By Brian Burkholder, EMU Campus Pastor

Brian Martin Burkholder, EMU Campus Pastor

Scripture: Luke 2:1-19

Most of us trudge through the ordinary of our lives. Although we complain about it from time to time, we like routine, we find comfort in predictability, we value being oriented to our surroundings. There’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, one could say it’s normal (as normal as normal can be).

In Luke 2:1-19, the shepherds were simply going about their lives. Ordinary for them was living in the fields keeping watch over their flock. This is what they did day and night, night and day. There was no doubt a level of comfort in it for them – amidst the drudgery. But imagine the shock factor when an angel of the Lord broke through this ordinary existence and stood among them! The text says the Shepherds were terrified and I believe it.

What is it that breaks through our ordinary?

Thankfully the angel offered the shepherds an explanation of the coming of a Savior, the Messiah Christ, the Lord (this might have shocked them as well) – and, after also hearing from a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, their curiosity got the best of them. Ordinary was a thing of the past – at least for now.

I fear sometimes that I’ve become so complacent in living the ordinary that I’m blind to that which has potential to break in. My focus is more on the tasks at hand than on expectantly watching and listening – expecting a message from the Divine to shine forth. It’s true that the shepherds were not expecting a Divine appointment on that night. That said, when the angel appeared, the shepherds didn’t miss or dismiss it. They took notice and took action!

Perhaps God’s messages to us are not so bold? Or could it be that we’re just that preoccupied with the ordinary of life to take notice?

I want to live life expecting to hear from God. I want to be on watch for angels of the Lord. I want to receive Divine messages from the music of heavenly hosts. Perhaps it’s as simple as orienting ourselves to expect such things? Such is the advent journey.

Carmen Schrock-Hurst, Co-Pastor Immanuel Mennonite Church

By Carmen Schrock-Hurst
Instructor of Spiritual Formation at EMU
Co-pastor Immanuel Mennonite Church

Scripture: Luke 1:39-56

Twenty years ago when I unpacked the family heirloom nativity set my three year old daughter Grace begged to be allowed to play with the baby Jesus. Lacking parental wisdom at the moment I said she could if she was careful. Naturally it didn’t take her very long to lose baby Jesus.

The two of us spent a lot of time that week turning the house upside down looking for Jesus. And at church on the second Sunday of Advent when the children were asked what they had done in their house to get ready for Christmas Grace eagerly announced, “Well, we’ve already lost baby Jesus.”

Over the next weeks Grace and I frequently had a conversation about where the little Jesus might be and I would assure her if we kept looking we would eventually find him. And she would say through her tears, “but when mommy, when will we find Jesus?”

Suddenly one morning it dawned on me, that perhaps that question is really the cry of our Advent hearts. “When will we find Jesus?” And maybe, earnest searching is what Advent is really supposed to be about. Maybe this is the time of year we are called to get down on our hands and knees and shine flashlights into the remote, dusty, cob-webbed corners of our lives searching for our promised Savior.

Indeed Jesus is everywhere, we just have to look. Indeed our gospel reading commands us to watch and to be alert, to look for signs of God and our Isaiah reading from the first week of Advent teaches us that when the awesome God does act it is often in unexpected ways. And so it was that the little manger scene Jesus was found 20 years ago, just in time for Christmas, under the corner cupboard in the dining room, right where we had thought we’d looked dozens of times.

He was there, all along, but we missed him somehow. Maybe our eyes weren’t really open. Maybe we weren’t calling his name or striving to lay hold of him. Maybe the timing wasn’t right yet. All I know is that there was rejoicing in finding God in an unexpected place and time.

And that is my goal for Advent this year. To watch and to wait and to prepare so that when Jesus acts in the world around me I will recognize him. I hope you join me on the journey.

Laura Lehman Amstutz, Eastern Mennonite Seminary

Scripture: Matthew 1:18-24

This story of Joseph is a challenge to move beyond our rights and instead participate in God’s work in the world.

Joseph would have been well within his rights to not only divorce Mary, but to stone her, if he chose.

When I imagine Joseph, I imagine a quiet, strong man, who has a deep sense of right and wrong. He was what we would call a religious person. He is described as righteous, which meant he followed all the Jewish laws. He was a son of David, with a long and proud heritage. Rather than publically humiliate Mary for what looks like a pre-marital indiscretion he makes plans to privately break their engagement. He was not doing anything wrong; in fact he was choosing a compassionate route.

