly traditions at Pathfinder was the overnight camping trip. Campers would take their sleeping bags into the high forest and spend the night singing, telling stories, and – with no tents to protect them from the falling dew – staring at the cosmos. 

Viewed from the darkness of the forest with no ambient lighting, the stars are spectacularly vivid. In August campers would lay silently on their backs, looking for the north star, identifying constellations, and watching occasional shooting stars of the Perseids meteor shower. 

It was a mind-bending experience. Most people can’t stare into the night sky without feeling tiny and insignificant amid the vastness of the universe.

It’s also a bit frightening. Some campers are overwhelmed to look at God’s infinite creation and to feel the astounding supremacy and awesome power of the Creator of All That Is. Laying on a lumpy sleeping bag in the middle of a primeval wood, God becomes so much bigger than God seems in our cursory readings of scripture. Suddenly we have a new notion of what it means to fear God.

Fortunately, we have the assurances of Martin Luther. This is an excerpt from one of Luther’s Christmas sermons:

See how God invites you in many ways. He places before you a babe with whom you may take refuge. You cannot fear him, for nothing is more appealing to a person than a babe. Are you afraid? Then come to him, lying in the lap of the fairest and sweetest maid. You will see how great is the divine goodness, which seeks above all else that you should not despair. Trust him! Trust him! Here is the Child in whom is salvation. To me there is no greater consolation given to humankind than this, that Christ became human, a child, a babe, playing in the lap of his most gracious mother. Who is there whom this sight would not comfort? Now is overcome the power of sin, death, hell, conscience, and guilt, if you come to see this gurgling Babe and believe that he is come, not to judge you, but to save.

This gurgling babe in the lap of the sweetest maid is the Word made flesh, the Word that was in the beginning.

This gurgling babe we can see and touch and cuddle seems so different from the incomprehensible God who spews out universes with a single word, and endows creation with miraculous life.

And it is because we cannot comprehend this formidable force of all creation that God decided to come nearer to us.

“The God who created and loves this world understands the need and longing for physical presence,” writes Lutheran Pastor Elizabeth Johnson.  “The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us. God has always been present with God’s people and has always spoken to God’s people through human voices such as those of the prophets. ‘But in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds,’ says the writer of Hebrews. In Jesus, God decided to come closer, to deliver the Word in person, the person of God’s Son.”

The poet Lucy Shaw writes:

Down he came from up,
And in from out,
And here from there.
A long leap,
An incandescent fall
From magnificent
To naked, frail, small.
Through space
Between stars,
Into our chill night air,
Shrunk, in infant grace,
To our damp, cramped
Earthy place
Among all
The shivering sheep.

And now, after all,
There he lies,
Fast asleep.

The Word made flesh.

Amen.

Dream Weaver

December 21, 2025, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N. Y.

 I can see it now, as vividly as if it were yesterday.

My mother is taking my baby brother Larry and me on a morning walk around Morrisville. Larry is in a stroller. I’m 3 years old and walking beside Mommy and Larry. We cross Main Street and turn left on Mill Street. We pause in front of a telephone pole while Mommy leans over the stroller to re-button Larry’s shirt. I point to the looming pole.

“Remember,” I ask, “when I climbed to the top?” Mommy stands and smiles.

“No.”

“But you were right here,” I insisted.

“I wasn’t.”

“You were!”

Mommy smiled and we began walking again. End of conversation.

But I did climb the pole! I remember it so well. And Mommy was there and Larry was there … 

It was, of course, a dream. Mommy took Larry and me on a downtown walk every day, and at one point during nap time I dreamed I had climbed a very familiar telephone pole.

And what a powerful dream it was. Even now, 45 years after my mother’s death, the memory of this dream invokes the clearest image I have of her as a pretty young woman. But at 3, I hadn’t sorted out the difference between dream memories and real memories. 

And now, as Christmas approaches, my mother – who, like Paul McCartney’s mother, was named Mary, is often in my thoughts. And sometimes in my dreams.

When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me,

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing
Right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

At Christmas time especially, dreams of my mother are bittersweet.

I celebrate it when my unconscious mind evokes her voice, her face, her smile. But memories of Christmas past, even the happiest ones, are sad reminders that the persons who were such an important part of our past lives will not be joining us for Christmas present. 

What should we make of our dreams? I ask myself, has Mother Mary come to me with a special message, speaking words of wisdom, let it be? Or is her spectral appearance merely a random and meaningless manifestation of my unconscious mind?

The psychiatrist C.G. Jung raised the question of whether we ever really sort it out. Dreams, Jung said, are windows between our conscious reality and our unconscious spirituality.

