He took that money and started his own insurance company. He started small. For a long time, it was just he and one employee, his office manager. He had his struggles, but in time, he grew successful. He got married, had a son, and bought a nice house in a very upscale part of town. Soon, he had many employees. He got a bigger office, and his business grew. He began to specialize in health care insurance at just the right time. He developed a way for smaller companies to offer decent health care benefits to their people. Things went well.

For many years, he prospered. He bought a better house and then a better house. In time, he was living in a house of his dreams right on the beach. He oversaw the design and building of his dream home. The floors were of the finest imported tiles. Skilled craftsmen did the woodwork. It was beautiful. He had a beautiful life. He paid his employees well. They worked hard and prospered. He moved his offices to a fine building and commanded the entire seventh floor!

But then, the health care insurance industry began to sour. His profits began to shrink. Times got hard. Soon, the creditors began to knock on his door. He was forced to lease out half of his office space. He did the best he could. He went back out on the road to bring in new business, but it was no use. He was forced to lay off some of his long time employees. Finally, he was forced to let his first employee, his office manager, go. He filed for bankruptcy. Within a year, he developed lung cancer and inside of three months, he was dead. And then the creditors went after his wife. She was forced to sell their dream house. The tiles, the beautiful view, the fine paintings, were all gone.

It had all seemed so indestructible. He seemed indestructible. It’s amazing how quickly everything you work so hard to build can be torn down. But that seems to be the nature of life. We like to think we are powerful. We like to think we can take on the world. From time to time, we win. But, as the great Paul Simon says, “You can’t be forever blessed (American Tune).” That’s the yin and yang of it, the great ultimate, the tai chi. Just look at our own country.

The United States has been the powerhouse in the world for the past fifty years, ever since the end of world war two. We were the standard of the world. We had the best schools, the best health care, and the highest standard of living. But it isn’t that way anymore. It hasn’t been for years. And today, we are just struggling to hang on, on the verge of another great depression. Anybody watching and paying attention would have to be able to see that there has to be more to life than just acquiring wealth and power. You can spend your whole life working, building, just to have forces beyond your control take it all away. I should know. I’ve lost everything I had in this world—twice. This phenomenon is nothing new. It is as old as humankind.

The story of Job, in the bible, is one of the oldest stories in the book. It far predates any of the written accounts. It is almost certainly fiction, a myth. But it still illustrates the truth of our place in the grand scheme of things. For those who don’t know the story, Job is a hard working, righteous man, with a wonderful life. God is impressed by his piety. The Devil, in an attempt to show God how wrong S/He is about Job, suggests that Job’s righteousness will soon fall away as soon as his life turns sour, so God allows Satan to fuck with Job. Job, however, remains firm in his faith. Here is a portion:

Job spoke, saying:
Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?
Are not his days those of hirelings?
He is a slave who longs for the shade,
a hireling who waits for his wages.
So I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.
If in bed I say, “When shall I arise?”
then the night drags on;
I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.
Remember that my life is like the wind;
I shall not see happiness again.

Job comes to understand that we are just people. We are not in charge. We have no control over our lives, not really. We like to think we do, but we don’t. Everything we have can be lost. Rather than weep over his losses for very long, he stays firm in his faith. As a result, the Devil is proven wrong, and God blesses Job with a new home and a new family. Sadly enough, this doesn’t help Job’s first family much. Of course, it’s easy to poke holes in any story. What is important is to take the meaning out of the story and see it for what it is. Jesus knew this. He understood the truth.

No matter what your opinion of Jesus, whether or not you believe he was the son of God, or the Christ, or even a prophet, or even non-fictional, you have to admit that he is the model for how we are to live our lives. We look at the life and teachings of Jesus and recognize that this is what a human ought to be, loving and forgiving. As much as we might poke fun at the religious right, and there is good reason to do so, we cannot fault them for their slogan, “what would Jesus do.” Yes, they use it for all the wrong reasons and purposes, but most of us still find it good advice. When faced with a choice on how to respond to any given situation, we can ask ourselves what Jesus would do, and know that the answer to that question will show us a clear path to follow. Let’s see what Mark has to show us this week.

On leaving the synagogue
Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.
Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever.
They immediately told him about her.
He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up.
Then the fever left her and she waited on them.

When it was evening, after sunset,
they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.
The whole town was gathered at the door.
He cured many who were sick with various diseases,
and he drove out many demons,
not permitting them to speak because they knew him.

Rising very early before dawn, he left
and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.
Simon and those who were with him pursued him
and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.”
He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages
that I may preach there also.
For this purpose have I come.”
So he went into their synagogues,
preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee. (Mark, Chapter One, 29-39)

Don’t be distracted by the miracle stories. I can hear the skeptics now, laughing at the stories of miracle healing and demons. That isn’t the important part of the story. Mark was simply trying to impress his audience, the pagan gentiles, with the authority, divinity, and power of Jesus the Christ. Rather, pay attention to how Jesus responded to this situation.

Jesus heals the mother in law of Simon Peter, if only so she can wait make him something to eat. News got around, and soon there are throngs of people at the house, as soon as the Sabbath was officially over, to see the miracle man. He did not fail to impress them, according to the story. Early in the morning, Jesus goes off to pray, and upon his return, his pals tell him that the crowds are looking for him. That’s easy to believe. Look what happens today. Some fool sees the Virgin Mary in the condensation on a bathroom mirror, and soon thirty thousand people are in the street outside chanting “hail Marys.” A few words in the synagogue, a few healed cripples, and Jesus is a rock star. Can you imagine how tempting it would be for any of us to hang around and let the crowd marvel at us?

Most of us would hang around that town and let the people treat us like royalty. We would speak at the local chamber of commerce, take the key to the city, and let them declare a holiday in our honor. We would take the honorary degrees from the universities and life achievement award at the annual Aramaic Oscars. But Jesus didn’t.

Jesus tells his homies that it is time to leave. Let’s go to the other towns so I can spread the message there. It is for this reason that I came, to spread the message of love and service. Jesus came to bring a message of hope. He came to tell the people to change their way of thinking. He came to turn the known world upside-down. Jesus understood that fame and fortune are fleeting things. They cannot last. With his abilities, assuming for the moment they were real, he could have written his own ticket. He could have been rich and powerful. Satan wasn’t kidding when he offered Jesus all the wealth of the world back in the wilderness. Jesus could have had it. He chose to bring us a message of love instead. He understood what was really important.

Many of us are hurting now. Many more of us will be hurting soon enough. Some of us will see all we have worked so hard to build swept away. At times like these, it is important to remember that you don’t measure a person’s worth by the kind of house s/he owns or the type of car s/he drives. We don’t measure a person by how much money s/he has in the bank, but in how much love s/he has in his/her heart.

Jesus came into this world, whether you believe in his divinity or not, whether you believe in his real existence or not, to bring a message of love, hope, forgiveness, and redemption. And we are called to do the same, to follow him in his path. In the end, it will be our ability to love and serve one another that will bring us through these hard times. We just have to believe in our own ability to come through this valley of the shadow of debt [sic]. These are the real gifts we have all be given, faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. With these, all things are possible. It has always been thus. Believe.

We are all tortured by demons. I have mine. You have yours. We all have those horrible fears we keep deeply hidden. We all have those things in life that control us. One person is addicted to coffee. Another is addicted to chocolate. Some folks are addicted to video games. But when you look at folks like the guy who killed his family, our demons seem like fairly wimpy little dudes. Considering what that guy did, you can see why people in ancient times believed that people were possessed by actual demons and unclean spirits. I mean, just look at Michelle Bachman!

