Scaring the Shepherds

Christmas Eve, First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

We are so consumed by the joy of this wonderful night that we sometimes forget that terror was the predominant reaction of the people who lived it.

I’ve never been a shepherd but I can almost feel what it was like for them on that night of nights.

On one bleak mid-winter night long ago, I was walking on a deserted beach in England. A fellow airman and I, both teenagers, had just dropped off our dates after a not entirely satisfying evening. We had less than an hour to catch a train back to the base so we walked quickly on the brightly lighted beach. 

Suddenly, everything went black.

I was terrified. Had I suddenly passed out? Dropped dead? I could see nothing. I could have used an angelic voice telling me to fear not but all I could hear was the rapid breathing of my companion.

“Oh, yeah,” my friend said with a slightly shaky voice. “I forgot. The beach lights are automatically shut off at midnight.”

“Of course,” I said. Our eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness and we walked on.

But I never forgot the fear I felt that night. 

And this night I try to imagine what the shepherds felt when they had an opposite experience: when the comfortable darkness that surrounded them became blinding light. Of course they were sore afraid. And so, I surmise, were the sheep.

Angels scare people. That’s why they announce themselves with an abrupt “fear not” while they wait to see if people will require a change of underwear.

And make no mistake: in the presence of God and the angels, it is good to be terrified. The shepherds are encountering the awesome power that breathed the universe into being and human beings are ill equipped to  comprehend it. 

Whether God speaks to you in a still small voice or in the roar of angels, it’s terrifying. Even when the news brings “great joy for all the people: to you is born this day … a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11) Still trembling with both fear and joy, they make their way to the manger to behold the miracle. “So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.” (Luke 2:16)

And what else did they find there? A cozy refuge from the capriciousness of the world? A tender scene of motherly love?

Possibly. What did Mary have to fear?

Well, quite a lot, actually.

As we have seen, the fact that she was unmarried and with child created grave dangers for her. She was literally saved by Joseph, who, thanks to the intercession of the angel, stepped in to marry her.

But there were other things to fear. In first century Palestine, the infant mortality rate was 40 to 50 percent. Even knowing that the child in her womb was of God, Mary would be aware that half the women she knew lost their babies. This must have weighed on her mind as she and Joseph made the rough journey to Bethlehem.

And what else was there to fear?

Mary was a first-time mother who birthed her baby alone, far from her mother, far from experienced women who could tell her that it was normal for a baby to cry, and burp up, to fill his diapers with a yellowish mess. 

Some women here know what Mary was experiencing. A little over a year ago, we watched from a distance as our youngest daughter in Atlanta gave birth to a healthy baby.

Separated from her mother by more than 700 miles, our daughter felt devastatingly alone. She and Martha were on the phone at all hours as our daughter asked desperate questions. Was she doing the right thing? Should she let the baby cry herself to sleep or pick her up and cuddle her? Was something wrong if the baby cried? Was something wrong when she stopped crying? Was our daughter was doing something wrong? “I don’t think I’m cut out for this,” she said, weeping. 

Martha flew to Georgia for a week so our daughter and her wonderful husband would have the support they needed. Gradually our daughter’s anxiety subsided. Martha assured her that there was no such thing as a perfect parent. “Be a ‘good enough’ parent,” she said. “That’s all we can do.”

A year and two months later, our daughter is a self-assured, loving, and nurturing mother to her toddler, who is already running around the house. Like all mothers, she quickly learned how to be a “good enough” parent, and now she stands ready to support and advise other new mothers.

We celebrate all our daughters who have had the experience of being mothers for the first time. We feel their joy. We celebrate God’s love and miracles of new life.

On this night of nights, we also celebrate the miracle that Mary brought into the world.

But as we gaze on her pious and contented face in a myriad of manger scenes and art, we remember that her placid surface may well hide a myriad of fears and anxieties.

We may never understand all Mary went through to deliver the savior unto us. But we rejoice that she went through it with faith and courage.

“My soul magnifies the Lord,” she said, “and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

Tonight in carols and candles, our spirits also rejoice in God our Savior.

We rejoice in those who were not deterred by their fears from bringing this holy night to the world.

Happy Birthday, baby Jesus. 

And Merry Christmas to all.

Mother Mary, Untangle Us

December 22, 2025, First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y. 

 “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” Luke 1:46b-55

Great stuff. It’s hard to believe this speech was uttered by an illiterate 14-year-old who has just been told she is pregnant. In her unmarried state, extra-marital sex and pregnancy could get her stoned.

“Oh, crap,” would be a more understandable response.

But it is foolish to underestimate Mary. With titles like Queen of the Universe, Queen of Heaven, and Mother of God, she is a major player God’s drama.

Less known but equally important is her title, “Untier of Knots.”

Indeed, some of the thornier knots she faces can be detected in the Magnificat, one of the scripture readings designated for the fourth Sunday in Advent. There are no greater tangles than the pride that makes people think they are greater than God, or the arrogant power of politicians who oppress the poor. But the little peasant girl perceives that no imbroglio is beyond the power of God, who casts down the powerful, lifts up the lowly, feeds the hungry, and sends the rich away.

