The Woman and the Dragon
12 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 5 She gave birth to a male son who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 He was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.
Revelation 12:1-20
4 So Joseph also went up from Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because they had no guest room.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for everyone. 11 Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary, Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen, just as they had been told.
Luke 2:1-19
Heaven and Earth’s Birth Pangs and The Hope of The Prince of Peace
December 2024 By: Rev. Daniel J. Bradley
One of my college professors, Rev. Dr. Jay Ray Kingensmith, was a pastor of the Church of the Brethren. During the Great Depression, he shared that he turned the church sanctuary into a men's shelter. It was complete with a soup and bread line. During the week, men could come into the sanctuary in the afternoon and sleep so they would not freeze. He fed them physically and conducted a worship service with Holy Communion every evening.
He would have to wake them on Sunday mornings to allow the wealthy parishioners into worship, as they funded his ministry. He did so much with just a little. He did not know the countless lives he had saved physically and spiritually until he entered glory.
Rev. Dr. Klingensmith was prone to say, "If your finger isn't bent over for ringing doorbells for Jesus, then you aren't doing enough for the kingdom."
There are times when drastic situations call for God-size responses. God does big things with the little we are convinced we possess. In my ministry career, I have seen God's wonders work miracles for the parishioners I have served. I have witnessed individuals' lives transform as they have grown in Christ. I have seen the Communion table become a supernatural table where the tangible presence of Christ is offered in grace and thanksgiving.
I have heard deathbed confessions that I wish I never heard. I have celebrated with couples who allowed God to resurrect their marriages. I have mourned the loss of beloved church members and their families at funerals as we sing “For All the Saints.” I have seen God work miracles in broken churches struggling to keep their doors open with so little left in the bank accounts to keep the lights. However, I mourn, more importantly, the lack of parishioners in attendance. I paraphrase the Apostle Paul from one of his epistles, ‘God works together for all things for God’s purposes.’ Nothing is wasted.
God has even performed many miracles on my family and my life—they are too numerous to recount. My guardian angel seems to need medical attention, including physical therapy and respite care.
God works this season as we sloth through the season of 'perpetual joy.' We know we have entered this season because Bing Crosby and Maria Carey have dominated every radio station since the end of October. Stores have had Black Friday sales since August, and credit card usage has increased by 50% since last year. All of that is part of the uncontrollable yuck of this world.
I was listening to a Catholic priest on a podcast out of Pickering, Ontario, just outside of Toronto, who described Advent "not as a season of preparation, but a season of birth pangs.” If you know anything about giving birth, it is a painful nine months of waiting for an expected child. Worse yet is the actual labor. Listen to any man, and they will tell you about the 'jaws of life' needed to get the child out. I once heard a comedian say, "Men, if you want to know what childbirth feels like, take your lower lip and pull it over your head." More valid words have never been spoken.
The priest continued his homily, "The times we live in today are no different than Mary and Joseph's time. There were wars, poverty, slavery, and women were abused and treated like chattel, and they were bought and sold. The politics of Rome ruling with an iron boot and fist over an oppressed Israel is no different than it is today."
The 21st century has gotten off to a rough start. Just like Brooks Hadden, in the film The Shawshank Redemption, a murderer out on parole after spending almost all his life behind bars, now a free man, said, "The world has gone and got itself in a dam hurry...I don't like it here; I don't think I will stay." His hopelessness leads him to die by suicide.
Twenty-four years into the new century, you would have thought we learned something about not repeating the missteps of the past and treating one another with kindness and grace. We haven’t learned anything.
Over the past couple of years, I have needed to come up for a breath of fresh air.
As a church, we have witnessed the burnout of clergy. My clergy colleagues left the pulpit for many reasons and departed from their vocational call. We have seen a horrific schism in the United Methodist Church, which does nothing to address the centrality of Christ in the world or the needs of the poor and oppressed. We had a front-row seat for a global pandemic in which the world, church, and our communities were unprepared. Talk to anyone in health care, and they will tell you about the number of nurses and doctors who quit their professions and or died in the treatment of COVID-19 patients.
Many churches did not survive the pandemic, and the ones that did had to learn to sink or swim. Facebook, YouTube, and live web broadcasts had to become the new medium of communication of the faith. Many congregants will shop in brick-and-mortar stores but haven’t returned to church. One reason may be that they can couch-surf millions of weekly church services. I suspect that the weeds of this world choked out their faith. One of my professors in my doctoral program commented, “Christianity has become the new spectator sport with no requirement for discipleship, commitment to community, or Christ.”
