christianity

We’ve Been Telling This Story Poorly

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Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

Why were these verses in Genesis chapters 2 and 3 selected for the Hebrew Scripture lectionary on the First Sunday in Lent?

Many people would answer this question from the perspective of church history and tradition: these verses describe “the Fall;” they describe how “Original Sin” became a part of the human condition. For those of you from traditions that do not emphasize “Original Sin,” it’s the Christian doctrine that describes the state of sinfulness “inherited,” literally and physically, by all humans from Adam and Eve because of their disobedience to God in this very story. This doctrine insists that all people are born with a tendency to sin; we can’t help it any more than we can help the fact that we have blue eyes or curly hair. The connection with Lent is that, in many traditions, Lent is a “penitential season,” a time for renewed focus on our sins and our sinful nature, and therefore our need for remission of those sins through Christ’s death and resurrection. (Don’t get me started on atonement theory.)

Instead, notice that neither the word “fall,” nor the word “sin,” original or otherwise, appears in these verses. What we are dealing with are many layers of interpretation by men (yes, I do mean men) over many centuries, from the Apostle Paul to Tertullian to Augustine to Ambrose and on through the ages to Luther and Calvin; men who recognized their own inability to conform their behavior to God’s will for the world (i.e., love, justice, mercy, fairness, peace, generosity), and needed an explanation for it. Or perhaps an excuse. Certainly, there are snippets of scripture implying that we just can’t help sinning. The psalmist laments, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). But as Cameron B. R. Howard writes, “The Bible is not the place to go if you want, like Joe Friday in the old TV show ‘Dragnet,’ ‘just the facts, ma’am.’ The Bible is not a collection of facts. It is a collection of stories, poems, songs, prayers, and remembrances.” The poetry of Psalm 51 describes the sorrow and regret of recognizing your faults and limits – which we all have. The etiological story of Adam and Eve helps to explain important questions about certain realities in life – why there is pain in childbirth, why the ground is hard to work, why snakes crawl upon the earth. Neither Psalm 51 nor Genesis 2 was intended to provide us with facts, either historical or biological.

As Marci Glass puts it, “We’ve been telling this story poorly for a long time.” Recent biblical scholarship has reframed the Genesis 2-3 creation story:

• The human has work and responsibility from the very beginning. God places the man in the garden “to till it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Eden wasn’t a work-free vacation.

• The traditional reading of the story assumes the first couple was perfect, without sin. The text doesn’t say that. The creation story in Genesis 1 describes the world as “good,” and an ancient Israelite wouldn’t have assumed that meant either perfect or sinless.

• The scene is usually portrayed with the woman alone as she’s tempted by the serpent, but a careful reading suggests that the man was present. The scene is of one piece: the serpent and the woman engage in conversation, she takes and eats the fruit, and she gives the fruit to “her husband, who was with her” all along! (Genesis 3:6). Why does this matter? Historically, Eve – and through her, all women – have been blamed for bringing sin into the world. This has been used as an excuse to keep women silent and prevent them from leadership in the Christian church (1 Timothy 2 :11-14). Dennis Olson writes, “The man failed to speak up, to speak out, and to join the woman in an alliance against the serpent’s attempt to appeal to the suspicions and yearnings that somehow were already within the humans’ heart” (emphasis added).

• The serpent is a very clever and talkative animal “that the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1). In other words, the serpent is one of God’s own creatures, not a satanic being from outside of creation. At any point, the humans could have told the serpent he was wasting his time, but as Olson noted (supra), there was something already in the human – before the bite of the apple – that was drawn to the alternative explanations the serpent offered them.

• If we decide to read this story as a “Fall,” we must see human curiosity and knowledge as a problem. Frank Yamada writes that the idiom, “good and evil,” which describes the forbidden fruit, means that the tree contains complete knowledge or knowledge from A to Z. Wouldn’t full knowledge be essential for human life? Isn’t curiosity not only desirable, but necessary for human thriving? Feminist biblical scholars have emphasized the theme of maturity in these verses. Even if acquired through disobedience, this exciting, if potentially dangerous, maturity is vital for human flourishing.

Following that line of thought – that what we see in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is not the introduction of sin into the world but a necessary if painful maturing to the realities of the human existence, Marci Glass compares the Adam and Eve story to the recent movie, “Barbie” (2023). After reading Glass’s insightful sermon, I wonder whether filmmaker Greta Gerwig had Adam and Eve in mind.

Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land, although in this tale, the women – the Barbies – run everything. Ken, on the other hand, is a helper, the secondary creation, an accessory to the main creation.

Things begin to sour for Barbie. Besides thoughts of mortality, her feet are no longer permanently curved for those tiny Barbie high heels. She faces a crisis similar to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Does she choose to stay ignorant of complex emotions and the reality of death by staying in Barbie Land? Or does she choose to step into the real world, with all its nuances, pain, beauty, and death? At first, she wants to return to the Eden of ignorance and bliss, but she recognizes that Reality is where she’ll figure out what’s happening to her.

Barbie encounters the person who invented her, played by Rhea Perlman. Glass writes that her creator “doesn’t control Barbie. She’s curious and even surprised to see the choices Barbie is making as she grows up and decides to become fully human, complex emotions and thoughts of death included.” She also warns Barbie of the consequences of the choice to become human: “Being a human can be uncomfortable. Humans only have one ending,” says the creator. Barbie weighs the consequences. Writes Glass, “She’s realized that she wants the complexities, and even the thoughts of death, that come with being fully alive. Because the real world is also where the magic happens. Where humans surprise us with kindness and beauty. Where we find community and love. And Barbie also wants creativity, which is a gift of the complexity of human existence. She wants to be ‘part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that is made.’”

We have indeed been telling the Adam and Eve story poorly for a long time. Perhaps it is less about the origins of sin than the reality of what it means to be human, including our tendencies to rebel, explore, question, and yearn for more than what we currently see and experience, some of which leads to pain and destruction, but some of which leads us to wonder, fulfillment, beauty, and truth. The serpent is simply one of God’s creatures; the yearnings and suspicions of the humans about God’s motivations are somehow already embedded within the human heart from the beginning – from the moment of creation. They simply needed the encouragement of the serpent to bring them out and convert them into action.

