Silent Night, Unsilent Life

 Christmas Eve 2011

On this quiet, country Christmas Eve, I invite us to imaginatively travel back in time.  Yet not too far back, not all the way back to a birthing barn scene in ancient Bethlehem.    Let’s first briefly visit a battlefield of human history where several incredibly powerful, peaceful moments of sacred silence and serenity were once born.

The date was Christmas Eve 1914 and the deeply meaningful moments happened at various locations along the Western front during WWI.   This month’s issue of Presbyterians Today magazine recounts that a good many German soldiers lit candles and raised them up on small poles and bayonettes.   They did so while singing “Silent Night” in their native tongue, ninety-six years to that night after this beloved Christmas hymn was written in Austria.  Both of these actions quite clearly revealed their strategic positions and made them vulnerable to attack. Amazingly, and beautifully, however, the British not only held their fire … they also joined in the singing.  Then they scrawled the words “Merry Christmas” on boards and lifted them up.  The gesture was returned.    Next, a great many soldiers from both sides voluntarily set aside their weapons and one by one climbed out of bunkers and met together at a small central patch of bombed out earth.   There, enemies otherwise engaged in the heart and heat of combat shared a campfire and exchanged small gifts of chocolate bars, badges, and tins of beef.   

Although the calm candle fire was soon enough replaced with deadly fire power once again, I imagine those brief moments of comforting, holy peace were an incredible gift to the frightened, exhausted soldiers.   What a wondrous in-breaking of our Emmanuel, the Prince of Peace, this historic moment was!  What a shining of the sacred, radiant beams of His holy face upon this wounded world seemingly always at war with itself.   

This story, this word of witness, reminds us of the deep, true meaning of this silent, holy night we have gathered to experience.   


Here, nestled in the pews cradling us, we remember and cherish Christ’s unique arrival to the course of all history.   


Here, we have hope reborn and are exhorted to be positively changed by the great gift of God in the flesh.    


In the midst of all of the holiday hubbub and the often complicated emotions at this time of year, we pause in sacred silence and serenity to honor the One born to bring about peaceful reconciliation between heaven and earth and all of humanity with itself.    Tonight, you and I share an open invitation to freshly realize how very much we need the holy calm and radiant Good News of Jesus’ all powerful, forever reconciling love.    We need it to settle conflicts within ourselves, with loved ones, and wherever there is enmity between children of God across the globe.    

Rejoicing in the greatest holy gift of all time, we have gathered in this absolutely heart-warming sanctuary space; this space so resplendent with symbolic reminders and rituals of all that is central to our faith and full of nostalgic nods to our congregational traditions.   

We gaze upon the manger scene nestled in the heart of our communion table, now complete with the Christ child after our Advent waiting.   

We take in colors of evergreen, white and red to festively, faithfully dress our hearts and minds.  

We sing our praises alongside the alleluias of the heavenly host. 

We speak affirmations of our faithful convictions and offer up prayers of thanksgiving and intercession.  

We look with loving, all-encompassing welcome upon one another. 

           

And we light our candles to sing Silent Night, Holy Night in blessed solidarity with the Prince of

Peace whose living presence seeks the heart of all humanity.

However, we will not be able to stay in this comforting, cradling space of silence and serenity.   We will return to our homes and soon enough, to our regularly scheduled daily living.   When we do, what will become of all this faithful centering, holy calling, and harmonious feeling?

I pray we all abide in it every day of our lives.    Like a prayer shawl, let us wear the silence and serenity and sacredness of this night as we move back into the various frays of our days.    Pastor and artist Jan Richardson, whose inspirations have guided me through this year’s Advent season, reminds us that “Christmas offers a microcosm of what we are called to in the Christian life.”     She then asks of herself, and by extension, asks us, “In the days, weeks, months to come, how will I bear witness to, point toward, open myself to, embody the God who came as life and as light?”[i]     Let us do so by not only holding fast to the memory of tonight, but even more importantly by turning our attention to what the child we are here celebrating had to say in word and deed when he fully grew into his holy purpose.     His was not a silent life.    His was a life that repeatedly exhorted – “Let anyone with ears to hear, listen!”  (Mark 4:9)

Now I don’t know if you’ve spend much time thinking about it, but Jesus started out like any human babe –crying and gurgling, sometimes with contentment and other times out of consternation.   Language to further express Himself had to be learned.  This language took form to definitively teach us all about the sacred life our Creator calls us to live.   At the very core of it all is the message of eternal peace – peace upon the mind, peace upon the heart, peace upon the earth.   

True enough … his words did often stir-up controversy.  But this was not to create conflict for conflict’s sake … it was for the purpose of clarity.    Again and again, through straight talking interpretations of the Old Testament as well as through curiously relevant parables, Jesus delivered a potent message about all that was happening to fulfill long-held holy promises.    He practiced what He preached without even the slightest hint of hypocrisy.    By word and deed, He repeatedly heralded the economy of mercy, where justice is the radical common currency.   In doing so, true joy and deep peace and sacred security were reborn in very many sinfully broken minds, bodies and spirits.    