But we all have painful knots in our lives, and one tradition of the church is that Mary has been given the power to loosen, unravel, and untie the bonds which paralyze us. In the words of a novena for Mary:

Mary, my Mother, God has charged you
With untangling the knots in the lives of his children;
Into your hands I place the ribbon of my life.
No one, not the evil one himself,
Can deprive it of your merciful assistance.
There is no knot that cannot be untangled by your hands.

Anyone who has spent a morning detangling a gnarled spaghetti of Christmas lights or computer cables knows that untying knots requires patience. Untying knots is a persistent trial-and-error of inserting ends through likely snags, un-inserting them when the knot tightens, gingerly reinserting in the hopes of loosening the kinks, and resisting the temptation to cast the jumble aside and walk away. Any time a knot is untied, it's a miracle.

If Mary has the power to untie knots, it’s no wonder she’s the Queen of Heaven. 

Sometimes the knots we get in our lives seem beyond untangling.  We sendan email to a trusted friend, complaining about a colleague, and accidentally send it to everyone in the office. We drink too much at an office party and the boss discovers us asleep beneath her desk. We forget to set the emergency brake of our car and it rolls down the driveway into a passing police car. 

But most of our personal knots are less dramatic. We say cruel words to a friend that cannot be unheard. We get overwhelmed by the complexities of our jobs and can’t get out of bed in the mornings. We shun family members because of imagined slights and can’t figure out how to start talking again. We are angry and frustrated by friends or relatives whose political views we regard as neo-Nazi and we build emotional barriers between us. We fall into a morass of boredom and ennui and don’t know how to restore meaning to our lives. 

As a Lutheran with a Baptist background, I know enough to pray to the Lord when these predicaments appear, and I know how to do it: “Lord, we just pray that you will help, and we just pray Lord that you will just make things good again, and we just pray …” In my tradition, the word “just” is used the way “selah” is used by the Hebrew Psalmist. It gives us a sense of timing and sometimes makes us feel better.

Certainly Jesus loves us and understands our pain. But sometimes I wish we Protestants hadn’t forgotten how to pray to an untier of knots who knows what it’s like to be a loving and a long-suffering mother.

Unfortunately, many Protestants have cast Mary aside as if she was a remnant of archaic papist habits we have rejected, like making the sign of the cross or saying vain and repetitious prayers or imbibing actual wine during the Lord’s Supper.

Mary remains, however, an important character in our Christmas pageants. In our little community church in Morrisville, N.Y., we’d find a blonde girl who looked cute with a white towel draped over her head and give her the role of a lifetime: gazing adoringly at a 40-watt light bulb portraying the baby Jesus in the manger.

Even so, one has to wonder why low-church Protestants have been so unaffected by Mary’s charisma. She was, after all, the mother of Jesus. We can't ignore that, but neither do we regard her with the same high status and deep respect as our Roman Catholic and Orthodox sisters and brothers.

Given what we know about Mary, we have vastly underestimated her. She was, among other things, a peasant girl. She was born into a patriarchal culture where girls counted for naught, and her family had to contend each day with an occupying army that regarded the Jews as superstitious bumpkins.

Mary and other girls were inconsequential members of their families, valued only for their cooking and cleaning skills. Mary was not expected to read, have opinions, make decisions, or fall in love. She did not go out and choose her husband because she liked his limpid brown eyes and sinewy pecs.

Joseph, like everything else in her life, was assigned to her by her father. Joseph, one might even say, was forced upon her. Based on what we know about the culture, Mary would have been between 12 and 14 when she was betrothed, which probably happened shortly after her first menstrual period.

What happened next must have been terrifying. Look at it from her point of view. She’s 14. She’s engaged to a stranger. She’s innocent of the ways of the world. She may not even understand what sexual intercourse is, but she’s old enough to know that if she does it before she is married, her parents and her neighbors will drag her out of the house and kill her with rocks.

Then one day Mary is told she is pregnant. That could not have been good news, even if it was delivered by an angel. Her first thought must have been that the angel was delivering a death sentence.

And even when the angel sought to reassure her that everything was all right, it’s hard to imagine she was in any sense relieved. With child, you say? With child? by God? You wouldn’t believe it today if someone said you or your daughter was pregnant by God.

This moment at which Mary was informed of her pregnancy – the Annunciation – has been portrayed in literature, song, Frescoes, statuary and art for two thousand years.

Certainly a miracle has happened, and throughout its history the church has seen it this way: a virgin has conceived by the Holy Spirit, God knoweth how.

But, according to Luke, a new miracle of equal power began to unfold. Once the shock wore off and Mary caught her breath, this 14-year-old peasant girl, this cipher who can’t read and has been told never to think, commences to utter one of the most revolutionary statements in human history.

God has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’ (Luke 1:51-55, NRSV)

Overthrow the powerful?

Raise up the peasants?

Feed the hungry?

Reject the rich?

The angel must have been as shocked as Mary was when she was informed she was pregnant. No sooner than she opens her mouth than she begins untying the cosmic knots she sees around her.

From the very beginning, demure little Mary far exceeded the expectations of her family and culture.

In the same way, she obviously exceeds the expectations of Baptists and others who set her aside along with the high liturgical trappings and arbitrary hierarchies of the oppressive churches we escaped. 

Ironically, as we can detect from her opening speech, Mary is the one thing we should have held on to.

Many low-church Protestants shed a lot of high-church trappings that reminded us of the Church of England and other oppressors. 

