Month: December 2023

Calm

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Scripture Text: Isaiah 2: 1-5

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. 3Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

This passage is actually from the first Sunday of Advent for Year A.  (See, to write every day, I usually have to add Scriptures.)  It is familiar, perhaps one of your favorites.  Filled with beautiful imagery, it provides a promise of a reconciliation of God’s people as they stream together to one place, a great gathering with echoes of peace and unity. It’s a hard read in this time of turmoil and war.  That image seems to have slipped farther away than ever.  What can we do?  How are we supposed to be a part of this peaceable kingdom when we’re so afraid and so divided and, yes, so incredibly angry at one another?

The meaning of this season of Advent, like most of our church seasons, is not easily condensed into a pithy phrase.  It’s complicated and nuanced.  See, part of it is remembrance of the past, of the people that wandered for centuries as they waited for a Savior.  That’s why we read Isaiah so much that we might in some way finally know the story of exile and redemption.  Advent is also about our own preparation.  Are our hearts ready for what is next?  Are we prepared to perhaps not just welcome the Christ child in some sort of annual re-creation but to actually change the way we walk from that place?  And, finally, this season is one that beckons us to look ahead to that peaceable kingdom, to the time of peace and unity and that imagined great gathering of God’s people.  But here’s the crux.  This season of preparation is not just about getting your house ready or getting all the gift-buying done or even preparing your heart for Christmas Eve.  That’s only part of it.  We are being asked to do something else.  We are being asked to be a part of calming this world that it might awake to what it is called to be.  We are called to be catalysts of change and instruments of peace.  Rather than merely decorating our trees, we are actually called to do some manger-lining, to prepare for the birth of Christ and the birth of the Kingdom.  Our waiting is not passive.  We are called to be part of it.

What in the world does that mean?  I’m so bothered by our world right now.  I pray for peace.  But I don’t think that’s enough.  See, I’d like to be a pacifist.  I think it is the way of Christ.  I think it is the way to be human.  But my pacifism flew out the window when I walked into Auschwitz.  When you step across the train tracks that brought humans in cattle cars to their demise, when you walk across the noisy sharp rocks that still remain on the floor of the camp, and when you enter the barracks with scratches in the walls where someone tried to maintain their sanity and dignity, you begin to realize that peace is not merely an absence of war. 

Auschwitz has piles of things that were unearthed when the camp was freed and all of these belongings are there to help us remember.  I was drawn to a suitcase, a suitcase with the name Anna Kraus on it.  My grandmother’s maiden name was Krause, so the name caught my eye.  I’ve thought a lot about her over the years and, particularly, over the last few months.  In recent years, there have been great strides in completing the database of the victims of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.  Now I know.  She was born May 19, 1898.  Her last residence was the district of Seegasse in Vienna.  She was transported from Vienna to Terezin and then from Terezin to Auschwitz on October 23, 1944 with 1,713 other deportees.  Of those 1,517 were murdered.  Anna was one of those.  Now I know.

Now we know.  What now?  What part do we have in lining the manger for the birth of that Kingdom?  This season of Advent is the one that calls us to do that.  As I said, I’d like to be a pacifist but maybe I don’t have the stomach for it.  I believe that the people of Israel have a right to defend themselves.  I believe that for Anna.  I also believe that the people of Palestine have a right to safety and dignity and, yes, a place to live, a place to thrive. I believe that we have to speak out against anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim rhetoric.  I believe that we should always speak out against any notion of certain races or certain ethnicities or certain ways of life or certain ways of worship being better or more deserving than the next.  I believe in that great gathering with all of us streaming into the Peaceable Kingdom.  I believe that each of us has our own part in lining that manger for the birth, a part in beating all the swords into plows.  Peace is not merely an absence of war.  In Hebrew, Shalom is more about wholeness or completeness.  If people do not have dignity and freedom, if they are not whole or complete, peace is not present.  I think peace is perhaps more of a calming of rhetoric, a calming of anger, a calming of violence, a calming of the world we know that it might become what God envisions it to be.  God will bring the Peaceable Kingdom to be.  But perhaps we are called to line the manger with a world that is calm enough to know that.  Because now we know.