So as we celebrate the birthing scene of our Savior in a barn in ancient Bethlehem through this beautifully silent and serene night, let us also recommit ourselves to listening to and living out the words he later rather loudly said. 

Recognize and rejoice in Him as the Word of God, in the flesh.  

Be inspired to become more vulnerable as you seek heavenly peace and loves pure light in your heart. 

Rejoice in this dawn of redeeming grace.  

Go share it with all humanity.    

This child, Jesus, so tender and mild, who grew to speak of and embody true sacrificial love, calls us to the constant common ground of faith and hope.   

No wonder, and what great joy there is knowing, that people sing Silent Night, Holy Night on every continent and in countless native languages.    By candle light and in the Light of Christ, we shall sing it again this quiet, country eve to the glory of our gracious God.    Amen.   

           

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[i] Through the Advent Door by Jan L. Richardson

The Scope of God's Promised Peace

Luke 1:46-55

The Fourth Sunday in Advent: Peace

         A week or so ago, my ten year old daughter Rebecca -- who I’m delighted to declare is developing well as a pianist and likes to sing -- informed me that she’d like to write a song.   Then she confessed her concern about not knowing what to write about.     I replied by telling her – and not for the first time -- about the first song I ever wrote.   

         I was ten.   The instrument was my first guitar, which I’d received for Christmas.   The song was called “Life In a Fishbowl.”     I remember it had a basic D-G-A7 chord progression and steady downward strum pattern.  The opening lyrics were as follows – “Life in a fishbowl, swimming around, in my aqua town.”   My words took a more dramatic, adventurous turn next, as I penned lines about “little plastic men trying to capture me again.”

          Obviously, the thing that inspired me to write my first song was a simple fishbowl.   It was a little liquid estate.    It had colorful rocks, some plastic seaweed, a fake rock arch, and at least one little plastic scuba diver who – despite my lyrics -- really didn’t pose a threat to the fish.    It was home to the oh-so-originally named Goldy and Rusty, both of whom I’d won at an elementary school fair game table.  

            As I explained to Rebecca, the inspiration was right in front of me … just part of my home life.  I don’t recall there being any serious moment of contemplating that fishbowl, of suddenly feeling overwhelmingly inspired to write and sing about it.   Yet it’s clear to me now that this song wasn’t just about identifying myself with a particular object and wet pets.   Having been raised on Hank Williams songs like “Lonesome Whippoorwill,” I was schooled from the start on expressing emotions with figurative language.    So I believe even at that early age I had envisioned the fishbowl as a metaphor for my life.   Looking at it from the outside in, it magnified more than the rocks on the bottom … it magnified tough truth about my home life.    

            I could relate to those fish, confined as they were to a space where there wasn’t much real freedom and where the waters were filthy most all of the time.    I could relate to feeling unsafe, as though everyday was a cycle of being captured, released, captured again.   I could relate to feeling as though I lived in a transparent glass house.  In metaphor, I believe I was singing on some level about growing up in the pollution of the alcoholism that flowed through my home life.           

            To me, then, this was an early song about feeling marginalized … about not feeling like my life was ever going to be lived in the mainstream; a song about struggle, about not feeling any deep security and peace.    

            Someday, I’ll explain all this more to Rebecca.   That dad was singing about fish and little plastic men is rather enough for her to ponder and chuckle about for now.   But perhaps eventually it will help her know where to start and to recognize how even seemingly simple things might have greater broader symbolic meaning.     My hope for today in sharing this personal anecdote is that it will alert us to recognize the same with our Bible passage for this fourth, and final, Sunday in Advent.

            Luke 1:46-55 is often called “Mary’s Song.”    As we read it, and as we hear it read, it is at first listen a simple, sweet song of gratitude and praise.     She boldly sings of her spirit rejoicing in the Lord, of feeling and being regarded as blessed.     This is perfectly understandable considering what had happened to her just prior to her heart-song.   She’d been visited by the angel Gabriel and told she had been chosen to conceive, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the very Son of God.    She then visited her relative Elizabeth, whose own rather miraculous pregnancy confirmed this holy calling.    Mary’s response to all this was to believe with all her heart, mind and soul that nothing is impossible for God and so she joyfully accepted her appointment as an instrument of divine mercy.    And so she sang her song of praise to the Mighty One who had done great things for her and for her ancestors in the faith.

            But this is not just a simple song of awe, gratitude and praise to God.  It’s not just a fishbowl glimpse into one life and one moment in time. 

            This passage is also and perhaps more widely known as The Magnificat.    This is the Latin word meaning to magnify and directly points to Luke 1, verse 46.   What is being magnified in Mary’s words flows much deeper … it floods straight over into God’s past, present and future merciful action in this world.    It streams into God’s great promises of peace and reconciliation for all people, and more specifically, as one Bible scholar has written, “for those who lurk on the fringes of the world’s hierarchy of value.”

            Mary was most certainly a lurker.    We should never overlook that this is a song sung by a teenage, unwed mom-to-be, who, if not for her fiancée’s intercession, most likely in her day would have been stoned to death.     Her song magnifies her harsh marginalization and thus also gives voice to every child of God who experiences devaluing by worldly measures.    To further quote the same Bible scholar I just mentioned, Mary’s message about the Mighty One doing great things can be applied to “anyone who has been marginalized by society, by culture, even by the church … it may be a message that offers newness in the midst of racial or economic discrimination … it may mean a message of newness from a wheelchair or a nursing home … or in the midst of grief and loss or barrenness of body or soul.”

