Hymn for the Leadership of the 119th Congress

(To the tune The Church’s One Foundation or Lead On O King Eternal)

We have no funds for healthcare

No funds for Mother Earth

No funds to help poor children

Who make it past their birth

No money left for food stamps,

Tuition subsidies,

Or foreign aid or research

To cure deadly disease

No money left for PEPFAR

No funds for Medicaid

Nor affordable housing

Or vaccines that could save

And time is running out on

Social security

That trust fund will be gone soon

Tough luck retirees.

But trust us when we tell you

It’s not that we don’t care

But what was left we’ve spent on

Tax breaks for billionaires

But there’s one thing we’ll always

Find lots of money for:

We’ll tax and spend like liberals

To fund our endless wars.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Filthy Things

I see before my eyes a grand parade

led by warriors, young and brave,

idols in a land that needs them to be,

yet cares little if they live or die

so long as they inspire love.

Love for filthy things, like war,

death, and violence, disguised

as honor, bravery, and sleek metal

bearing grand designs and logos.

Faces like sharks, mouths like lions.

The crowd cheers as these pass by,

swallowing whole the vicious lie

that has in time left millions dead

and now misleads some millions more

along this fatal route called war.

This horrid scene disguised as bliss

betrays the world like Judas’ kiss.

So stand apart my friend and sing

a love song to a different king –

lest you be touched by filthy things.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Inspired by 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 NLT

The Never Ending Story

‘Just as the weeds are sorted out and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the world.  The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will remove from his Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil…Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s Kingdom.’

– Matthew 13:40-41; 43(a) NLT

‘We will shine like stars in the universe, holding out your truth in the darkest place.  We’ll be living for your glory.  Jesus, we’ll be living for your glory.’

– Matt Redman, from the song, ‘Shine’

Last Friday was Good Friday.  I spent it with a wonderful group of Holy mischief makers at a service and demonstration in front of the headquarters of the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.  Together we worshipped, prayed, and remembered both the suffering of Jesus and the suffering of his children.  We lamented the human cost of war, read aloud the names of children killed by the bombs and missiles manufactured by the merchants of death, and otherwise stood in solidarity, as Jesus had on the original Good Friday, with the victims of evil’s ongoing rampage against the life.  Some folks even took the step of direct action against such evil, crossing the line onto Lockheed Martin’s corporate property, where they knelt and prayed while awaiting arrest.  I’ve never had a more worshipful experience.  One of the organizers, who had brought her children, commented, ‘I told my kids we could do one of two things today: we can go to church or we can be the church.  They decided to be the church.’  That’s what being there with my brothers and sisters felt like for me as well.  Next year, I hope to cross the line myself. 

I am aware that not everyone sees this as I do.  Many may become angry at the thought that I bore witness to such shenanigans.  Others will scoff and dismiss such efforts as useless.   ‘Why do that?’ they ask.  ‘It doesn’t do any good.  Neither you nor those who were arrested stopped any war.  The bombs are still being made.  Why waste your time at such an event?  What possible good do things like this do?’

My response is two-fold.

First of all, I’m foolish enough to believe that such things do a lot of good.  It certainly does me some good.  Sometimes, as I watch the fires burning in the world, I feel alone and helpless.  But when I participate in such things, I no longer feel that way.  I become a part of something bigger than myself, something full of possibility.  I also believe that it is important to witness to the fact that another world is possible.  That things don’t have to be this way.  Certainly for my own sanity, but also because I believe that in doing so, there is always the possibility that someone else might agree; that someone on the other side might even change their mind.  It happens.  For example, there have been protests at Lockheed Martin for years, and over those years, people have turned.  Employees have repented.  Lives have changed.  Souls have been saved.  There is a power to loving, nonviolent protest that has the capacity to win enemies to the truth.  Just ask the Centurion who stood guard at the Cross on Good Friday (Mark 15:39).  Sometimes, nonviolent, loving protest can even change the world.    

But secondly, I admit that you sort of have a point.  You’re right: Lockheed Martin did not stop manufacturing bombs that day.  Indeed, decades worth of protests haven’t stopped them from doing so.  They’re still inflicting harm.   Still killing children.  Still lining their pockets with the proceeds of weapon sales.  The Trump Administration is still proposing an over 40% increase in military spending (much of which would go to Lockheed Martin), and even if they don’t get it, they will get at least a trillion dollars (think of that!).  What if it goes on like this forever?  What if it never changes?  What possible good then did it do for those folks to get arrested, and what possible good will it do for me to consider risking arrest myself some day? 