Given the importance Mary’s son assigned to his last supper, for instance, it seems almost heretical that some denominations - and here I'm thinking of Baptists, my former tribe - limit their communion ordinance to once as month. They've abandoned the beautiful litanies and liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer because they think it’s holier to pray from our hearts. And despite their eagerness to be transparent witnesses of our faith, we tossedsaside the most visible demonstration of what we believe: making the sign of the cross when we pray.

Baptists have also exchanged priests, bishops and hierarchs for soul liberty and the priesthood of all believers, and who can say they are not better off?

But when you consider the importance of Mary to the church and to Jesus, I they we had not been so quick to set her aside.

Mary’s first utterance, as recorded by Luke, sets the scene for all that is to come. She quickly grasps what is happening: the God everyone expected to come in shock and awe is actually coming as a mewling, puking boy. But that counter-intuitive revelation preceded the turning of the universe on its head. And with Jesus still zygotic in her womb, Mary knew it all.

But more than that, it was Mary who nursed him, guided his first steps, toilet trained him, and whispered in his ear the Godly secrets that would change the world. 

In a sense better understood by our higher church sisters and brothers, Mary is also our own mother in that she symbolizes a side of God we rarely acknowledge: God’s feminine side.

Years ago I attended the funeral of a good friend on the American Baptist staff. He was young and energetic and his sudden death from a cerebral hemorrhage was a devastating shock.

As we sat sadly in our pews, my late friend’s wife was surrounded by her young children. The children, confused and frightened, began to cry. And their mother reached out her arms to them and hugged them tightly, whispering comfort in their ears.

The minister who officiated at the funeral pointed to the widow.

“Here we see how God comes to us as a mother,” he said. “God shares our grief, our sense of loss, but the Mother God’s first instinct is to embrace and console her children.”

Sometimes we need a divine mother, a goddess, who knew something Jesus didn’t: the experience of motherhood.

One thing the angel did not reveal to Mary at the Annunciation is that giving birth to God’s son would not be all gold and frankincense.  That message fell to a dying old man when the baby Jesus was presented in the temple.

Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul, too. – Luke 2:34-35, NRSV)

Throughout history, when a woman is overwhelmed by the joys of motherhood, or when the sorrows of motherhood break her heart, the mother of Jesus understands with an intimacy that transcends the experience of fathers and sons. “I’m a mother so I pray to Mary,” many women say. “She was a mother, too.”

Sometimes I wish I was as comfortable as many of my Catholic and Orthodox friends in relying on Mary as an eternal reminder that God whom we call Father has another dimension we rarely call on: the Goddess. God the mother.

And precisely because she is a mother, Mary has the spiritual and moral power to be the untier of knots.

Advent is a perfect time to remind us of the crucial role this peasant woman played in the life of Jesus and in the foundation of the church, and give her the honor she is due.

Mother Mary, come to us, speaking words of wisdom. Untie our knots. 

Let it be.

Unquenchable Fire

 

First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y., December 15, 2024

In today’s Gospel, Luke is running hot and cold.

“[The Messiah] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire,” John the Baptizer declares. “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:16-17)

Oh boy. 

That’s harsh. And as a sinner, I must ask myself: am I wheat? Or am I chaff? Am I a nourishing member of the community? Or am I a scourge of the gluten intolerant.

Luke continues:

“So, with many other exhortations, [John] proclaimed the good news to the people.” (Luke 3:18)

Excuse me? Which part of that was good news? The winnowing or the unquenchable fire?

On this third Sunday in Advent it’s hard to think about fiery Jesus. We’re focused on the tiny babe in the manger, gentle Jesus meek and mild, the Jesus who looks upon us with love and calls us “little flock.”

But just a few chapters later, Luke’s narrative runs hot again:

Jesus said: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:49-53)

Oh, boy. 

Once Jesus is calling us “little flock” and assuring us it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. (Luke 12:32). Now he’s bringing fire and division to the earth, and he describes a household that sounds like an extended family’s combative Thanksgiving dinner.

We know Jesus’ life on earth was replete with many opponents and divisions. The devil challenged him in the wilderness, The members of the Nazareth synagogue tried throw him off a cliff. The Pharisees tried to catch him in legal conundrums. His own family thought he was crazy and tried to have him taken away. 

Now he is telling his disciples that the divisions will get worse as he brings fire – presumably a metaphorical fire, but who knows? – to the earth.

How we wish Jesus was still offering words of comfort to his “little flock.”

But if we look back on two millennia of church history we see he has a point. Since the earliest days, division and fire have been the most constant threads in church history.

So it was when his mother Mary realized what God was saying in her womb: 

“He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:51b-53.)

So it was when the baby Jesus was presented in the temple and Simeon declared to Mary, 

“This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” (Luke 2:34-35)

So it was years later when the first of Jesus’ followers came to loggerheads over whether uncircumcised gentiles could be Christians.

So it was during the Catholic Church’s Western Schism in the 14th century when popes and antipopes competed for power in Europe.

So it was when Martin Luther’s 95 theses led to the Protestant reformation in the 16th century, forever dividing the church.

And so it was when Lutherans splintered along ethnic lines: German Lutherans, Norwegian Lutherans, Swedish Lutherans, liberal Lutherans, Missouri Synod Lutherans.