There is a Muslim prayer for peace that prays, “In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful.  Praise be to the Lord of the Universe, who has created us and made us into tribes and nations, that we may know each other, not that we may despise each other.”

Shalom to you as you do your part in the manger-lining.  May this Advent be a season of Peace.

Peace does not come rolling in on the wheels of inevitability.  We can’t just wish for peace.  We have to will it, fight for it, suffer for it, demand it from our governments as if peace were God’s most cherished hope for humanity, as indeed it is.  (William Sloane Coffin)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Lament

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Scripture Text: Isaiah 64: 1-9 (Advent 1B)

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— 2as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

6We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.

I’m backtracking a little and going back and picking up some of the Scriptures from yesterday’s lectionary.  And, yes, this passage assigned to us as the Old Testament reading for the first week of Advent seems a little dark and dreary.  I know.  You’re ready for some twinkling lights and perhaps a star and some signs of hope.  But we get a lament.  How does a lament fit in with this season?

The truth is that our culture, particularly in this country, doesn’t handle laments well.  I don’t know if we’re too shaped by our English Puritan roots or what.  But somewhere along the way, we became convinced that all of those things that go wrong, all those things that are uncomfortable, all of those things that involve grief and such, should be pushed down, or bottled up, or hidden away in the junk drawer of our lives.  So, when we lose those we love, when health issues don’t seem to cooperate with the life that we envisioned for ourselves, when things just do not go according to our plans, we tend to hide them away.  We are taught to be strong, even stoic at times.  And we are convinced that there is a proper way to grieve and an expected and timely way to move on.

So, consequently, reading laments is an odd, if not uncomfortable, practice for us.  Take this one, for instance.  The Israelites have returned home after years in exile.  But home was not the same.  It would never be the same.  The Temple (the place where they knew God was) had been destroyed.  And in their search for God, for a God that seemed elusive or even hidden, they began to look at their own lives and name their grief and pray a prayer of lament.  But how does that fit into Advent?

Well, see, we’re often told to move on.  Do we really move on?  Do we really put those things away or do they just continue to gnaw at the comfortable parts of our lives?  Is that really the best way to handle our grief and our losses and our failed expectations?  Maybe we should take a lesson from our brothers and sisters who are immigrants or refugees or part of the African, Middle Eastern, or African American traditions.  They openly wail their grief and pound their chests in atonement.  Their lament is tangible.  It can be felt.  It can be heard.  It can be shared. It can be named.  And in that naming, it is claimed.  And in its midst, God enters.

I have lived most of my life with little loss.  That changed over the last seven years or so.  In those years, I have lost people I love, a beloved dog, as well as my own well-being and security.  I have lost what I expected to be.  I remember when my wonderful friend Suzy died of ovarian cancer, I tried to be strong, to “move on” the way that everyone expects you to do (particularly as a pastor—for some reason people don’t want their pastor to grieve uncontrollably).  I did fine for several months and then at Annual Conference that year, where Suzy and I usually sat together and ate together and caught up with our lives, I heard her name read in worship and I collapsed into sobs.  I was pretty much given the impression from one of the other clergy that that probably wasn’t acceptable.  I didn’t care.  It was cleansing.  It was prayerful.  It was lament.

Re-read the lament.  Or write your own.  No, we don’t “move on”.  That’s a farce.  What we do is we walk the journey of lament.  We name our grief or our loss and we claim it.  And into our grief and our despair and our loss, God comes.  God comes not as a magic Band Aid that fixes our problems but as a Master Creator that re-orders them.  We do not move on.  We are never rid of them; instead, they are redeemed and recreated.

