The lamp in my childhood bedroom looked like balloons. I cannot remember if someone was holding the balloons; whether it was a clown or a child or if the balloons were hanging by themselves. My memory of what the lamp looked like is fading. But I can close my eyes and see the light that it gave off. A warm reddish-orange glow.

When one is a small child, those bedside lamps are like a security blanket. It pushes away the mysterious and foreboding darkness. The light chases monsters. It is a reminder that your room is still your room no matter how many shadows make it look otherwise. And in a way, the light can be a beacon left there by the grownups in your life. Mom and Dad turned the lamp on and the light was like their lingering presence through the night.

As I got older, I didn’t need the lamp as much. It eventually became a light by which to read books before I went to bed. Eventually the dark did not scare me that much anymore and I would turn off the light to sleep. The lamp had done what it needed to do. It had shown me that the world was not as scary as I had thought and in a way that light had turned from something in a balloon lamp by my bed to something inside of me.

Psalm 40 is a passage of the Bible that I and many others cannot read without hearing Bono singing in our head. In a way, we probably should hear more psalms in our head like that. Not necessarily with U2’s frontman belting it out, but with music that amplifies the anguish and joy that make up this brutally honest book of common prayers. Yet—because of U2—the words that I most commonly associate with the 40th Psalm do not appear in the passage at all:

How long to sing this song?

And it creates a tension within the psalm itself. “I waited patiently for the Lord” and yet how long to sing that song. Patience is not wearing thin, but it feels like there are centuries, even millennia worth of waiting building up behind it. God pulls us out of the pit, yet “How long?” has this element of wondering how many times we are going to fall down into that pit. A new song will be sung, but how long will we sing it?

I don’t remember this happening. But I hear the story every time our family is at the beach, so I can almost see it in my head. When I was not much older than a baby, Dad was playing with me out in the ocean. An enormous wave swelled out of the water. My dad saw it and braced for it; holding me as tightly as he could. It wasn’t enough. The wave wrenched me from my father’s arms. Acting quickly, Dad dove forward in hopes of finding me somewhere. And he found me; very likely saving my life.

There was this time that both sides of my family were over at my grandparents’ house for a party. I could not have been more than five or six years old. Everyone was playing in the pool. Somehow, I got into my little mind that I was going to push Pop, my dad’s uncle, into the water. It took all the strength I had in my tiny body, but I got my great uncle over the edge. And I went with him. I don’t know if I couldn’t swim at that point or if I was just as surprised as Pop was. All I remember is the blue. Everywhere. And a pair of arms reaching down and pulling me out.

I remember that my socks were completely wet. And that felt really weird. I remember seeing my mom out in the sanctuary. I remember my dad talking about the commitment I had made. There was lots of white; white robes on me and Dad, white baptismal, white washcloth that went over my nose and mouth when I went under water, and those wet, white socks. I was around seven and I had a seven year old’s understanding of what was going on, which is perfectly fine. I think God honors that; probably prefers it sometimes to the way we muck up our relationship with Him. I remember the red carpet of the sanctuary and people saying they were proud of me afterwards. I think that struck me as kind of funny since it was what God wanted me to do anyway. I think I was a practical seven year old.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. - John 1:10-11

I know that the gospel writer is talking about a time and a place. And as beautifully written as the Prologue is, there is a bit of unnecessary shade-throwing to that statement: the world did not know, his own people did not accept him. There seems to be this suggestion that, reader, you and I would have known better.

I don’t know if we would. I am actually fairly sure that we would not have known him either.

It’s one of those essential questions of pop theology: What if Jesus came back today? What would he look like? What would he do? Would Christians follow him or revile him? Granted, when you are talking about “Christians” you are talking about a wide swath of individuals who hold vastly different beliefs. So it is hard to say what his theoretical followers would do if Immanuel showed up in 2020. Those of us in the United States probably wouldn’t notice for awhile because I get the sense that he wouldn’t show up here.

I’m presently working on a sermon for tomorrow (using a non-Lectionary text), but I wanted to do something to remember this week’s gospel passage about Mary, Joseph, and Jesus escaping to Egypt as refugees. I am not a good artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I was inspired to sketch the drawing above from a photograph that I saw of Central American refugees. We shouldn’t ever forget that Christ too was a refugee and whatever we do to those who are seeking shelter, it is as if we were doing it to him.