Is it possible that God’s plan for growing the church is schism?

I spent several years on the staff of the World Council of Churches and the U.S. National Council of Churches. For both councils, Christian unity was an idealistic goal. The staffs spent much of their time preparing resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an event that is observed each January in concert with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The prayers for unity have not been entirely successful. It has never been possible for all Christians to sit down together at the Lord’s common table to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Catholic churches will not allow Protestant Christians to receive the Eucharist. Most Orthodox churches, even those who are members of the World and National Councils, will never sit down with other members to receive the blood and body of Christ. And as we all know, many Protestant churches and congregations bar non-members from the communion table.

Too, the churches cannot agree on styles of baptism – dripping or dunking – and Catholics, Orthodox, Pentecostals, and others refuse to ordain women as pastors and bishops, no matter how clear the call of the Holy Spirit may be.

The divisions are exhausting.

But are they exhausting because, as Jesus said, we do not know how to interpret the present time? (Luke 12:56)

It is a maxim of our time that our country has not been so divided – politically and spiritually – since the Civil War.

What do we make of the rising clouds, the south wind, the scorching heat that are signs of our times?

For many years we have been feeling the scorching heat:

The heat of sisters and brothers in many of our churches who support political views based on lies, white supremacy, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, and ethnic hatreds.

The heat of racially motivated attacks and mass shootings aimed at African Americans, Muslims, Sikhs, Asians, Jews, and others.

“I came to bring fire to the earth,” Jesus said, “and how I wish it were already kindled. I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:49-50)

When Jesus talks about fire, we know very well he is not referring to the glowing logs in our fireplaces on a cold night. That kind of fire soothes us and makes us sleepy. It lulls us to quiet inaction when we are surrounded by threats and dangers all around us.

Could it be that Jesus is calling us to feel fire in our hearts – a burning commitment to be witnesses for justice?

Professor Troy Trofrgruben of Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, suggests that when John calls his listeners to repentance, he’s not merely addressing unrepentant sinners. He’s not leaving anyone out. 

Sure, he’s calling out devious and corrupt politicians. 

Sure, he’s calling out unscrupulous landlords who won’t waste money turning on the heat and leave their tenants to suffer in the cold. 

Sure, he’s calling out drug dealers who profit on the suffering of their customers. 

Sure, he’s calling out health insurance providers who make billions in profits while denying their customers what they need to fight their diseases. 

Sure, he’s calling out American oligarchs for spending billions to send their rockets into space while so many people – including their own employees – live on the edge of poverty.

But John is also calling out the Church Lady – and thank you, Lorne Michaels for bringing her back – who has lost her passion for faith and judges those around her with a dismissive, “Isn’t that special?”

He’s calling out hard-working dudes who keep their faith a secret among their co-workers and sleep in in Sunday mornings instead of going to church.

He’s calling out those who stay quiet as persons of different races, ethnicities, faiths, and sexual orientations are ridiculed or abused by bullies.

He’s calling out you. He’s calling out me.

But if he’s asking all of us to face our sins, where is the good news?

Professor Trofrgruben writes, “In today’s world, where polarizing caricatures of others are easier and more self-assuring than nuanced appreciations of their humanity and experience, the audiences who respond to John—and the way he takes them seriously—invite us to lay our stones down. The good news in Luke’s Gospel is for all—even those we deem threatening.  While a call to repent may not seem like “good news,” it marks an invitation to a life better aligned with God’s purpose—and on that path, there is joy.”

The call to repentance may truly be good news. It invites us to take practical steps toward aligning our lives more squarely with God’s purposes—not just in theory, but in practice. “

The call to repentance is for us to reignite the fire in our own hearts, the fire that inspires us to celebrate that while we were in sin, Christ found us. The fire that compels us to live Christlike lives. The fire that compels us to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.

Henry M. Nouwen wrote: 

“Jesus’ whole life was a witness to his Father's love, and Jesus calls his followers to carry on that witness in his Name.  We, as followers of Jesus, are sent into this world to be visible signs of God’s unconditional love. Thus we are not first of all judged by what we say but by what we live.  When people say of us:  ‘See how they love one another,’ they catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God that Jesus announced and are drawn to it as by a magnet.”

It’s not going to be easy. There are still going to be people we can’t stand. There are still temptations we can’t ignore. There is still the potential that we will make terrible mistakes.

But “in a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred,” Nouwen writes, “We have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.”

It takes fire in out hearts to assume that privileged vocation. It takes the unquenchable fire that will burn away the chaff in our hearts and set us on the path top discipleship.

Professor Jerusha Matsen Neal quotes the poet Mary Oliver in her book, What I Have Learned So far.

The fire that Jesus brings “is a fire that, like Simeon’s piercing prophecy to Mary, tests the heart – revealing the thoughts of many and calling for a baptism of commitment.

As we strive to represent God’s truth and Jesus’ love amid the divisions and dangers of our times, may God give us the courage to be ignited.

As Oliver says:

“’Be Ignited or begone.’”

Advance Prophet

December 8, 2024, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

As many Christians observe the second Sunday of Advent, we find ourselves re-reading beloved stories of Jesus’ coming and the appearance of John the Baptist.

(John) went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” (Luke 3:1-6)

John the Baptist appears in all four Gospels, and he is mentioned by a first century historian, Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews. The Romans knew more about John than they knew about Jesus.