Well, I suppose if you live in the story of the powerful, then, aside from the things I mentioned above, it won’t do much good at all.  If you choose to live in a history defined by the powerbrokers, the presidents, the prime ministers, the war makers, and the merchants of death – the history as written by empire – then yes, it probably won’t change things much.  After all, even Jesus tells us that in the last days there will be wars and rumors of wars.  So yes, I suppose, our protests and arrests won’t end war entirely.  Even if they end one war, another will come along.  ‘We didn’t start the fire, it’s been always burnin’ since the world’s been turnin’, and when we are gone it will go on and on and on and on….’ (so says Billy Joel).  Such things will persist until Jesus comes again. 

But I contend that it’s still worth bearing witness to another way.  Because, you see, I choose not to live in the history of those folks.  I choose to live in a different story.  A never ending story. 

In Revelation, we read about this tome called the Book of Life (see, e.g., Revelation 20 and 21).  A lot of people think it’s nothing more than a list of names of those who believe in Jesus, but it’s so much more than that.  It’s the book that reveals history from God’s perspective.  And history, from God’s perspective, looks quite different from the perspective of the empire.  The empire believes that it is writing history with its armies, guns, and bombs, with power plays and games without frontiers.  But all the while, God is writing a different, better story.  It is the story told through the lives of people at the fringes, the marginalized, those of no account.  The wandering Arameans, the imprisoned prophets, the persecuted apostles, the martyred saints.  It is the history in which conscientious objectors who refuse cooperation with empire, such as Franz Jaggerstatter, who refused to fight for Hitler for the sake of his faith in Christ, and die for it, are hailed as the true heroes and given places of honor.  It is the history defined not by those who carry swords, but by those who take up the cross.    

And in that book of history, on Good Friday 2026, there is an entry about a little  band of holy mischief makers who worshipped together, who stood in solidarity with the suffering, who took a stand by kneeling and praying on the property of the warmongers, who bore witness, who pointed, even if few saw where they were pointing, to another future and another way.  Some may have seen it, and perhaps, as a result, they too will one day find their names written in the Book of Life.  And one day, for sure, their story, along with millions of other unsung stories, will be the only stories told in the universe.  Theirs will be the songs that will be sung forever.  The merchants of death will be gone, while the ‘righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s Kingdom.’ 

What happened last Good Friday doesn’t matter?  Oh my goodness, it matters more than you or I can imagine. 

And so I say to you that today, you have a choice.  You get to decide which history you would like to be a part of.  The history that will be forgotten, that will come to an end, or God’s history that will never end, the history that is, in fact, determining the course of eternity even as we speak. 

The power brokers will surely continue to laugh if you live on the right side of things.  As you kneel and pray while the nations rage.  As you bear witness to another world.  But that’s okay.  For one day, their laughing will be forever silent.  One day they will know they were wrong.  One day when they fall to their knees and hail Jesus as Lord, they will know that ours was the true history, that ours was the never ending story. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

All I Need to Know

Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty.

I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp.

Instead, I have quieted myself,

like a weaned child who no longer cries for it’s mother’s milk.

Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 

– Psalm 131:1-2 NLT

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

– 1 John 3:16(a)

What is the message of the Cross?

This is the question I must address every year at this time.  Weeks before Holy Week, it rises amidst all the other things I must think about.  I’m plugging along, embracing each week as it comes, spending time with God and creating space for inspiration for the messages and lessons I must impart each Sunday, while in the back of my mind some manic voice shouts, ‘Have you thought about Holy Week yet?’  And so the pressure begins to mount. 

I’m not sure what that pressure is, really, other than the massing of my own insecurities and perfectionist tendencies.  I think a lot of pastors feel it.  Somehow or other, we once again have to talk about the Cross, and not just as we do throughout the year.  It’s Holy Week, for crying out loud, and so you have to talk about the Cross in a special way!  This is the big time.  The show.  People who don’t normally come to church may show up on Palm Sunday.  They probably won’t on Good Friday, so you need to get the message of the Cross right then.  Oh sure, you can talk about Palm Sunday itself sometimes, the Triumphal Entry and all that, but not every year, that would be too repetitive, so at least every other year, on Palm Sunday, you need to deliver a whizz bang message about the Cross.  And remember, most of the people you’ll be speaking to have heard this story before.  Many times.  So you have to come up with something new.  Something original.  Something…clever. 