And yet God breaks in and invites him to do even more.

And Joseph’s life is changed forever. He goes from doing what is within his right, to doing the will of God.

God did not need humans to participate in bringing about Emmanuel, God with us. I’m sure that God could have found a way to bring salvation that did not require the willing participation of humans. And yet God chooses to involve humans in this miracle.

I wonder sometimes if I do what is right or righteous (as Joseph’s intended divorce of Mary would have been), without paying attention God. I follow the rules and yet am blind and deaf to how God is moving.

I’ll admit that I’ve never quite had the angels-in-a-dream experience that Joseph had, but when I pay attention, sometimes I realize that what God is asking me to do is more than just right and righteous, but is true participation of God’s action in the world.

As individuals and communities of faith, do we do follow the rules and do what is within our rights, or do we truly seek the will of God?

Prayer:

Emmanuel, God with us, help us to be alert to your work in the world, and participate, like Mary and Joseph, not only in doing what is right, but it doing your will. Amen.

By Brian Burkholder, EMU Campus Pastor

Brian Martin Burkholder, EMU Campus Pastor

When I visit the opening chapters of the gospels of Luke and Matthew, I find myself inspired by Mary, Joseph and Elizabeth. I ponder what it would have been like to be in their places – to be chosen for a special purpose of God; to receive a clear message from God; and to respond out of reverence, servanthood and faithfulness to God.

Mary, who was engaged to be married, was perplexed and perhaps initially fearful when the angel Gabriel came to her and greeted her as “favored one.” After hearing his explanation of how the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her, she questioned the wisdom of the angel regarding conception before making herself available as servant of the Lord.

Joseph, ready to quietly dismiss Mary from their engagement so as not to expose her to public disgrace upon learning that she was expecting a baby, also encountered an angel of the Lord. In his dream, which must have been vivid and unmistakably from God, he was given clear directions to take Mary as his wife and to name the child Jesus.

Elizabeth, six months or so after having her own encounter with a messenger from God, and while carrying a son in what had been her barren womb, encountered the Lord himself for the first time. When she heard Mary’s greeting and felt her son jump in her womb, she was filled with the Holy Spirit leading her to boldly proclaim the child within Mary as her Lord.

Oh to have the faith of these three servants of God!

Granted, it helps when God shows up and speaks with such clarity. Many of us yearn for such clearness when making decisions of faithful living. Yet there is an essential posture of servanthood demonstrated here – a willingness to be of use for God’s ways, a practice of listening for and to God’s voice, and boldness in accepting and naming the Lord as Lord.

In this season of Advent, a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the coming of Lord Jesus, might we all be inspired to embody such a posture.

EMU Campus Pastor Brian Martin Burkholder

Could it really be Easter! Is the Lenten journey over? It’s been such a long wait this year with Easter coming in the calendar as late as possible. And what’s up with Easter landing right in the middle of handing in final papers and preparing for final exams here on campus? It’s just mixed up.

Mixed up? How many of us get in the way, or let our agendas get in the way of the very presence and miraculous of God? In what ways do we blind ourselves to the world changing faithfulness of God? Are we holding back from receiving the love and grace and GIFT given by Jesus – this EASTER gift that is available every day? How freeing it is to let God set the agenda.

God’s agenda in the resurrection is clear – death will not have the final word. Jesus is who he said he was and his ways are God’s ways. God is indeed with us. Alleluia!

So let us live in Easter hope. Let us bind ourselves to Jesus: the way, the truth and the life. Let us live this hope in following Jesus in meeting needs in our communities, seeking justice, serving the poor and the broken-hearted, calling each other to faith and building one another up in the faith.

This is our work – this is our collective life according to God’s agenda. May it be so for you and for me – for us, the body of Christ resurrected once again and forever more.

Matthew 21:1-11

I read of Christ crucified,
the only begotten Son
sacrificed to flesh and time
and all our woe. He died
and rose, but who does not tremble
for his pain, his loneliness,
and the darkness of the sixth hour?
Unless we grieve like Mary
at His grave, giving Him up
as lost, no Easter morning comes.
From “The Way of Pain” by Wendell Berry

While the rest of the world continues their lives on a normal schedule, Christians remember the story that takes us through a whole host of emotions. The week of the Passion of Jesus Christ is central to who we are. A story we have been adopted into. A story that says that only through death can we have life.