John was, to put it in modern terms, the greatest second banana in history.

We know from practical experience that second bananas are not always content with (to expand the metaphor) their second fiddle fare, nor are they enamored with their charismatic superiors in whose shadows they musty dwell. Examples of resentful subordinates abound in history.

As Lin-Manuel Miranda has reminded us, Aaron Burr was so outraged by Alexander Hamilton’s obvious superiority that he became “the damn fool who shot him.”

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.”

During the Second World War, British Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery dismissed his superior, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with four words: “Nice chap, no soldier.” More than once, Monty tried to usurp Eisenhower’s job as allied field commander in Europe.

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

Vice President Richard Nixon, who owed everything to President Eisenhower, called Ike “devious,” although he added a Nixonian qualification that he meant the word in its “best sense.” 

Vice President Lyndon Johnson hid his contempt for President John F. Kennedy, whom he regarded as a callow playboy who was physically not up to the job. According to his biographer Robert Caro, LBJ would put his thumb and forefinger together to demonstrate the circumference of JFK’s ankle, suggesting Kennedy was neither physically nor temperamentally fit for power.

Historically, Second Bananas had a bad habit of knocking First Bananas off their pedestals. In England, Prince Stephen usurped the throne from Queen Matilda in 1135; Henry IV from Richard II in 1399; Edward IV from Henry VI in 1461; Richard III from Edward V in 1483; Henry VII from Richard III in 1485; Mary I from the legally designated Queen Jane in 1553; and William III and Mary II from James II in 1689.

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)

Later, Luke introduces John with historical precision, marking for posterity the time and place he first appeared:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 

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 in accounts outside the bible. In addition to his appearance in Josephus’ histories he plays a prophetic role in the Qur’an. According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, Sufi Muslims hold John in high regard because of the Qur’an’s account of his astute wisdom, unfailing kindness, and sexual purity.

John’s significance as a prophet and first century evangelist has led some scholars to theorize his Second-Banana-to-Jesus status was an after thought made up by uneasy Christians seeking a credible cover story. The fact that Jesus was among several thousand who came to John for baptism suggests to some – including scholars who work so hard to destroy the faith of innocent seminarians – that Jesus initially thought of himself as a disciple of John. All the prophetic references casting John in the role of the “voice crying in the wilderness” to prepare the way for the Messiah came later, these cynics say, to explain why Jesus was baptized by John, a mere Second Banana. 

There is even biblical support for the notion that John was never fully persuaded of Jesus’ messianic role: “He sent word by his disciples and said to (Jesus), ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’” (Matthew 11:3).

So John had moments of doubt. So do I. So do you. Christian writer Frederick Buechner said, “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

And the testimony of Holy Scripture always reveals the truth. John knew who he was, and he knew who Jesus was. 

When crowds came to him asking if he was the Messiah, John put them straight.

“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Luke. 3:16)

We may 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.  

And the markedly loyal Second Bananas we know were hardly threats to the throne. I remember with fondness Andy Divine’s “Jingles” who rode with Guy Madison’s Wild Bill Hickock, or Gabby Hayes’ humorous subservience to Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy, or Leo Carrillo’s Pancho who rode with Duncan Reynaldo’s Cisco Kid, or – lest we forget – Ed McMahon who loyally laughed at Johnny Carson’s funniest – and weakest – ripostes. 

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 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.

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” (Luke 3:1-6)

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.

John the Baptist is no Messiah but neither is he a Second Banana. 

In the eyes of God and all who seek to emulate his role every day, his status in the divine hierarchy is clear.

John the Baptist is banana number one.

The Little Apocalypse

A sermon preached December 1, 2024, in First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

Luke 21:25-36 

The Heinz family – that singular conglomeration of aristocratic noblesse oblige that gave us H.J. Heinz, Senator John Heinz, and 57 combinations of condiments – didn’t get rich by underestimating the American people.

When they made their luxuriously thick ketchup, they realized they had a potential problem. The ketchup was so dense you could hold the bottle upside down for what seemed like hours before the first drop would dribble on to your cheeseburger. Almost no one in the United States has that kind of patience and the Heinz people feared millions would desert their delicious condiment in favor of Brand B, some thin, runny, but instantly available tomato liquid. Brand B offered lower satisfaction, perhaps, but instant gratification.

In 1979 – yes, I remember it well – with the aim of stemming the migration away from their viscous product, the Heinz people implemented a TV commercial. Two boys are shown patiently holding a Heinz ketchup bottle over their hamburgers as the first drops of red goo begin to form at the bottle’s mouth. In the background, Carly Simon sings: “Anticipation. Anticipation. It’s making me wait.” In the 32-second commercial, the boys decide that postponed gratification is good. The words appear on the screen: “Heinz Ketchup. The taste that’s worth the wait.”

There you go. An Advent sermon in a single sentence. The taste that’s worth the wait.

This singular phrase, historic in the ad business, is a helpful clue as we parse the passage placed before us this morning. 

The passage, sometimes called “The Little Apocalypse” because it quotes the adult Jesus’ prediction of the end times, is not very Christmassy. There is no babe in the manger poetry, no paeans to the Christ child, no glory to God in the highest, no peace on earth. Instead, we are warned that stars will be falling from heaven and we are advised to keep awake.