Humans continue to rebel against God, to resist the gracious boundaries that God has set for us, often to our own peril or to the peril of others. I’m not arguing there is no such thing as sin. However, I am arguing that this story doesn’t explain how sin entered the world. I don’t believe humans ever existed in a state of perfection. What this means is that Lent is not a path back to some mythic perfection. Rather, it is a reset, yet again. It is starting over, again and again, as we reflect on our relationship and our responsibilities to God’s boundaries, trusting, as Anne Lamott put it, that God loves all of us more than we can possibly imagine, exactly the way we are. And God loves us too much to let us stay like this.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Valerie Bridgeman, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7-7
Justin Michael Reed, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7-6
Cameron B.R. Howard, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7-3
Dennis Olson, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7
Frank M. Yamada, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7-2
Marci Glass, “Leaving the Garden,” September 10, 2023, ttps://marciglass.com/2023/09/10/leaving-the-garden/
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).

Christ for Today

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2 Peter 1:16-21, Matthew 17:1-9

Most people have an, “I was there” story. “My mom took me to Woodstock” or, “I was in Milan when Ilia Malinin was the first person in 50 years to land a backflip in figure skating at the Winter Olympics.” The Second Peter passage is an, “I was there” story with a purpose, but also a couple of thorny challenges.

Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday, and both Second Peter and the gospel lectionary passage, Matthew 17:1-9, describe the event called the Transfiguration. Matthew’s version is part of his larger story of the life and ministry of Jesus. The author of Second Peter refers to the Transfiguration in a letter written sometime later. In this letter, the author has written the letter to a Christian community because he’s concerned that they are being misled by teachings he considers to be “false.” The letter is an attempt to get the church back on track. To bolster his authority and convince the church that it should listen to him rather than to these other “false” teachers, he says, essentially, “Trust me. I was there. I was there at that amazing and holy moment when Jesus was transfigured on the mountainside, and we heard the voice of God claiming him as God’s beloved son.”

The first of the thorny problems is that this writer wasn’t there. This letter is written in the name of the apostle Peter but biblical scholars as far back as the third century have been nearly unanimous in agreeing it could not have been written by Peter. It wasn’t uncommon in that era to write under the name of someone famous to borrow the authority of that more famous person. That sounds nothing short of fraudulent to us today, but this borrowed identity authorship was an accepted practice.

The next challenge is that the problematic teaching concerns the Second Coming of Jesus. In the early years of the Christian church, people were certain that Jesus would return at any minute. When he did not, some people adjusted their clocks and started making predictions about when it would happen sometime in the future, but others said it just isn’t going to happen. There are still parts of the Christian church that focus heavily on Christ’s return at end of the world and God’s concomitant judgment. In my tradition, the Reformed Tradition, we continue to use the language of the traditional belief in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, for example, but emphasize that Christians are called to transform society and enjoy the goodness of the creation here and now, not wait or even hope for it to be destroyed.

So we have this writer who thinks the church is going to hell in a hand basket because people have quit believing in a doctrine that isn’t central to many of us, and he lies about what he saw in order to impress his readers. You might be wondering, about now, whether the main lesson from this text is: “Don’t preach from Second Peter.”

But there is a better lesson. The author sees that the church in his time is losing life and hope; its viability and purpose are being threatened. What does he do? He returns to the Jesus story – to the life and teachings of Jesus. He returns to the roots, to the foundations, and in particular, to a story that describes an eyewitness account of a dramatic and mysterious event that speaks to Jesus’ uniqueness and to God’s power and presence. He is saying that the gospel, the good news, the Jesus story, is the source of his authority. He challenges his readers to confront those teachings that do not give life and hope for his time. The way he does that is to call on the memory of the eyewitnesses of Christ, glorified, to bring people back to what was foundational. He returns to the Jesus story.

Just like the author of Second Peter, we need to figure out how the Jesus story speaks in our time.

There are plenty of folks who don’t think much of that story, who don’t believe that Scripture or the Christian Church speaks very eloquently to our time. Is it fair to say that many if not most folks outside the church believe Jesus is irrelevant to the very real human social problems that we face; that his message is about the soul, its guilt before God, and the afterlife, rather than our world and its current crises? Is it fair to say that the conventional view of the Bible is that its purpose is to explain how to go to heaven, to legitimize certain religious institutions, and to serve as a timeless rulebook for certain aspects of moral living? People are longing for ways to respond to the big problems – violence, injustice, poverty, hunger, disease, the degradation of the planet – and they look at the conventional Christian Church and do not see that it offers any life or hope in our time.

In his book, Christ of the Celts, John Philip Newell raises the question, “Who is Christ for us today?” That is the question that German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked in the midst of the terrible wrongs that were being done in Nazi Germany. The question, Bonhoeffer believed, was not “Who has Christ always been?” but “Who is Christ now?” We too live at a time of transition as well as a time of deep wrong, including the destruction of the very creation that sustains us. On the one hand, never before has humanity been more aware of the oneness of the earth: that we are an interdependent living organism. On the other hand, that awareness is being opposed by some of the world’s mightiest political, economic, and religious forces. So who is Christ for us now? What is it we are to bring from the great treasure trove of our Christian household to the most urgent problems facing not just humanity but all of God’s creation? Can we be a part of leading this new consciousness instead of opposing it or being unrelated to it?

Second Peter challenges us: What doctrines or teaching of the Church, in our time, do not offer life and hope? Which of the teachings of the Church feed discord, separation, exceptionalism, discrimination, and human supremacy? When we return to the Jesus story, which of his teachings show us that compassion, empathy, and our connection to God’s creation matter more than legalism or “correct” doctrine?

It is time to ask:
• What doctrines or teachings of the Church permit us to exploit matter and dominate creation? On the other hand, what teachings of Jesus show us that matter matters, and domination of others is never okay?
• What doctrines or teachings of the Church create the impression that vengeance and judgment are what fuel the universe? What teachings of Jesus reveal that God’s self-giving love is at the heart of everything?
• What doctrines and teachings of the Church encourage the idea that my well-being is separate and unrelated to your well-being? What teachings of Jesus point to a salvation that comes only with one another, not in separation from one another?


Twentieth Century theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “No particular religion matters, neither ours nor yours. But I want to tell you something has happened that matters, … A New Creation has occurred, a New Being has appeared; and we are all asked to participate in it. …We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard … that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.”