Fortunately, there are all sorts of ways to talk about the Cross.  The New Testament writers, tasked with expressing the most extraordinary event in the history of the universe, were inspired to paint various word pictures that help us capture the Cross and it’s meaning.  The Cross is a place of victory.  It’s a hospital where humanity’s wounds are healed.  It’s the place where the price was paid for the forgiveness of sins.  It’s our ransom.  It’s our moral model for how we are to live.  It recalls us to our true identity in God’s sight.  It restores our union with God.  It is the place where God enters into our suffering.  The list goes on and on.  There are any number of entry points to the message of the Cross.  So there shouldn’t be any problem coming up with something to share. 

But sometimes, there is.  And I know that sounds crazy.  But when you’re the pastor, you tend to remember everything you’ve every said about the Cross.  Every sermon.  Every illustration.  Every clever approach to make it sound new.  And you can’t help but think (hope?), even though you’re certainly wrong, that everyone else remembers too.  And so, the pressure.  How do you come up with something new, something original, something clever, in speaking of the Cross this year during Holy Week. 

I felt this pressure this year.  Big time.  The week before Palm Sunday, I sat down to write my sermon, and hours into it, felt as if I’d written nothing more than four pages of theological gobbledygook.  And so, a couple days later, I started from another angle.  I didn’t even finish a draft of that one.  I couldn’t seem to capture what I was trying to say.  And so, my brain hurting, I abandoned the project for a while. 

I eventually completed the sermon (I returned to my original, modified it slightly, and realized it wasn’t so bad).  But even so, I felt as if this whole exercise, this whole exhausting effort at trying to capture the message of the Cross in a single message, was ridiculous.  And, of course, it is.  Because the truth is that all of our efforts to capture that message are destined for failure.  How can you possibly capture the meaning of the Cross in a single message, or even in a lifetime of messages?  At the end of John’s Gospel there is a telling notation: ‘Jesus did many other things.  If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that could be written.’  How equally true is that of the message of the Cross!  For all our theories, all our word pictures, all our attempts to capture the meaning of the Atoning work of Jesus Christ, all our cleverness, we have never, will never, come close to capturing its essence or fullness.  What happened there is beyond words.  There’s a reason theologians refer to the events of Holy Week as the paschal mystery.  The message of the Cross, the meaning of the Cross, the elusive understanding of the Cross will forever remain just that – a mystery.  Trying to explain it with words is like trying to contain the whole of Niagara Falls in a tea cup. 

Hence, the pressure. 

And so, here’s a message that doesn’t try so hard. 

What is the message of the Cross?

It is that we mean everything to God. 

And here is where, despite my earlier comments, I risk being clever. 

I recently finished reruns of The Office, a comedy that features one of the great love stories of the ages.  Yes, besides Romeo and Juliet, Captain Von Trapp and Maria, and Heathcliff and Catherine, you have to put Jim and Pam.  Their story captivated audiences for nine years running this century.  But if you know it, you know that near the end of that run, they hit some bumpy times. 

Pam, who struggled with self-esteem, was really having a hard time when Jim attempted to start a new business.  The time away, the time apart, made Pam feel as if she weren’t enough for Jim.  At one point, she tells him so, and Jim, well, Jim is just crushed.  After all he has done to show Pam how much he loves her, he realizes that he hasn’t done enough. 

And so, he asks the video crew that has been filming their story for nine years (that’s the premise of The Office) to help him out.  The crew assembles a montage of key moments in their love story, moments that highlight just how much Pam means to him.  Pam watches the video and then Jim hands her a letter.  It’s a letter he’s had for a long time.  He had almost given it to her once before they started to date, but chickened out.  But now, in the fullness of time, he shares it.   

As he hands the note to Pam, he simply says, ‘Everything you’ll ever need to know is in that note.’  Pam reads it, and with tears in her eyes, looks at Jim, who simply says to her, with a heart full of love, ‘Not enough for me?  You’re everything.’ 

And just like that, Pam knows she’s enough. 

She knows that in Jim’s eyes, she is everything. 

Here’s the funny thing: we never learn the contents of the note.  It remains, and still remains all these years later, a mystery. 