That’s not Silent Night. That’s the Ride of the Valkyries. Who knew we would begin this joyous season with dark warnings of the collapse of all we know? Where are the tidings of great joy?

Karoline Lewis, assistant professor of preaching at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, thinks the rhetorical bombshell might be good for us. “There is a certain realness in this Gospel text to begin the Advent season,” she writes. “It cuts through any sentimentality and romanticism about Christmas and reminds us that incarnation is risky business.”

The passage in Mark, like its counterparts in Luke and Revelation, is the basis for the expectation of the rapture, that at the end of time Jesus will appear in the clouds and send out his angels to collect his elect from the four winds.

Rapture theology can be distracting and predicting the rapture can be dangerous. In May 2011 a misguided evangelist named Harold Camping said it was about to happen. Camping and his followers spent fortunes on bill boards and T shirts to alert people to the end of time, financed in part by many who sold everything they had to pay for the ad campaign.

Most Christian scholars said then that Mr. Camping, who died in 2013, was clinically nuts. Even Al Mohler, the conservative president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, spoke with wisdom on the Camping issue.

Mohler wrote: “Given the public controversy, many people are wondering how Christians should think about his claims, the Bible does not contain hidden codes that we are to find and decipher. While Christians are indeed to be looking for Christ to return and seeking to be found faithful when Christ comes, we are not to draw a line in history and set a date.”

In the first centuries after Jesus’ resurrection, persecuted Christians yearned for the return of Jesus and prayed daily for him to keep his promise.  The Apostle Paul didn’t predict the date of Jesus’ return, but he thought it was imminent: “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (I Corinthians 15: 51-52). A couple millennia later we are still waiting, and many Christians have lowered their expectations.

I was in a workshop with the late Robert Schuller in January 1981 when he bet the millennialist Hal Lindsey a million dollars that Jesus would not return before the year 2000. Clearly Schuller’s ideas about the Second Coming of Jesus drifted leftward, but I was more impressed by the fact that he was a man who knew a sure-fire bet. Lindsey, incidentally, declined. And it's 2024 and Lindsey, now 95, is still waiting for the rapture while soliciting contributions and selling merchandise as if he thinks the world will last forever.

The Second Coming of Jesus is a basic tenet of faith, appearing in the Nicene and Apostle’s Creeds. It’s something we should be eagerly anticipating. But our reaction to the “The Little Apocalypse” set aside for our first week of Advent suggests we find the idea a little scary. It’s no coincidence that most of the end-of-world movies are classified as horror, and even films with a rapture theme portray a vengeful Jesus in pursuit of terrified sinners.

That probably says more about us than it says about the films. Most of us live lives of reasonable contentment and we would prefer to indulge the non-threatening Yuletide trappings of tinsel and wassail than contemplate the stars falling from the sky.

The future, for many of us, is a very scary place because so little is known about it. No matter how hard we try to live virtuous lives, all of us have fallen far short of perfection – and the future, we fear, is where all our chickens come home to roost.

This month when we watch the inevitable rebroadcasts of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol (if you only have time for one, I recommend the 1992 Muppets version), the ghost of Christmas yet to come is the creepiest character of all – not because of his menacing cowl and skeletal fingers, but because he shows Scrooge his own just desserts, the righteous judgment on the grasping, self-obsessed life he has led. It is Scrooge, not the ghost, who is the chilling character in these scenes. Ebenezer’s life of depraved indifference to the poor leaves him no chance of heavenly reward, and he knows it. He fears the ghost of Christmas future most of all. He has no hope of relief, no promise of the joys of postponed gratification, so his anticipation of the ghost’s awful truth is agony for him.

“Anticipation. Anticipation. It’s making me wait.” And the anticipation can be unbearable.

Most of us, perhaps, have less to worry about than Ebenezer Scrooge, but at Christmas time we’d still rather trill with Silver Bells than pulsate with apocalyptic cannonade.

Given all this, it will take a little discipline to remind ourselves: when we anticipate the coming of Jesus, there is no difference between welcoming him as an innocent child or as a rescuing savior.

Karoline Lewis offers reassuring words: “The darkening of the sun, the dimming of the moon's light, and the stars falling from heaven means the end of the world as we have known it. That death will be no more because God will die is something to anticipate during Advent. This is not to be a downer just when Bing really kicks into high gear with White Christmas. It’s to speak the truth, about ourselves and our unrealistic expectations; about God and how God exceeds them.”

Advent begins, and there will be many joys to share in the coming weeks: the Advent wreaths, the manger tableaus, the pageants, the lights, the presents, the family gatherings, and the familiar carols.

The Advent message, as always, is that the Creator of the Universe has taken on human flesh, coming to us in the form of a powerless, innocent infant.

And the message is also that God, through this child, has come to die on a cross, conquer death, and ultimately to return to gather those who have been redeemed in loving arms.

What does it matter if the stars fall from the sky if death has been defeated and a new, more perfect life begins?

The bottom line on the first Sunday in Advent is this: the coming of Jesus is good news.

And our Advent prayer is to savor the anticipation of the miracles yet to come.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Christ the King

Preached November 24, 2024, at First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

I’m always a bit surprised to see this Good Friday story appear in the lectionary a week before Advent.

Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus is disturbing on many levels. Clearly, Pilate doesn’t think Jesus looks like a king. The man before him is dirty and bleeding and his simple garment is torn to shreds. You can almost see Pilate’s lips twisting in a mocking grin as he asks, “Are you King of the Jews?”

And we almost understand what Pilate is thinking. Jesus does not look like a king. When we think of kings we think of jeweled crowns, capes of ermine, luxurious gowns made from the most expensive silks, and gold-plated shoes. Pilate may have been remembering the bling surrounding his glittering boss, the Emperor Tiberias, and thinking, “now THAT is a king.”]

Jesus, of course, rejected imperial trappings when he was tempted in the wilderness. He proclaimed that the first shall be last and our goal as Christians is not necessarily to be a kindly boss but to be servant of all. 

So what do we mean on Christ the King Sunday when we acknowledge His kingship throughout the world? What kind of King is Jesus?

I begin many days reading a brief devotional by the late, great Henri M. Nouwen, a Dutch-born Catholic priest who wrote 40 books about spirituality. Daily emails of these snippets can be obtained at www.henrinouwen.org.

Each day, emails from Nouwen’s writings take seekers on a guided tour of the mysteries of the universe, offering fresh insights into Jesus’ teachings about life, death, faith, and moral behavior.

Recently the editors chose a Nouwen comment that has stuck in my mind like the lyrics of a old song that bursts forth with new and unexpected meaning.

“The largest part of Jesus’ life was hidden,” Nouwen wrote. “Jesus lived with his parents in Nazareth, ‘under their authority’ (Luke 2:51), and there ‘increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and with people’ (Luke 2:52).  When we think about Jesus we mostly think about his words and miracles, his passion, death, and resurrection, but we should never forget that before all of that Jesus lived a simple, hidden life in a small town, far away from all the great people, great cities, and great events.  Jesus’ hidden life is very important for our own spiritual journeys.  If we want to follow Jesus by words and deeds in the service of his Kingdom, we must first of all strive to follow Jesus in his simple, unspectacular, and very ordinary hidden life.”

Jesus had a hidden life. Of course he did. The Gospels are accounts of the special moments in Jesus’ life, observed by many, and passed along by oral tradition for decades until someone decided to write them down. The gospel writers are not so much inspired auditors of God’s dictation as they are the beneficiaries of careful Middle Eastern Griots – oral historians and story tellers – whose job it is to pass the same basic story to succeeding generations. We know from African oral traditions that Griots have been remarkably reliable in preserving great truths over many centuries, so the basic veracity of the gospel stories is not in question. 

But it’s clear that the stories of Jesus became memorable when he said or did something remarkable. There are perhaps three decades in his life about which we know nothing, but which we must assume to have been – in Nouwen’s words – simple, unspectacular, and very ordinary.

Why is this revelation so exciting?

Maybe it’s just the element of mystery, the idea that we know almost nothing about 90 percent of Jesus’ life on earth. By that measurement, we are stunned that we know so little about the most famous person who ever lived.  And, too, we are amazed that so much of what we think we know about Jesus is based on information we can’t have. 

No where in the gospels, for example, are we told precisely how Jesus dressed. One account is that he wore a seamless robe of undetermined color. The gospel writers make no mention of the likelihood that he wore a tallit, or prayer shawl. Artists occasionally portray Jesus with a scarf over his head, but the artists leave out the corner fringes that would have been prescribed in Numbers 15:38 or Deuteronomy 22:12. 

Our most likely image of Jesus is of a brown skinned man with long black hair and a beard, which is what most Jewish men looked like in Palestine in the first century. But this image omits curly uncut sideburns that Jesus almost certainly wore with most of his male contemporaries. 

Our image of Jesus does not include phylacteries affixed to his forehead, the small leather boxes containing scripture verses that he undoubtedly wore during morning weekday prayers, as all Jewish males did. 

If Jesus omitted any of these things, it would have been noticed and remarked upon for gospel posterity. The Griots wouldn’t have been able to to keep quiet about it.

We have also come to think of Jesus as an ascetic bachelor who eschewed married life in order to devote himself to God and to his flock. Perhaps so. Certainly large doctrines and time-honored practices have been based on this assumption, including the celibate priesthood. But that notion, too, is based on information lost in the thirty years of Jesus’ life we know nothing about. And if Jesus had broken so radically from the Jewish tradition that the husband-led family was God’s basic unit of society, why wouldn’t the Griots have said something about it?

Perhaps the Griots didn’t mention it because women were akin to slaves in Jesus’ day, and they saw no reason to mention wives as appendages to the public lives of the disciples. We wouldn’t know Peter was married if his mother-in-law had not fallen ill and required a miraculous cure by Jesus. Did the other disciples have wives who were not deemed to be worth mentioning because they didn’t get sick? Did Jesus?

It’s all speculation, of course. And this is not a lead-in to the premise of The DaVinci Code, the 2003 novel in which Dan Brown posits that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and the church covered it up for doctrinal reasons. Until we cross over, we will not know the answer to this and other mysteries. But they are mysteries, not heresies, because they are part of Jesus’ life we know nothing about.

We do know, of course, that Jesus was a carpenter. This has led to entertaining theories as to how he plied his trade, my favorite being a scene in the 1961 epic King of Kings starring Jeffrey Hunter. 