Here and there. Now and then. In our time. In the Jesus stories, and in ourselves, may our hurting world see glimpses of the glory, the hope, the love, and the healing that our world so desperately needs.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Herman Waetjen in New Proclamation for Sunday, March 2, 2014, https://members.newproclamation.com/commentary.php?d8m=3&d8d=2&d8y=2014&event_id=19&cycle=A&atom_id=19694.
Pheme Perkins, Interpretation: First and Second Peter, James and Jude (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1995).
J. Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).
Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change (Nashville TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007).
Paul Tillich, The New Being (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955).

Salt and Light

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Matthew 5:13-20

It’s appropriate that on Super Bowl Sunday, we hear Jesus giving the disciples a pep talk. In Matthew 5:1-2, the two verses preceding what we call the Sermon on the Mount, we’re told that Jesus has seen a crowd, but he goes up the mountainside to teach his disciples. These words of encouragement are meant for Jesus’ disciples – his disciples then, and his disciples now.

When we hear Jesus tell the disciples they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, what we often hear, instead, is “you should be…;” you should be the salt of the earth; you should be the light of the world. But that isn’t what he says. He says “You are…” You are, already. Rather than telling us we ought to be doing something we’re not, or setting an unreachable standard that we’ll only feel guilty about, Jesus says, “You are salt. You are light.”

These ordinary images don’t point to huge, dramatic acts. It only takes a pinch of salt to turn a bland dish into a tasty meal. Even a single candle destroys the darkness. With both salt and light, a little bit makes a big difference.

We’re living in difficult, challenging times. Perhaps these are not “the worst of times,” as Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, but it can certainly feel that way some days. In the United States, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community are under siege, American citizens who protest this have been shot and killed, the rule of law is under threat, it’s unclear that we’ll have free and fair elections in the fall, and many folks are struggling to pay their bills. Today the Washington Post lost a third of its staff, further jeopardizing trustworthy reporting following budget cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Department of Justice seems to have been relegated to the role of personal attorneys of the Administration. I could go on and on. So could you.

What difference can a pinch of salt and a small flashlight make in all this?

I recently finished a book by author Sharon McMahon, who is known as “America’s history teacher.” The book, The Small and the Mighty, is about ordinary American citizens who didn’t make it into our textbooks but who, through small acts of courage, determination, and commitment to the ideals we claim we value as Americans, brought about more justice, more equality, more freedom, more peace. As one review puts it, “Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers.”

McMahon’s book is a corrective to our assumption that things change for the better only when the rich and powerful act. Each of the people she describes simply does “the next needed thing.”

That is the salt and light Jesus has in mind. Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your God in heaven.” (Mathew 5:16) When we have compassion for people – our families, our co-workers, the person who mows your lawn, the person who cleans your office – their lives improve. When we serve, the world improves. When we do the next needed thing in our own corner of the world, we heal that corner. We gather in community so that we can get encouragement and support in figuring out what that next needed thing is. But we are salt. We are light. Where we are, loving our neighbors as Jesus loves, we change the world around us.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Come and See

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John 1:29-42

“Come and see,” Jesus says to Andrew and another disciple of John the Baptist. The two men hear John say that Jesus is the Lamb of God. They begin to follow him, probably watching him as he teaches, heals, and goes about his ministry. When Jesus notices them, he asks, “What are you looking for?” Instead of answering his question, they ask their own: “Teacher, where are you staying?” What they mean is, “Where can we find you?” Not only do they want to follow Jesus today; they want to be able to find him tomorrow. In response, Jesus invites them to “Come and see.” A better translation might be, “Keep on coming and you will see!” This is an invitation to the two disciples, but it’s also an invitation to the later readers and hearers of John’s Gospel. It’s an invitation to continue to read and interact with the story in order to see, in order to experience and understand and be touched by God through Jesus. It’s an invitation to us, and to anyone else who encounters Jesus, in the Gospel or in the church.

“Come and see.” The invitation is open and welcoming. At this point, Jesus doesn’t say, “Who do you think that I am?” He doesn’t say, “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?” He doesn’t say, “Are you really ready to accept me as your Lord and Savior?” He doesn’t even say, “Wait a minute; you didn’t answer my question. I asked what you’re looking for.” He certainly doesn’t try to sign them up to work on a committee (you’ll understand this reference if you’re Presbyterian). He says, “Come and see.” He doesn’t tell them that they should already know anything or that they should already be something before they become his disciples. He accepts them where they are and invites them to go from there.

In his book about the post-modern church, Jim Kitchens writes, “More and more of the people who are coming into our churches today either have never been to church before or haven’t been to worship since they were first able at age 13 or so to resist their parents’ demand that they attend.” When I began seminary, a close friend who’d never had anything to do with church asked me, “So, will you keep practicing law during the week since church is only on Sundays?” I guess she thought sermons are extemporaneous (they are not; at least not for me). She had no clue that being part of a church community means being visited when you’re ill, comforted when you’re grieving, and counseled when you’re confused, or that, all week long, congregations offer fellowship that builds community and service that extends God’s love beyond the doors of the church building. We can’t assume that people who find their way to our sanctuaries on Sunday morning know any of this. Just as Jesus didn’t tell the two men that they were asking the wrong question or try to bring them back to his question, a gentle, “Come and see” will encourage questions and provide ways of working out answers.

A woman I’ll call Sharon told me her “Come and see” story. She’d attended church and Sunday school as a child, but it had been years since she’d had anything to do with organized religion. She was in a choir at her community college, and the choir director kept inviting her to his church. He said, “The people are really nice; you’d really like them.” Sharon said to me, “I thought, ‘Whoop-dee-do.’ Lots of people are really nice. People at the Rotary, in the P.T.A.; you don’t have to go to church to find really nice people.”

Sharon’s college choir was scheduled to give a joint concert with another campus choral group, and one week before the concert, the other group flaked out. It looked as though the concert would have to be cancelled, but the choir director, the one from the church with really nice people, invited the choir from his church to fill in for the missing choral group. Sharon said they learned the music quickly and performed cheerfully. And they were good. And they were nice.

Sharon decided to check out the church but instead of attending worship she took part in the church’s ministry of providing meals to homeless people. Sharon said, “These were people who were walking the walk.” She got to know some of these people better, working alongside them. She remembers that one evening as she was putting sandwiches on trays, a passage from Matthew’s Gospel came to her – the one that says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). It hit her – that was what she was doing. She was serving Christ as she was serving the homeless people.