“The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul,” Jung wrote in The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1933).  Our daily waking experiences overwhelm our ability to remember everything, so we remember some, forget others and lose track of everything else that has happened to us. “But in dreams,” Jung said, “we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man … there he is still in the whole, and the whole is in him … It is from these all-uniting depths that the dream arises, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral.” 

Dreams, Jung believed, are spiritual glimpses into memories our brains have forgotten but our souls retain forever.  

But Jung cautioned those who would interpret dreams that these glimpses are not always understandable. “The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details,” he wrote in On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1953), “this producing an impression of absurdity, or … so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered.”

Jung said he could not interpret his own dreams, and he pointed out in Psychology and Religion (1938) that the church was reluctant to interpret random dreams. “In spite of the Church's recognition that certain dreams are sent by God,” Jung noted, “she is disinclined, and even averse, to any serious concern with dreams, while admitting that some might conceivably contain an immediate revelation.”

In the case of Joseph, the betrothed of Mary, the dreams are vivid messages from God and require prudent action.

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus. Matthew 1:18-25.

That’s a remarkable turn of events: Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

Thank God Sigmund Freud would not be born for another 1,856 years, because that could have been disastrous. Freud, unlike Jung, believed dreams had no spiritual import but were either erotic in nature or expressions of wish fulfillment. You know. Sex.

How would Dr. Freud have counseled this hurt, confused young man?

“Joseph, my boy, you will never set your anger aside if you don’t face it honestly. You have been a good boy, you have never laid hands on this women who has been betrothed to you. And yet she is with child!. Sure, you’re hurt. Sure, you’re angry. But this dream of yours – forget it! This dream is only your wish that you and Mary could go back to where you were, that nothing would have changed, that you can still possess this woman and make righteous, innocent love to her. But hoping for that and dreaming about it will not make it so. Forget about it.”

Freud would have gone on to advise Joseph that sex is a fundamental human drive and he needed to understand that if he wanted to start all over again. But no one thought like that when Mary found herself with child. What people thought was written down in the Bible:

“If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress will be put to death,” says Leviticus 20:10, among other verses.   

Maybe Joseph was thinking, hey, the father was probably a Roman soldier and maybe Mary didn’t have a choice. So I’ll just throw the girl out and get on with my life.”

But then Joseph closed his eyes and had a dream. And, there being no Dr. Freud to confuse him, the dream had a profound impact on his thinking and on the history of the world. 

He went to bed a cuckold. He woke up the stepfather of the Son of God. 

That’s a major flip flop. One commentary suggests Joseph’s dream is the first recorded example of post-hypnotic suggestion. 

But the truth is, we know Joseph better than that. We know he is not a weak-minded wood worker subject to mere hypnotic suggestion. He is a good and righteous man. He’s the sort of man who recognizes God’s voice when he hears it, even if it comes in a dream. And he’s the sort of man whose personality is strong enough to withstand the withering stares and judgmental gossip of prying neighbors. His wife is pregnant with God’s son, and Joseph makes a moral decision not to care what anyone else thinks. His message to the neighbors is a brass-age rendition of a modern bumper sticker:  God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

What an extraordinary man, this Joseph. His is a story we hear so often we have stopped wondering what it must have been like for him. He was the oldest son of Jacob, the scion on a patriarchal lineage extending back to Joseph was one of history’s most notable dreamers, a practical man who predated Jung by two millennia but who understood that dreams are windows to the soul. Once Joseph heard God’s message in the stillness of the night, he set a new path and never looked back.

Granted, not all of us have dreams that are as easy to understand as the ones that were visited upon Joseph. And most of us have had dreams that are, as Jung said, unintelligible and occupied with silly details.

But that does not diminish the possibility that our dreams are spiritual experiences, and that they come laden with messages from that part of our unconscious where God speaks to us. 

The next dream you have may be perplexing, confusing and beyond your comprehension. But it can also be an opportunity to reflect on the power of Joseph’s dream, and to embrace all such REM experiences as a potential blessing.

In the hush of the twilight, [writes Timothy Charles Carter]

dreams await,
Slumber beckons, the stars narrate.
Lay down your head, let the night enfold,
Rest your bones, let the dreams take hold.
The pillow soft, a cloud in the sky,
Carries you to where the dreamers lie.
Through the night, may peace be your guest,
In the sacred silence, find your rest.
So close your eyes, the journey’s begun,
To the land where dreams and night are one.
May the moonlight guide you through the flight,
Until dawn returns with the morning light.

The Baptizer in Crisis

 

December 14, 2025, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

It’s good that we keep Advent joy in our hearts because the scripture this morning is a bit of a downer. 