How else do you explain people continuing to do something that they know is self-destructive? Addictions make no logical sense, do they? Why would anybody smoke cigarettes in this day and age when we know all the harmful effects of smoking, not only to the person smoking, but to everybody else around the smoker also? Cigarettes don’t make you feel particularly good. They don’t get you high or anything. The closest thing to a positive aspect to smoking is that you look kind of rebellious and cool with a cigarette in your hands. But people smoke. People do all kinds of really destructive things that, although they want to, they cannot stop doing. That seems pretty demonic to me.

Jesus, according to the gospel accounts, had several encounters with demons. He faced his own demons more than once and overcame them. He faced demons in the wilderness immediately after his baptism, demons that tried to persuade him to give up his mission. He faced demons in the garden the night of his arrest, demons of doubt, and a desire to avoid the fate he knew awaited him. Even his own pals brought demons along with them to tempt Jesus away from his mission. Jesus had a lot of experience in battling demons.

“Then they [Jesus and his buddies] came to Capernaum,
and on the Sabbath, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught.
The people were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having mastery of the law and not as the scribes.

“In their synagogue was a man with an impure spirit;
he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are—the one, holy, belonging to God! (You are the holy one of God)’

“Jesus rebuked him and said,
‘Shut up! Come out of him!’
The impure spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him.

“All were amazed and asked one another,
‘What is this?
A new teaching with mastery.
He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.’

“And word spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.” (Mark, Chapter 1, 21-28, BDT)

“Yeah, well,” you say, “I don’t believe that really happened, and even if it did, I don’t believe in demons!” And I say that it doesn’t matter if it happened or not. Where Matthew spent most of his gospel trying to prove to a basically Jewish audience that Jesus was the long awaited messiah, Mark spends his gospel trying to prove to a bunch of gentiles (AKA pagans) that Jesus is a holy guy. To pagans, holy guy means a god, and by god, they mean someone who is fucking powerful. So Mark is full of miracle stories. That’s what the pagans wanted to hear.

The meaning behind the miracle is still valid. Follow the teachings of Jesus, and you can free yourself from the demons that plague you. Nowhere in the gospels does it suggest that following Jesus is the only way to be free of demons. Since there were prescribed thanksgiving offerings for such things, one would have to assume that people did, from time to time, find themselves freed from their particular demons. But certainly Jesus does appear, by all accounts, to have control over the demons he encounters.

I have encountered two specific ways to overcome demons. Becky and I were running the Los Angeles Marathon once, in the cold, and the rain. We had not adequately trained for the race at all. We had not planned to run it, but had been persuaded by a friend of ours. Halfway through the race, the city pulled up its support. No more water. No more cheering crowds. It was wet. It was cold. Cars driving by were splashing us. We were miserable. We wanted to quit. And all along the way, there were the shuttle buses waiting to take the quitters, the defeated, back to the starting line, to warmth and comfort. How they tempted us. We were cold, wet, tired, and every muscle in our bodies was screaming. But we didn’t want to be defeated.

And then, around mile twenty, we found these teenage girls running. They were having a miserable time, too. It was their first marathon. They had trained for months. They were part of the “Students Run LA” program, which trains high school kids to run the marathon in order to give them confidence and a sense of accomplishment. It’s a good program. Anyway, they were struggling. We started talking to them. We discovered that they went to the same high school that Becky attended as a girl. Well, she wasn’t about to let them fail. We started to encourage them, to talk them in. We kept on helping them along all the way up to the last mile by which time they knew they could finish and they surged ahead. And we finished soon after, having forgotten our own pain, doubts, and temptations to quit.

We overcame our own demons of doubt and pain but reaching out to help someone else on the way. That was a very educational experience. You can overcome your own demons by reaching out to others. Take care of other people and your own needs end up being met. That’s following the teachings of Jesus. That’s what he told us to do, to love one another. That is one way to overcome your demons.

Prayer is the other. I have weight issues. What can I say? I like food. It brings me comfort. It also makes me fat. Food is one of my demons. I have lost weight many times, and I have tried to lose weight many times. Sometimes the diets work, and sometimes they don’t. I have noticed that the times the diets have worked have always been times when regular prayer was a part of my life. I get fat when my life is out of control. My life is out of control, and so my eating gets out of control, and then my weight gets out of control. And the times my life has gotten out of control were times when I prayed whenever it hit me to do so, but with no regular, disciplined time for prayer.

Recognizing that my life is out of control, I make the conscious decision to get a hold on myself, so I start setting some time aside out of every day for prayer, usually first thing in the morning, and the last thing in the evening. And when I do that, when I say my morning and evening prayers, I start to reclaim my life. Now maybe this is all psychological, but it doesn’t make it any less real. Perhaps it’s all in the symbolic gesture of doing some specific act. I control my prayer life, so I get control of the rest of my life. Maybe going out for a morning run would do the same thing. Maybe it would. But prayer does work. I can testify to that. Prayer helps you cast out your demons. The puzzle is why I ever stopped.

Jesus cast out demons in the bible stories. But Jesus also says that if we have faith, we can do the same things he did and greater. You and I have the authority to cast the demons out of our lives, whatever demons afflict us. It doesn’t matter if they are the demons of fear or addiction, or real fucking demons. I have no problem believing in evil spirits. They make about as much sense as ghosts and angels. If you can believe that psychics can talk to dead people, it shouldn’t be too hard to believe in demons. However, whether they be real demons or not makes no difference, they afflict us and the teachings of Jesus hold a key that will release us from those afflictions.

You have the power to overcome anything. You can achieve anything you set your mind to do. You just have to believe you can. You just need to have a little faith. Just do what Jesus did. Say a little prayer and reach out to take care of one another. You’ll be master of all your demons. After all, I know who you are. You are the one, holy, belonging to God.

Of course, when I chose to become a teacher, I knew that life was never going to happen for me. And some folks might say that I chose a much more meaningful path, and they’d be right. I don’t regret becoming a teacher at all. I just wish I could be a financially secure teacher. Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen. No, I knew I was never going to be rich, but still…it would have been nice.

I would also like to know what it’s like to be really popular. When I was a kid, I was always the one chosen last for any team. Of course, this is largely because I was…well…largely. Fat kids don’t usually make for good athletes, so nobody wanted me on his team. They were right of course. I was horrible at sports. I wouldn’t have wanted me on my team, but I had no choice. I was always the runner up. The times I have run for some kind of elected position, such as union representative, I’ve only won for one of two reasons. Either we had a horrible boss and people knew that nobody was better at fighting a horrible boss than I was, or there was nobody else willing to run.

Again, I’m not really complaining. I have my fans. They are not legion, but hey, I’ve got over 120,000 blog reads. And there are many people who really like my music, and my poetry. And I believe that it’s better to have a few people who really like what you do than a helluva lot of people who sort of like what you do. In the end, the only way to be really popular is to never do anything that pisses people off, and people who never piss people off are seldom doing anything of any importance, the Beatles notwithstanding. Actually, even they pissed a lot of people off, they just were damn good and who can argue with that?

Anyway, I’m not really good at being chosen. Even when I got my teaching job, it was when there was a huge teacher shortage in Los Angeles. Who knows if I could get the same job today, in a tight market. This is not to say that I lack confidence, but I’m realistic enough to know that there are plenty of people who are just plain more likable than I am. I can’t help it, and I’ve learned to accept it. Had I been Abraham, God would have chosen some other people.

