The View from the West Mesa

Ever since the prophecy of enmity between the serpent and the descendants of Adam, we have been looking for peace. Not just between the serpent and humans, but God and humans too. More so, the story of Cain gives us the prediction of enmity between humans themselves. Cain kills his brother and then God has to mark Cain so others wouldn’t kill him. The whole life-with-God-in-the-Garden idea pretty much spiraled out of control pretty quickly.  Humankind finds itself at odds with God, the Devil, the animals, and each other. Even the earth has to be worked harder to give up her bounty. Perhaps more surprising is that even between religions, Christian denominations, and within congregations, there is often a severe lack of peace. Not much peace to be found it seems. God has tried to woo us back and in so doing re-set the entire creation, but with every offer and promise of God, we manage to eventually reject it, insisting that we know better, that we need to look out for Number 1, and g...

Christ’s coming, Paul tells us was to reconcile the world to God; to bring two estranged parties back together. God had created people to live with Him in the Garden of Eden. This was to be a life of communion, of pastoral bliss with humans and the rest of creation living in harmony, with the earth providing sustenance for all, apparently with little painstaking work. An Idyllic garden it was to be, with the creatures being blessed to live their lives in shalom. But you know the story – the humans rebel, not appreciating what they had and poking God in the eye with a sharp stick. Yes, God had said, “eat of everything…except.” Well, they had eaten and the problem was now manifest. Knowing the difference between right and wrong – good and evil – they were now responsible for themselves before God. And they knew it. That’s why they were hiding from God when He came looking for them. Once we’ve sinned; once we’ve gone against God, there is nothing we can do to “not have done that.”...

Advent is a period of waiting, a period of assurance, and a period of expectation. During Advent, we remember and join Israel’s desire and promise that God would come and redeem her, restore her to Himself as His people. For us, we recall and imagine the faithful coming of God to fulfill that promise and we remember His promise to the disciples to return yet again and gather us to Him. The four Sundays of Advent each have their own theme. This year we will use the themes of hope, peace, joy, and love for these reflections. We know the story of Job and his quandary. He believes himself to be righteous and yet his world has literally been destroyed, except for his wife. Her advice to him is “curse God and die.” Job is miserable, sitting in ashes and covered with boils on top of everything and everyone he has lost. Seeing her husband suffer, her solution is to just go all the way and give God a reason to kill you – curse Him and get it over with. Job, his wife and Job’s friends believe t...

As the church year begins anew, Advent engulfs our thoughts, our imaginations, and our horizon. The first Sunday reminds us of hope. This sort of hope has various nuances including those of weariness, of questioning, of desire, of want. All these are expectable human responses to a God who seems not present, aloof, disengaged. We have heard the hecklers even in Scripture when they ask, “it’s been a long time; where is your God?” Those who would be the people of God may be excused for these feelings that border on despair and threaten their trust in the God they seek to follow. This hope though, also includes remnants of that trust and leads to stronger trust in a God who is not seen but who has demonstrated His presence and power in the past. Advent hope, fully exercised leaves the negative nuances behind and chooses not to look at them. Rather, this hope recalls the promises, recalls the past faithfulness, and leans into it once again. God has promised a messiah, a savior, a ...

Luke's telling of the Annunciation is a story too easy for us to simply read over, thinking we've heard it all before. We do ourselves a disservice if we don't slow down and read the exchange as though there is something there for us. An angel appears in front of a young girl. No, not just an angel - an Archangel. Gabriel. He's been around but today he is entrusted with delivering a very important announcement. And so he appears.Usually in Scripture when an angel shows up, grown warriors fall to the ground and have to be coaxed to their feet. This girl doesn't do that though. She is a bit confused. First, she isn't expecting an angel today and this one is telling her something about her having a baby and her baby being a king for Israel, a descendant of David on his throne. The angel has to repeat himself and expand his message a bit.He even tells her that her aunt who everyone thought to be barren was pregnant. So we have two females who aren't suppos...

Matthew 3.1-12 Advent is a season of preparing, of getting ready for the coming of our God. John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin was a bit older than Jesus and John had been given a mission by God. John’s work was to tell the people of Messiah’s coming and encourage them to get ready for His appearing. Jesus refers to John as Elijah, the prophet who was to come before the coming of God. John in turn, always pointed to Jesus and referred to Him as someone whose sandals John was unworthy to untie. John knew he was a forerunner, going so far as to say that “I must decrease so that He might increase.” John spent his time preaching repentance and baptizing people in preparation of receiving and greeting the Lord when He arrived. He and his disciples were baptizing a number of Jews who would come and be baptized as evidence of their repentance and desire to be set right with God. Most of the time this would go without a hitch, but one day a bunch of Jewish leaders came out to be baptize...

First Sunday of Advent Jeremiah 23.1-8  Advent is a season of waiting, of anticipation of the coming of our God. Scripture is replete with people of faith waiting, longing for, and growing impatient with God’s perceived slowness. Israel’s history seems to be one crisis after another, followed by her crying in distress for her God to respond to her. People of faith have had to maintain their convictions in the face of others and perhaps even their own thoughts that looked at the amount of time that had passed and wondering or even proclaiming that God would not fulfill His promises. In the birth narratives of Jesus, we read of people who have been faithfully waiting for God to visit them through their entire adult lives, and we read in other passages that even angels and perhaps the entire creation have been waiting for the culmination of the ages.  The passage this week, Jeremiah 23.1-8 contains a promise of God’s restoring of things to their rightful order. In th...

Have you received a gift that was particularly special? Maybe it was something you had been wanting for a long time, or perhaps something you had been needing and for which you had been hoping, or maybe even something you did not expect but once you had it, it seemed the perfect gift. These sorts of gifts go beyond themselves and impact more areas of your life than what might seem at first blush their purpose. Perhaps it was someone offering you a job out of the blue that set you back on your feet. Maybe it was someone who came along beside you during one of your darkest moments and lifted you out of that space, empowering you to move forward. Or it could have been a note, written on a small card that arrived in the mail telling you that you hadn't been forgotten in the morass of life. None of those appear to the greater world as anything special. None will fuel an economy, end a war, or cure a disease. But to you they might have meant more than the world itself. B...

The following is the communion reflection given on the first Sunday of Advent, 2007. Romans 13.11-14 reads like this: “And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” (NIV) This is an interesting passage for communion but we will get to that a bit later. First let’s read the previous pericope. Verses eight through ten read thusly: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments,...