John the Baptizer is in prison because he because he spoke truth to power. He rebuked the king, Herod Antipas, for divorcing his wife Phasaelis and unlawfully marrying his brother’s wife, Herodias.

There is no way this could end well for John.

We can imagine the Baptizer in a dark cell, trying to keep his spirits up. But he is clearly at the end of the line of his prophetic ministry and doubts begin to cross his mind. In his desolation he calls upon his followers to go to Jesus and ask, 

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:2-3)

This is a shocking question from Jesus’ own kinsman. John knew all his life that he has been called by God to prepare the way of the Lord. John had seen the heavens open when he baptized Jesus and heard God’s voice express pride and pleasure in God’s son. We can only guess the depth of John’s despair that made him doubt himself, his life, and now he is feeling doubts about the Messiah’s legitimacy. It’s almost as if, in his desperation to restore his faith, he sends a message to Jesus asking, “are you for real? I think you are. But I need to check.”

John, son of Zechariah, was born to play a supporting role for the greatest event in history. He clearly accepted his role, telling his disciples, “One who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 

As far as modern scholars are concerned, John is not number one in the drama of world redemption. He’s number two. In other words, the Baptist is the greatest second banana in history.

But as he sits in his darkened prison, assured of an imminent execution, is he struggling with doubts about this celestial assignment?

We know from objective observation that second bananas are not always content with their second fiddle fare (to expand the metaphor), nor are they enamored with those who cast the shadows in which they walk.

Vice President Thomas Jefferson smiled sardonically as his followers accused President John Adams of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Jefferson may not have used the words, but he could have said, “I’m Thomas Jefferson and I approve this message.”.

Vice President Harry S Truman described his boss, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as “the coldest man I ever knew,” and “a faker.”

In fact, virtually every empire and geopolitical entity in the world has had its usurpers. Second Bananaship inevitably fuels a drive to the top job.

Church historians and cynical observers have wondered if John the Baptist was content with the role. Did he, in fact, actually think of himself as a Second Banana?

The biblical and historic record suggests he was an extraordinarily gifted man with a magnetic personality who attracted thousands to his watery warren in the Jordan River and acknowledged no authority but God’s. He had innumerable disciples who followed him faithfully.

John’s father, Zechariah, foresaw a starring role for the boy:

“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:76-79)

 If there was ever a religious or political leader qualified to think of himself as number one, it was John the Baptist. He is one of a small handful of bible characters who appear outside the bible. He is mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus and he plays a prophetic role in the Qur’an. Sufi Muslims hold John in high regard because of the Qur’an’s account of his astute wisdom, unfailing kindness, and sexual purity.

Most of us find it hard to respect Second Bananas, or to trust them to be loyal to the person at the top. History is too full of Second Bananas who were driven to push their bosses aside and snatch the power away.  

Ideally, Second Bananas should not threaten their bosses. And John the Baptist was no comical sidekick, so some scholars have had difficulty thinking of him as a prophet who would be comfortable as a number two.

The skepticism is understandable because it is so difficult to accept the logic of Jesus’ oxymoronic declaration: “So the last will be first and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:16)

Jesus also made it clear what happens to Second Bananas who seek to usurp power:

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be first among you must also be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20: 25-28)

Perhaps no one in history had a more important supporting role than John the Baptist.

He was, by his own declaration, not the Messiah. His role was to prepare the way, to call people to repentance, to remind them of the preeminence of God in human lives, and to open their hearts and minds to the coming of Jesus.

That may be only a supporting role, but it’s a great one.

When the imprisoned John asked Jesus if he was actually the Messiah, Jesus responds with understanding and love.

Jesus answered them, 

“Go and tell John what you hear and see:  the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

And Jesus shows he has not lost faith in John:

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: 

“What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind. What, then, did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces.  What, then, did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.  This is the one about whom it is written,

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you.

    who will prepare your way before you.’

 “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.

This is the testimony of Jesus the Christ.

William Drummond, the 17th century English poet, offered his testimony in stirring verse:

THE last and greatest Herald of Heaven's King,
Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild,
Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,
Which he than man more harmless found and mild.
His food was locusts, and what young doth spring
With honey that from virgin hives distill'd;
Parch'd body, hollow eyes, some uncouth thing
Made him appear, long since from earth exiled.
There burst he forth: 'All ye, whose hopes rely
On God, with me amidst these deserts mourn;
Repent, repent, and from old errors turn!'
—Who listen'd to his voice, obey'd his cry?
        Only the echoes, which he made relent,
        Rung from their marble caves 'Repent! Repent!'

Amen.

Advance Man

December 7, 2025, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

By modern standards, John Baptist was one of the worst advance men in history.