For us this Holy Week is about waiting.  We wait with fear and trembling. We wait knowing that the salvation shouts of “Hosanna” by the people lining the streets and the sidewalks, and the steps and pews of our churches on Palm Sunday quickly turn to tears of suffering. We wait in the knowledge that those who cry, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” will too soon change their chants to “Crucify him”.

We wait because we know we must remember. We wait because we need to know the story. We wait because, as Wendell Berry stated in the poem,  “Unless we grieve like Mary at His grave, giving him up as lost, no Easter morning comes.” We must resist the impulse to turn away, and quicken the resurrection. We must stay with the hard parts to get to the hope.

But the paradox is that this season is also about movement. This week spans two liturgical seasons, crossing over a bridge from Lent to Easter.  We move from Bethpage to Jerusalem, walking and riding along with our coming to reign King. We move from a city in turmoil to an upper room. We move from a meal of bread and wine to Christ’s body and blood.  We move from Jesus’ act of humility in foot washing to Christ’s humiliation on the cross.

This story in Matthew is also about how we get to where we are going. Jesus was all over the place during his teachings and journeys. To the north out of Galilee, to Nazareth where he was rejected, to Tyre and Sidon, to the west and finally down into Judea, where he turns towards Jerusalem.

Jesus changed our old ways into new ones throughout the narratives found in this gospel; transforming our old thoughts and habits into a new cycle of life.

To me, the joy of the streets that we associate with Palm Sunday, sounds more like a protest crowd asking a leader to save them. Today we think of Hosanna as a shout of praise, but the cry translates into a plea. Hosanna literally means help me, save me, I pray. With the current upheaval in the world today, the shouts of the streets in Jerusalem, in Egypt, and in Libya ring loudly on this Palm Sunday, as the innocent cry for an end to oppressive regimes all over the world. The triumphal entry is the culminating expression of the mistaken belief that Jesus was going to set up an earthly kingdom, restore Israel to the good old days, and overthrow the oppressive Roman empire. But following Jesus means following in death, not overthrowing the powerful through violence and power.

Followers of Jesus routinely got a bit mixed up between what they thought their messiah was going to look like and what Jesus actually did and taught. This might be one reason that responses to Jesus turned from positive to negative throughout the book of Matthew.

And who can blame them?

The triumphalism found in this narrative would have felt familiar to the people in Jerusalem. Often, the ruling Roman occupiers would have extraordinary displays of military power down the streets of Jerusalem. When Jerusalem was brimming with travelers and pilgrims during the high holy days of Passover the Romans would do this to keep the people in check.

Jesus does not come with the war chariots, or the white stallion. Jesus chooses a donkey for his ride. The world that expected a king to save them must have started asking questions. Jesus refuses to be controlled by the hopes of a nation, refuses to be persuaded by the demands and fears of a people who wanted things to go back to a better time.

As he trots into Jerusalem, Jesus exposes what is behind the idea of earthly power for what it really was. The vicious cycle of death and violence did not need another round. It needed to be transformed. Instead Jesus offers a new way of seeing God’s kingdom. Jesus forever redefines what it means to be king, Lord, and messiah. Jesus submits. But in the end that doesn’t quite live up to our expectations. We want change now.  Jesus transforms the life-taking violence that the people wanted and offered them a new way. A way that leads to the cross.

As we walk with Jesus in our lives, we will go to places where we would have never dreamed of going. Walking with Christ to Tyre and Sidon could mean going to the places where our culture says we’re not supposed to be. Walking with Jesus means that we are going to be misunderstood, means that we are going to have some cuts and bruises along the way. But ultimately we do not walk with Jesus down the streets of Jerusalem because we want to change the world. We walk because Jesus is Lord.

I urge us to live in the paradox that is our story. This great drama that is unfolding is the path to the cross, but is also a path where we meet our savior over and over. Through the bread and cup, through the washing of feet, through the darkness and into the light. The story that we are re-living is our story, the story of the unexpected, the story of Jesus bursting into our world, re-shaping it, transforming it to make all things new.

