Month: November 2021

Advent is this time of the year when we read from several books of prophets. The readings may seem a bit random with the choice of texts and authors our lectionary operates. What these readings have in common though, and the reason why these passages have been selected, is that they all point to the coming of Christ – or at least this is the way we understand these passages as Christians. They are certainly read differently in the Jewish tradition

The passage we have today from Jeremiah is actually very typical of the way we as Christians often read the prophecies. We have a very short extract (3 verses) of a book that actually contains 52 chapters. In these verses, Jeremiah declares that God “will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem lives in safety”. As I mentioned last week when we read from Daniel about the “Son of Man”, as soon as we hear these kind of references we are tempted to “jump” immediately to Jesus and say: “See, centuries in advance, the prophets announced Jesus” “the Son of Man” or the “Son of David”, our “king of righteousness”, our “Savior” – and then we are done with the reading. We look in the Bible for confirmation of something we already know and we close the book because there is nothing more the Hebrew Scriptures have to teach us because we have found the answer with Jesus.

The problem though with our Christian understanding of the Old Testament in general, and of the prophecies more specifically, is that if we approach these texts only as “predictions about Jesus”, we take the risk to make of the Old Testament a book of divination (and divination that’s actually the way we often understand what a prophet does on a very basic level: the prophet is the one who sees the future). This is a dangerous and deceptive way of reading the Bible. First of all, it’s dangerous because it may lead some readers to try to use the texts to predict and control the future and even the end of the world, and we certainly know that many cults did just that when interpreting the Bible. But more often, without going that far, the problem with this type of reading is that it is deceptive: seeing only the “prediction” can make us miss the historical, ethical and spiritual meaning of the text. Interestingly, reading the Bible, and especially the prophecies, as a foretelling of the future is actually counter Biblical: there are many passages in the Bible that condemn astrology, divination and all the ways we try to manipulate our reality using a perverted form of religiosity.

So the question for us during this time of Advent could be: How – as Christians – are we supposed to read the prophets right and what can we learn from them? Well, I am not sure I have the correct answer, but there are maybe a few things we can talk about. Luther used to say that the Old testament was “the cradle of Christ”. I don’t think he meant by that that we should “read between the lines”, find hidden references to Christ in the Bible, rather Luther meant that the Old testament relates the history, the cultural context from where Jesus comes from and he probably meant also that we find in the Old Testament a growing sense of who God is, the God who Jesus called his Father.

And so back to our lesson for today – My sense is that there is much more to learn in Jeremiah than a simple prediction of a few verses. I am not convinced that Jeremiah was gifted with a sixth sense, or even had a revelation from above about what would happen in his land several centuries later. More important I think is that Jeremiah, as a prophet, shows us what it is to be a bearer of God’s word ( which is the Greek etymology of the word pro- phet. As a consequence, in Jeremiah’s way of living / of bearing the word, we are given clues to recognize the ultimate “bearer of the word” when he would come (“bearer of the word” / “the word himself” is the name John gives to Jesus in the prologue of his Gospel).

So what clues are we given?

– Well, the first thing we notice about Jeremiah is that he spoke the truth to power – specifically he told the king of Judah things he didn’t want to hear – that Babylon would prevail over Jerusalem and that he would lose his kingdom. We see in the Gospel today that it is exactly what Jesus does as well, as he predicts the second fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. They both teach that real power is to be found in God and not in human institutions.

– In the meantime, Jeremiah had words of comfort for those who were afflicted and enduring the oppression of the foreign powers and a corrupted king. The passage we have today is actually taken from what we call “The book of consolation” (chapters 30-33 inside the book of Jeremiah). In the same way, Jesus promised a reversal of situation to all who were oppressed (“the first will be the last”) and was systematically on the side of the powerless (sinners, foreigners, women and children)

– Jeremiah, as Jesus, loved the poor and lived in poverty as a way to proclaim that the true riches were to be found in God. They didn’t seek profit from their prophetic activity – quite the opposite, they didn’t receive prestige and wealth because their teaching was displeasing to many.

– Jeremiah suffered for the truth: He was imprisoned, mocked, starved and almost put to death – this of course reminds us of the sufferings of Christ who remained faithful to his mission to the end.

– Jeremiah died in exile and Jesus died being rejected.