In fact, by ancient Jewish thought, I’m certain that God would never have chosen me. I am nowhere near holy enough to be the kind of guy that God chooses. Back in the first century, people in Judea pretty much figured that the rich people, the powerful, the priests, all held those positions in society because God had chosen them. Hell, people talked about the divine right of kings for thousands of years. In fact, if you were crippled or homeless or starving, it was because God was pissed at you. There was no sympathy for you. If you were down, it was because you deserved it. Countries had droughts and famines and plagues only because they had sinned before the Lord.

It was this very attitude that Jesus was trying to change. Jesus came to teach that this was not God’s way. And then he set about to live those final three years of his life in a way that would illustrate our relationship with the divine spirit. Jesus came out of the wilderness after being baptized by John with this one message.

“After John [the Baptist] had been handed over,
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God:
“This is the time of fulfillment.
It makes near, The kingdom of God .
Change your way of thinking, and rely on the good news.”

As he passed by the Sea of Galilee,
he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea;
they were fishermen.

Jesus said to them,
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Then they abandoned their nets and followed him.

He walked along a little farther
and saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
They too were in a boat mending their nets.
Then he called them.

So they left their father Zebedee in the boat
along with the hired men and followed him. (Mark, Chapter One, 14-20, BD Translation)

The first people that Jesus chose to follow him were a couple of fishermen. Of course, the vocation of Peter and Andrew is highly symbolic. It is no accident that the gospel of Mark begins and ends at the Sea of Galilee. Even we modern people see the sea and all that live in it as a metaphor for our world. Why else would we have Sponge Bob Square Pants? Jesus chooses fishermen to help him fish for the souls of humankind. But what is more important, is whom Jesus does not choose. He does not go looking for holy people. In fact, you don’t get much more earthy than fishermen. Anyone who knows professional fishermen, knows that they are a salty lot.

But this idea that God chooses whomever S/He damn well wants to choose is a common theme throughout even the Old Testament. Okay, Noah and Joseph were pretty damn holy. But Moses was just some poor ex-prince of Egypt, rescued from the Nile by pure chance, a fugitive from Egyptian law, and a working stiff, herding sheep for his father in law. Gideon was just a poor guy trying to steal some of the leftovers from the Midianites. David was just a young boy herding sheep in the fields when he chosen to become the greatest king the children of Israel had ever known. It seems to be a habit with God to see things in ordinary people that most people don’t.

Of course, Andrew was a seeker. At least, we know from the writer of John that Andrew was a follower of John the Baptist before he followed Jesus, so he must have been looking for something. He must have had some sense that there was something in what was being taught about God that didn’t quite ring true. He was looking for something. And to his credit, as soon as he heard the call of Jesus, he abandoned—literally “dismissed” his fishing net, and went after him. This would suggest that, once seeing Jesus, the fishing net, the source of his livelihood, no longer meant anything to him. So it was a mutual choosing of sorts. Jesus chose Andrew and Peter, and they chose him. Life is all about choices, isn’t it?

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, AKA “the sons of thunder” because of their strong wills, chose to leave their nets and their father right there in the boat. I’ll bet there was hell to pay when they got home later. The Greek word translated as “left”, “aperchomai”, has the figurative meaning of dying also. So on another level, James and John died to their father. They felt chosen and they chose to follow.

Jesus called on all of those who would listen to change their minds, to look at the world in a different way. Why did people follow? People followed for the very same reason they follow today, the basic truth of the message. Deep in our core we know that mercy is better than power, that kindness is not a weakness, that peace is better than war, that forgiveness is better than vengeance. Deep down, we know that money and power and fame will not bring happiness, even if achieved. We see the truth in understanding that the way to feel the love of the divine is to share our love with everyone around us. We heal ourselves by healing others. That truth resonates within us.

The message here in Mark is that God has chosen each one of us to come after Jesus and live out his words. By our very birth, we have been chosen by God to rebuild paradise. Each one of us has been anointed to serve one another. That is the good news of the kingdom. We have love. We can have faith in love. We can find hope in love. And as God has chosen each one of us, each one of us has the power to choose the way of love. We can walk away from those old desires like acquiring stuff, money, power, prestige, and choose to reach out to one another. Life is, after all, about making choices, like choosing to be poverty –stricken teacher. The kingdom of God is love, and the kingdom of God is at hand, it is making itself near. In fact, it is there in the person right next to you. It is what you see when you look in the mirror.

So there is at least one team for which I was chosen. And I’m pretty sure it’s a winning team, too.

I can’t really explain why I have always been so interested in philosophy and religion. I don’t know why I have felt drawn to study the holy books of the world’s religions. I have not felt anything missing from my life. I never felt particularly lost or lonely. I mean, I have, but not in any way more lost and lonely than anybody else. I’m just a regular sort of guy in most ways. I have developed a strong belief in God over the past thirty years or so, but not because I felt any need to believe in God. And my rational mind wants to balk at a great deal of the things that I believe. My rational mind tells me that I should not believe those things, but my experience tells me to believe. I know it doesn’t seem to make sense, but I think I can honestly say that I have not ever been so much in search of God, as God as been in search of me.

I once told this story before, but I will repeat it here. When my children were very young, they attended Catholic school. And so I was required to take them to mass every week, because there is a long waiting list of people who want their kids to attend Catholic school. So if you want your kids to go to Catholic school, you must jump through a lot of hoops to keep them there. Because of this, although I felt no great need to attend church on Sundays, I found myself going anyway. I didn’t particularly care if they attended Catholic school, but my ex-wife did, so there I was.

While we were there, waiting for mass to begin, I began to pray, because that’s what you do before mass. So I was kneeling there in the pew with two little boys, one six, the other four. I had been spending a lot of time those days reading books on Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and even some New Age stuff like the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I didn’t know what I expected to find. But I felt sure the truth was out there somewhere. I remember making this one simple prayer.

I whispered something like, “Father, I know that I’m looking in a lot of places. And I know I’m swinging out there far from the center.” I had this image of myself, much like a planet, swinging around the sun, swinging further and further away from the source of light, of life, of warmth.. I looked up at the image of Christ on the cross and continued, “Please, no matter how far I go…please, don’t ever let go. Keep me where you are.” And I don’t even know exactly why I made that prayer, but every part of me meant it.

Just as I finished whispering those words, a kindly looking woman came up to me, and said, “Excuse me, but would you and your boys like to offer the gifts today?” Offering the gifts means to bring the bread and wine up to the altar at the appropriate time during the Mass. Now maybe that concurrence of events means nothing at all. Maybe it was a totally random happening, but I don’t think so. That’s not the way it feels. I believe that was an answer to my prayer that day. You see, you don’t have to go out looking for God. We are a lot like lost children. Just stay in one place. God will come looking for you. Check out what happened to the young prophet Samuel (before he knew he was a prophet).

Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the LORD
where the ark of God was.
The LORD called to Samuel, who answered, “Here I am.”
Samuel ran to Eli and said, “Here I am. You called me.”
“I did not call you, “ Eli said. “Go back to sleep.”
So he went back to sleep.

Again the LORD called Samuel, who rose and went to Eli.
“Here I am, “ he said. “You called me.”
But Eli answered, “I did not call you, my son. Go back to sleep.”
At that time Samuel was not familiar with the LORD,
because the LORD had not revealed anything to him as yet.

The LORD called Samuel again, for the third time.
Getting up and going to Eli, he said, “Here I am. You called me.”
Then Eli understood that the LORD was calling the youth.
So he said to Samuel, “Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply,
Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.”

When Samuel went to sleep in his place,
the LORD came and revealed his presence,
calling out as before, “Samuel, Samuel!”
Samuel answered, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

Samuel grew up, and the LORD was with him,
not permitting any word of his to be without effect.