Then the choir director invited the college choir to sing at his church’s Good Friday service. Sharon sang with the choir and then stayed for the service. She’d never been to a Good Friday service. She was surprised at how moving it was; somehow, in the message of the cross, God’s love and faithfulness became real to her in a new way. Two days later, of course, was Easter. It just seemed natural to go to worship on Easter after Good Friday. And the rest, Sharon said, is history. She started attending worship regularly. It made it easier that she already knew people through the choir and through the homeless ministry. She became more and more active and pretty soon it was “her” church.

Is a story like Sharon’s still possible in 2026? We live not just in a post-modern era, but in a post-Christian era. For many good reasons, people mistrust religious institutions and are suspect of Scripture. As Mark Glanville writes, “terms such as evangelical and biblical have been co-opted by racist and nationalistic expressions of Christianity.” People wonder whether organized religion makes any rational sense and whether any Christian church could reflect their own values of justice and compassion. At the same time, people long for community. They long for acceptance, and hope – they long for communities that nourish hope.

If we in the church say, “Come and see,” what will we show people? Will their curiosity be encouraged? Will their doubts be met with humility and grace? Will they see the tenderness, the acceptance, the passion for justice and the love of Christ?

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Herman C. Waetjen, “The Second Sunday After Epiphany/The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time,” in New Proclamation, Year A (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007).
Jim Kitchens, The Postmodern Parish (Herndon, VA:2003).
Mark Glanville, Preaching in a New Key: Crafting Expository Sermons in Post-Christian Communities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2025).

Baptism of the Lord

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Matthew 3:13-17

Many commentators argue that this passage about Jesus’ baptism in Matthew is exactly that: it’s about Jesus’ baptism, not baptism in general, not our baptism. The point of the passage, they say, is Jesus’ identity, and God’s affirmation of that identity. “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

John the Baptizer looks and sounds like an Old Testament prophet. He does what all the Old Testament prophets did: he reminds the people of God who God is and what God expects of them. The reason he’s doing this out in the wilderness is because his message is countercultural; it’s basically a protest against the religious establishment. Ritual cleansing wasn’t anything new, but it always happened in Jerusalem, in holy baths near the Temple. By baptizing ordinary folks out in the wilderness, John is saying that traveling to a fancy building in the big city isn’t what makes people holy. The message accompanying his baptism is, “Repent!” which isn’t as scary as it sounds. It simply meant “rethink everything,” or “turn completely around in your thinking and your values.” As protest so often is, John’s message was both a warning and a ray of hope. He confronted the powerful with their hypocrisy at the same time that he said to ordinary folks, “Look, things don’t have to be this way. God doesn’t want them to be this way for you, the 99%.”

Jesus shows up at the river and that all by itself tells us a couple of things. Jesus identifies with John’s countercultural protest, and he identifies with these ordinary folks. John objects that Jesus is the one who should be baptizing him, and the early church struggled with the questions John raises: Why would Jesus need a baptism for forgiveness of sin? Why would he submit to baptism by a merely human prophet and teacher? Matthew links Jesus’ baptism to the fulfillment of righteousness (Matthew 3:15). In the Old Testament, “righteousness” isn’t limited to moral uprightness; it’s relational. Abraham was considered righteous not because he was morally flawless, but because he trusted God (Genesis 15:6). John’s baptism with its call to repentance is a step toward restoring a person’s relationship with God; that is, a step towards becoming “righteous” again. Jesus is “fulfilling all righteousness” by coming to be baptized in solidarity with the folks God sent him to heal, to feed, to serve, to save. He gets right into that muddy water along with everybody else.

We don’t know what it means that “the heavens were opened to him” except that it’s far from ordinary. Something like a dove – not like a lion or an eagle or a hawk or a viper – a dove, representing God’s Spirit, lands on him, and a heavenly voice, presumably God’s, announces, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

In each of the four gospels, the story of Jesus’ baptism includes the giving of the Spirit, and in three of them there is this voice from heaven pronouncing that Jesus is God’s beloved Son, a child with whom God is most pleased. Whatever else Jesus’ baptism may mean, it’s certainly the place where he learns who he is and whose he is. At his baptism, Jesus is given the intertwined gifts of identity and affirmation.

Which is why even though this passage is about Jesus’ baptism, it is also about our baptism. Today, the world tries to identify us by political party, race or ethnicity, gender identity, immigration status, or even by the products we buy and the brand labels we wear on our clothing. But those who follow Jesus are baptized into him, into his life. We get into the muddy river with him, and this means that somehow, some way we share his identity, or maybe a better way to put it is that when we are in Christ, we discover who we really are. We may not see a descending dove, but what’s declared in baptism is our true identity: You are my child. You are beloved, and well-pleasing to God. You are worthy. That is our primary identity.

Further, Jesus is baptized before he begins his public ministry. This gift of identity precedes mission, and this is true for us as well. It’s when we know who we are, how worthy we are, whose we are, that we are able to make good choices, to resist what we know isn’t really good for us, or what isn’t good for the world God has given us.

This message has never been more timely. We live in a culture that promises acceptance only if we are (fill in the blank here) skinny enough, smart enough, strong enough, successful enough, rich enough, popular enough, beautiful enough, young enough, and so on. But the message of baptism is that God has declared that we are enough, that God accepts us just as we are, and that God desires to do wonderful things for us and through us.

It isn’t that we’re worthy because we’ve been baptized. One of the reasons Presbyterians practice infant baptism is that it expresses that before we can do anything, God claims us. We don’t have to believe something, recite any creeds, accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior – we don’t have to do anything at all to be declared worthy of God’s love. We’re worthy because we belong to God. The unbaptized also belong to and are loved by God, but they haven’t had a public opportunity to announce and celebrate that fact, or to be reminded of its implications by a community. We all need a community that knows that we are worthy for no other reason than that we belong to God. It’s so easy for us to forget or doubt these claims when we’re hounded by messages of “not enough.”