"Isn’t that enough?" I need to come up for air.
In 2024, we entered an awful political season filled with anxiety, fear, and so much hate. Hate is so thick you could feel its dark presence as if it were the smog from the Canadian wildfires. There were two attempted assassination attempts of a former President turned presidential candidate. This had the potential to start a full-blown civil war. I am thankful by the grace of God that the tensions have calmed; however, I am still unclear about what God is up to. I don’t know anything, but that’s okay.
I need a break from this reality television show that won’t turn off no matter how often I change the channel.
I need to come up for air!
James Madison, a devout Christian who wrote two-thirds of the Constitution, said in a speech on the floor of the Continental Congress, “The purpose of the Constitution is to keep the majority from oppressing the minority.” It's a remarkable statement, but the reality of that statement is that it hasn't always lived up to the sentiment behind those words. The Constitution is a work in progress, and progress is slow and sometimes comes to a grinding halt.
The minorities in this country in the middle of the madness of the 21st century are the poor, the disease-ridden, widows, orphans, senior citizens who live on a pittance, and millions who are housed in nursing homes with no families--waiting to die. They are the forgotten soldiers of wars past, present, and future—those soldiers who suffer from PTSD and have traumatic brain injuries and the loss of limbs. The Blacks, Browns, and Native persons have been abused throughout the years by oppressive systems that have had horrific acts committed of genocide and lynchings.
To go on would continue to break my heart and only cause the Trinity to keep weeping for the devastation done by human hands. This world has gone mad.
As depressing as this may seem, God is still in the details. Nothing is wasted.
However, I need a break from this reality unfolding in real time.
It’s just too much. I need to come up for air.
I need Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor, and the King of Kings to bring the only form of peace with a two-edged sword: the Word of God.
I need God’s grace for this minute, this hour, this day, this season of birth pangs.
During one of the darkest days that I experienced this summer during my recovery, one of my closest colleagues said, “I don’t doubt that you love Jesus; I do wonder if you have ever let Jesus love all of you.” I began to weep. It was, as a director might say, "a showstopper." She came over, put her arms around me, and whispered, “The peace of Christ is with you.”
Only through Christ’s peace can I come up for air and keep moving my feet forward even though it hurts like hell. As Vigo Mortensen said as the Command Master Chief in G.I. Jane to the Navy SEAL recruits under his command, "Pain is your friend; it lets you know you are not dead. It reminds you to finish the job and get the hell home." I want to go home to heaven’s womb, where Jesus is. However, I know that in this word, God has called me to serve, preach, and care for my congregation and the communities I am assigned.
Lewis Carroll's classic story Alice in Wonderland occurs in a world of nonsense. Alice falls into a rabbit hole while chasing the white rabbit. During her adventure, the Cheshire cat tells Alice, “We're all mad here.” Those words have never been more valid than they are today. Whether you ascribe to a form of organized religion or consider yourself an agnostic, we must come to terms with this world, as Brooks said, “This world has gotten itself in a dam hurry.” And like Alice chasing the white rabbit, we only have the nonsense words of the Cheshire cat to direct us. Or do we?
I wonder if God rolled the dice one too many times, shook God’s head, and asked, “Why did I create humanity in the image of the Trinity?” At times, I have asked myself that same question. However, God sees things that I can't. God sees beauty in piles of rubble. Fields of wide flowers in wastelands poisoned by war, he sees life in the bodies of sinners to be redeemed, not chastised or condemned. God is omnipresent and can see through multi-dimensional time and space that goes on for infinity.
As humans in this mad, mad world, we cannot see, conceive, or understand what God is up to. I need to fall down the rabbit hole and see the world of nonsense for what it is: an illusion. Just as Alice is wakened by her mother at the end of the story, I hope to wake face to face with God in a world unburdened by humanity's mess; I can finally come up for air.
I wonder if any of those men that Rev. Dr. Klingensmith ministered to in that church sanctuary cured cancer or fought the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy; perhaps one of them was Jhonas Sulk, who cured polio, or a politician who kept this nation from shedding more blood at times of war than was necessary. Maybe some married and gave birth to some of the greatest artists, teachers, scholars, preachers, and theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will never know, but God does.