Somebody calls your name, you look up. You can’t help it. And maybe that’s why some of us are looking, not because we’re trying to find something, but because something is trying to find us. We hear something calling our names. Sometimes we think we know what it is. Sometimes we think it’s money, or power, or thrills, or knowledge. And then we look, and we find that stuff, and then we find out. That wasn’t it. We know because even after we get money, or power, or whatever, we still hear something calling us. The gospel of John tells us this story:

John was standing with two of his disciples,
and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said,
“Behold, the Lamb of God.”

The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus.
Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them,
“What are you looking for?”

They said to him, “Rabbi” — which translated means Teacher —,
“where are you staying?”
He said to them, “Come, and you will see.”
So they went and saw where Jesus was staying,
and they stayed with him that day.
It was about four in the afternoon.

Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter,
was one of the two who heard John and followed Jesus.

He first found his own brother Simon and told him,
“We have found the Messiah” — which is translated Christ —.

Then he brought him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said,
“You are Simon the son of John; you will be called Cephas” — which is translated Peter.

Jesus puts it perfectly, “What are you looking for?” Well, we don’t know what the hell we’re looking for. We just know someone or something is calling us. We feel that pull, deep in our heart’s core. We know it’s out there somewhere. So we look for things. And we follow people. Peter wasn’t out there following John the Baptist, at least not that we know of for sure. Andrew was the one following John. Andrew was the one following Jesus. But when Andrew brought Peter to meet Jesus, Jesus called him out. And Peter would follow him the rest of his life.

So how do we find that something that’s calling us? As the writer of the letter to the Hebrews says, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” If you’re still reading this, then you know that you’re being called out. You hear the call. How do you answer? Remember what Eli said. Simply say, “Speak. I’m listening.” You don’t have to look for God. God is looking for you.

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,
in the days of King Herod,
behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,
“Where is the newborn king of the Jews?
We saw his star at its rising
and have come to do him homage.”

When King Herod heard this,
he was greatly troubled,
and all Jerusalem with him.
Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people,
He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea,
for thus it has been written through the prophet:

And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
since from you shall come a ruler,
who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Then Herod called the magi secretly
and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance.
He sent them to Bethlehem and said,
“Go and search diligently for the child.
When you have found him, bring me word,
that I too may go and do him homage.”

After their audience with the king they set out.
And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them,
until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.
They were overjoyed at seeing the star,
and on entering the house
they saw the child with Mary his mother.
They prostrated themselves and did him homage.
Then they opened their treasures
and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,
they departed for their country by another way.

Matthew was written in Antioch for a mixed community of Jews and gentile converts. Matthew’s main purpose was to establish the authority of Jesus for the Jews by showing them how Jesus fit all the ancient prophecies concerning a messiah. Moreover, he wanted to show that the gentiles were as acceptable to God as were the Jews, who hitherto had been the “chosen” people with whom God had made his first covenant through Abraham several thousand years earlier.

So, here in Matthew, we have the Christ child, the messiah, linked to the house of David, being born in Bethlehem, David’s city of birth. When the Magi come to King Herod and tell him of the messiah, Herod becomes frightened. Now why should a king, a man with great power and the authority of Rome be frightened? Because the Magi referred to the child as the “BORN” king of the Jews. Herod was not born into office. He was appointed by the Romans. Herod was not of the right dynasty. So any child born king would be a real threat to him among the people, who never accepted Herod’s claim to the throne.

Matthew also shows us that among the first to recognize the Christ child are gentiles from far away. He is not recognized by the temple officials. Thus, God accepts the gentiles because the gentiles accept Christ. So in other words, quit hatin’ on those gentiles, Jewish brothers! God likes them too.

These were all ideas that Matthew, or the writer of Matthew had in mind when he wrote the gospel. The truth is that there is little real evidence to suggest that the Magi existed at all. Many well meaning astronomers have tried to explain the Christmas star by trying to prove it was a special configuration of Jupiter and Venus, or that it was some kind of stellar explosion, or comet. They mean well, but more than likely, there was no Christmas star of any kind. The entire story was written to make a point. And yet that doesn’t make the story any less meaningful.

The Magi went in search for the messiah. Where do we find the messiah? Do we find him in our hearts, our homes, our actions? Here we find what were supposed to be three important wise men looking for salvation in the body of an infant. Here Matthew is telling us you don’t find salvation in a temple, you find it in a child. For the divine is present in every child. The salvation of humankind is present in every child. Hope for the future is present in every child.

And the Magi come bearing gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Each of these gifts had symbolic importance. The myrrh was used to anoint the kings of Israel. It is also used to anoint the body for burial. The frankincense was an offering to the divine. The gold…well, who couldn’t use a little gold? It’s a gift worthy of a king. We, however, also come before the divine offering gifts. Each one of us has gifts to offer. Both Matthew and Jesus make it clear that we offer our own gifts to God, or whatever you want to call that creative divine spirit, when we share ourselves and our material possessions with each other. And that is one of the real messages the Magi teach us.

Moreover, it is important to see in the story that the Magi return home by a different path. Because an experience with divine should change your life. Once confronted with the divine spirit, one does not go back along the same path. Your life is forever changed. You are not the person you were before. The experience should change you. So you encounter the divine and then you return to your life, but you cannot go back to being the person you once were. You are more aware, more clear on the things that have real value.

As always, the Bible is a book of truth, not a book of facts. You can blast holes in the history of the story. You can balk at the idea of these wise men coming from the mysterious east to pay homage to the infant king, the story of the Christmas star, and the myths surrounding the Christmas story if you want to. But then you miss the point of the story. So, as a Christian, I can say right here and now that these things more than likely never actually happened. The ancient Greeks never believed in the stories of their gods and goddesses either. The stories were meant to teach.

Whether or not these events actually happened has nothing to do with the divine nature of Jesus, the man called the Christ. The things he had to teach regarding the relationship of humankind with the creator are what really matter. And this story teaches us that we each have something to offer, that the quest for divine revelation is worthy of the journey, and that this journey will leave your life forever changed. Once you accept that God is, can you ever go back to life as you knew it? And this understanding of God is a real epiphany, in the truest meaning of the word.

The first time it happened I was a boy of nine or ten years. My parents had to do the laundry at the Laundromat. Since we all know how fun and exciting those places are, they would generally drop me off at the park on the way to play and then pick me up after they were finished. I know that sounds kind of nuts today, but back then things were safer. At least they thought they were. My friend, Phillip Graper, was staying with us at the time. In fact, on this particular day, I didn’t want to go to the park and told my mom so. She asked me why, but I didn’t know what to tell her. I just didn’t want to go. Since I had no good reason not to go to the park, my parents dropped us off at the park and went on their merry laundry way. Not an hour after they left, a bunch of big kids came up to us and took our toys and threatened to beat us up if we said anything. Well, of course we said something when my folks came to get us, but there was nothing we could do. We didn’t know who those kids were or where they lived, so we were just out some toys. My mom decided she would listen to me after that, but it never happened again while I was living at home.

Another time there was a drawing at work back when I worked at Bank of America for a FM radio. It was actually a raffle to raise money for the social club (to buy flowers for people and greeting cards for birthdays and other such not). At the very last moment before the drawing, something told me to buy a ticket, so I did. And I won. An FM radio. Big deal. It’s a shame that never happens to me before buying a lottery ticket. I think it’s important to listen to those gut feelings. Of course, I don’t know what I would have done about the Arizona trip. What would Becky have said if I had told her that I had a funny feeling about the trip and that perhaps we shouldn’t go? And besides, that radiator hose would have burst at some point. And without us, her niece would never have made it home for Christmas. (read Arizona Highways for the full story)

God seems to tell some folks His/Her plans for humanity and others when to enter a raffle for an FM radio. Oh well, I guess we can’t all be prophets. But then, you wonder, how many times do we miss those little feelings because we don’t give them any credence? Good thing Joseph, the father of Jesus, listened to his feelings or there wouldn’t have been any savior of the world. According to Matthew, it wasn’t long after the birth of Jesus that the whole family had to hightail it out of town.