            The newness being magnified is the broad-scoped reversal of fortunes from the merciful heart of God.  It magnifies the faithful fact that God’s good and holy standards will always trump the worldly standards that create injustices of every stripe.   It is the grand, eternal reversal of sin centered in the advent, birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, Mary’s child, God’s Son, our Emmanuel, the Christ.  

             The amazing scope of this reversal is promptly pointed to by Luke in his use of the Greek word megas ((pronounced megas).   The root of this word, which is the biblical basis of magnificat, refers to measurement of space and its dimensions.  It is meant to get us thinking about God’s great mass and weight, God’s spacious breadth, God’s long measure and height, and God’s eternal stature.    It doesn’t magnify God’s mercy by zooming in, but by zooming out!   So Mary sings of her soul glorifying the vast greatness of God in her life and in the life of the whole world – a greatness that holds in highest regard every lowly, hungry servant and steadfastly honors the merciful promises made to Hebrew forbearers.   

            Quite a lot of deep meaning for such a small and sacred ditty, don’t you think?  
Really hammers home the point that Mary’s pregnancy and her joyful, grateful willingness to be an instrument of God’s merciful peace symbolizes much more than just what was happening in one poor but deeply blessed girls life.  We thank God for Luke’s recording of this song!

            How are you hearing it?   Like so many songs that have intimate yet timeless meaning for our lives, and for the world, what does it mean to you?   How are you being, and how have you been, marginalized in your life?    What mercy comes to you at the margins?

            My ten year old boy written song about marginalization was blessed with God’s amazing grace and reversal of fortune.   The swamp of all kinds of family abuses was cleansed; replaced in my life by a steady stream of prayerful reflection and spiritual direction.  He has led me beside still waters.    Every song, poem, sermon, newsletter article and just everything I write I try to magnify the scope of God’s promised peace for all.    And, as Mary knew well, the beautiful thing about faithful witness is that it gets shared through the ages, generation to generation, to the glory of our truly great God.   Amen.

           

             

           

           

Desert Delights

John 1:6-28

“Desert Delights”

John 1:6-28

Advent 3: JOY

Rev. Rich Gelson, Fairmount Presbyterian Church

What joy is there to be found in a desert wilderness?   How does this joy strengthen us as we seek to see and to proclaim the Savior of the world, the one who comes again and again to be present in our lives?   These are the big questions John the Baptist beckons us to answer for ourselves on this third Sunday in Advent.   

Throughout the Bible, the word “wilderness” has two primary purposes.   First, it refers to physical locations.  Second, it works as a figure of speech, as a metaphor.

As a physical location, the wilderness can simply refer to travel routes and locations where holy historic happenings took place.   The trouble is, we are told that many of these routes and locations are sites where dangers, rebellions, temptations, and deadly battles took place.   Deuteronomy 8:15, for example, tells us that the people of Israel left Egypt only to find themselves in “the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpians.”   And it was in this scary place that Jesus spent forty days at the very beginning of his ministry, confronted by wild beasts and intense evil temptation.   

However, the wilderness is at other times also described in the Bible as a place of safe sanctuary, of refuge, a location for worship and remembering God’s covenant promises.   That scary wilderness in the time of the great exodus was, after all, also where the bitterly complaining Israelites experienced miraculous reminders that God was guiding them and providing for them every step of the way.    And Jesus was survived and thrived during his dramatic wilderness days by prayerfully relying on divine power.   

The tangible history of the Israelites and of Jesus thus also frames the wilderness as a figure of speech.  So when we read of “wilderness,” we are inspired to consider not only a physical terrain, but also our inner, spiritual terrain – the place within our hearts and minds where we experience great fear for our lives and have our faith tested; the place where the temptation to turn against God most sinfully summons as well where we can respond by boldly calling upon God’s gracious power to deliver us. 

Why are we having this brief Bible study?  Well, where did John the Baptist live and minister?   In the wilderness!   A hostile setting is where God spoke to John about his true purpose in life, his holy calling.    This same divine word had inspired John’s mother, Elizabeth, to say to her pregnant relative Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” (Luke 1:28). This same divine word had motivated John’s father, Zechariah, to declare that his newborn son would be “called the prophet of the Most High,” a child born to grow-up to “give knowledge of salvation” by going before the Lord to “prepare his ways.” (Luke 1:76).   

We know from our lesson this morning that this is exactly how John’s life unfolded.    He was first strongly steeped in desert solitude.  Once brewed to the proper intensity, to the bold flavor of his calling, John then stepped out to the edge of the wild life and directly to people’s mainstream living.  There, he called for repentance – for people to turn away from sin and turn back toward God.   He did so to point a firm finger in the direction of his Jesus, the light of the world, from whose fullness all receive grace upon grace.    When confronted about this by the religious authorities of his day, the Pharisees, unabashedly announced that he was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy (Isa. 40:3) – the voice crying out in the wilderness to declare the arrival of  the “greater one” standing among them, the Christ they had been waiting for.    