– In the midst of the “gloom and doom”, Jeremiah and Jesus both encouraged the people to “watch expectantly” for God’s justice – as is very obvious in our Gospel today. Jesus says: “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near”

There are for me two main lessons we can take away from that:

1 – A prophet embodies holiness. True prophets don’t just proclaim the message – they are the message, at their level, in their own circumstances, according to their own strengths (and weaknesses). If we believe that the prophets of the Old Testament announced Christ, we have to see that it was not only with their words that they did the announcement. They worked actively for the righteousness and the justice of the kingdom. As we read from the books of the prophets, we are invited to do those things as well: To put God first, even against our interests, to stand up against injustices (sometimes the ones done to us, and mainly, the ones done to others). We are invited to comfort the afflicted, to encourage the little ones, to help the poor, to find God’s presence in the midst of our personal sufferings and in the difficulties of our times. And above all that, we are invited to find hope and to bring hope.

2 – And I would like to conclude by saying a few words about hope as we can come to understand it in our readings. Hope as you know is generally the umbrella theme in Advent. Yet we often misunderstand hope as a religious form of optimism. We see though that hope isn’t cheap in the Bible. As we discover in Jeremiah and in our Gospel today, hope is the sense of God’s presence in a broken and suffering world, in the doom and the gloom. Jeremiah like Jesus do not sugarcoat it. Yet Jeremiah tells the people that in spite of all, God will fulfill his promises. Jesus invites his disciples to stand up. Hope does not come when we sit and tell ourselves that things will get better eventually (or even in a more spiritual way: “This too shall pass”). In Jeremiah, hope springs from righteousness, from holiness, embodied in God’s people. It is from people with a prophet’s awareness and behavior that God will bring healing and restoration to the world. This was foreseen in Jeremiah and will find for us clear revelation in Christ. But this is also an invitation for all of us. We too will be prophets and announce Christ if we embody this way of living.

– Today our Old Testament lesson is taken from the Book of Daniel and it’s interesting because if you’ve paid attention (and if you’re in the Bible study group, you’ve definitely paid attention!) since September we have been reading from the books of wisdom every Sunday morning. In Advent (starting next week) we will dive into the prophecies. It’s interesting because Daniel is sort of an “in between” book of wisdom / book of prophecy. The book of Daniel relates many visions, and yet the Jewish tradition does not acknowledge Daniel as a prophet per se because Daniel never had a direct conversation with God. On the other side, Christians like to think of Daniel as a prophet because he had these visions of a “Son of Man” and we know that’s the way Jesus used to refer to himself – so we like to think that Daniel anticipated the coming of Christ! But what Jewish and Christian traditions agree on though is that Daniel is also a book of wisdom.

Before we come to all the visions, the first part of the book of Daniel (Chap 1-6) relates the story of the man who, as many others, had been exiled from Jerusalem and came to live in Babylon, in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. The story of Daniel is not unlike Joseph’s story in Egypt. In the mist of paganism and debauchery, Daniel, like Joseph, remains a faithful, trustworthy, god-fearing man whom people notice because of his excellent character and many gifts – not the least of them being the gift of interpreting dreams. Daniel, like Joseph, is not a magician though – it’s only for his piety that he is made able to understand what God says to men and women. Daniel deciphers the visions of others and later on he’ll receive his own visions.

And so that’s the first connection between wisdom and prophecy. In our modern understanding, we often see prophets as mildly eccentric, strange people saying strange things, but in the Bible, prophets are wise, godly, holy men. You don’t become a prophet because you’re an eccentric, you become a prophet because your heart and mind are close to the heart and the mind of God

Second connection between wisdom and prophecy is that prophets receive visions to help the people cope with difficult times – and we talked about that two weeks ago on All Saints’ Day. We mentioned that the Book of Revelation was written at a terrible time for Christian people, but the vision of the final victory of Christ is given to them so they can find hope and overcome adversity. This vision of Daniel, is, if you will, the ancestor of the Book of Revelation, the origin of what we call apocalyptic literature: A vision of the final victory of God against the forces of evil as we come to know them in History, through the violence and oppression of the nations. Apocalyptic writings are meant to show us that, in spite of all appearances, God has the ultimate power and is in control. An important thing apocalyptic literature is meant to teach us is to learn endurance and hope.

This should help us understand a little bit better the images we have today. The vision Daniel describes “one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven” certainly clicks immediately in our minds as referring to Jesus. It is good though to put back the vision in context and realize that Daniel sees this one “like a human” after he had the vision of four beasts: Lion, bear, leopard and one so scary that he does not even know what it is. And so that’s interesting because you see, the first idea is that we see God bringing a kingdom with a human figure versus a beastly one. For reasons too long to develop here, the four beats refer respectively to the Empire of Babylon, the Persian Empire, the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire. But the kingdom of God looks like a man. And you know I like it if we just take time to think about it before jumping to Jesus: When Daniel describes God, God looks like a human being for the simple reason that God does not look like a beast and does not behave like a beast. The kingdom of God brings humanity.