“Now after those wise guys left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Joseph! Get your sorry ass up and take this child and his mamma to Egypt and stay there until I tell you. Harrod is royally pissed about this whole future king thing and he means to whack the kid.” So Joseph took Jesus and Mary that very night and got themselves hence to the land of the Pyramids. And they stayed there until Harrod died so that the prophecy might come true, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” After Harrod died, an angel came to Joseph in another dream and said, “Get your ass up now and take Mary and the kid back to Israel because those guys that wanted to kill him are dead.” So Joseph got us and schlepped everybody back to Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his old man Herod, he decided to head off for Galilee. So he took them off to Nazareth to live there so that the words of the prophet would be true, “He shall be called a Nazorean.” (Matthew 2: 13-23, Big Daddy Translation)

It is quite logical to assume here that the author of Matthew was just taking the story of Moses, a very popular guy to the Jewish community, and sort of transforming it for Jesus. If you remember from The Prince of Egypt or The Ten Commandments starring Charleton Heston, Pharoh had also ordered the murder of all the first born of the Hebrews to avoid that whole threat to his kinghood. This story also mirrors the story of the Israelites, exiled in Egypt and released through the efforts of Moses (with a powerful assist from the all mighty). Jesus is a powerful symbol of the children of Israel (not to be confused with the current government of Israel). He stands for the people. He was exiled to Egypt and he eventually will sacrifice himself for the sins of his people. So, in a way, the story of Christ is the story of the children of Abraham…and the story of humankind.

The first prophetic reference is to the Book of Hosea (11:1). Of course, Hosea is referring here to the nation of Israel and the Hebrews, not necessarily to the Messiah. The other reference, that the Messiah would be a “Nazorean”, is a mystery. There is no reference to Nazareth in any of the writings of the Old Testament. It is possible, according to some scholars, that the author of Matthew is making a reference to the Book of Isaiah in which the word “neser”, or bud, refers to the Davidic King, the Messiah. Jesus is seen as a bud on the branch of David. Or, it may also refer to a reference to Judges, wherein Samson, the scourge of Israel’s enemies, is called one who is consecrated, or a “nazir”. Or it could mean that there is a book the existence of which is still unknown. Or it could mean that Matthew was talking out his ass. It doesn’t really matter. The author of Matthew was primarily writing to the Jews. He was trying to convince them that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah.

But for us, a more important lesson from this story, whether it happened or not, is to listen to those little inclinations we have that tell us what to do and what not to do. It’s really an amazing neurological construct, that part of our brain that gives us advice. There is one part of the brain, the most reptilian part, that sees a situation, another part that tells us what to do about it, and yet another that tells us whether or not our plan is a good idea. Most of us listen to the first two parts of our brain. But we don’t always listen to the third. Adolescents have not yet physically developed that third part of the brain which is why they do some of the stupid things they do. But once you’re past about 16 years old, you have.

I know every day there are things my whole being seems to tell me to do. Most of the time, I listen. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes those feelings don’t always feel very practical. Sometimes it’s not a good idea to club the guy over the head for cutting in front of me at the checkout line. Thank God for that third part of my brain that keeps me from doing stupid shit when I bother to listen to it. It must have been weird for Joseph, though. How would you like to have a dream and in that dream a fucking angel tells you to up and take your whole family somewhere far away? What would your spouse say? What did Mary say? “Joseph, are you out of your fucking mind?”

But they went. Sometimes you have to listen to that little voice. How do you know when to listen to that voice or not? I guess you just know. I just knew with my wife. I knew she was the one. I knew back when I was a little kid about that park. I knew I was going to win the raffle. And I knew that the trip to Arizona was going to be a trial. Now maybe if an angel of the Lord appeared to me in a dream and said not to go to Arizona, I might have listened. But maybe that’s what that little voice is, just an angel of the Lord.

There are some churches that say that the age of miracles is over and that God only talks to us through the bible. It seems to me that those churches suffer from a lack of faith. If the things Jesus said were true two thousand years ago, then they ought to be true today, or else they are not much good. It could be that the miracles in the bible are a tad over exaggerated, or not. It could also be that we don’t see the miracles that happen around us all the time. When Elijah was in a cave waiting on the word of the Lord:

Then the LORD said, “Go outside and stand on the mountain before the LORD; the LORD will be passing by.” A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the LORD–but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake–but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was fire–but the LORD was not in the fire. After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.” (guess where the Lord was)

It’s hard to hear a tiny whispering sound. You have to be very quiet. Maybe that’s why Joseph’s messages always came while he was dreaming. But I’ll tell you one thing: you don’t hear a tiny whispering sound if you’re not paying attention. It’s just too easy to miss. We are all of us asking for just some kind of sign as to what we should be doing with our lives. Maybe there are signs all around us that we don’t notice. Some of them say, “HOMELESS AND HUNGRY. PLEASE HELP”

Of course there are a lot of historical problems with the story. And this all stems from the simple fact that the only sources we have for this story come from two of the gospels, Luke and Matthew. Mark and John both pick up the story of Jesus when he is baptized by John the Baptist. Matthew and Luke were never trying to be history books. They were simple stories for the true believers written by followers of Luke and Matthew because it didn’t look like Jesus was coming back as soon as everybody thought he was and they thought it would be a good idea to pass the story along. Moreover, they never meant to be factual accounts of his life. In fact, to be fair, it should be pointed out that it is quite possible that much of the story may have been reverse engineered, as it were. There were a great many prophecies about the coming of the messiah, the one who was to save his people. One is from the book of Micah.

“But you, Bethlehem-Ephrathah too small to be among the clans of Judah, From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; Whose origin is from of old, from ancient times.” Bethlehem was the town from which the great king, David, came. The messiah, according to all prophecies, was to be of the lineage of David. Isaiah says, “But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” Matthew goes into great detail showing the genealogy of Jesus back all the way to Adam in order to prove his ancestry. So does Luke. One goes though Joseph, which, according to the official story, shouldn’t really make any difference if you know what I mean, and I think you do. The other goes through Mary, which would make more sense, if you consider the manner in which Jesus was supposed to have been conceived.

That prophecy goes back to Isaiah. “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.” Of course, the word translated as virgin, actually more correctly is translated as maiden, a young unmarried woman, whom would be assumed to be a virgin, but then, things are not always as you assume. At any rate, a number of these attributes to the story may have been added to the Gospel According to Matthew in order to match the prophecies. This is because Matthew was written for the Jews, who would have cared. Luke, on the other hand, was written for the gentiles, who wouldn’t have given a fiddler’s fart about the prophecies, not being raised in the traditions of the Jewish people, nor would they feel this intense need for salvation.

