Well, I’m not going to give too much of a recap of where we have been because our passage actually does that for us today. But I’ll just briefly remind us that over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been in the book of Exodus, and we heard about God using Moses to rescue the people from slavery in Egypt, their narrow escape through the sea, and their time in the wilderness, where they experienced this newfound freedom. But then God gave them the commandments as a shape of that freedom—ways that they can live together in peace and harmony with one another and with their neighbors.

In today’s passage, we’ve moved on from the book of Exodus and into the book of Joshua—and actually all the way to the end of Joshua—when the people are on the cusp of entering the promised land.

Joshua 24:1–15

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac, and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in its midst, and afterward I brought you out. When I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued your ancestors with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. When they cried out to the Lord, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians and made the sea come upon them and cover them, and your eyes saw what I did to Egypt. Afterward you lived in the wilderness a long time. Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan; they fought with you, and I handed them over to you, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you. Then King Balak son of Zippor of Moab set out to fight against Israel. He sent and invited Balaam son of Beor to curse you, but I would not listen to Balaam; therefore he blessed you, so I rescued you out of his hand. When you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, the citizens of Jericho fought against you, as well as the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I handed them over to you. I sent swarms of hornets ahead of you that drove out before you the two kings of the Amorites; it was not by your sword or by your bow. I gave you a land on which you had not labored and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant. 

“Now, therefore, revere the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” 

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

Well, there are times in life when it’s just vitally important to look back and reflect. And these occasions become more and more precious the older that we get: births, baptisms, birthdays, weddings, funerals, anniversaries, reunions. They give us an opportunity to reflect not only on where we are going, but on where we have been.

Why is it so important to look back?

Because it’s vitally important that we understand we did not get here on our own. One of the most dangerous things is when we think that all of this—that we’ve earned it, or that we somehow have deserved it, or that we’ve come about it because of our own goodness or sacrifice or hard work. That may be part of the truth, but that’s only ever part of the truth.

We owe a debt of gratitude to so many who went before us, some of whom we had the pleasure to meet, but many of whom we only know their name, if even that. There have been those who have worked and sacrificed so that those who come after them may have opportunities that they never dreamed of. Parents and grandparents, sure, of course, but countless others as well. And not to mention the strokes of good fortune and all of the needful things that have happened so that we can be here today.

And we see this in our passage today when Joshua gathers the people at Shechem as they prepare to enter the promised land. But before they do, they have to stop. They have to pause. Joshua wants to make sure that they acknowledge those who helped them get there while they are still at this crucial juncture.

Arthur Wright points out, “Joshua gathers the entire people of Israel to Shechem. He then begins to recount God’s activity and faithfulness on their behalf, from the call of Abraham to God’s partnership with Moses and Aaron to save the Hebrew people from the Egyptians.”

And did you notice the emphasis that is put on: Not by your sword, not by your bow. You didn’t plant those fields. You didn’t plant those vineyards. I have done this.

“God is viewed as the primary agent of these events,” writes Arthur Wright, “and the passage emphasizes God’s agency on behalf of the people.”

He then continues, “This passage offers us an opportunity to remember the histories of our own faith communities and reflect on the ways in which we’ve seen God’s faithfulness to us along the way.”

As many of you know, I just had a birthday. Birthdays are a great time to look back and reflect and give thanks. As a congregation, we have just been celebrating 125 years. And to do that, we’ve revisited and celebrated our history. And as a nation, we have marked 250 years as well.

And we give thanks and we celebrate. But these occasions are not just times for celebration. They are also times for truth-telling. As we look back, of course, not everything is worthy of our praise. Sometimes we need to repent and make sure that we learn from our mistakes in the past.

As Joshua and the people stood triumphantly at Shechem, the truth is that their victory came at a cost for others. People were displaced and dispatched in order for them to take hold of this promised land. And that’s part of the story, too. It’s a hard part. It’s a part we would rather look past or look over, but it’s part of the story as well.

“At this moment in time, where nationalism—and especially in the United States, where Christian nationalism—continues to be ascendant,” writes Arthur Wright, “it is important to draw attention to these features without simply minimizing or explaining away the violence.”

Do we really believe that it affirms something true about God’s heart and God’s activity in the world? We have to choose, just as the ancient Israelites had to choose which gods they will serve.

You and I—this text demands that we choose between a God of conquest and violence and a God who intends to bring divine blessing to the entire world.

In recent years, our knowledge of what we mean by the entire world has expanded exponentially. While we had long suspected it, it was only in 1992 that we confirmed that there are planets outside of our solar system. That’s a huge shift in our cosmic perspective of who we are.

Furthermore, with the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, we’ve been able to look out further and further into the universe, which also means that we get to look back further and further in time as well. The data that we have available to us now is overwhelming, to say the least. It can make us feel small and insignificant—just a small, tiny speck in the universe.

Physicist and professor of humanities at MIT Alan Lightman writes, “Over the span of less than a century, discoveries in astronomy and biology have expanded our perspective almost beyond comprehension. We’ve learned that our solar system sits on the outskirts of an enormous galaxy of a hundred billion stars called the Milky Way. And the size of our galaxy is itself inconceivable.”