And that, more than anything else I can say, is the message of the Cross.  It’s God’s love letter to us.  The note that tells us everything we will ever need to know.  That no matter who we are, where we’ve been, or what we’ve done, we are, in God’s eyes, everything. 

When I was a kid, my Mom hung a plaque on the wall that said, ‘I asked God how much he loved me.  ‘This much,’ he said, and he stretched out his arms, and died.’

No matter what else the Cross means, no matter what theories we might propose or explanations we might offer, in the end, they really don’t matter much.  In the end, all that can remain a mystery. 

What matters is that God loves us. 

What matters is that we’re his everything. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Isaiah 40:3

‘In the wilderness,’ the prophet said,

‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’

He said, ‘In the wilderness.’

Not in the grip of power,

or the company of politicians.

In the wilderness of powerlessness.

Not in the boardroom,

or the palaces of oligarchs.

In the desert wastes of poverty.

Not in the councils of generals,

or the military command centers.

In the abandoned places of empire.

Not in the mansions of the rich,

or the lifestyles of the famous.

But among those of no renown.

There you must prepare the way.

Go therefore, to these latter haunts,

and make preparation.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Minneapolis

Helpless.

That’s how this feels,

as jackbooted thugs

pummel faces with fists,

knees,

bullets.

And so I kneel

asking for the miracle

that will awaken your Church,

that silent behemoth that sleeps

beneath the din

(so enraptured with civility)

(or else captured by anti-Christ)

to rise once more

and shake the world

with love, faith,

and strong determination.

Perhaps we are not

helpless after all.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Perspective

‘All that is necessary to make any landscape visible and therefore impressive is to regard it from a new point of view, or from the old one with our heads upside down. Then we behold a new heaven and earth and are born again…’ – John Muir

Sometime, when conditions are just right,

go and stand on the edge of a creek bank

when the sun is bright with morning

gladness and the water still and dark.

Ease your head over the ledge,

just a bit, and see yourself

staring back from the water,

peering upward, at you, beyond you.

Keep looking and notice above you –

beneath you, marvel of marvels! –

the ecstasy of a cerulean sky

dappled with clouds.

Observe the crowns of trees

rooted in the heavens,

drinking deeply of glory.

Notice too the sun, shining up at you,

as if this were the way of things.

Just for a moment,

or several if you can spare them –

and by all means, spare them –

allow yourself to fall skyward

into a world turned upside down.

And consider the curious fact

that this is indeed the way of things:

that in truth we touch the sky

as often as we touch the ground.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Hymn for Peace

Sung to the tune of How Great Thou Art

O Lord my God, when I, in awesome wonder

Consider all the beauty of your world

And yet look on, at all its splendor plundered

By those who hate and maim and bomb and kill

Then sings my soul

O God, how can this be?

God bring us peace. God bring us peace.

Then sings my soul

How long until we’re free?

God bring us peace. God bring us peace.

Around the world, I see the weapons of war

Wielded without a hesitating thought

As hell rains down on precious lives you died for

Who with your blood, salvation has been bought

Then sings my soul

O God, how can this be?

God bring us peace. God bring us peace.

Then sings my soul

How long until we’re free?

God brings us peace. God bring us peace.

And when I think of Jesus’ blunt refusal

To wield the sword against his fellow man

I wonder how his church gives her approval

To those who do; I cannot understand

Then sings my soul

O God, how can this be?

God bring us peace. God bring us peace.

Then sings my soul

How long until we’re free?

God bring us peace. God bring us peace.

As we await, the day of coming glory

When Christ shall come, and put an end to strife

We pledge ourselves to live a better story

To be the ones who treasure every life.

Still sings my soul

O God, how can this be?

God bring us peace. God bring us peace.

Still sings my soul

How long until we’re free?

God bring us peace. God bring us peace.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Annunciation

What is this strange eruption,

this in-breaking of light,

this strange luminescence

that sparks a secret word,

that brings the presence

whose name I dare not speak?

A sudden rush of meaning,

dazzling, hopeful, dreadful,

impossible. How can this be?

Silly question, to ask the One

Who makes stars from nothing.

Or so the herald seems to say.

Yet gentle are the words.

Loving the Soul that speaks.

The Kingdom comes apace.