So it’s up to us to decide whether or not the story is a true one. To me, the inaccuracies actually give the story more credibility. For example, the prophecy says he will be named Emmanuel, god is with us. But they didn’t name him Emmanuel, did they? They didn’t name him Jesus either. They named him Yeshua, which means deliverer (and not the pizza sort). So if they were trying to match the prophecy, they screwed up there. And if they thought anybody was going to check, they would have done a better job on checking their history. Luke opens with Caesar Augustus being in power in Rome and when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Unfortunately, there was no census taken in Judea during that time, at least not at the time when Jesus was supposed to have been born. So what would have brought Joseph to Bethlehem, along with Mary, his wife? And I would have to say, who knows? Perhaps they lived there. Perhaps they were just passing though. I have no doubt that whoever wrote down that information had some vague memory of there being a census sometime around that time, and thinking the birth of Jesus may have been tied to it. Matthew would have been written a good forty years at least after the death of Jesus and Luke was written much later than that. It is likely that both books borrowed heavily from another gospel which has not, as yet, come to light, called the “Q” document. After forty to fifty years, facts get sort of mixed up and distorted. Shit, I can’t even remember what happened a few years ago, let alone forty.

Of course, my first thought is why would we think it not true? I mean, miracles aside (although, I have no problem with miracles), why would we doubt it? If I ask you what you did last week, you would tell me, and I would have no reason to think you were not telling the truth. If you think about it, for most of us it’s pretty hard to prove what we did at any given time. So what if Augustus wasn’t the emperor, or if no census was taken. That doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t born in Bethlehem, or that his parents weren’t Joseph and Mary. Many parts of the story we have created from our traditions, not from scriptural references. The Bible never says three kings came to see Jesus. It simply says wise men from the east. That could have been any number of people. It most likely was a group of astrologers who had read the stars and had foreseen the arrival of somebody important.

And there is no doubt that Jesus was important. He may not have seemed that way as an infant. But certainly, if there is any truth at all in the accounts of his life and of his words, he was different from other people calling for a return to faith. In many ways, he stood in direct opposition to all that was traditional. As we look back over our human history, we can see a lot of people who were different. Consider Gautauma, the Buddha, consider Lao Tzu, consider Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Theresa. No, they weren’t perfect, but then I doubt Jesus was either. He got angry. He battled with his faith. But all of these people, Jesus included, were touched by the divine, however you want to consider it.

No, I have every reason to believe that the story happened pretty much the way they say it did. And I have no doubt that Mary knew that the child she was carrying was someone special, although I doubt she new just how special he would end up being. The message he would bring would be different from any other message the world had yet received. It was not a message of war, or a prophecy of doom. It was not a condemnation of mankind, but an affirmation. Jesus told us that we were all the children of God, and that we were co-inheritors of all that God had created. He preached a message of compassion, charity, and peace. Just as Isaiah as said, “For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.”

So today I will light a candle to welcome the Christ child. He reminds me that God is not some big scary being up in the sky, but that God, or whatever you want to call that creative spirit, is here among us. And so what the angels said was true. “…behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah. And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” I don’t know if any shepherds really heard all that or not, but I hope they did. It doesn’t change my faith one way or the other. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the truth of the message. But ain’t it a beautiful story? Happy Christmas to all. Peace be with you, and God bless.

Something has caused you to want to voyage on these seas, as it were. Who knows why we make the choices we do. But you have chosen to read this far, at least. You are reading because there is something you are looking for. You’re not exactly sure what it is, but you’ll know it when you find it. Deep down in the center of your chest, you know that you are not complete somehow. Something is missing. You’ve thought you’ve found it before a few times. But you were wrong. None of the things you found ever filled in that gap exactly, completely. Nothing was a perfect fit. So you’re still looking. Not everybody is.

There are plenty of people who seem to go about their daily lives getting up, going to work, paying their bills, out at the movies, shopping in malls, driving the freeways, who are perfectly content with their lives just the way they are. They give not one thought to anything lacking in their lives. Perhaps they, too, have that nagging feeling, but they have learned not to listen to it. They have buried it beneath the constant flow of entertainment and information. Many of them are religious people, too.

The word used by Jesus for “the church” is the Greek word “ekklesia”. It refers to a general assembly of people, usually for political purposes, and means literally, “called out ones”. The Church, not any specific church, but church in the generic sense of loose collection of believers, is a group of people called out. They are people who are called out from the crowd. You…I want you. Yes, you, the one there in the old sweat pants and the scarf. You. That’s right. The Church (with a capital C) is the people called by…something, whatever you want to call that something.

The bible is full of stories of people called out. There is the story of Moses, the story of Gideon, the story of Jesus, and the Disciples. There is the story of Abraham, the father of three or the world’s great (or not so great, depending on your opinion) religions. And there is the story of Mary. I give it here from Luke:

The angel Gabriel was sent from God
to a town of Galilee called Nazareth,
to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph,
of the house of David,
and the virgin’s name was Mary.
And coming to her, he said,
“Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”
But she was greatly troubled at what was said
and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
Then the angel said to her,
“Do not be afraid, Mary,
for you have found favor with God.

“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,
and you shall name him Jesus.
He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High,
and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father,
and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever,
and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

But Mary said to the angel,
“How can this be,
since I have no relations with a man?”

And the angel said to her in reply,
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Therefore the child to be born
will be called holy, the Son of God.
And behold, Elizabeth, your relative,
has also conceived a son in her old age,
and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren;
for nothing will be impossible for God.”

Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word.”
Then the angel departed from her.

Much of this story may well be fiction. The earliest gospel, Mark, doesn’t mention it at all, nor does John. Only Matthew and Luke have any accounts of “The Christmas Story” (and not the one with the leg shaped lamp). It doesn’t really matter whether it happened like this or not. As I always say, the bible is a book of truth, not of facts. What this story contains is the element of every story of someone chosen by God for some task.

In every case, God, or some agent of God, comes to someone, someone highly unlikely, and tells that person that he or she has been chosen for a particular task. And in every case, these people try to tell God that there must be some mistake. They try to tell God that they are not equal to the task. Moses said he was slow of speech, meaning he had a speech impediment. Gideon pointed out to God how poor he was. I mean, for cryin’ out loud, when God came to Gideon, he was hiding out from the Midianites stealing leftovers from the winepress! In just about every case, these people told God that S/He must be crazy, that S/He had the wrong person.

Jonah (you know from the story of Jonah and the whale Jonah—except it doesn’t say it was a whale. It says it was a great fish) went so far as to try and run away, believing as most people did at the time that God was only God of a particular geographical area and that you could escape His jurisdiction. But it didn’t matter. God found him. There’s no getting away from God. And Jesus tells why. Jesus taught that God is in us. There is no running away from yourself.

And so, in each person’s case in all the bible stories, they surrender. Moses goes to free his people. Gideon kicks Midianite ass. A lowly shepherd boy, David, becomes a great king. Noah builds an ark. Jonah goes, kicking and screaming, but he goes, to Nineveh. Jeremiah takes up the prophet’s mantle. And Mary becomes the mother of God. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Mary said “yes” to God.

If there is one common thread (and believe me, there is more than one) that runs through all the world’s religions, it is the need for us, humankind, to surrender to the will of the divine spirit, whatever you want to call that spirit. We are a willful people. We are stubborn. We want to do things ourselves. That is the underlying message of the Garden of Eden Myth. We wanted to be like God. That’s why we ate the fruit. But we can’t be like God, not here anyway. We want to be in control. And to think that we are in control in any measure is a pure delusion. One look at the storm that was Katrina should seem to prove that little nugget of truth. We don’t control shit.

Every person who ever found true peace and happiness only did so after surrendering to that divine truth. It is the Zen. It is the Tao. There is nothing you can do. Reality is what it is. You cannot control the world around you; you can only control your own reactions to it. That is the key to happiness. Clinical studies have shown that the area of the brain most linked with feelings of happiness is that area which governs loving kindness. In other words, science has proven that being kind and loving is what ultimately makes you happy. This comes from a study on happiness and people who meditate. And this is precisely what Jesus taught two thousand years ago.