But there are other galaxies—many, many, many other galaxies beyond that as well. “The mind reels from trying to imagine such expanse,” Lightman writes. And I think sometimes that’s why it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning, right?

But seen from a different perspective, it’s a miracle that we exist at all.

Lightman continues, “Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck that we will ever experience, yet it’s the easiest to overlook and to take for granted. We wake up in the morning, we have our coffee, we make breakfast, we send the kids to school, we go to our jobs, we move through our routines, we worry about the deadlines, we check off all the items on our to-do list, and we forget that beneath it all lies something profoundly rare: existence itself.”

The point Joshua is trying to make is that we are blessed beyond measure just with the mere fact that we’re here at all. And no, it hasn’t been perfect. It hasn’t always been pretty. And we’ve not always been on our best behavior, to say the least. But nonetheless, we are extraordinarily blessed just to be alive here and now, in this moment, in this place.

And the least that we can do is give thanks and pledge to honor that blessing and pass it on. We can also look back, knowing that we are loved, and admit where we were wrong. We can learn from our past and our mistakes and promise to do better when we know better.

Gratitude does not require that we gloss over the past. It helps us to honestly acknowledge the good and the bad.

Look, I know as well as you do that there are times in our lives when gratitude is not an easy choice. It may be the very hardest choice of them all. When health fails, or money is tight, or work is overwhelming, it’s not easy to be thankful.

But the more we practice gratitude—like any skill, the more that we practice it when we can and when it’s easy—it will help us to find a little bit of gratitude when it’s more difficult.

We can think of gratitude like a deep well that we dig. And the deeper we go, the more it can hold. And the more it will have for us when we need it.

And we may even find our way to gratitude for some, but not all, of the tough times.

In a really profound and touching interview—and Google it and watch the whole thing later if you haven’t seen it—with Anderson Cooper, Stephen Colbert reflects to him, “It’s a gift.” Stephen Colbert from The Late Show—you all know, the comedian. Okay? So this is really—that just helps with the perspective.

He says this: “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. But if you’re grateful for your life, then you have to be grateful for all of it.”

And Colbert goes on to explain further, saying that it doesn’t mean that you’re glad for everything that’s happened to you, but in time you may find it useful to relate to others these things that we have gone through. We can turn our pain into compassion. “You’re a different person on the other side of it,” is how Colbert puts it. And largely, it is up to us how we respond and what we choose in terms of what kind of person we will be.

“If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it’s very unlikely that we’ll ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day,” writes Anthon St. Maarten. “Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully,” he writes, “it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom and find the hidden blessing in it.”

“Choose this day,” Joshua says to the assembly at Shechem. Choose. Every day we make choices, and every day we wake to the miracle of existence.

Sure, some days the weight of it all feels too much, and all we can do is hold on until sunset. But other days, the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, and we’re hit with an overwhelming sense of thankfulness for all of it. Most days, of course, fall somewhere in between.

But choosing gratitude does not mean that we gloss over the hard parts of our lives or those things in our past we would rather not think about again. Gratitude actually helps us to face up to the hard stuff because it puts it in the larger context of existence—and what a miracle it is that we are here at all to celebrate and to suffer, to give and to receive, to learn and to grow.

Existence is a gift. We are extraordinarily fortunate just to be here. But this does not mean that life will be easy or free of pain. Rather, even in the midst of the darkest and hardest times, we can still choose gratitude.

“If the only prayer we ever say is thank you,” writes Meister Eckhart, “it will be enough.” Amen.

The post Choose This Day appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, 

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight,’ ”

 so John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And the whole Judean region and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

With Thanksgiving and the start of Advent being back-to-back this year, it occurred to me that Advent is like the morning before the big Thanksgiving meal: you don’t just go about your normal routine, it is all about how you prepare yourself. In his book Voices of Advent, Matthew Skinner reminds us that Christian holidays are also called “feast days” in the church. He writes, “Feasts usually need to be preceded by an extended period of fasting…For one…, it takes work to prepare a feast and moderation to save the food you need for a supersized party. That was especially true for people in medieval Europe, because food was relatively scarce in December. Another reason is less practical and more spiritual: Abstaining from food—either entirely or in moderation—is considered by many an exercise in religious devotion meant to deepen a person’s sense of reliance on God alone. Fasting was not viewed as punishment but as something that can benefit your spiritual vitality and help prepare you for all that Christmas declares about God’s reliability and generosity.”

In Advent we prepare for Christmas. Not preparation as in shopping, decorating and cooking, but as in anticipation, longing and introspection—deepening our sense of reliance on God alone. The call of Advent is to pay attention to where it hurts, where the world is not right, and where we need healing, even dare we say, saving. Because before we celebrate the birth of our savior, it’s important to remember that we need one.

Which is why one of the first voices we hear during Advent is that of John the Baptist. Skinner calls John “one of the most peculiar figures in the Bible, and that’s saying something.” He appears in all four Gospels, as a herald and precursor for Jesus. We read Mark’s version today, which is the simplest. Luke gives us the fullest account. Matthew and John are somewhere in between but add their own unique flare.