So much can be done with just a little. God does more than we think we can do or conceive.
Since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we have been experiencing ‘birth pangs.’ However, before their expulsion from the garden, God made Adam and Eve garments of skin to protect them from the outside world. God shed the first blood and gave them grace for the minute, hour, day, and a lifetime. God continues to make garments of grace for us in this world.
We can offer garments of grace by sharing kind words, helping those in need, and remembering that not everybody is our enemy and that we should love whoever they are. Grace looks like setting down all that we fear to lose for the sake of another human being. It is not brow-beating individuals with the Bible but meeting them where they are and walking with them on their journey, not ours. Grace means feeding the poor and going into these urine-smelling nursing homes to sit with someone who has nobody. It means fighting for justice for people you may never know, but in doing so, give them life and hope. It means never giving up on individuals' messes. It allows God to turn 'graves into gardens’ and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
The trinity suffered together with all creation on Good Friday when Jesus was crucified. The temple shroud was torn in two, and nothing was behind it. The Ark of the Covenant was not there, and God was not behind the curtain. Tony Campolo, the late Baptist preacher and evangelist, once wrote the title of his masterpiece: “It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming.”
God makes us garments of skin both physically and spiritually. Rev. Dr. Klingensmith made garments of physical skin by nourishing the body; he also made spiritual skin by serving God’s grace in Holy Communion all those years ago.
In this season of birth pangs, I am reminded of the story of Arch Angel Michael and the other Arch Angels fighting Satan in the Book of Revelation. It is an epic battle of life and death, hope and loss, triumph and victory. It may seem odd to recall this story at Christmas time, but I promise you, I have a point.
One of my favorite World War II characters is Winston Churchill, the great Prime Minster of England. He told a reporter when he was asked, “Why do you drink so much?” he replied, “I drink in victory because I can; I drink in loss because I have to.” Churchill was often drunk when he would address parliament or at his cabinet meetings.
Parliament and his cabinet tried unsuccessfully to remove him from office. One of his cabinet secretaries shot him in the shoulder. Churchill jailed him for ninety days and made him his secretary of war. Churchill may have been a drunk and a flawed leader, but God used him to save England from the Nazis. If Churchill hadn't saved England, our world would have looked different.
God looks out for “Fools and Idiots.”
Rev. Dr. Klingensmith once commented on the number of students who wanted him to teach a course on Revelation. He said, "If you want to understand the book of Revelation, I will have to go back into the Old Testament and teach you Leviticus." He lamented that he never had any takers.
In this passage in Revelation, Satan is trying to destroy the woman who was pregnant with the Messiah. Satan is defeated and cast out of heaven and down with his demons to earth, where he has plugged the world into every want, desire, and sin that could be thought of and even some that have yet to be. Through fiber optics, microchips, satellites, internet, and cable television, we are plugged into a twenty-four-hour world that will not let us go.
We need God’s grace in a mad, mad world of nonsense.
I must come up for air; I can feel myself suffocating.
Remember when it was scandalous for Mike and Carol Brady to sleep in the same bed? They were also a divorced couple with a blended family on television. Now, it seems as though anything goes. Nothing is left to the imagination; it is before your eyes for consumption. There are some things that God never intended to be seen and some that can’t be unseen.
In his finest theatrical role as Lucifer in The Devil's Advocate, Al Pacino replies to his son Kevin Lomax, quoting John Milton's Paradise Lost: "It's better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Kevin is expected to give his seed to give birth to the antichrist.
Lucifer replies, “…I'm here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I've nurtured every sensation man's been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted, and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I'm a fan of man! I'm a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.”
Lucifer's great lie is that he is a friend of humankind. His purpose is to destroy humanity. He and his demons are attempting to destroy the very world that God has created. God has brought forth the coming of the Messiah, and the Messiah will set all things right. The end of the story is this: when the Messiah returns, Lucifer and his demons will be cast into the lake of fire. The point of this world is not only to survive and thrive, but to thrive means doing the things of God: offering love, grace, and mercy, which are antithetical to Lucifer and his demons.
The testimony of the shepherds coming to the manger to witness the birth of the Messiah gives me great hope that the Messiah is coming and will establish a new heaven and earth.
On that day, there will be no more weeping or pain. Tyrants will fall, sheep and goats will be separated, and the Messiah will judge the quick and the dead.