Jesus taught that each one of us is called. We are called to love one another. Through our love, we are saved from fear, anxiety, and death. Jesus was called out at his baptism. The gospel of Mark indicates that when Jesus was baptized, he had a vision.

“And right after coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit, like a dove descended upon him: And there came a voice from heaven, saying, You art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness.”

According to Mark, nobody saw this or heard this but Jesus. And this spirit didn’t abide with him and make him feel all warm and cozy either. It drove him out into the wilderness. And while most scholars would argue this point, I should mention that God here says that Jesus is His beloved son, not his ONLY son. I don’t begin to understand the nature of the godhead, nor do I think that I am able to understand it. I accept Jesus as the Son of God. But I also know that we are all children of God.

To me, the bible seems to indicate that there is no way to run away from the call of God. But what do I know? God doesn’t say to Moses, “You know, you’re the tenth guy I’ve talked to today.” For all we know, Moses was just the guy who said “yes”. Perhaps there were nine other guys who heard about that whole parting of the Red Sea thing and then kicked themselves for passing up the gig. I don’t know. I do know that Psalm 95 says, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

Certainly being called out doesn’t mean an easy life or anything. In fact, most people called out have a pretty miserable time of it. But what are you going to do? Being a savior isn’t an easy job. And the mission of Jesus was to call all of us out, to make each one of us the arms of God on earth. Some people, as Saint Paul points out, were called to teach, others to heal. All of us were called to love. If you are still reading this, then you are called out. You are looking for something. You are looking for something because something is calling to you. You just haven’t found it yet. Keep on looking. You’ll find it.

I know I always want to fix things. When I see things are broken, I want to fix them. The ever popular TV character Red Green taught me that there are only two things necessary to fix anything, WD40 and duct tape. If it doesn’t move and it’s supposed to, use WD40. If it moves and it shouldn’t, use duct tape. Would that everything could be solved so easily.

This most recent election proves we want someone to come in and fix things. One look around will tell you that a lot of things are broken. Our economy is broken. Europe’s economy is broken. The Middle East is broken. The image of The United States around the world is broken. And we have some expectation that we can put some people into office who can fix things. The people in first century Palestine were just the same.

They lived under the iron fist of the Romans. The Romans were great administrators. They built roads. They built bathhouses. They improved the infrastructure and brought peace, but at a cost. The children of Israel lost their sovereignty. They had to endure the rule of a gentile people and a distant emperor. In many ways, they were like the people of the United States. They had once been part of a great power. Now they had to accept an inferior position and they didn’t like it. Small wonder that they placed their hopes in the words of the prophet Isaiah.

“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,
to heal the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
to announce a year of favor from the LORD
and a day of vindication by our God.

I rejoice heartily in the LORD,
in my God is the joy of my soul;
for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation
and wrapped me in a mantle of justice,
like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,
like a bride bedecked with her jewels.
As the earth brings forth its plants,
and a garden makes its growth spring up,
so will the Lord GOD make justice and praise
spring up before all the nations.”

The prophet Isaiah, or actually the person who wrote this portion of Isaiah, was, of course, referring to the restoration of the ancestral lands of Palestine to the Jewish people. But under the Selucids and the Romans, these words took on a more powerful meaning, the hope that one anointed by God, a messiah (in the literal meaning of the word—anointed one), would come and restore everything to the way it was before, and better. They wanted someone to come and fix things.

In that movie from a few years ago about the young man who wanted to play football for Notre Dame, “Rudy”, the protagonist Rudy is given advice from one of the priests who teaches at the university. He is told, “Rudy, in thirty-five years of being a priest I have learned exactly two things. One—there is a God, and Two—I ain’t him.” I have to confess that in my zeal to fix things, I often forget that. My power to fix things is limited. I have to remember. I ain’t God. John the Baptist understood that. In the first chapter of John we are told:

“A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
but came to testify to the light.

And this is the testimony of John.
When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests
and Levites to him
to ask him, “Who are you?”
He admitted and did not deny it,
but admitted, “I am not the Christ.”
So they asked him,
“What are you then? Are you Elijah?”
And he said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
So they said to him,
“Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us?
What do you have to say for yourself?”
He said:
“I am the voice of one crying out in the desert,
‘make straight the way of the Lord,’”
as Isaiah the prophet said.”
Some Pharisees were also sent.
They asked him,
“Why then do you baptize
if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?”
John answered them,
“I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me,
whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”

John here expands on what we read in Mark last weekend. John the Baptist came to announce the coming of one sent by God to fulfill all those promises spoken by Isaiah. John looked around his world and saw that things needed fixing, but he was smart enough to realize that he wasn’t the one who could fix them. All he could do was proclaim that we should all “make straight the way of the Lord.” He told the people to reform their lives, to make themselves ready.

John the Baptist went to be in the wilderness, where he found his spirituality. And in a way, we are all in the wilderness. Many of us feel lost and cut off. The wilderness is all around us. When it comes to finding peace and true fulfillment, we are in a barren desert looking for a way out. And in a way, that’s a good thing. John found God in the desert. We find God in our adversity. Most of us never give a thought to our spirituality until we’re hit with hard times. Then we turn to God. As the old saying goes, there are no atheists in fox holes. And as long as there are exams, there will always be prayer in schools.

There is great symbolic meaning in Mark’s story which has Jesus going off into the wilderness to be surrounded “by wild beasts” right after his baptism.

“It happened in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John. On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’ At once the Spirit drove him out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.”

Jesus at his baptism discovered his own identity, just as we each discover who we are. And then he went out into the wilderness, just as we go out into our own deserts surrounded by the wild beasts of fear, anger, hatred, greed, to find his own mission, just as we must find our own missions. The Greek word translated as “Satan” literally means “adversary”, from which we get our word “adversity”. Jesus had to go into the desert to face adversity. But he was not alone. Mark makes it clear (especially in the original Greek) that the “angels ministered to him”, not only at the end, after all his temptations, but during his entire sojourn in the wilderness.

I take a lot of comfort in knowing that in the midst of all these hard and dangerous times, I am not alone. As the priest said to Rudy, there is a God, and I ain’t him. I don’t have to face these challenges alone. There is a higher power that will help me to overcome all the obstacles I have to face. I have only to be open and willing to accept that help. The same protective spirit that brought Jesus out of the wilderness is available to me and to you. Divine love is our protection in times of trouble. Just have faith. The love is poured out over you, whether you believe in it or not, but if you just have faith and believe in it, then your life becomes so much easier. The fear and the anxiety falls away.

And so, in our own way, we are just like John the Baptist, making straight the way of the Lord into our own lives. The call is to reform our lives, not in the evangelical “quit yer wicked ways and fall down on yer knees, sinner” sort of way, but in that way of allowing the love of the spirit, however you see that spirit, into your life and then sharing the spirit of love with everyone else. That is how we heal the world. That is how we set the captives free. That is how we break the chains of fear and worry that bind us.

Mark’s gospel was written during a time of great persecution of Christians, during the time of the emperor Nero, when Christians were wrapped in animal skins and thrown to wild dogs and lions. Now those people were really facing adversity. Mark was trying to remind them that the divine spirit was with them through all of it. With that knowledge, they could face any persecution following the Apostle Paul’s advice to the church at Thessonolica:

“Brothers and sisters:
Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.
In all circumstances give thanks,
for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus

The one who calls you is faithful,
and he will also accomplish it.”