Rather than cultivate religious insiders, he called them vipers and told them they were going to hell. No wonder they were in such a bad mood when Jesus arrived.

In modern times, the role of the advance team is to attract crowds, warm them with compliments and jokes, and get them excited about the great leader who will soon follow.

Months before Billy Graham opened an evangelistic campaign, Cliff Barrows, George Beverly Shea and dozens more would descend on the city, schmooze with clergy and politicians, recruit choir members, anoint ushers, and get everyone excited about the coming of the great man. I sat in on some of those advance meetings prior to Billy’s 1967 London crusade. By the time the advance team was finished, I was convinced that only Billy’s presence could save millions of Londoners from hell.

John the Baptist's style of telling the good news  was to talk about the realm of God and how wonderful it will be when Jesus arrives, and in the second he was condemning influential religious leaders to unquenchable fire. 

As a journalist, I knew several persons who did advance work for politicians. Many of them were indeed nicer than the pol they served, and it takes enormous skill to make reporters on deadline feel okay that the boss had little time to waste on them.

I have also done a little advance work for traveling ecumenical leaders or church hierarchs who liked to meet with the press. In 1998 the World Council of Churches sent a colleague, Sonia Omulepu, and me on a trip around Zimbabwe to assess hotels, game parks and other recreational activities for persons attending the eighth assembly of the WCC in Harare.

What we assessed was that some airport runways in Zimbabwe had not, in 1998, caught up to jet travel. Sonia and I boarded a British BAe-146-300 regional aircraft that hopscotched its way to several small airports around the country. 

The runways were too short for jets and the aircraft had to slam on its brakes to keep from charging into the bush. We scarcely noticed the seatbelts grabbing at our bellies because we were distracted by the acrid smell of burning brakes.

Our particular aircraft had lost the cooling agent to reduce the temperature of the brakes so each time we landed we had to sit on the plane for an hour until the brakes were cool enough to use. 

The short runways also made takeoffs difficult. There wasn’t enough room for the plane to accelerate normally to liftoff speed so the pilot held the aircraft at the end of the runway until the engine reached a deafening pitch; then the plane lunged forward as passengers were slammed roughly against the backs of their seats. We felt the G’s as the plane soared into the air. 

What the advance team of Omulepu and Jenks found was one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with spectacular scenery including Victoria Falls, modern farms, exotic game preserves, Zambezi River cruises, comfortable hotels, and excellent restaurants.

But our message to the six thousand assembly visitors eager to visit the country was concise: take the bus.

John the Baptist’s advance work was invariably rude and hardly designed to comfort his audiences. Still, he attracted huge crowds. People may have been as impressed by his honesty as by his assurance that God will forgive the repentant. Certainly folks enjoyed his verbal attacks on the overweening aristocracy, the Pharisees and Sadducees. 

They would certainly have noted his warning that their salvation would not depend on being a member of a great ancestral lineage recognized by God. 

“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’, he said. “For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

We can understand what it’s like to be proud of our ancestry. My grandfather Addison was a perfunctory Methodist, though no member of my family recalls seeing him in church. His real religion was a form of ancestor worship. He believed the family name would be enhanced if he could trace its roots to a great ancestor, such as a Mayflower pilgrim.

Perhaps in Heaven I will have a chance to ask Grandpa what the big deal was about the Mayflower, which was filled with puritans of the same ilk as Oliver Cromwell, who missed the boat and stayed home to slaughter thousands of Catholics in Ireland. Later, the puritans in America jailed and flogged Baptists on the public square in Boston and hanged innocent women as witches in Salem. 

I think it makes more sense to be ashamed of a puritan ancestry, but Grandpa was pleased to prove – to his satisfaction, at least – that he was a descendant of Mayflower passenger Elizabeth Tilley. That makes me a Mayflower descendant. I am so ashamed.

The central theme of John the Baptist’s message is this: 

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Even as a child, John knew that his calling was to prepare the way for the ministry of the messiah.

As an advance man, he had a distinct disadvantage. He didn’t know the whole story. He didn’t know how it would turn out. And sometimes he was puzzled when Jesus reached out in love to everyone, even the brood of vipers John assumed the messiah would consign to unquenchable fire.

With that in mind, we can certainly understand John’s brusque demeanor and eccentric ways. He may not have been the best advance man in the world. But he was a faithful prophet who understood God offers love and forgiveness to all who repent.

But we, who have the advantage of knowing how the story came out, know that Jesus took it a step further.

God, Jesus said, loves each of us unconditionally – the repentant and the unrepentant – and God will send no one to eternal fire without giving them abundant chances to turn back to God.

And the message assigned to you and me, as members of Jesus’ advance team, is the eternal declaration of angels:

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those who he favors.” Luke 2:14