Can you imagine what his tone of voice probably sounded like?   Chances are a bold, fierce, frightening voice of warning first comes to mind … a voice that matches a desert dwelling prophet decked out in prickly camel-hair clothing and with breath saturated in the scent of wild honey and desert locust meat.  

I do believe, though, there was something else resonating through John’s voice.   Something unmistakable for someone so powerfully aware of God’s abiding presence, of the Good News of God’s plan of salvation unfolding not just in some cosmic spiritual realm but directly in the flesh.    There just had to be joy in that voice, joy in declaring the fullness of grace upon grace for all humankind through the person of Jesus.

This joy was forged in his heart through the Holy Spirit.  And again, to my main point this morning, it was forged directly through his wilderness experiences.  

Case in point, I just mentioned his desert diet of wild honey and locusts.   Sounds rather gross to us, but to John, focused on surviving in a hostile environment, these were desert delights.  With all of the threats he had to guard against in that way of life – from hungry beasts to isolating depression – he did not lose sight of the fact that in the wilderness experience, there is plentiful, holy provision to be found that brings joy to the heart and soul. 

In the case of the desert locust, there was an additional plus.   Recall that at the announcement of John’s birth it was declared that he was to grow up as a person of ritual purity.   Whatever food he found find in the desert might have not been an option.   Keeping his spirit clean just might well have trumped keeping his belly full.      From learning his scriptures, however, we assume he knew Leviticus 11:22, which indicated God regarded the desert locust as a clean creature. He therefore knew eating these green-brown winged critters would not defile him.   Plus, I understand they nourished him well, for fifty percent of a dried locust is composed of valuable protein![i]   Joy!

There is something else joyful about the imagery of eating locusts in the desert that is worth mentioning.    After they hatch and are fed, they leave their solitary life behind.  They join up together, forming masses to cover the ground.    Now … John fed on the wild life until it was time to leave that behind, his time to be the voice crying out from the wilderness.   That’s when he joined up with other people, recruiting disciples for his ministry.   That meant more mass covering the ground of declaring the Good News of the Messiah.    So in addition to the joy of having locusts to feed on, perhaps he also had the joyful inspiration of how to prepare the world for Emmanuel – through great gatherings of witnesses!  

You and I don’t live in a wilderness.   True enough, compared to the urban and suburban environments I was accustomed to before moving here, my first year or so living in this area kind of felt like it.   And some of you may well have had some actual wilderness living at some point in your lives.   Today, though, we don’t live in a desert wilderness the likes of which we hear about in the Bible.   Yet we do have our own kinds of wilderness experiences.   The good kind that reenergizes and reconnects us to the life that is in all of creation, as when we go spend time in the woods or go on some great outdoor adventure.   And we have the tougher kind too – the wilderness found in our innermost terrain of heart and mind.   We have wildernesses of loneliness, of grief, of fear, of economic hardship, of social exclusion … to name a few.    In both places of wilderness, we come to realize and recognize anew that God is always providing for us, always strengthening us for meeting and proclaiming the Christ who is ever present.  

 I recently read and related to one man’s particular wilderness … and it’s one we all live in as well.  The difference is, this guy’s a bit like John the Baptist in terms of what he calls us to do.  I’m speaking of a Texas Christian University professor named Jeff Ferrell.    

On the one hand, he is a respected academic who lectures on sociology and criminology and has written nine books.  He looks like he’d fit in perfectly fine on the cast of the television show C.S.I.  

On the other hand, he has a reputation as an urban scrounger, as a profoundly committed dumpster diver.     He does so to find all sorts of stuff that should have been donated or recycled.   He then diligently donates or recycles them.   But … he also lives off of other people’s discards … his clothing, his home furnishings, and he has no aversion to nourishing himself with prepackaged food he finds.   This authentic, high energy, spiky-haired PhD’s lifestyle of reclaiming waste is paired with his passionate teaching about the ill effects of consumerism.   “I think it’s appalling on the level of just sheer waste and full landfills … it’s also profoundly disturbing given the level of need in our society,” he said during a recent interview.    His main point of emphasis is on how the constant rush, rush, rush of American culture cultivates the habit of just throwing things away.   He knows that much of the stuff found at the wilderness edge of society has great value.    He clothes and nourishes himself with it.    In the wastelands, he finds provisions and uses these to strengthen his call to repent of behavior that casually tosses poverty of body and spirit aside, behavior that inhibits joy in the community of all God’s children.

What wildernesses have you experienced in the past, might you be experiencing right now?    Figuratively speaking, what sort of wild honey and desert locust sustained and strengthened your faith?       

Christmas Eve truly is coming right up.   Blink and it will be here.   Our Sunday morning Advent journey has led us through hope by way of Isaiah 64, through love by way of Psalm 85, and today, joy by way of John the Baptist.   None of these sacred texts are gentle greeting card interpretations of hope, love and joy.   Each calls us to seriously examine the way we abide by our faith as we prepare to revisit the silent night our Savior became fully present to the world.  Practically speaking, just think about what it means to prepare for child’s birth.   There is a lot of material planning that happens … but there’s also an emotional and spiritual inventory taking place.    This Advent and Christmas season we should be doing no less as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the Son of God.    May you experience the deep blessing of joyful reminders in the wilderness, and may your faith be refreshed the remainder of your personal Advent journey and our Advent adventure together as faithful people in Christ.   Amen.