Hunter, who also played the callow youth who attached himself to John Wayne in The Searchers and was the bad guy in Walt Disney’s The Great Locomotive Chase, died before he could ice the cake of his career as the captain of the starship Enterprise. But the tall, blue-eyed actor was perfectly suited for the role of Jesus, better looking even than Salman’s Head of Christ. 

Hunter acquitted himself well in the role, portraying Jesus as a likeable guy who didn’t lord his special status over everyone else. 

But screenwriter Philip Yordan seems to have struggled with how to portray Jesus as a savior who got his fingernails dirty working with wood. 

Brilliantly, Yordan conceived a scene found no where in the bible in which Jesus’ mom, played by Siobhán McKenna, interrupts her son as he attempts to slip out of the house to save the world. But wait, she asks, have you made that little wooden table you promised me? Aw, Mother, I’ll get to it, the savior replies with a polite smile as he swoops out the door. But he knows and she knows and you know it’s never going to happen. 

Anthropologists have a pretty good notion what other Palestinian carpenters did in the thirty mysterious years when Jesus lived under Joseph’s authority. According to the Christianity Today Library:

“As carpenters, Joseph and Jesus would have created mainly farm tools (carts, plows, winnowing forks, and yokes), house parts (doors, frames, posts, and beams), furniture, and kitchen utensils.”

Almost 2,000 years before electric power tools, that would have been hard isometric exercise. Apart from providing daily development of the carpenters’ pects and delts, it was also the kind of work that would have placed Joseph and Jesus on friendly business terms with most of their neighbors. Jesus grew to adulthood providing most of the residents of Nazareth with the tools and wooden paraphernalia they needed to live. We must assume his products were of excellent quality and that he did not overcharge.

Archeologists who study first century Palestinian settlements make it clear that Jesus would have grown up in intimate proximity with his neighbors. According to JesusCentral.com, an excellent website “where people of all backgrounds learn about Jesus,” the standard living arrangements provided little privacy.

“Houses were all purpose 1-2 room squares, with dirt floors, flat roofs, low and narrow doorways, and front wooden doors,” the site explains. “Often people would sleep on flat roofs during hot nights. The houses were arranged around a central shared courtyard where neighbors performed daily chores (cooking, laundry, etc.) in each other’s company. Water was carried in from a public well and stored in a courtyard cistern. Lighting was provided by earthenware oil lamps. People slept on mats, and owned limited personal goods.”

There are no records or apocryphal gospels that give us a clear idea what Jesus’ hidden years were like. We can only speculate that he lived like everyone he knew when he was growing up: a nice Jewish boy raised in the law and tradition of his ancestors, living and working and often sleeping with relatives and neighbors he saw every day of his life.

It was a life of extreme ordinariness. He came into the world in a barn, surrounded by the redolence of fetid hay and animals, and we shake our heads that God’s son, the world’s savior, got such an inauspicious start. But even more staggering is the probability that Jesus grew up in mundane, commonplace, everyday surroundings, where he looked and acted like everyone else. The good people of Nazareth knew him as Jesus from the block, not Jesus Christ.

It’s no wonder, then, that when Jesus finally assumed his messianic mode, his intimate acquaintances and other observers looked at him like he’d grown a new nose. 

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" (John 6:51-52)

Granted, the ensuing passage with its references to eating flesh and drinking blood is difficult for anyone to understand. Jesus’ friends and neighbors are particularly befuddled because they knew Jesus before he was Jesus. 

After thirty years of a hidden life among them, Jesus abruptly emerged from the shadows as the light of the world. That’s an unexpected and dazzling transition to behold.

But Jesus made the transition with power and ease, in part because he had put the hidden years to good use. He knew what none of his neighbors knew: that he was the anointed one of God, sent to take away the sins of the world. But he also knew that in order to accomplish his mission, years of preparation would be necessary: years of hiddenness.

“Hiddenness,” Nouwen wrote, “is an essential quality of the spiritual life. Solitude, silence, ordinary tasks, being with people without great agendas, sleeping, eating, working, playing ... all of that without being different from others, that is the life that Jesus lived and the life he asks us to live.  It is in hiddenness that we, like Jesus, can increase ‘in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and with people’ (Luke 2:51).  It is in hiddenness that we can find a true intimacy with God and a true love for people.”

Jesus could not have accomplished his goal if he had spent all his time on earth above the fray, floating like a twilight sprite above the mud and the dust and the suffering. In the thirty years of his life we know so little about, he lived – literally – as one of us. He got to know all our needs, our foibles, our temptations, our quirks, our sins. He got to know us, in a sense, more completely than God the Creator who counts the hairs on our head. The experiences and insights Jesus gained during his hidden years took on a mighty power when he began his formal ministry. 

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them,” he declared in terms that the literary minded found cannibalistic.

But Jesus had hit upon the perfect metaphor to describe the sacrifice he was to make to atone for the sins of the world – the sacrifice that opens the door to life for all who accept it.

Neither Jesus’ understanding of his role or the metaphor he used to describe it sprung up over night. Both were the product of long years discovering “a true intimacy with God and a true love for people” when no one was writing down what he said or did.

It is, after all, precisely what developed in the hidden years that would make the declaration true: 

“This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Blood is the Color of the Reformation

Updated. See October 2025