Teach your parents well

And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, “Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?” then you shall say to them: It is because your ancestors have forsaken me, says the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law; and because you have behaved worse than your ancestors, for here you are, every one of you, following your stubborn evil will, refusing to listen to me. Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.

Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, “As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,” but “As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them.” For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their ancestors. I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.

For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight. And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations. O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: Our ancestors have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. Can mortals make for themselves gods? Such are no gods! “Therefore I am surely going to teach them, this time I am going to teach them my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord.”

 - Jeremiah 16:10-21

The writings of the Hebrew prophets are chock full of scenes like this: God is angry, angry, angry, and is going to punish us! Yet that judgment is always placed beside a passage of mercy—usually God promising to bring the people back after their exile. I find that the best way to handle passages like this is to look through the lens of parenthood. Doubtless, people anthropomorphized God in the first place by looking through that lens.

My daughter Sarah threw a fit over something at bedtime. She wanted me to read her a comic book. I’d had a long day, and for some reason I didn’t want to read her a comic book. I asked her to pick out something else. And that’s when the screaming began.

So I took away her story—that is, I said I would read to her tomorrow night, but not tonight. Stories are central to our bedtime routine, and I never like to take them away, but it was the right thing to do. We moved on to the next step in her routine, when Christy reads her a story. After that comes “quiet time,” three minutes of silence often punctuated by thoughts about Sarah’s day.

As I sat down for quiet time, Sarah said, “Dad, I’m really sorry.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t like taking your stories away. But sometimes Mommy and I take things away from you to teach you how to control your emotions.”

“I know,” Sarah replied.

“You know,” I said, “Sometimes your emotions—especially anger and frustration—can become so strong that it feels like they’re controlling you.”

Sarah smiled. “Instead of you controlling them!” She got it.

I said, “Sometimes it feels like they sneak up behind you and grab you by the throat and try to choke you!” That got a good laugh. “Grownups deal with that, too. We also have a hard time controlling our emotions sometimes. But it’s something you’ll get better and better at as you grow up, and it’s Mommy’s and my job to help you.”

It was a wonderful conversation. Suddenly that screaming fit seemed a world away. And then, in the silence that followed, Sarah said, “Dad, I have a question to ask you.”

“Yes, Sarah?”

“Why don’t you like to read me comic books?”

Huh. That was a really good question. And I didn’t have a really good answer. Certainly I have the right to say, “No, I don’t want to read that--let’s read something else.” But would it have killed me to read her a comic book? Probably not.

Here are Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with a classic parenting song: “Teach Your Children.” Of course, children teach their parents, too.

A YouTube Advent Calendar: November 30

Jesus began to tell the people this parable: ‘A man planted a vineyard, and leased it to tenants, and went to another country for a long time. When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants in order that they might give him his share of the produce of the vineyard; but the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Next he sent another slave; that one also they beat and insulted and sent away empty-handed. And he sent yet a third; this one also they wounded and threw out.

Then the owner of the vineyard said, “What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.” But when the tenants saw him, they discussed it among themselves and said, “This is the heir; let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours.” So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.’

When they heard this, they said, ‘Heaven forbid!’

But he looked at them and said, ‘What then does this text mean:

“The stone that the builders rejected

   has become the cornerstone”?

Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.’

- Luke 20:9-18

In 1990, we saw one of the most startling turnarounds in popular music. After becoming a superstar with his album Faith, featuring songs like “I Want Your Sex,” “Father Figure,” and the title song, George Michael released a new album called Listen without Prejudice Vol. 1. The first single was a bleak but amazing song about God’s judgment, featuring a video of nothing but lyrics. The song shot straight to #1 on the strength of George Michael’s popularity, though many people have forgotten the song now. Here’s “Praying for Time.”

I love the bumper sticker that says, “Jesus is coming! Look busy.” When we imagine Christ coming not the first time, but a second time, it’s hard not to freak out. We look around us and see the mess we have made of our worldwide play room. After all this, will God still consider us His children? And yet we hear from Jesus that, in George Michael’s words, “God’s stopped keeping score.” Even so, many Christians are obsessed with the idea of Jesus showing up unannounced and finally getting around to cracking heads—other people’s heads. Certainly we’ll be OK, right? Right? If we weren’t going to be OK … if we were the guilty ones … would we want Jesus to show up at all?

But … does God crack heads? There’s a lot of that mentioned in the Bible, but is it for real? Can we expect violent retribution from the God who submitted to crucifixion and then used it to defeat death? Is death really defeated? Then why does it still seem to reign supreme? What if the entire world is going through some sort of mass crucifixion?

What if the judgment we so dread only feels like violent retribution to those of us who struggle so hard to hang onto something of our own, something we can’t take with us when we go anyway? Do we need to be terrified? After all, we’ve seen where crucifixion led Jesus. If we allow ourselves to be shattered on the rejected cornerstone, who knows what new and joyful thing may come of it?

Maybe we can take some comfort in the words of the Prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to have kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” When it seems "there is no hope to speak of," when all is confusion, do two things. Pray. And go out of your way to do good things for others. What else is there to do?

A YouTube Advent Calendar: November 29

Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom!
Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.

When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand?
Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation -
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers, I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, learn to do good;
seek justice, rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

- Isaiah 1

Continuing with the theme of judgment ... I once heard a great preacher refer to this reading and say, "See? God gets bored in church, too!" Enough posturing and posing and hypocrisy, says God. Quit sacrificing animals to me and sacrifice for others instead. If you feel the need to burn something, burn up your hearts. Quit trying to shore up your own security and comfort and give NOW to those who have much less than you do. You can't keep what you have anyway. Eventually, it will all be gone ... burned up in the flames of time that devour everything. So take care of others now, and worry less about your own selfish desires.

This is an Advent discipline: to give to the poor and the oppressed. Consider making a Christmas gift in someone's name through Episcopal Relief and Development ... rather than giving more unnecessary stuff.


Song of the day: from 1968, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, with "Fire."

A YouTube Advent Calendar: November 28

Song of the day: "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" by R.E.M.

Your country lies desolate,
your cities are burned with fire;
in your very presence
aliens devour your land;
it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.
And daughter Zion is left
like a booth in a vineyard,
like a shelter in a cucumber field,
like a besieged city.
If the LORD of hosts
had not left us a few survivors,
we would have been like Sodom,
and become like Gomorrah.

-      Isaiah 1

Advent begins with judgment. It begins with a realistic assessment of the state of our house—the House of Israel, the house of our souls. We sort through the junk, trying to cut back, trying to simplify, trying to make room for Christmas. Deep within us is a profound loneliness. We know we have failed at so many things.

But those failures have prepared us for something new. Our failures prove to us that we cannot, in the end, be self-reliant creatures.