Mark’s “Gospel gets right to the point,” writes Skinner, “beginning the whole story of Jesus with a short description of John…drawing from the Old Testament to give us a sense of [his] significance…John’s voice in Mark, along with John’s wardrobe and location, declares that a time of disruption is coming. John characterizes the public arrival of Jesus as an occasion marked by a divine intrusion and expression of God’s power.”

“Since we now live in a society—and a world—that is fitfully drifting toward fascism, the breaking of silence is altogether urgent,” writes Walter Brueggeman. “In the institutional life of the church, moreover, the breaking of silence by the testimony of the gospel often means breaking the silence among those who have a determined stake in maintaining the status quo.” In other words, those who have a voice have a responsibility to use it. But too often we stay silent!

“We need John’s voice in Advent,” writes Skinner. “As the Gospels tell their stories, John is also vital for setting Jesus in the context of agitation and protest. John expresses dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. He’s eager for God to inject new life and forgotten convictions into the world. John leads us to reflect on our own expectations and frustrations. John urges us to get ready.”

The getting ready of Advent, the fasting before the feast, is removal of all the ways we deny, pretend, or otherwise ignore the state of affairs around us and within us. Before German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was martyred by the Nazi regime, he wrote, “The coming of God is truly not only a joyous message, but is, first, frightful news for anyone who has a conscience … God comes in the midst of evil, in the midst of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world.”

***

              A friend of mine is going through some things. The specifics don’t matter, because we’ve all been there. There are just times in life that are like that. It isn’t a matter of blame or guilt. Whether you are in control of the circumstances or not isn’t really important either. All that matters is that things aren’t right.

Of course, this is the very same time that everyone asks, “Are you alright?” or simply states, “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.” To the first, you want to say “No, of course I am not alright.” To the second, you want to shout, “You don’t know that everything will be okay.”

Advent is the Christian calendars way of saying, “It’s okay not to be okay.” To my friend going through some things I said, “Of course you are not alright right now. No one would be in your circumstances.” Sometimes all we can do is acknowledge that things are not alright at the moment and might not be for some time. As Christians we can do this, without losing hope in God’s future and God’s promises. Rather Advent reminds us just how deep our hope runs.

The Right Rev. Maryanne Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of DC, who famously pleaded with President Trump in her homily at his inauguration, recently traveled to Europe. The trip was part personal, to take her mother’s remains to be buried with her parents and part professional; she was giving a book talk in Sweden.

About her time oversees she writes, “The people I met in Europe wanted to talk about life in the United States, and I was moved by the depth of their concern. The question I was most frequently asked was some variation of “What is life like for you in America now?” While I didn’t presume to speak for all Americans, I tried to describe the fullness of our life, alongside the sober realities that make international headlines…The second most frequent question I was asked in Europe was “Where do you find your hope?” That was easier to answer. My hope is in Jesus, crucified and risen. No matter how I feel on a given day, Jesus has given me a path to walk and his light to see by. It is the way of love.” Then she wrote this, “When I falter and lose hope, others walking the path beside me become my hope bearers. I look to the example of those wondrous human beings across our world whose sacrificial love is like light shining in darkness.”

That’s it! Advent calls us to be hope bearers. To use our voice to tell the truth. We are not okay. Our world is broken and so are we. We have not loved God with our whole heart. We have not loved one another as God has loved us. We have done that which we should not and left undone that which we should have done. But we do not lose hope because God is not done with us yet! Before every feast, there’s a famine. So we pray, may the full feast of God’s justice come and come soon. While we wait Lord, come. Amen.

The post Voices of Advent: John the Baptist appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.

Discussion Questions:

1. Preparing the Way

• In what ways is Advent like the quiet morning before a great feast? How might slowing down and reflecting help prepare your heart for the coming of Christ?
• What practices—spiritual or otherwise—help you enter into the kind of preparation John the Baptist calls for?

2. John’s Voice in the Wilderness

• John the Baptist is described as a disruptive voice calling people to honesty and change. Where do you hear modern echoes of that prophetic voice?
• What voices today are calling attention to injustice or spiritual complacency? How might God be calling you to be a truth-teller?

3. Hope and Honesty

• The sermon reminds us that Advent allows space to say, “It’s okay not to be okay.” What does that mean for your life right now?
• Who are the “hope bearers” in your life—those who carry light in dark times? How can you become a hope bearer for someone else this season?

4. Repentance as Readiness

• John’s message of repentance isn’t about shame but about readiness. How do confession and truth-telling make space for grace and growth?
• What is one small step you can take this week to “make straight” a path for God in your life?

5. Being Voices of Advent

• The Advent season reminds us to use our voices rather than remain silent. What truth do you feel called to speak right now?
• As a church community, how can we be a prophetic voice—like John—helping prepare the world for love, justice, and the coming of Christ?

The post Sermon Discussion Guide: Voices of Advent: John the Baptist appeared first on Roland Park Presbyterian Church.