Remember your baptism. It tells you who you are.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

The Word Became Flesh

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John 1:1-18

This time last year I blogged about the traditional Epiphany passage in Matthew’s gospel (https://solve-by-walking.com/2024/12/30/which-story/). This year I’m drawn to Sunday’s lectionary passage from John’s gospel, commonly referred to as the Prologue to John’s Gospel. What I’m writing here is a work in progress for me because I’m still developing my thinking around this, but what fascinates me is, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…”

John’s gospel begins with, “In the beginning…,” reminding us of verse 1 of Genesis Chapter 1, the first creation story and the very first words in Scripture. John intends for us to make this connection but then changes it up: “In the beginning was the Word,” or in the Greek, the Logos. The Logos is God’s creating and speaking power, always with God, through which God created everything. Remember in Genesis where God speaks, and it is so? That’s the Logos, the Word of God. When John tells us that this Word of God became flesh and lived among us, he is describing the Incarnation, the belief that the Word of God existed with God from the beginning and became a human being, Jesus Christ, who lived among us, giving us the best picture of who God is and what humankind can be.

I am drawn to this text because of some reading I’ve been doing (as well as reading I continue to do and plan to do; thus the work in progress) about the Christian faith and anthropocentrism or “human supremacy.” On the recommendation of a dear friend, I read Daniel Quinn’s 1992 book, Ishmael, a philosophical novel exploring our cultural biases that Earth was created for humanity, and that humanity is the pinnacle of evolution. Once you’ve noticed this bias, it doesn’t take much imagination to see the catastrophic consequences for humankind, other species, and the environment that follow. Quinn posits that at one time, humans were just one of the many creatures inhabiting Earth, living as part of Creation, but we’ve stepped outside of the natural order of things. We’ve given ourselves the power to decide what is right and wrong for all life, and what is “right” generally means what we human beings want or believe we need, without regard for other species or the sustainability of the planet. In a nutshell, we behave as though the Earth belongs to us, and this has led to the problems we face such as global warming, mass species extinctions, food shortages, and overpopulation.

Quinn is not alone in this concern. Among other writers, Christian author Thomas Berry discusses this issue in his book, The Christian Future and the Fate of the Earth (2009). Ecologist Derrick Jensen tackles this concern head on in his book, The Myth of Human Supremacy (2016).

What does this have to do with John’s prologue? Verse 5 states, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.” Cody J. Sanders challenges us to take this verse seriously as the inbreaking of God’s incarnate presence upon the cosmos, not in human flesh but in the cosmic order (logos) of creation. He writes, “This may very well open our perspective – as the whole prologue of the Gospel seems intent on doing – to the indwelling of God in the other-than-human realm of the cosmic order.” He notes that Margaret Daly-Denton reminds us that the Word becomes flesh, not man. Daly-Denton writes, “’The word became flesh,’ with all flesh’s implications of interconnectedness within the whole biotic community of life on Earth. … ‘Flesh’ is a far broader reality than ‘humanity.’” In a similar vein, Mary Coloe writes, “[Flesh] is all inclusive, male and female, human and nonhuman, living and nonliving.” Sanders continues, “While our Christmas imagination is shaped most profoundly by the coming of God with us (humanity), we can have our too-small reading of the Gospel expanded again by John’s insistence upon the logic of God that suffuses the cosmos by becoming flesh, a category of being shared by all biotic life. The Good News is incarnate for all creation, perceived in ways that we cannot imagine with our limited space-time perspective.”

It’s heavy stuff, right? But what we have been doing – treating Creation as though it belongs to humanity as opposed to treating humanity as though it is part of Creation – isn’t working. In Genesis 1:28, God tells the as-yet-unnamed first human beings, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” One could argue that a literal reading of this verse supports a conclusion that humankind is supposed to be in charge of all life on the planet. The simple fact that this hasn’t worked well for humanity or any other part of Creation weighs against such a literal reading; could anyone believe that God wants environmental degradation or catastrophe?

So what if, instead, we take Psalm 24:1 literally?
“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
the world, and those who live in it.”

And what if the Word became flesh, “a far broader reality than humanity”?

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (1992)
Thomas Berry, The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth (New York: Orbis Books, 2009)
Derrick Jensen, The Myth of Human Supremacy (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2016)
Cody J. Sanders,
https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-christmas/commentary-on-john-11-9-10-18-11

How Do You Recognize the Messiah?

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Matthew 11:2-11

Early one Friday morning a while back, a street musician took a spot by a trashcan in the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station in Washington, D.C. He was nondescript – youngish, jeans, baseball cap. He took out his violin and threw a few dollars in the case so people would get the point. For the next 43 minutes he played six classical pieces while over a thousand people passed by on their way to work. Only seven people stopped. Twenty-seven people dropped change in the violin case, mostly on the run. So that morning, if you count the twenty-dollar bill dropped in by the one person that recognized him, Joshua Bell, one of the finest classical musicians in the world, made $59 for a 43-minute concert on his three-and-a-half million-dollar Stradivarius.

Why didn’t people recognize Bell? They would have recognized him at Carnegie Hall or Kennedy Center. They would have recognized him if they’d paid $200 for a ticket. But playing for free in a Metro Station isn’t what a world-famous violinist does. It wasn’t what they were expecting.

This Matthew passage raises the question: How do you recognize the one sent from God to save God’s people and God’s world? How do you recognize the Messiah? Once again, we meet John the Baptist. In last week’s lectionary passage when Jesus came forward to be baptized, John seemed to recognize him as the one for whom they had all been waiting. But now John is in prison where he’s had some time to think about it, and he’s not sure Jesus fits the mold. He likely wonders why that Roman puppet and tyrant Herod is still on his throne. He likely wonders why he, John, is still in prison.

This Sunday is just eleven days until Christmas, and this passage tells us not of angels or shepherds or mangers but of John the Baptist and his doubts and disappointment. “You aren’t who I was expecting. You don’t look like a Messiah.” But the thing is, if John could ask such things, we can, too. “If you are the one who is to come, why is my friend dying of cancer? Why does every generation seem to need to go to war? Why are so many kids hungry, neglected, abused? Why are there still people all over the world, like John the Baptist, unjustly held in prisons?” Many of us have friends who have asked, “How can you believe in a just, merciful, all-powerful God when the world is such a mess? If God exists, and if Jesus is as important as you claim, shouldn’t things be better by now? Why are there still diseases, wars, earthquakes, greed?” Wouldn’t the Messiah clean up this mess?