I am the servant of the Lord.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Featured image is The Annunciation, by Henry Ossawa Tanner

The Zeal of the Lord

Nevertheless, the time of darkness and despair will not go on forever.  The land of Zebulun and Naphtali will be humbled, but there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory.  The people who walked in darkness will see a great light.  For those who live in a land of deep darkness a light will shine.  You will enlarge the nation of Israel, and its people will rejoice.  They will rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest and like warriors dividing the plunder.  For you will break the yoke of their slavery and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders.  You will break the oppressor’s rod, just as you did when you destroyed the army of Midian.  The boots of the warrior and the uniforms bloodstained by war will all be burned.  They will be fuel for the fire.  For a child is born to us, a son is given to us.  The government will rest on his shoulders.  And he will be called, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  His government and its peace will never end.  He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity.  The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s armies will make this happen – Isaiah 9:1-7, the New Living Translation

German educator Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster suggests that the deepest meaning of the Incarnation becomes clear if we listen to the cries of newspaper vendors calling out the latest news, which, he argues, is hardly new but rather ‘age old and constantly repeated: the cold or hot war of everyone against everyone else.’  Each year at Advent we light a peace candle and echo the song of the angels, ‘peace on earth.’  But just beyond our voices we hear the cacophony of un-peace.  Violence.  Hate.  Gunfire.  Bombs.  The insatiable capacity of people to war with one another over matters large and small.  With misguided zeal, people strive to free themselves from the threat of perceived enemies and are willing to employ violence to do so.  It is hard to believe things can improve.  Turn on the news and you will see evidence of this war everywhere.  It seems our times are dark and growing darker each day.      

If there is any consolation, it may be that this feeling is not new.  It is, as Foerster says, ‘age old.’  Isaiah, centuries before Christ, wrote of a people walking in deep darkness.  These were the people of Northeast Israel (Zebulun and Naphtali), who had fallen to the Assyrian Empire.  Their land was the staging point for both the invasion of the Northern kingdom of Israel and the deportation of her people.  These people knew well the sound of warriors’ boots and the sight of uniforms stained in blood.  They felt the oppressors’ rod and the yoke of slavery.  They knew injustice as we know only in our worst nightmares. 

But Isaiah had comfort to speak even to such as these.  For the people who walked in darkness, Isaiah proclaimed, would see a great light. Glorious things would happen.  What would this entail?  Well, for starters, Isaiah states that Israel would be enlarged.  No doubt his initial readers took this to mean a literal expansion of Israel’s territory; having lost much of it (the entire Northern Kingdom) to the Assyrians, they would get it back, and then some.  Perhaps Israel would be as great as when David ruled, or encompass all the land once described to Moses (Numbers 34).  Understandable, but wrong.  The key to understanding Isaiah’s words is to ask: what is Israel, that she should be enlarged?  Israel is God’s people, called to be his peculiar treasures, to live in God’s light and show others his glory.  His instrument by which he would win all peoples to himself and bring restoration to the world.  Israel is a light to the nations, the people through whom God would bring about the day when, as Isaiah will later say, every knee will bow, and every tongue confess Yahweh’s lordship (45:3).  This is what is meant by ‘Israel enlarged;’ God had not, despite appearances, abandoned his promise.  Israel would fulfill her role.  The nations would be included, and the world restored.  Her light would expand to the ends of the earth.

Isaiah imagines the day when the people who walk in darkness will rejoice like harvesters at the harvest, like warriors dividing plunder.  Harvesters rejoice at harvest because it signals the end of a season during which any number of things might have gone wrong.  Now the harvest will sustain the community through the coming winter.  Warriors (careful: don’t abuse the metaphor and think God is calling his people to violence) rejoice when dividing plunder, not so much for plunder’s sake, but because war is over, and they can return to a life of peace.  Yes, Isaiah insists to his audience, you will rejoice, for the yoke of slavery will be lifted, the oppressors rod will be broken. 

But how, the people ask? 