There’s a common meme on Twitter in which someone will write something very straightforward and then say “That’s it. That’s the Tweet.” Doing a little internet research “Brie Larson’s Endgame Look. That’s it that’s the tweet” is where this kind of tweet entered into memedom. The idea is that the statement or picture is so obvious or straightforward or awesome that no further commentary is needed.

Looking at these two passages, there is only one appropriate response: “Immanuel. God with us. That’s it. That’s the blog.”

John the Baptist was in prison. He figured it would happen eventually. You bring the prophetic thunder down on a thin-skinned despot enough, he’s going to toss you in jail. It didn’t stop John from continuing to call out Herod. But he also had lots of time on his hands to think and he wondered about his cousin. Was he really the One?

John’s disciples would come periodically with what Jesus was up to. The stories were incredible, but also sometimes confusing. Sure there were the miracles, but there was also the interactions with the centurions and tax collectors. Jesus’ disciples didn’t exactly seem to fit the fasting and praying aesthetic of John’s disciples. And, again, John was in prison. The imprisonment had to tug at him and make him ask questions. So John sent his followers to ask the big question: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

It was a blunt question, which fit John perfectly like a camel-hair suit. One likes to think that Jesus chuckled at his cousin’s brassiness. Then he gave a non-straightforward answer, which fit Jesus perfectly. He told the Baptist’s buddies to tell John what they had seen and heard: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” Then he added, “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

Every Friday night at our house is movie night. We get pizza, pop some popcorn, and one of our kids selects what we’ll be watching. The quality of what they pick varies wildly. But the appetizer to the evening—and I don’t exactly remember how this started—is always an episode of the PBS cartoon Wild Kratts. Each episode of Wild Kratts, for those who are uninitiated, focuses on the the titular Kratt brothers and their team learning about and then rescuing some wildlife creature utilizing special suits that give them that specific animal’s “creature powers.”

As children’s TV shows go, it’s pretty good. Just don’t pull on the threads. Things fall apart. On a related, unsurprising note, I have been pulling at the threads of every cartoon that has graced our TV screen for about a decade. I will not go into all of my Wild Kratts quibbles right now—none of us are here for that—but I got to thinking about one of them in light of this week’s Lectionary passage from Isaiah.

Here’s the thing, Wild Kratts isn’t really that, well, wild.

I totally understand why it’s not wild. Wild Kratts is geared towards children. As such, it probably shouldn’t show a mongoose killing a cobra or a Komodo dragon feeding on the corpse of a water buffalo that it had earlier injected with venom (because that’s what they do!). They talk about it, but never show it. All the animals are really chill with the Kratts coming into their habitats and cuddling their babies. Again, the show probably shouldn’t have the Kratt brothers weekly getting mauled by a wild animal because once again the bros got way up into some creature’s business. Even though that is what actually would happen in the wild, it wouldn’t make for a good children’s show. It would make for a very educational program to be sure, but not one that parents would be keen on showing their kids.

We can get behind swords being turned into plowshares. Well, there might be a few organizations and corporations that would not be thrilled about weapons being turned into gardening tools. But for most of us, the picture presented in the second chapter of Isaiah is an appealing one. The whole world coming together. Nations no longer entrenched in war against one another. The picture the prophet paints is the great hope of the world. It’s hope like a toasty cup of hot chocolate. We can sit down with it by a crackling fire at Christmas time and feel safe, comforted.

And yet…

That sentence right before swords are beaten into plowshares grabs my attention every single time. “[The Lord] shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples.” The NIV and CEB translations say that God will settle disputes. This hoped for future is not just some happy time in which every slate is wiped clean and the past is the past. Peoples are held to an account. There is a reckoning here.

For about three years, I would pick one of the Revised Common Lectionary passages for the forthcoming Sunday and write some kind of reflection about it. Sometimes short, sometimes long, sometimes earnest, sometimes goofy. But I stopped doing that a little over two years ago. Writing, which was once as natural as breathing, has become exponentially difficult for me of late. With apologies to Anne Lamott, I’m going to try to bird by bird this sucker starting with resurrecting this old practice. It might be rough, but I’ve got to start somewhere.

Jeremiah 23:1-6
First Reading for Reign of Christ Sunday (Year C)

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord.”

I’m going to try my best to be honest: Reading this my mind immediately goes to the dumpster fire and, I don’t know, port-a-john pyrotechnics that are presently engulfing our political and religious lives in America. And I want to steer out of that. It’s there. It’s important. We need to stay informed and be vigilant. But I am just too exhausted by it tonight.