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[i] Zondervan Dictionary of Biblical Imagery “LOCUST”

Listening, Loving Hearts

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13

 

                

There sure are lots of acronyms enmeshed in American culture, in the USA.    At least once a week I ask my daughters if they would like a PBJ, a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich.   In lots of conversations I’ll either say or hear a reference to being or not being PC, Politically Correct.  There always seems to be good reason to say FYI, For Your Information.     When wondering what exact time someone is going to show up at my office or home, I’ll ask them about their ETA, Estimated Time of Arrival.     As a pastor of the PC(USA), the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, I will on occasion need to consult the BOO, the Book of Order as well as the BOP, the Board of Pensions.  

I could definitely offer a very long list of the many words formed from the initial letters of set phrases.    But this morning, it’s an acronym that originated in my mind one day while parenting that I hope will be helpful for us to know as we reflect on today’s Psalm and what love means in the context of this Advent season

How many of you have children and grandchildren who, when asked to do something, always listen the very first time the request is made?   Now, and on the other hand, how many of you have to make repeated requests?   In home life with my dear daughters, I admit I’m often on repeat.   Then, with impatient frustration, I very often exclaim, Listen the First Time!   So often, in fact, this phrase gave birth to a new household acronym – LIFT.   How well the acronym is responded to may not be much better than if I use the full phrase, but I enjoy saying it anyway!   “Children, FYI, our ETA is 7:30, so LIFT and let’s get those PBJ’s made!”

When I read Psalm 84, I’m inspired to wonder how many times throughout history God might have shouted LIFT in our direction.    God is always speaking.   God speaks through every page of Scripture, straight to our hearts and minds through the power of the Holy Spirit.  God speaks as well through hymns, sermons, Bible studies and through every day conversations and interactions.   How well do we listen the first time? How often is God on repeat?

            

I find the human frustration children not listening the first time rises out of a desire to be heard, respected, and ultimately trusted for having the family’s best interests at heart.   It is not arbitrary -- it is firmly rooted in deep abiding love.  Direct, loving communication is needed as a constant in family life.  

            

Since each of us was knit together at our birth by the abiding love of our Creator, it seems true enough from reading the Scriptures that God gets frustrated when we fail to listen.   This, in turn, can become frustration for our faithful family life.    While God’s grace covers all failures, we aren’t excused from diligently working toward a healthy, mutually loving relationship with God and with one another.  We need to listen with love, to declare, along with the Psalmist, “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak …”    

            

How well do you welcome this divine, community of love building communication?    What blocks you from intentionally making time to lovingly listen to God?

            

Asking questions like these is what I do when I meet people one on one for spiritual direction.    Spiritual direction is a set-apart time from other pastoral duties where I prayerfully discern with someone where God might be most actively engaging that person’s daily life.   It’s a special, intentional time for listening to sacred love.   Just a quick reminder– I am available as a Spiritual Director (which, come to think of it, is more like being a Spiritual Connector!) to you, your loved ones, your friends, pretty much whomever wants to be intentional about the time.  

            

I mention it here because when I was training for certification in this field of ministry, my favorite required reading was a book called The Awakened Heart.   It was written by Gerald May, an M.D. who practiced medicine and psychiatry for twenty-five years before becoming a truly inspiring teacher of contemplative spiritual practices.   

            

In May’s chapter “Loving the Source of Love,” he writes how having a more child-like faith can help us be more directly attentive to God’s presence in our lives.   In a beautiful turn of phrase, he invites us to consider the “unadmitted sparkle of the child” we each have within us.   In this sparkle, he encourages us to recognize that we have, to quote him directly, “a sometime longing to climb into God’s father lap, to nestle against God’s motherly breast, to rest for a moment in the shadow of God’s wings … held in God’s strong and tender arms.”  Following this affirmation, he continues with this question – “If you could allow yourself to feel it, are there not times when you would love to cry on God’s shoulder, to let God tell you are worthwhile and beautiful?”   

            

I sure find this to be a rhetorical question … especially since I believe we are spiritually hard-wired to crave this attention and nurture from our Creator.     Dr. May follows next with some blunt bit of advice.    “Dispense with your maturity for a moment and indulge yourself … direct relationship with God is the one place where you can be absolutely trusting of your desire and give it full reign.  You will never know how safe the place is until you risk being in it fully.”

            

All relationships require this risk … this deepening of trust of between our most basic desires and another person.   It’s so much more so with our first love, the love that never lets us go … the love we experience with God.  

              

I surely hear this spiritually-centering risk in the Psalmist’s voice.   It’s not a voice making academic sounding statements about the reality of God.   It’s a voice confessing the basic need to turn the human heart toward heavenly hope.   It’s the voice of a child of God waiting on a holy, loving, parental kiss.    Evidence of this kiss takes form, sings the Psalmist, wherever God’s steadfast love and our faithfulness meet, wherever signs of God’s deep peace and our right living share intimacy.   