Many of us have asked those questions ourselves. We still wait for the fulfillment of the Christmas promise: peace on earth and goodwill among all. That very promise is the reason Christmas can be so difficult. The headlines and sometimes our own lives make it clear that peace and goodwill seem as scarce today as they were a couple of millennia ago.

Quoting Isaiah 35 and 61, Jesus tells John’s disciples, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard . . . that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is seen a New Creation.” Jesus says more is going on than John has noticed. Yes, John is still in prison. But Jesus is saying, “Listen. Look. God is at work here, maybe not with the ‘unquenchable fire’ that you were expecting (Matthew 3:12), but God is at work just the same,” here and there in the world, and now and then in ourselves. Jesus is both the fulfillment of the people’s hopes and something altogether different. Something no one was expecting.

This means a couple of things. First, Jesus hasn’t fixed everything. We don’t have any better answer for our non-Christian friends than, “You’re right. The world is still a mess. We aren’t claiming that everything is ‘all better’ since the advent of Jesus as God with us, only that now we have a clearer idea of how to spot that new creation, a concrete hope for its fulfillment, and a fervent prayer for the present time: ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’”

But it also means something bigger. When Jesus tells John, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than [John]” (Matthew 11:11), he’s talking about us. The only example of power Jesus will give us – serving, feeding, healing, giving himself away – is the same power that we have. It is because of that power that here and there in the world, and now and then in ourselves is seen a new creation. I know people who don’t want to have anything to do with a God who doesn’t solve all the world’s problems in a blinding flash of light or with fiery judgment. But what we celebrate this season, the coming of God into our world, this world, the real, human world is more along the lines of what Thich Nhat Hanh has said: “The miracle is not to walk on water but on the earth.”

Still, during this season of festive excess, even that miracle can seem unattainable, unavailable, or simply not enough, to those who have experienced loss, trauma, ill health, economic setback, or fear what the future might hold. Some congregations offer a “Blue Christmas” or “Longest Night” service, a celebration of Christ’s incarnation and birth a few days ahead of December 25 and designed particularly for those who are dealing with loss, disappointment, grief, or depression. This reading, revealing that even intrepid John the Baptist had doubts and fears, might be an appropriate text for such a service. Doubt and grief are not unfaithful. Those of us who are feeling festive can stand in solidarity with those who long, who wait, who hope for something better; to assure them through our presence that God is with them, even if not in the way they might wish. It’s an opportunity to sing what David Lose describes as “that most honest of Advent hymns,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

You can see a short YouTube video of Bell’s subway performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw. 
Paul Tillich, The New Being (New York: Charles Scribner, 1955); http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=375&C=15. 
Mary Hinkle Shore, https://members.newproclamation.com/commentary.php?d8m=12&d8d=15&d8y=2013&atom_id=19021.  

Walter Brueggeman, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: Year A (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).


What Does “Repent!” Really Mean?

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Matthew 3:1-12

It’s unlikely that the folks who show up for church on the first Sunday in December are hoping to be compared to a brood of vipers and warned of “the wrath to come.” But every Second Sunday in Advent, we meet John the Baptist out in the wilderness. What does John have to tell us this year?

John preaches repentance. “Repent” is a word with a lot of baggage. I grew up with cartoon images of scruffy, bearded, street preachers carrying signs saying “Repent!” and maybe, “The end is near!” alluding to God’s eternal judgment and what some folks call “turn or burn” theology. These cartoons made repentance seem like a joke about religious extremism or even delusion. Some hear the word “repent” and think it means you’re supposed to say you’re really, really sorry and you will never do it (whatever it is) again. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a pretty small part of repentance. I suspect most of us hear the word “repent,” and think, “Okay, now I’m supposed to feel bad about myself.” But here’s the thing: What “repent” really means is turn around. Go in a different direction. David Lose writes, “Repentance, in short, is realizing that God is pointing you one way, that you’ve been traveling another way, and changing course.” Brian McLaren writes “repent means, ’rethink everything,’ or ‘question your assumptions,’ or ‘have a deep turnaround in your thinking and values.’” Rather than a threat, what John is getting at is that what we’re doing isn’t working. It isn’t working, and we deserve something better. Everybody deserves something better. The whole world, the whole creation deserves something better. In order to experience that “something better,” we need to repent; we need to change course.

John doesn’t just say, “Repent!” He says, “Repent! God’s kingdom has come near!” His call to change course is connected to a promise. Something better for everybody is a real possibility. Matthew calls that something the “kingdom of heaven.” Mark and Luke call it the “kingdom of God;” they’re the same thing. What John is announcing is life on earth lived as though God is the ruler of our hearts and minds, a new life that stands in stark contrast to the kingdoms of Caesar and Herod, known for domination, injustice, exploitation, and oppression. This new kingdom, this new life is about God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. It’s about God’s love and compassion, a better kingdom for everyone.

A chapter later, Jesus speaks these same words at the beginning of his own ministry. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). In the next chapter, he gives us a glimpse of what God’s kingdom looks like in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the poor. The meek shall inherit the earth. Love your enemies (Matthew 5-7). So, if we want to be part of this other kingdom, this new life, it means going in that direction, living in that direction. God is pointing us one way, and we’ve been traveling another way. When John says, “Repent,” he means “Move in the direction of God’s love, for ourselves, for others, for our neighbors, for the world.” This change in direction isn’t about punishment; it’s about love because God is love, and you are God’s beloveds. You deserve something better than injustice, oppression, revenge, greed, and the suffering they produce. The whole world deserves something better.

But – “the wrath to come,” and “unquenchable fire”? “You brood of vipers”? Yikes! John isn’t trying to make friends here. Matthew’s John, like any prophet worth his salt, speaks truth to power. Power appears out in the wilderness in the form of the Pharisees and Sadducees who come to be baptized along with everyone else. John warns them that a baptism of repentance really means repentance. It isn’t enough to get dunked in the river. It’s time to walk the walk without relying on some special status as descendants of Abraham to give them a pass.

John then warns that the one who is coming – Jesus – will have “[h]is winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12). This punitive and harsh separation isn’t how we experience Jesus in Matthew or elsewhere. What we see instead is inclusion, healing, acceptance, love, but also an unequivocal condemnation of hatred, hypocrisy, and greed. Could it be that John was expecting a different kind of messiah, a scarier messiah? This might explain his confused question from prison several chapters later: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:2-3)

So, what do we need to repent at the close of 2025? So many things are not working for humanity right now. We still try to solve problems with war and violence. Like that ever worked. We still haven’t figured out how to share the earth’s bounty so that everyone can thrive. We still hoard power, wealth, resources, even knowledge. We still believe the next technology will solve all our problems instead of creating more. We’re still terminally tribal, forgetting that diversity is so very obviously God’s plan. We still haven’t figured out that we’re part of creation, part of the natural world, and that our very survival depends on our understanding that and living that truth. We are still driven more by fear than by love.