And so that’s the second thing we come to learn in this passage of Daniel: true power is to treat people with humanity, decency. Humanity is at the center of this power from heavens: not conquest, display of splendors and riches – the power displayed by God looks like people, is for people. And isn’t it what we want from the powers and nations and all those in authority? That they would act like human beings and that they treat everybody like human beings? That is the vision of peace God brings and this is not just a vision, it’s also a promise for what is too come. And this is also the question that is given to us: Do we want to foster this vision of the kingdom of God or we will side with the Empire? What is our understanding of power?

Which of course leads us to the question our Gospel asks today.

Pilate against Jesus in John’s Gospel is really about the Empire of the Beast against the Kingdom of God. Jesus describes his own power and he is very clear. Jesus says: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.” The essence of Jesus’s power is non violence. To me, it’s really important we notice that because so often we think that these apocalyptic visions, the coming of the kingdom of God happens with violence. Yet we see with Jesus that there is no violence – only a Son of man, humble and vulnerable.

It’s important to notice that so we don’t have false ideas about God. Some Christians say: “God is violent but that’s okay because God is God” or “because God is good”, but we see in John’s Gospel that God’s power is completely different in nature from the powers of this world. It’s also important we notice that so we don’t have false ideas about ourselves too. Because some Christians believe a good God can be violent they say: “As long as the violence is in the hands of the good guys it’s okay” (and of course they understand themselves as the good guys). Well maybe at some point violence in certain circumstances is a lesser evil but it is certainly not the type of power Jesus embodies and invites us to imitate.

How is this power different from what we know and practice? Well, a certain theologian opposes what we call the “redemptive suffering of the Gospel” against the “myth of redemptive violence of the world”. The myth of redemptive violence – you know what it is – it’s everywhere in fiction and in facts: It’s the belief that if the good guy(s) kills the bad guy(s) the world will be saved. In fact, it’s a myth because violence just repeats itself, violence never ceases and that’s the wars between nations apocalyptic visions describe so often. To that, the Gospel presents an alternative vision, reverses the cycle: Bad guy kills the good guy and the world is saved – What we call “Redemptive suffering”.

Now we have to be very careful with that. Thinking about suffering as redemptive is dangerous. Redemptive suffering is not not about letting our enemies crush us or just endure everything that comes our way. It’s not the suffering in itself that is redemptive but the refusal to act with violence, to respond to violence with violence, to use violence as a solution. What is redemptive is Jesus standing in front of Pilate, standing against worldly powers and speaking the truth to this power whatever the cost. We see in John’s Gospel that Jesus did not see himself as coming to suffer and die but first of all, to testify to the truth. That’s also the story of Joseph, the story of Daniel and that’s the story we are invited to tell / to embody as well.

Now what does it mean for us to “speak truth to the powers”? Well – that’s what prophecy is all about. Prophecy is much more about speaking the truth in dangerous circumstances rather than having visions, dreams or being able to predict the future. And that’s what we’ll talk about throughout Advent.

All Saints Sunday is one of those too rare Sundays where we read at church from the Book of Revelation, so I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about it before we have a look at our Gospel.

The book of Revelation is actually quite a wonderful book when we do not use it to push an agenda, to terrorize people or just to try to determine when the end of the world will occur…

The book of Revelation was not written to terrorize Christians – it was actually quite the opposite. It is believed that this book is the latest (=most recent) book of the New Testament and was written at a time where Christians were terrorized (= persecuted). This book is the telling of a vision meant to bring courage and consolation as Christians await the final victory of Christ against the forces of evil and death.

What makes the Book of Revelation a bit terrifying is that it does not mean to bring courage and strength by denying how bad reality is – rather it dives deeply in the violence that tears our world apart and the sorrow that breaks our hearts. In this it is certainly not a self help book that motivates us to “feel better” by “looking on the bright side”. We certainly need self help at times and to not focus on the negative – yet we know it’s not enough in the end.

The Book of Revelation talks about the way in which – no matter how bad reality is – God will have the final word. God will bring consolation (wipe away all the tears) not just by bringing us temporary comfort, but by having the final victory against evil and putting an end to it.