           

In this Advent season, we are preparing ourselves to be reminded on Christmas Eve when and where and why this holy kiss most fully happened in the course of human history.  We are preparing our imaginations to enter into ancient history and hear God directly speaking to us of love, beginning with the gleeful gurgles of a newborn infant so tender and mild.   

            

Yet so much of our preparation time for this intimate audience with the Almighty gets audibly blasted by commercial begging and the sounds of stress within and around us.   The space we should be creating to listen in love for what God has to say to us gets so easily crowded out by extra demands on our time and drains on our energy.     We get culturally forced to focus more on mommy kissing Santa Claus than on Christ come to kiss our sin away.     The life presented to us by Psalm 84 – a life “portrayed as full, complete, and healthy … lived to the fullest in relationship with God as part of a community of faith”[i] – gets squeezed into commercialized spaces.    We get repeatedly tempted to replace thoughts about right living with God with obsessions about getting the right gifts and having the right décor.  

            

All the while, I honestly believe God cries out, LIFT!  Listen to the First Time I spoke saying “Let there be light” and declared all of Creation good.  Listen to the First Time I spoke to humankind saying “Be fruitful and multiply” along with invitation to be faithful companions and stewards of all.    Listen to the First Time I warned of the dire consequence of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.    Listen to the First Time I made covenant promises and cried out through prophets.  Listen to the First Time I directly took a human breath and cried out for love.   

            

A fellow preacher’s blog, which can be found at www.theharestquestion.com, has this insightful conclusion about the meaning of Psalm 84 – “God does not deny the inherent tensions in the nature of humanity, the capacity for great love and great deceit,” for “love and faithlessness” but “God does not consider these tensions reason to alter God’s plan for our creation.”   

           

So very true.   God’s plan for wholeness in relationship with us and all of Creation does not ever cease.    We live with and through these tensions, these times of listening and loving and times of turning deaf ear and of denying, because we do believe God’s most precious, most intimate, most communicative plan for creation was birthed in Bethlehem of long ago.    And this good news is one hundred plus percent uplifting!   So may we each turn our hearts and declare our willingness to listen to what the Lord is speaking in love this very moment, in this special hour, on this Advent day.  Amen.

           

                  

           

           

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[i] www.workingpreacher.org, January 28, 2011

Yet, O Lord

 Isaiah 64:1-9

            Ah, another Advent season has arrived.   It has arrived on our church calendars and it has arrived yet again in our hearts and minds.    With our bodies full of thanksgiving and the Black Friday brouhaha behind us, we now focus on this special, sacred time set apart for us as faithful individuals and as a believing community to prepare for Christmas.  It’s time to really ready ourselves for the sacred reason of this season!   When we are intentional about taking this time to spiritually prepare for the “celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem,” we can come to realize that “Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives.”[i]

            Specifically and biblically, we intentionally prepare by spending four weeks reflecting on what the coming – the advent -- of our Emmanuel, of God with us, of Jesus, means for our lives and for this whole world.    In our worship services, we are guided in this consideration by specific biblical topics – today, the topic of hope; on the 4^th, the topic of love; on the 11^th the topic of joy; and peace will be our focus on the 18^th.   Come the beautiful moment of Silent Night, Holy Night, may we light the candle with a fresh fire of holy hope, love, joy and peace ablaze within us.   We start faithfully striking flint today by turning to Isaiah 64 and focusing in on hope.  

            Let’s begin by building a bridge between hope as a broad ideal and hope as an intimate, heartfelt reality.  Stepping on this bridge, consider this question for self-reflection -- What was the most recent request you made?   Further, what exactly was it you needed to be given or have done?   Who did you make this request for favor or courtesy of?  Did you so with a sense of urgency or complacency?    When you stop to think about it, we do make a lot of requests every day.     We do so because we have many needs and because we inherently live with hope that one way or another these needs are going to be attended to.     Hope fuels our need fulfillment.   

            I invited us to think about this because Isaiah 64 begins and ends with request.    The author of the words had a finger on the pulse of his people’s needs and spoke with hope that those needs would be met.    The people are the ancient Israelites and God is squarely the one whose favor is being requested.  

            The request is made in very dramatic, very poetic fashion – “O that You, God, would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake in Your presence.”   This is not a poetically framed request for God to stretch open the sky in order to come down, strike fear and destroy.    It is instead a request for God to come and be directly present in order to fire things up the way fire kindles brushwood and boils water.   

            The request for God’s presence reflects a historic time of conflict within the Jewish community.   A great many people had returned to Jerusalem after having been forced to live in exile some sixty years in the neighboring Babylonian Empire (present day Iraq).    Upon their return, there was a commonly felt great hope amongst the Jewish people for Jerusalem to be restored to its former glory.  “All hopes were pinned to that return,” writes one Bible scholar, for “coming home to Jerusalem was going to mean the end of all Israel’s shame and discontent.”[ii]   Can you relate, as I sure can, to having a great hope that God’s children can somehow come home together to a common holy place and be liberated from sin and discord?