There’s a lot to repent, right? And repentance isn’t easy. Changing course is never easy. Rob Bell writes starkly and poetically about repentance:
“It will require a death,
a humbling,
a leaving behind of the old mind,
and at the same time it will require an opening up,
loosening our hold,
and letting go,
so that we can receive,
expand,
find,
hear,
see,
and enjoy.”

It will require a death. A humbling. Ouch. Although I suspect most of us know this death, this humbling. Maybe you felt in when you finally gave up a grudge, or a resentment, or an addiction. When you figured out that what you had been doing was creating a hellish reality for yourself and others. When you figured out that things didn’t have to be the way they always have been, and on the other side of letting go of the way things were was freedom, and even joy. As Frederick Buechner writes, “To repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying ‘I’m sorry,’ than to the future and saying, ‘Wow!’”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road By Walking (New York: Jericho Books, 2014).
Catherine Sider Hamilton, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent/commentary-on-matthew-31-12-7
Shannon Kershner, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven Is Near!” December 4, 2016, https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/120416.html
David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2016/11/advent-2-a-reclaiming-repentance/
Rob Bell, Love Wins (New York: HarperOne, 2011)
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC’s (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1973; revised and expanded 1993)

Why I Go to Church

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A couple of Sundays ago, I drove back to the Bay Area from a family visit in Orange County, which meant I missed church. I realized as I was driving that I really missed church. It felt like a loss not to attend worship. It got me thinking about why; why I’m committed to showing up at church every Sunday, while most people in this part of the United States rarely if ever attend any kind of religious service. Do they have any idea why some of us do?

Here’s what I came up with: In church, I’m surrounded by a community of people who trust that God loves every one of us, who loves the entire creation, in fact. I’m surrounded by a community that yearns for our lives and our world to reflect that love. That, all by itself, is hopeful and powerful. I’m not alone; I need community to support me in my commitment to try to love God and love my neighbors as myself. I also need community, full stop.

In worship, I experience God’s presence in and through the gathered community. God is made real for me as we sing together, pray together, and seek inspiration both to live as God’s beloveds and to treat others as God’s beloveds. There’s plenty in our culture that denies that all of us are precious, regardless of circumstance or station. There’s plenty that would tell us we just need to look out for ourselves. Once a week, sitting in a pew, I’m reminded that there’s another way, a better way, a Godly way.

Many people say they experience God in nature, and I do, as well. I feel close to God in Muir Woods, on a Pacific Coast beach, and in the High Sierras. But nature doesn’t challenge me to be transformed into a more loving, just human being. Nature doesn’t collect socks, mittens, and gloves to hang on a Christmas tree for neighbors in need, or prepare a free Thanksgiving dinner for over 300 lonely or unhoused neighbors. Nature doesn’t march in the Pride Parade in support of our LGBTQ+ siblings or provide apartments for refugees. Nature doesn’t confront me, as I was yesterday morning, with the observation that “’Nice’ people make the best Nazis,” Naomi Shulman’s way of describing how people who avoid confronting uncomfortable truths can contribute to societal injustices. Nature doesn’t encourage me to overcome cynicism by assuring me that the bad news is never the end.

In worship, I’m part of a tradition that as long ago as the 8th century B.C.E. longed for a world in which humankind “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” in which “Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4). I’m reminded that the human being whom my tradition believes most represents godliness said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Certainly, the Bible is ancient and foreign, and can be confusing and even maddening, and always – yes, always – requires interpretation. But when that interpretation is done with love and care in community, there’s a better chance that God is speaking through it. God speaks through the Bible not only to ancient worlds, but to our world today. As one writer put it, the Bible shows “how nations fall when leaders pursue power without righteousness. It shows how societies unravel when truth is discarded, when the weak are exploited, or when leaders trust in chariots rather than principles. It records what happens when peace is sought without justice. At the same time, it illuminates how communities are renewed through repentance, how justice restores trust, and how humility opens the door to genuine reconciliation. These are not merely religious lessons; they are political and social truths validated repeatedly across human history.” (Jeff Fountain, “All the Light You Can See,” https://weeklyword.eu/en/all-the-light-you-see/)

I also know people who don’t attend church because they think of themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Maybe they’ve been injured by religion; someone may have told them that they were bad, sinful, unacceptable to God, “damned.” A religious leader may have been manipulative or even a predator. Sadly, religious institutions are not free from abusers, charlatans, jerks, or people with good intentions who just screw up. But neither is any other institution. All we can do, in any institution, is hold people accountable for their misdeeds and try to prevent further abuse.

Others who are spiritual but not religious may fear that someone will insist that they believe things – or pretend they believe things – that they find unbelievable. I can’t speak for other faiths, but I’m grateful that my tradition, the Reformed tradition, is committed to “the church Reformed, always being reformed” (in Latin, “Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda”). The UCC (United Church of Christ), one of our cousins in the Reformed tradition, has a saying: “God is still speaking.” This is indeed my experience, and in my lifetime, our still-speaking God has revealed to the church that it isn’t only straight, white, males who can lead congregations; that commitment to community and God’s love is more important than whether you can recite the Apostles’ Creed without crossing your fingers; that how we love our neighbors here and now is more important than what we speculate will happen to us after we die. In my experience, church is the place where you figure out what you believe (or don’t believe), not the place you must believe certain things in order to belong. Being spiritual but not religious does offer the freedom of believing whatever you want, but it doesn’t offer community or teach time-tested spiritual practices. Tradition isn’t always a bad thing.

I know people who don’t attend worship because they fear they’ll encounter judgmental people, bad music, and on top of that, they’ll have to dress up. Find a community with music you like; it’s out there somewhere. And while I’m certain there are congregations with pious, judgmental people, I haven’t encountered any in my adult life. In fact, church people are the most gracious, humble, and welcoming people I know. Certainly, you’ll find more people wearing jeans in some churches than in others, but I don’ know any church in 2025 that has a dress code.