The promise of the Book of Revelation does not describe a blissful reality, but it does not make a faint promise either: “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more”. That’s the promise of promises, the promise above anything else that can be promised and hoped for.

And this is really what the Book of Revelation is about: It’s about Hope. The Book of Revelation brings us a vision (indeed a “revelation”) that brings a new light on this, at times, terrifying reality and the book invites us to live this life believing that the best is yet to come, instead of thinking of reality as just a series of loss and tragedies. This world is passing away, yes, but not just to disappear. The world is passing away because God is bringing something new, something that will endure for ever.

It’s interesting if you think about it, because what makes life so hard is mostly because this world is passing away. We get older, we lose our friends, we lose our abilities, we cling to people or things that in the end let us down and deceive us, maybe we try to make a name for ourselves, or to surround us with material comfort – only to find out that nothing last.

The Book of Revelation puts this understanding upside down. This world is passing away but the author shows us that, in a sense, it’s good that it is passing away, it’s passing away because God can bring something good, something that will last forever, and also something we will be a part of (because otherwise, what’s the point for us?)

With this vision – we find hope. And we know how much hope is important in everyday life. We all need to have some kind of hope to get up in the morning. To make it through difficult times, we need to have a vision that brings hope: that we will find a job, that we will recover from this disease, or maybe just that we will learn something trough our trials. If we don’t have a vision that brings hope, we die inside.

And what the Book of Revelation does it that it does not bring us hope only for what’s next in this life, the book of Revelation brings us hope to what’s beyond life. The “hope for what’s next in this life” is important because it also points to the hope we should have for what’s “beyond life”.

Now you may know that it is believed (or was believed for a long time) that the author of The Book of Revelation is the author of John’s Gospel – John the Apostle, maybe. There is no certainty about that, but we can find in both book a common thread. In John’s Gospel too, we are given a vision – the author of the Gospel calls them “signs”, signs that point to a reality that hidden, not directly accessible to our eyes.

If you remember, I told you that Mark’s Gospel is much more concise than John’s. True – but in away, John goes more directly to what’s essential. Mark is interested in showing Jesus as a teacher, a healer, a miracle worker, and the divinity of Christ is kept a secret for a long time. But, on the other way around, what John is interested in doing is to show us the divinity of Christ at every turn.

The Resurrection of Lazarus is the last “sign” Jesus gives to the people before he is arrested and put to death. If Jesus weeps and dies with and like all the people, he is also the one who brings ultimate consolation and new life. It’s interesting to notice that people wonder aloud if Jesus, who had “opened the eyes of the blind” (and we talked about that recently) “couldn’t have kept the man from dying” – because actually the miracle will be even greater than opening the eyes of preventing someone from dying. Jesus does not makes life better just by healing people. Jesus brings hope when no hope is to be found, when all hope is lost. John tells us that the man had been dead for 4 days, when 3 days was believed by the Jews to be this lapse of time when the deceased was still hanging around, but after that, gone for good. Jesus can bring back Lazarus when he is already gone for good. We know that Lazarus will die again, but then, it’s a sign so we believe that Jesus has complete mastery on life and death. It’s a sign to believe in Jesus’s divinity.

If we believe the signs we will “see the glory of God”, says John. Not just as spectator, but by participating in this glory. I told you before that Jesus’s glory was to have his friends with him – and we can certainly see that in our story today.

Now what can we do with that, concretely?

1. Do not lose your vision. We are Christians for hope. A lot of people notice these days that you don’t need to be Christian to be a good person and that’s true, but it’s also true that if we really believe the promises of the Bible, then we will probably become better persons too, because we will know what really matters, we won’t feel like we have to cling to things we believe will make us happy, we won’t feel we need to be in competition with one another to be acknowledged – all of that gives us a false sense of immortality, whereas Jesus promises us real life.

2. Again, do not lose your vision. We are Christians for hope. Again, a lot of people notice these days that you don’t need to be Christian to be a good person and that’s true. What is unique to believing in God – and more specifically to believing in Christ – is that we have this hope beyond all hope, a hope that does not shed us from sorrow and pain but helps us not to be stuck in it, knowing that sorrow and pain are not the ultimate reality and do not have the last word. This hope we are invited to cultivate it for our own sake of course, but also to cultivate it for the sake of others in a world so often plunged in despair. This is really what us Christians have to offer, our gift to the world: Ultimate hope, because ultimate hope is nowhere to be found – nowhere to be found – except in Christ.