            Alas, instead of the great community abiding by a unifying faithful fire, power struggles blazed amongst the people.   Conflict crackled.  Divisiveness simmered.    “Problems multiplied rather than disappeared; ugliness and evil continued to exist.”[iii]    The need and hope of holy restoration was thus pulled down by lamentable sinful behavior.        

            Isaiah’s prophetic word to this community was even more metaphorically dramatic than his request to the Almighty.  He compared the people to filthy, faded cloth – the kind of filth that clearly marked them as ritually unclean and impure before the Lord.    A gross rag sure is a hopeless image.   He further gave voice to the fear that God had been so angry about the people sinfully soiling themselves into this condition that God had decided to turn away from receiving requests and realizing hopes.  

            But great prophets call out people’s sin in order to inspire them to return to a vigorous hope in the greatness of God.   So we read in Isaiah 64 the reminder that God had done some unexpected, totally awesome deeds throughout Hebrew history.  Implied here are such moments as the miraculous delivery from enslavement in Egypt, the mercy of manna given to griping people in exodus, and the mighty military hand shown through a shepherd boy with his iddy-biddy slingshot.  Isaiah not only reminded the people, but also God.  We hear this in Isaiah’s plea -- “Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever … consider, we are all Your people.” (64:9)

            Inspired by this Scripture, we can conclude that there are two essential aspects of living with holy hope.   First, we are reminded that despite laments, hope comes alive each time God’s past unexpected acts of deliverance are recalled.   And second, we are reminded hope also comes alive when we acknowledge our sin and make humble requests for God to yet again mercifully, miraculously deliver us.

            What do these two reminders about hope have to do with Advent?   Doesn’t it sound more like they belong more to the repentant season of Lent?  

            Last week, I mentioned that our Christ the King celebration marked the end of the year on the church calendar.   Today, the first Sunday in Advent, then, is like New Year’s Day.   It marks not only the beginning of our preparation for Christmas, for the birth of Jesus, but also our preparation for Jesus as the Christ who is fully revealed to us at Easter and whose reign we live in as Easter people.   It’s not coincidental that the color purple marks our sanctuary during both Advent and Lent.   So this is indeed a time for repentant self-reflection, of realizing and turning away from behavior that burns down instead of builds up faith as we live alongside our loved ones and neighbors near and far.  Along with Isaiah, we do so not to feel guilty and live only in lament that God has justifiable reason to hide from us forever.   We do so to name it while also saying “Yet, O Lord …” in order to turn our full attention to hoping in the Holy One who acts to deliver us from sin in awesome, unexpected ways. 

            When God spoke through Isaiah, we can trust the divine plan was already in full-swing for God to “tear open the heavens and come down” in the most completely astonishing, earth-shaking way ever.    Not by angry thunderbolt and lightening, but by gentle, darkness illumining starlight; the starlight that shone on field-filthy, socially outcast shepherds and on wealthy, worldly respected wise men alike.   Not by a massive physical display of military and political might, but by way of a fragile-fleshed human child born to an impoverished family.    We must faithfully contemplate that the ultimate coming down and our ultimate hope began with simple, stark reality.   It began by entering the physical cells of sinfully soiled humanity.   It began by eternal revelation made in the midst of lowly manger mud.  

            Perhaps you have made a recent request of your loved ones expressing your hope for a certain gift you feel you want or need to receive this Christmas?             If so, also intentionally take time this Advent season to lament sin, to consider all of humanity’s truest need and to make a humble request of God to please come down to hearts and minds and give us all afresh the greatest gift of all – the gift of Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus.   Amen.

             

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[i] Edward Hays, http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/teachers/teachers.php?id=109

[ii] Diane Jacobson, “Isaiah in Advent: The Transforming Word” page 384

[iii] ibid

Thy Kingdom Care

Matthew 25:31-46

            


Despite my having the utmost reverence for the King Jesus described in this morning’s Gospel passage, I really can’t say I’m eager to meet Him.    Frankly, I find this King Jesus more than a bit frightening.    I read the fiery words of condemnation about those seated at His left hand -- those He judges as cursed -- and I feel intimidated down to the most cluttered basement corner of my soul.   The word our pew Bibles translate as “cursed” can also be translated even more bluntly as “doomed.”   On the eternity sized bench of divine judgment, I do not want to be seated even one millimeter to the left of this King Jesus.   

            The condemning declaration against those who do not follow the ways of this King not only intimidates me, it kind of irritates me too.   I’m generally one who favors preaching about Christ’s all-inclusive, loving grace.  I guess you could say the harsh tone gets my goat.     Plus, earlier this week, when I first re-read this widely recommended passage for Christ the King Sunday, I felt like I’m far too docile a person to preach about people being segregated into the “eternal fire prepared for the devil.”  It’s safe to say I felt – what’s the right word? – well, I felt sheepish about speaking to this passage.

            However, it’s a good and faithful discipline not to ignore Bible passages just because they irritate or intimate you.   Comfortable or not, it’s all the Word of the Lord.  It’s all there for the sheep and the goats and the great purpose of being the definitive guide for righteous living.  We do have a choice, though, for how we choose to primarily interpret it.  