And so, every Sunday, I sit among my fellow worshipers. We’re different ages, genders, and ethnicities; we have different educations and incomes; we’ve led different lives. We become one body through the music, sermon, liturgy, prayers, sacraments, and fellowship. We “pass the peace.” We acknowledge our limitations together. We ask for healing and the courage to forgive. We pray for the ability to love even those who seem unlovable. We celebrate milestones. This morning, a young family sat in the pew in front of me. Their toddler daughter’s eyes grew as big as saucers when the choir began singing the choral introit (a song at the opening of worship) from the balcony. She was transfixed by the ethereal music, music that called all of us to take a deep breath and be present to the holy in us and among us. I hope she will remember that feeling. I hope she will remember being part of a motley crew of people who strive imperfectly but courageously to love the world.

Advent Waiting

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Matthew 24:36-44

This Sunday’s passage from Matthew is another text that seems out of place for the season. The culture around us is fresh from Thanksgiving and Black Friday and rushing headlong into Christmas, decking the halls and making merry. But instead of tidings of comfort and joy, the first gospel reading for Advent offers us a flood, a thief in the night, and warnings to be prepared. This year, it doesn’t seem so much as though these messages are coming from out in left field, and therefore, they’re more comforting.

The passage comes at the end of a long apocalyptic prediction by Jesus. Apocalyptic literature is crisis literature. It’s meant to bring comfort to distressed communities and it encourages faithfulness and courage during the struggle. The promise of God’s deliverance is normally linked to instructions to be watchful. Be alert. Pay attention. These apocalyptic passages always show up early in Advent. Of course, there is always something we can do, some action we can take, however small, to participate in God’s coming reign, but these passages remind us that there are some things we simply can’t make happen. Sometimes we have to wait. We may have to wait for a diagnosis, for the pain to stop, for a loved one to heal, or for a loved one to die. We may have to wait to find out whether we got the job, or whether we’ll lose the job. We may have to wait to figure out whether we’ve made the right decision. We may have to wait for justice, or to be loved. There really are some things we can do nothing about. That’s hard news for many of us who like to think we’re in control of our lives. We want to be proactive – which is good and right and faithful. But sometimes we must wait.

Advent re-tells the story of people who, like us, were waiting for the promises of God to be fulfilled and striving to live faithfully as they waited. Down through the ages, Christians have waited for the “Second Coming” of Christ, and that’s still language that many people use today. Presbyterians give a nod to this in our communion liturgy when we recite, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Speaking for myself, I’m not waiting for a cataclysmic end time; I believe, instead, that the reign of God is realized among us; as Frederick Buechner wrote, “Insofar as here and there, and now and then, God’s kingly will is being done in various odd ways among us even at this moment, the kingdom has come already. Insofar as all the odd ways we do [God’s] will at this moment are at best half-baked and halfhearted, the kingdom is still a long way off – a hell of a long way off, to be more precise and theological.” So, when I proclaim, “Christ will come again,” I don’t mean at the end of the world as we know it but in the next instant, or in our next encounter, in our next opportunity to meet Christ in others and in other situations.

Either way, Christ’s work isn’t complete, is it? God’s promises are not all fulfilled. The world is not beating its swords into plowshares or its spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4). As much as we wish we could, or pretend that we can, we can’t make God’s reign come on our own. And so we wait. Advent offers us the reminder that waiting can be a spiritual practice, a holy practice, because Advent not only reminds us that there will always be times we have to wait; it asks us how we are waiting.

The lectionary cuts off the reading of Matthew 24 at verse 44 but the final half-dozen verses of the chapter provide an analogy about household servants. In verse 45 Jesus mentions that a commendable servant would be the one who gives the other servants their food at the proper time. In other words, the good servant is commended for making dinner! It doesn’t say he amassed property and goods so that he’d be secure, even if others were suffering. It doesn’t say he hunkered down into an armed compound or bunker. It says simply that what made him a good servant was that he made dinner for others and served it at the usual time. In other words, he carried out the ordinary service of his ordinary life. Might it be that being faithful servants in our everyday routines demonstrates holy watchfulness for Christ’s return? Is being an honest office manager, a careful school bus driver, an ethical attorney, a thoughtful homemaker really a sign that we are aware that God will indeed fulfill God’s promises? Yes, it is.

This kind of waiting – being faithful in our everyday routines, paying attention and listening, watching for God’s active presence here and now – is a spiritual practice, a holy waiting, because it means we recognize our own limitations and rely on God. The Serenity Prayer is a terrific Advent prayer: “God, grant us serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.” There are things we cannot change or fix. For those things, we must wait; we wait for God. And here’s the thing: spiritual transformation doesn’t take place when we get what we want, when we want it. Spiritual transformation happens in the waiting room. Waiting is soul work.

As the Serenity Prayer reminds us, there are things we can change, and our faith asks us to join with God in changing those things. And so we wait for the kingdom by working for the values of the kingdom; being alert and paying attention to the voices on the margins, the voices we might not even want to hear. Joining in the work God is already doing in the world; working for God’s kingdom of justice and peace and kindness and generosity with a fierce hope that never dies.

And God does come. God comes with comfort through the kindness of a friend when we lose someone we love. God comes with healing through gentle touch. God comes with reassurance when we’re afraid. God comes with energizing spirit when we’re discouraged and life-giving love when we’re depressed. Sometimes God surprises us in coincidences that shift our thinking. Other times, God comes quietly – in the birth of the child of Bethlehem long ago and in the birth of love today, now, in the world, in your life and mine. The message of Advent is that God indeed comes into the world – to lonely exiles centuries ago, and to you and me.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Henri J. M. Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting,” an article condensed from a tape available from Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, http://bgbc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/A-Spirituality-of-Waiting-by-Henri-Houwen.pdf.
David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2014/11/matthew-24-32-51/.
Scott Hoezee, “Advent 1A,” November 21, 2016, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/advent-1a/?type=the_lectionary_gospel.
Pete Wilson, “The Spiritual Benefits of Waiting,” November 19, 2015, http://www.faithgateway.com/spiritual-benefits-waiting/#.WDcMhqIrJsM
John M. Buchanan, “The Work of Waiting,” November 29, 2009, http://fourthchurch.org/sermons/2009/112909.html.