We must live in this paradox; that our movement is really just an exercise in waiting. We wait because this time is not our time, but that we are made participants in God’s time. We wait for the unexpected, for the blind to see, for the dead to rise. We wait because that’s what followers do. “Unless we grieve like Mary at His grave, giving him up as lost, no Easter morning comes.”

This blog post is adapted from a sermon preached at Cincinnati Mennonite Church, 4-17-11. Dustin Miller is a ’07 Eastern Mennonite Seminary graduate. It is cross-posted from Work and Hope:Finding Christ in the Church

Matthew 21:1-11

I love that people used something from nature to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem. Today, depending on the part of the world, they use olive branches, marigolds or pussy willows in remembrance of this day.

When I was young I liked Palm Sunday for the simple reason that they gave us palm leaves in church. Now I care more about the significance of this day. But I still appreciate that by passing out palm leaves, we are bringing some of nature into the sacred space of the church.

I think, in turn, we can bring some of the sacred to nature, by noticing with reverence all that is around us in this lovely valley – today I saw a field of robins (I didn’t even know they traveled in flocks) and a hawk in my driveway (who doesn’t let me get too close). “But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you”
Job 12:7.

By noticing nature, and actively giving praise for it, we are welcoming God into our lives in a sacramental way – a celebratory way, just as the people of Jerusalem welcomed Jesus.

Question for reflection: How has nature helped you to celebrate God?

Ezekiel 37:1-14

I find it ironic that the scripture for this week is about Ezekiel and the Valley of Dry Bones, where the Old Testament prophet receives a vision from God about the people of Israel.

I feel the irony as I find myself dry and parched, drained of the life-giving Spirit that comes like a breath of wind from the mountains or a gulp of cool water in the desert. This is the time of year when students buckle and break down with the weight of their projects and papers and exams. More often than not, I feel less like Ezekiel, speaking words of life into these dusty skeletons, and more often like the bones themselves: bare, empty, and devoid of that Breath of Life that only comes from above.

But I sense that this story of renewal in the wilderness offers more to us today as followers of Christ than simply as historical context to the Old Testament narrative about the Israelites. This is about hope in the dry season, for sunrise after the darkest hour of morning. This is about the life that Jesus breathed into each of us when we were nothing but dry bones. When I read this text, I can almost feel the pulsating heat of this valley and the grit of dry sand in my sandals. I hear the rattling of bleached bones as they join tendon to tendon, ball to socket, and I see the newborn breath in their dark eyes as they look to me expectantly, a crowd of people newly remade by the breath of God.

For me, the season of Lent is one of expectation and preparation, where discipline becomes a tangible act of faith to honor the Savior I know is about the face the most painful and difficult part of the salvation story. But on those rushed mornings or very late nights, my faith becomes that dry valley in the heat of the wilderness. I am the bones, helpless without the breath of God to join together the pieces of my tattered and stressful life into something whole, something fully human yet touched unmistakably by the divine hand of a God who comes to us just when we need him.

Even as I continue in this Lenten season, my spirit and body tired and dry as those bones as they lay on the valley floor, I can hear a whisper amid the dusty wind of the stress and the drudgery. A whisper like the one that breathed life into Lazerus, just as it still breathes into the followers of Jesus today as we prepare to celebrate his death and resurrection. A whisper of love like no other, that continues to breathe life into the hearts and souls of his children when they need him most.

Listen. The whisper is coming.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

As Ezekiel stood in the valley in the mist of the bones all things looked dry and bleak.  The Lord asked the question, “Can these bones live?”  To the eyes of Ezekiel it may not have appeared so, but he knew that God knew the true answer to that question.  During this time the house of Israel had lost all hope and felt they had lost all with no way of return. God promised them restoration and the realization that He is the Sovereign Lord.  Maybe you feel as though you are surrounded by dry bones such as problems, negative situations or failed dreams, realize that God is Sovereign and He can speak life into your situation and bring restoration.  God is faithful to keep His word and fulfill His promises.  Ask yourself today, “What dry bones can I speak life to?”

Prayer

“Father, I acknowledge you as Sovereign Lord over all things.  Help me to look to You and your word during times of difficulty.  When I lose hope may I remember your promise of restoration and remember that you are always faithful.  Help me to receive the abundant life that You desire to give me. In Jesus name,  amen.”