            We can choose to first and foremost focus on and proclaim this as a scary Scripture lesson.   Among other reasons for this not being my first choice is the fact that I grew up in an abusive situation and was consistently scared by frightening language.   So I can say that strong condemning language doesn’t exactly inspire me to feel loved and to love others for who they are and where they are at.   It triggers angry, resentful and generally combative feelings.  And that is not good news in any way shape or form.  Can you relate?    

            I do acknowledge and respect our Lord’s authority as eternal judge, especially since any negative judgment is the result of the sin humankind sows.   But this lesson has an even more potent point.   It is a very clear invitation to follow Jesus rightly by faithfully and blessedly loving ourselves and our neighbors as He loves.     I don’t find this passage is meant to scare the hell out of us so much as it intends to inspire heavenly life into us!

            Teaching about what heavenly life here on earth under the reign of Christ is like truly is the most potent point of Matthew 25.     Yes, it’s a parable that shocks us to attention.  But it does so to then settle us into the teaching of how we disciples of the Son of Man are to love Him and love like Him.    Matthew was intentional in using “Son of Man” instead of “Son of God” as his title for Jesus in this text -- it’s the title that always points to his selfless, sacrificial suffering on earth.  It’s a cue to let us readers know Jesus’ judgment is based on His incarnate example.

                So when you and I pray and declare “Thy Kingdom Come” do we do so primarily to remind ourselves and others that eternal judgment will be upon our souls one day?   Or do we do so to reassure ourselves and others that as wounded as this world is, God’s reign of love, justice and peace in Jesus is and will forever prevail?    I pray we pray to foremost feel reassured and inspired to faithful action.  I pray that as we speak the words to Jesus, “Thy Kingdom come,” we simultaneously say to ourselves, “Thy Kingdom Care.”

            Our eternal king is not a power-hungry, people abusing, self-serving autocratic Pharoah.   The Gospels bear consistent witness that our eternal king is a selflessly caring and universally compassionate sovereign whose reign is all about God redeeming the injustices of sin.    To be His subjects, his ambassadors, his -- in keeping with our parable this morning—the sheep of His fold, is to make serving this divine government our daily priority.     Our king led by flawless, bold example while physically on earth.   Our king now continues to govern our hearts and minds in this way through the power of His Holy Spirit, power that is given by grace and received and lived through faith.  

            How, then, are we to live into Christ’s kingdom and in doing so inherit it and build it on earth as it is in heaven?    Matthew’s message for today is crystal clear -- be the sheep and not the goats.   Faithfully follow the Good Shepherd in doing the caring, sin rectifying things Jesus was born to do instead of obstinately, sinfully ignoring them.    Some of these are very plainly named for us in Matthew 25.

            Where there is hunger and thirst, offer food and drink.   We are summoned by our King to offer nourishment to anybody lacking the basic human necessities needed to be alive.   As we share in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper today, spiritually feast being mindful of these neighbors and ask God how you can go forth in this season of thanksgiving as a holy ambassador.

            Where there is estrangement, offer welcome.   Those we may consider strangers are not strangers to Jesus.  They are beloved friends.   Absolutely every one of them.  And so our King summons us to address all shunning prejudices, non-inclusive practices and gross injustices against our neighbors near and far.   By doing so, we help rebuild our communities and this hurting world in His holy image.

            Where there is nakedness and sickness, offer clothing and healing.   Nakedness takes many forms.  You know the most obvious and what this means in terms of body warmth and social acceptance.   In the Scriptures, it’s worth noting that it also functions as a way of naming shame.    The nakedness of Adam and Eve before God was less about their physical condition and more about their mortified spiritual condition once the sickness of sin factored into their lives.    As our king summons us to clothe and heal, then, we should be mindful that this is about our soul-care as well as body-care.

            On a similar note, where there is imprisonment, offer visitation.   While I miss going to the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Graterford during the Advent season, which I did with the men’s group at my previous church, I also know there are other times of imprisonments needing to be visited.    People are imprisoned by loneliness, by a myriad of physical and mental diseases, by paralyzing grief, by economic despair, by lack of feeling loved and accepted for who they are as precious children of God and so forth.   Our king summons us to visit these realities and these neighbors in prayer and in person.  

            We consider all of these on this Christ the King Sunday, the last day of the year on the church calendar before we start anew with the season of Advent next week.    For truly I tell you, our caring King has said for our repeated hearing, whatever you have or have not done for “one of the least of these followers of mine” you did or did not do it for me.  (Matthew 25:40, Good News translation).   

            And friends, we are not just subjects of our caring king Christ Jesus … even more beautifully we are all His royal family.    Like all families, there can be great drama mixed in with great love.     We have to thank Jesus for dramatically pointing out what I would find to be the most painful part such sacred sovereign duty, the part about judging and segregating unrepentant sinners and unresponsive ambassadors.     We have to thank him for this shock to our system the way we are thankful for pool water being shocked with cleaning agent.    We are further thankful that in His Kingdom all the street signs direct us to keep right.    And that at every entrance way, there is a sign that reads “Come, you that are blessed … inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” 

             Yes, yes, Lord, good sovereign of all, Thy kingdom care.   Amen.