King David writes in Psalm 30 writes:
God’s anger will not last forever, but his love will endure from generation to generation. Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.
This may be what Tony Campolo thought about when he said, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.”
"Mary pondered all these things." As we gather with our families for our Christmas celebrations and the opening of presents, I hope you will ponder all of these things and ask:
"How can I be an instrument of peace for the coming kingdom of God in this world of nonsense.”
Let me offer some thoughts to ponder:
· Make a skin garment for a family member, friend, or neighbor.
· Serve at a soup and bread line.
· Focus on the things of God daily as you read the scriptures and pray.
· Be an instrument of God’s peace in your corner of the community you are a part of.
· Make amends with one another and restore the communion that was once with you and those who hurt you.
· Rember It’s not about you, it’s all about God.
· Forget everything you think you know and ‘train yourself to let go of what you fear to lose.’
Let go of everything you know about the nature of the Church, Religion, Faith, and God, and ask God to show you the next steps.
The shepherds heard the Angels. Mary and Joseph listened to the Angel Gabriel, and Hope was born as a baby to get our attention. And let me tell you, babies require a lot of attention. When those ‘diaper boxes say 6-10lbs, that is all those diapers will hold.’
As I close this message, I want to share a Methodist Hymn from 1851... is for my friend and college roommate, Rev. Dr. Derek Marotta, a Presbyterian preacher; he gave me the hymn book that this hymn came out when I entered the ministry.
This Hymn It Is for every Pastor:
It is for the pastor who has doubted their faith and questioned the existence of God—wrestled with their Sunday morning sermon. Has had the church meeting from…you know. Gone crazy over a budget and trying to put people in pews. Dealt with the politics of a denomination and its impact on the ability to do ministry.
This Hymn is for every Pastor:
Who Survived Seminary (Cemetery) with thousands of dollars in loans to barely make a living wage. Who hung in during COVID-19 and led their church foreword in victory or mourning due to closing their doors. For the pastor who walked away from their calling and vocation for reasons only known to God.
This Hymn is for every Pastor:
Who has struggled with depression, considered suicide, attempted suicide, or died by suicide. It Is for every Pastor who suffers from alcohol and substance abuse, mental health disease, physical health issues or feels as though the world is coming to an end around them.
This hymn is for every Pastor:
That is a beautiful mess, called the beloved by Jesus and used by God for God’s purposes.
Answering the call to be a pastor is not for the faint of heart. It is a vocation that takes all that one has and gives no wealth, power, or status, just the joy of knowing that they made a difference in their corner of the world.
The Pastoral Office
Let Zion’s watchmen all awake,
And take the ‘alarm they give;
Now let them from the mouth of God
Their awful charge receive.
‘Tis not of small import, the Pastors care demands;
But what might fill an angel’s heart, and fill’d a Saviours’ hands,
They watch for souls for which the Lord Did heavenly bliss forego;
For which must forever live In rapture, or in wo.
May they in Jesus, whom they preach, And watch then daily o’er their souls,
That they may watch for thee.’
As the great hymn of the faith says, “Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace and Let It Begin with Me…”
Jesus says well done, beloved, good, faithful servants. May you receive the blessing of the Trinity and ponder on all these things.
The logos ‘word’ of God took a lifetime and nine months to bring into the world, which gives us new hope that God is not an absentee landlord. Oh yes, this is a world of nonsense and madness, but God is in the details. Look at your neighbor next to you; each of you bears the mark of the Trinity, bought and paid for by the shed blood of Christ.
God looks out for 'fools and idiots; I've been both.' on many occasions.
Jesus came into this world to show us a new way of grace and faith. Jesus gave us this life so that we might confront the nonsense and madness of this world. We are not called to warm the pews or surf church from our couches. The point of faith is to serve God and do for others what they cannot do for themselves. We are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ, which comes with the responsibility to be God's active presence in grace and thanksgiving.
I can finally come up for air.
This is our Christmas charge.
Thank you, Rev. Dr. Jay Ray Klingensmith, for being an instrument of peace in a world of nonsense, feeding so many physically and spiritually, ringing doorbells for Jesus, and teaching me true faith through your love and affection for the Word of Christ. You read just enough of your Bible to pass the faith onto this student who knew nothing then and still knows nothing now except to do the same you did for me. Receive your reward and enter into eternal rest, thy good and faithful servant.
Amen
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