Ezekiel 37:1-14

A story to set the context of the reading

”You can never hope to understand the biblical people,” Harrell Beck used to say, “unless you understand that they lived in a sandbox.”

Professor of Old Testament studies at Boston University School of Theology from 1954 to 1987, Beck often spoke with his students about the sitz im leben of the biblical people, as well as their hopes.

“It’s a sandbox that is 90 miles wide, but it is most definitely a sandbox. A desert.”

“And you know when you’re in a desert,” he would say. “When you’ve been pushing and dragging a recalcitrant camel for hours, and when you just have to sit in the sand with your back to the wind and swallow the grit that gets blown into your face,  you know you’re in a desert.”

“And the color of the desert is brown.”

“But you also know when you’ve come to an oasis,” he would add. “At the oasis, it’s cooler. You can wash your face, stable your camel, rest in the shade. If the desert is a place of stress, the oasis is a place of refreshment. You know when you’ve come to an oasis.”

“And the color of the oasis is green.”

He would lean in toward the gathering, lower his voice as if sharing a secret, and deliver this pearl: “And the great hope of the biblical people was their belief that you can turn brown into green.”

Some reflections on the text

Ezekiel’s vision clearly displays his acute and disheartening awareness of the “brown” of his situation. Exiled to Babylonia after the fall of Jerusalem, he was living with the terrible consequences of Israel’s destruction. While others in the community set aside their harps, overcome by weeping and sorrow, unwilling to sing the songs of the LORD in a foreign land (Psalm 137: 1-4), Ezekiel faced a more devastating dilemma: how to sing the songs of the LORD when you’re dead.

Dead, dead, dead. So dead that the marrow has been completely vaporized from your sun-bleached bones. Dead so there is no hope left for you. Your identity has been completely destabilized; your mission in the world has been disrupted, totally derailed.

The vision granted to Ezekiel from the Spirit of the Lord interred the people of Israel in a shallow mass grave, their bones scattered across the valley floor. For Ezekiel, the horror of the site reflected his disconsolate loss of the people of Israel, whom he saw not solely as “his people,” his ethnic base of secure attachment, and not simply as a people who had been privileged.

Ezekiel carried a vision of his people in terms of their being a covenant community, tasked with modeling God’s covenant and its blessings to all the peoples of the earth, giving warnings to other nations like a watchman from the city wall.

So Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones was about more than simply the dismantling of a nation; he felt the brown-ness of the loss of hope for that nation’s mission, the LORD’s great enterprise of reconciling the nations to a right relationship with Yahweh.

Resurrection was not a doctrine endorsed by religious authorities in Israel; when the spirit of Yahweh asked him his opinion (“Mortal, can these bones live?”), Ezekiel had no reason for hope. “I said, ‘Sovereign LORD, you alone know’.”

In a scene which bears echoes of the creation story (Genesis 2:7), the Spirit of God puts flesh and sinew to the dead bones, and infuses the breath of life into them, and they rise up transformed into an army.

This re-creation story also echoes the notion of the creation by the Word, the logos. The Spirit directs Ezekiel to speak prophetic words—to the bones, to the wind, to the nation of Israel. Ezekiel obeys, and in his obedience, receives the boon of serving as co-creator with the LORD, a participating agent in converting his own “brown” into “green.”

Interestingly, the Spirit emphasizes the Spirit’s own agenda in these collaborative proceedings: to transform the understanding of Israel (and the nations) about Yahweh’s identity—“Then you will know that I am the LORD” and “Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it.”

The Spirit wants to restore the covenant community to life and to its mission; part of that mission is to direct all who have eyes to see or ears to hear to an encounter with the One who gives life and calls us—individually or corporately—to mission.

Some questions to consider

In what circumstances in your community or sphere of influence can you see the Spirit of the Lord working to infuse life into “dead bones?”

What prophetic words do you sense the Spirit of the Lord is speaking to the “dead bones” in your community or sphere of influence? In what ways is the Spirit of the Lord creating new life in these “dead bones?”

What do you think might happen if the “dead bones” in your community heard and responded to this word of the LORD: “I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’?”

In what ways do you sense the Spirit of the Lord is inviting you to participate in this endeavor?