Isaiah answers, ‘You will break the oppressor’s rod just as you did when you destroyed the army of Midian.’  The reference is the victory of Gideon over the Midianites (Judges 6-7).  Gideon defeated them in a most unusual way: God demanded he lose the thousands of troops he had amassed, whittling them down to a force of 300, and then, had him attack the vastly superior forces, not with weapons, but with the sound of shofars and the rattling of jars, together with shouts to the glory of God.  The Midianites became so filled with terror that they ran away attacking each other, giving Israel a victory without ever having to draw swords.  This is Isaiah’s first clue that the means by which Israel, and the world, will be delivered, is not what normally comes to mind: it will not come about in the usual fashion, with swords and human effort.  It will be God’s victory, and it will come about in a new and strange way.  The ‘boots of the warrior’ and the ‘uniforms stained with blood’ will not be needed.  They will be burned as fuel for the fire.  The great light that shall shine on those walking in darkness will bring about their fortunes without need for a battle. 

How can this be?  Isn’t a battle necessary to make peace?  Is peace not achieved through the use of force?  Do we not need to fight for it with all the zeal we can muster?  Do we not need our own bloody coats and tramping boots?  How can darkness be fought in the absence of such measures?  To this, Isaiah can only offer what God has told him: For a child is born to us; a son is given. Which sounds crazier than what happened with Gideon, doesn’t it?  How can the birth of a child deliver the world from darkness?  How can a child rule a government whose peace knows no end? 

Well, Isaiah says, this will be no ordinary child.  His names will be ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’  Somehow, in ways Isaiah’s audience (or Isaiah for that matter) couldn’t have understood, the child to be born would bear the power of God, even deserve the names of God, in fact, be God, and God, of course, can do anything.  In this we begin to see how it can be that people who walk in darkness will be lifted into light without need for a battle; for it will not be the zeal (or ‘passionate commitment,’ as the NLT puts it) of men and women that will deliver them from evil.  It will be the zeal of the Lord.  God will, in this child to be born, enlarge the nation.  God will, in this child to be born, break the yoke and rod.  What we cannot do, God can.  It will not be our zeal that saves us, but God’s. 

And this, you see, is why peace is so elusive in our world.  For in our attempts to make a better world, we rely on our own efforts.  We rely on our power, we take matters into our own hands, rather than trusting things to God’s hands.  We forget that the promised victory of peace, the dawn of light to those in darkness, will not be won by conventional means, neither by the sword nor the arguably less bloody weapons of our culture wars.  We forget that the victory will not be won by us at all, but rather by the zeal of the Lord of heaven’s armies.  We forget that it will only be when we embrace his way that we can even taste the promise of a better world. 

Not so long ago, I saw a woman on TV who clearly forgot this.  She was decked out in a T-shirt professing her Christian faith, telling a reporter that it was perfectly acceptable for her side of the political divide to encourage the deaths of those on the other, because, you see, ‘we are at war!  We have to fight for our rights!  God wants us to!’  No, he most certainly does not.  He wants us to be still.  To trust and know that he is God.  Yes, he wants our prayers and witness, our truth-telling and sacrifice.  But not our violence or bellicosity.  It will be his zeal, and not ours, that will one day fill this world with light. 

I suppose I can understand the thinking of those who believe that the only way to fight the darkness is to fight themselves; to rely on their zeal to save the world.  This idea of waiting on the Lord to take care of things seems, to many, naïve.  Or worse, dangerous.  Waiting on God instead of taking matters into your own hands, that just might get you killed or at least result in the loss of cherished rights and privileges.  And honestly, there is truth in that.  It sounds more realistic, more practical, to strike back at our enemies, if not first, to at least give it all we’ve got, to fight on the world’s terms.  I can only say that God calls us to fight on His.  He calls us to, like Gideon, trust in ridiculous strategies, believing in the possibility of a peaceable victory.  He calls us to throw our boots and uniforms, our instruments of war and vengeance, into the fire, and to believe the darkness will, in a stunningly new way, meet its defeat.  He calls us to believe that the zeal of the Lord will bring this about. 

And it will.  How do I know?  For unto us, a child has been born.  Unto us, a son has been given.  The vision of Isaiah has already come to pass.  We can now stand, with old Zechariah over the crib of his newborn son John, the one who would prepare the way for the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and sing his song, believing that the tender mercy of our God has broken upon us (Luke 1:78).  That his light is shining on those who sit in darkness.  And that he will guide our feet in the way of peace.

We can know, as Jurgen Moltmann once said, that ‘the liberator is already present and his power is already among us,’ and that ‘we can follow him, even today, making something visible of the peace, liberty, and righteousness of the Kingdom that he will complete.’  And complete it he will, for he is zealous for it, and nothing will ever stop the zeal of the Lord. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent