Reflection One
“Normal isn’t coming back. Jesus is.” That’s the title of our Advent preaching series, and we are beginning it a week early because the theme of Christ the King fits well with it.
In advance of launching this effort, I got two pieces of in-put. One was from the Rector. She told me, “Don’t use the word, “eschatology”. “But that’s what Advent is all about,” I complained. “The return of Christ is at the heart of biblical hope.” “Don’t,” was her response. So, I guess I’m not going to use the word, “es—cha—to—logy”.
The other piece of feedback I got was from nineteen hundred of my closest friends on Facebook. I announced that we were going to do this series, and – much to my chagrin – someone immediately concluded it was about politics. “This seems to be a reference to the upcoming change of administration in Washington,” one person observed. I said, “No, it isn’t.” To which “my friend” responded, “Sure sounds like it.” Eventually I had to just say, “Look, you don’t know me – because Facebook friends are like that – so, don’t be so obtuse. If I say it’s not about politics, it’s not.”
Both conversations led me to the conclusion that – at the outset – I should explain what this sermon series is all about. So, let me do that, by beginning with the first part of the sermon series title, “Normal isn’t coming back.”
When I landed on this phrase, what I had in mind was not politics. “I’ll be so glad when things get back to normal” is a phrase that I have heard for as long as I can remember. I have heard people say this when the pace of life picked up and normal routines slipped to the margins. I have heard it when young families have passed around a virus, sending everyone to their respective bedrooms, with no one able to cook a meal or wash a load of dishes.
People talk about getting back to normal when they lose a job, when inflation eats into the family budget, or when loved ones die. We even use the phrase when the engine of change is a good thing, like a new job. Burdened with finding the post office, registering our cars, or finding a new grocery store, we still complain, “I’ll be glad when things get back to normal.”
Perhaps the most poignant conversation I have ever had about the phrase was with a parishioner years ago who had broken his leg in his late eighties. Confined to a hospital bed and dealing with the early stages of dementia, his nurse promised that the hospital would do physical therapy and “get him back to normal”. Still aware of how complicated life was fast becoming, he asked the nurse, “What is normal?”
Getting back to normal, in other words, is about a perennial desire to get back to a good place. A place where we are secure. Where fear and anxiety subsides. Where uncertainties fade away. When life is in balance and we have the sense that we are living the life we expected to live.
It doesn’t matter whether that place ever really existed. It doesn’t matter if we look at the past with rose-colored glasses, or with heavily edited memories of what things were really like. “Normal” – to the minds of most people – is that place where they are untroubled, unthreatened, and at peace. Getting back to normal, then, is not just the cure for what troubles us most, it is also a description of what we most want from life.
But therein lies the problem with both “normal” and with the life-story we tell ourselves. To be untroubled, unthreatened, and at peace are not bad in themselves, and I am not arguing that to want them is evil. But is normal – as a state of affairs outside of ourselves – ever something that really existed, and – even if it really did exist – is that truly enough? Or is holding onto it even possible?
Our children grow up and there are wonderful moments along the way, but they are never the same. We build homes and friendships, but with time, homes change, and friendships do, too. We build careers but we age, work worlds change, and eventually we retire.
Missing from all of these definitions of “normal” is also something else. Something transcendent, something reliable, something that doesn’t change. Something that gives all of those moments meaning.
And this is where Christian hope comes in and the second half of our series title, “Normal isn’t coming back, but Jesus is.”
In past iterations of the Christian message, preachers in some traditions have tried to shake people out of their preoccupation with “normal” by threatening them with hell, and some still do, I suppose. I don’t think that is productive or even a particularly good motive for making life choices. But more importantly, I don’t think that it truly reflects the Christian understanding of the spiritual life.
To be sure, Jesus is honest about the dangers inherent in making these things the goal of our lives. And he clearly teaches that we can’t hold onto “normal”. He talks about treasure that doesn’t rot, spoil, or turn to dust. He urges those who are fixated on their wealth to give it away. And he tells his followers to trust God’s provision. But Jesus tells them these things because Christian hope — dare I say it, es—chat—ology — is about receiving the gift of a life that is immune to rot, spoilage, and dust. He is also offering us the certainty of God giving us so much more — not just one day in the future – but here and now.
Exploring that gift will be the focus of this sermon series, but today I would like to focus on what we can learn from what Jesus told Pilate in John’s Gospel:
“My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” … For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:33-37)
Just like my Facebook “friend” who thought this series had to be about politics, Pilate thought that what Jesus taught had to be all about politics. That was Pilate’s normal. That was Pilate’s life-story. He couldn’t imagine anything else, he couldn’t imagine Jesus caring about anything else. And, in all fairness — since Jesus had used the language of “kingdom” — maybe that was inevitable.
But Jesus flatly rejects a preoccupation with politics. His kingdom is not of this world, his followers are not the subjects of a new empire. They are those who “belong to the truth” and hear his voice. He even goes so far to observe that, if the hope that he had offered had been different, his disciples would have fought to keep him from being handed over the authorities – in which case, his movement would have been just one more revolutionary sect, snuffed out by the Romans.
So, then, what kind of hope does Jesus offer?
Well, for one thing, it is rooted in the transcendent claim that he is God’s son and that through him, God has inaugurated a new path for our lives. One of the real weaknesses in Pilate’s “normal” and in our political “normal” is that human schemes never last, whether they are national norms or the personal norms that we create as individuals and as families.
If we haven’t asked ourselves what in our lives is rooted in something beyond ourselves, then we haven’t been asking deep enough questions. If we make gods and saviors out of our leaders — if we make our goal some version of personal “normal” — we are probably deceiving ourselves.
I was talking with a long-time family member some time ago. Her husband died just over two years ago and, with the help of her family, she is still living alone. Life is hard, of course, and she is still grieving the loss of her husband. She probably always will.
But, one of the things she has missed most, is being able to process what is happening in the world around her. So, the world seems uncertain to her, and she wishes she could get back to normal.
But she is 93 years old. So, she was born in 1931, two years after the start of the Great depression. She was eight years old when World War II began. Eighteen when the nuclear arms race began. Nineteen when the Korean War began. Twenty-eight when the first American soldiers died in Vietnam. Thirty-two when President John Kennedy was assassinated.
I could go on but the point would be the same. “Normal” is illusory, and Jesus isn’t offering us a human version of it. He is offering us a “normal” grounded in the presence and the will of God.
Second, the life that Jesus describes is – of course – about allegiance, but it is not about political allegiance.
To be sure, Jesus uses the language of kingship and kingdom. This is language that is rooted in the Scriptures of ancient Judaism and in the language of what we call the Old Testament. But these aren’t realities that exist in either the Old Testament or in the teaching of Jesus as a political order.
The Kingdom of God exists, instead, as Jesus describes it elsewhere, as the place where either two or three are gathered in his name. It is there that healing takes place. It is there that our relationship with God and with one another takes shape. And the hallmark of those who live in that Kingdom is the unqualified willingness to be open to the voice of God, as made real in Jesus, his Son.
Third, and finally, embracing the hope that Jesus offers is to belong to the truth. This last observation sounds strange to us. Truth in twenty-first century is not at all the same thing. Until a couple of decades ago, truth was something that you measured or tested for. It was largely an academic ideal. You could suffer for ignoring it – a bit like ignoring the law of gravity – but truth had less and less hold on how we lived.
Then, not long ago, truth became all about experience – the experience of individuals or of groups. Identity became all important. I had my truth and you had your truth. But a conversation about truth, that was universal, that made a claim on all of us became impossible.
In the teaching of Jesus truth is not the same. Those who belong to the truth, know who Jesus is. They know that a knowledge of him makes all the difference, and they know that it makes demands upon their lives that cannot be evaded.
But that kind of truth also offers hope that cannot be shaken by an “old normal” or a “new” one. In describing Jesus as both the Logos – the mind of God – and as the inaugurator of God’s kingdom, John tells us we can discover the truth, not just about God, but about ourselves: The truth that we are marked by God’s image. The truth that we are invited to abide in him. The truth that Jesus leads us through mere existence into life abundant. The truth that in his life, death, and resurrection, he has created the one and only normal that cannot be lost.
Friends, the invitation of Advent is to let yourself be embraced by the kind of normal that only Jesus can offer.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In