I don’t always remember to give thanks for my adversities when they come. But the truth is that it is adversity that brings me closer to my spirituality, that brings me closer to that divine spirit. And during the Advent season I can celebrate not only the coming of the Christ child, but the coming of that divine connection to the love of God, or the Tao, or the Atman, or Allah, or whatever you want to call it, into my own life. And during Advent, I can remember John the Baptist, and try to make straight that path into my own parched soul here in the desert, and know that I am not alone.

On top of everything else, my uncle also told those stories. He even wrote them down in a book when he set about to discover our family tree. But my mom said that a lot of what was in that book was wrong. When my sister finally decided to research the family tree, using research methods she had learned earning her doctorate, she discovered that they were both wrong, although she was surprised to learn that my mother was a lot closer to the facts than my uncle was. And who knows? Maybe my mom’s oral tradition is actually closer to the truth than some of the facts contained in the local history books in Arizona. Those books don’t say my great great grandmother used to walk around with a little pouch of marijuana attached to her belt. That’s what my mom says, but maybe she made that up because she thought that it made for a good story and now, after all these years, she has come to believe her own fiction. It’s a cool story either way.

So I have a pretty good idea about the history of my mother’s family. I certainly have the basic facts of the story. I could not say with any certainty as to whether or not they were good people or not, whether they were courageous or cowardly, whether they were saints or sinners. But I have no reason to doubt the stories my mother used to tell me, what I remember of them. She is certainly giving me the point of view of my grandmother and great grandmother, both of whom got their stories from their parents and grandparents. I have no doubt my mother inserted a portion of her own personal opinions into the stories. Republicans and Democrats tell very different stories of the Nixon administration, after all.

So when we consider the gospels, the accounts of the ministry of Jesus, the man called the Christ, we can be sure that we are faced with much the same problem. The people who were followers of Jesus were expecting him to come back down from heaven fairly soon, before the end of that generation. So they felt no pressing need to write down his story. He was coming back soon. It wasn’t for quite a little, after all twelve of his original students had been killed, and many churches of the new sect had been established that early church leaders decided that somebody needed to put ink to papyrus and get the story down. There were already several variants of the story circulating around by means of oral tradition. There needed to be some sort of definitive story. So gospels begin to appear.

Scholars argue about which of the four gospels included in the official canon is the oldest. Some claim it to be Matthew. That was the first idea. That’s why it comes first in the collection of books called The New Testament. Scholars today, however, for the most part, all agree that Mark is the oldest and that Matthew and Luke borrow extensively from it. Quite a few scholars argue that there was an original, older document from which all three gospels borrow called the Q document (from the German word for source. Most significant theology comes from Germany. They’re such anal people, aren’t they?)

There are two main thoughts in placing a date to the writing of the gospel of Mark. Some claim that it had to be written after 70 CE, when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This is because Mark has Jesus predicting that the temple in Jerusalem would one day be destroyed. So, since Jesus can’t see the future, and since the author of Mark can’t see the future either, the book must have been written after the temple was destroyed. To believe that the book was written before the temple was destroyed would be to suggest that Jesus WAS able to predict the future, or at least the author of Mark was.

The problem with the after 70 date is that more than one early church leader mentioned the existence of the gospel in their letters as early as 68 CE, and 68 is definitely before 70. One group of scholars even claim to have a fragment (about the size of a postage stamp) of the gospel that dates to 62 CE. This evidence is not universally accepted, however. But we can be sure that the document was in wide circulation by the early 70s. So we can say that the first accounts of the ministry of Jesus were written somewhere between twenty and forty years after his departure from this early realm.

Another argument for an early origin of the gospel of Mark is that it is such a short gospel. It is much shorter than the others. Unlike Matthew and Luke, there is no mention of the childhood of Jesus, or of the Christmas story. And the oldest copies of Mark contain no resurrection stories. The original document seems to have ended with the discovery of the empty tomb. There is no mention of Jesus appearing to anybody after rising from the dead as the other gospels do. That doesn’t mean the original version didn’t have those stories. It just means the oldest copies of the gospel don’t. Copies are copies, after all. This is how The Gospel According to Mark begins:

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you;
he will prepare your way.
A voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.”

John the Baptist appeared in the desert
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
People of the whole Judean countryside
and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem
were going out to him
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River
as they acknowledged their sins.

John was clothed in camel’s hair,
with a leather belt around his waist.
He fed on locusts and wild honey.

And this is what he proclaimed:

“One mightier than I is coming after me.
I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.
I have baptized you with water;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mark, Chapter 1, verses 1-8)

As you can see, it begins with the story of John the Baptist, a guy we know for a fact did live in Judea. The historian Josephus writes about John a lot, much more than he writes about Jesus. There are still people alive in the world today who consider John the Baptist to be the long awaited messiah and have built up a church around him.

The word used here translated as repentance, unlike Matthew, is “metanoia”. It means to think about things, and to reform. So we’re not talking about repentance here in the sense of feeling “sorry” for what you’ve done, your sins, as it were. In fact, the word for sins, “hamartia”, means failures. So what is being said here is that John called on people to think about their lives, to think about their failures, and to reform themselves. That’s something most of us make at least some attempt to do every New Year’s. John is calling for people to examine their lives. That was a new concept back then. People didn’t do that. So it was a revolutionary idea. And the truth is that a lot of us don’t do that now, especially if we think we’re dong okay as it is.

Since John was important enough to be mentioned by the historian Josephus, we can be pretty sure that he must, at the least, been a very colorful sort of person. He obviously didn’t blend in with the crowd. Perhaps these stories of him have blown him up into some kind of folk hero, larger than life character, wearing camel’s hair clothing and all, but his message seems pretty clear. He was calling on people to reform their lives because someone was coming, someone important, someone who would give them new spiritual life—literally “breath”.

John was right. It was Jesus who brought us the real message of hope. John showed us what we were doing wrong, but Jesus showed us how to do it right. And when you’re in the pit, knowing you’re in a pit and how you got there is pretty important. But knowing how to get out…that’s REAL important. That’s what Jesus came to do, whether God sent him, or whether he sent himself.

And this seems like a very appropriate message to consider as we approach the Christmas season. The message of Jesus seems kind of old hat to us now. We’ve all grown up with it. We’ve all seen the movies. We’ve all seen Jesus Christ Superstar. And quite frankly, not a few of us have gotten sick to death of the message most Christian churches have been preaching. But the real message of Jesus was revolutionary. Whether or not you believe that Jesus was the Son of God, or even a holy guy, you have to admit that the world was changed forever by this simple son of a carpenter. So it seems fitting that we celebrate his coming. He brought us a message of peace, love, and of service. If we all lived according to his teachings, the world would be a pretty wonderful place to live. And for those of us who do believe in his divine nature, he brought a message of hope.

When we celebrate the Fourth of July, we are celebrating more than just the birth of our nation. We are also celebrating the idea of liberty and equality for all people, that a government could be founded on those democratic principles. And we have a helluva good celebration, too. So, considering the message of Jesus, it seems like a good thing to celebrate his coming too. Whatever you believe about him, the world is a better place for his having lived here for the short time he was here. He most likely wasn’t born any time near December 25th. And the gospel of Mark doesn’t mention his birth at all. But this is as good a time as any to celebrate his coming. John would tell us to reflect and reform our lives. Jesus would show us how to live them.

So, as we drink our eggnog and put up our “holiday” trees and hang our stockings and join in an orgy of consumerism, it is good to remember what this holiday was meant to be. We are celebrating the coming of a man who would show us how to live happy, meaningful lives. John told the people that someone was coming who would save the world. And that’s just what Jesus did. He showed us how to save the world. It’s really very simple. Love one another. Christmas is about the coming of the messiah. Wow. How much of a messiah do you want?