In this season of Advent, we are sometimes tempted to put our best face on, to work to make the season one of joy and memories.  But the season calls us to be fully ourselves, to be the ones into whose lives God enters.  Maybe a few laments wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe some good old-fashioned wailing will make us realize what God offers us.  Maybe sharing with others will lead to transformation for all of us.  God doesn’t wait to enter until everything is perfect.  That was never the deal. God enters when transformation is at hand.  God enters when God is needed the most.  So, maybe go ahead and clean out that junk drawer!

Spirituality is the ability to live with ambiguity. (Ray Anderson)

I have sort of been on a Carrie Newcomer kick, so I guess you are too! She is Quaker. Her mentor is writer Parker Palmer, whose writings many of you may have read. She has a rich catalog of music that echoes peace, love of others, the beauty of this world, and a deep and abiding spirituality and belief in the God who is always and forever coming into our lives. I hope some of her music will bring you the joy and peace it brings me.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Awakening

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Scripture Text: Mark 13: 24-37 (Advent 1B)

24“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

28“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

32“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

‘Tis the season!  Advent is here, the time of preparation, the time of waiting, the time of that somewhat always-chaotic march to Christmas Day.  And, at the risk of stressing you out even more than you already are, this year’s season is even shorter than usual since the fourth Sunday of Advent is actually Christmas Eve!  So, yes, this year we have only three weeks of Advent.  What is THAT about?  So, we begin…

I know Advent is here because the stores have their holiday décor out, I’ve heard one or two Christmas carols, and I keep seeing that commercial where the red and green Hershey kisses play “Carol of the Bells”.  And, yet, there are things in the world that do not seem to echo the joyousness of the season.  There is still a war in Ukraine, a seemingly endless war only because boundaries were not honored and greed ensued, and now the Middle East has become a veritable powder keg of violence and distrust between neighbors.  And we find ourselves getting pulled into it in a way, find ourselves dealing with anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, find ourselves being forced to choose sides in a war that has way more than two sides, a war that is nuanced so that many things can be true at once, find ourselves fighting to keep our own democracy and defend it against corruption and authoritarian creep and those that think they should control others and inflict their beliefs on those around them.  And this Scripture doesn’t really help.  Why do we have to read about suffering and the end times on this first Sunday of Advent? What happened to that angel coming to Mary and Mary doing her pondering thing and everyone being joyfully reminded that the world was with child?

Read it again.  This Scripture is not about the end times.  This Scripture is about now.  This Scripture is about us.  See, if we look at this Advent season as only a season of preparation, a season of waiting for what follows this, for what comes next, we miss out.  If we spend this Advent season trying to somehow forget the world that spins around us, trying to ignore those things that make us uncomfortable, that we might have our ideal fill of nostalgia, we’re not giving this season it’s due.  This season, like the Scripture in today’s lectionary, is not a call to merely get ready for the next season; it is a call to an awakening.  This season is our awakening.  This season calls us to wipe the sleep from our eyes and, rather than just waiting, to be a part of what comes next.

The world is still at war, both actually and figuratively.  We are still fighting each other over our beliefs and our quest for power, over our control of each other’s lives, over our differences and our diversity in which God created each of us.  We try our best but sometimes the world seems to be splitting apart at the seams.  And into this world, into this messed up little world, God comes.  But we have to pay attention.  We have to stay alert.  We have to become those who stay awake.  Something new is about to happen.  Maybe the world will or will not get better.  Maybe the wars will or will not end.  Maybe nothing around you will change.  But you will.  And that makes it worth waking up. Here’s to this joyful season, the time of your great awakening!

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn. (Henry David Thoreau)

OK, I’m back. I’ll try to post something each day during this Advent season (short though it is!). I hope it aids you in your journey and your great awakening! Do me a favor. Don’t just read it. Digest it. And then comment back. It helps me and it adds to what others are reading. Let’s journey together! Drop me a line and invite others to either read or follow!….Shelli