Author: shelliwilliams

The Other Story

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Matthew 1: 18-25 (Advent 4A)

18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah* took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ 22All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23 ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
   and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is with us.’ 24When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

So, here, we get the story of the annunciation.  Wait, didn’t we talk about the annunciation yesterday?  No, this is the OTHER one.  This is the other side of the story.  We’re guilty of skipping over it, this calling of Joseph.  I suppose it’s pretty easy.  After all, he doesn’t even talk.  We really know very little about him. We know he was from Nazareth, a sort of no-name town in Galilee.  We can surmise that he was a carpenter because Jesus is described as the son of a carpenter several times in Scripture.  And we know that he was engaged, or actually betrothed to Mary.  This is not like our engagement.  This was a marital contract.  It just wasn’t consummated.  They were not just dating.  But you know what?  Joseph had plans.  He had some idea laid out of how his life would go.  And, when you think about it, Joseph had to be hurt, probably even angry at Mary.  And then came the dream.  (What is it about Josephs and dreams?)

The writer known as Matthew is the only one that gives Joseph his moment.  But, interestingly enough, he doesn’t even get a chance to ask a question (like, “How can this be?”)  or voice his opinion or perhaps shake his fist in utter disbelief.  I don’t know if it’s the moment or the Scripture, but Joseph is somehow rendered speechless.  He’s not even given a small speaking role.  Instead, Joseph, who had apparently already decided what he was going to do (a plan that it should be noted in the face of the tradition was merciful and compassionate).  He was going to quietly dismiss her.  And, I suppose, Joseph would have faded into the pages of the story with no other mention.  Perhaps Mary could have gotten help from her cousins.  They probably would have put her up.  And Jesus and John would have grown up like brothers.  It could have all worked out, but a better story was waiting.  Because in this moment, Joseph is handed a dream.

It was apparently a wild fit of a dream.  I mean, the Lord came.  That cannot have been a comfortable situation.  And, true to form, God tells him not to be afraid.  “Oh, no,” Joseph thought, “I have read this before.  When the Lord tells you not to be afraid, things tend to happen–things like the floor of your world on which your standing giving way and you falling uncontrollably into something that you never imagined and for which you certainly could never have planned.  Hold on!”  And the Lord hands him a story that doesn’t even make sense.  Joseph is being asked to step back into the story.  And oh, what a story it has become.  Joseph is being asked to raise the child that IS the Messiah.  Joseph is being asked to love him and guide him and discipline him (Good grief, how do you discipline a Messiah?  I mean, does he get like some sort of Divine time out?)  Joseph is even told what to name the child—Emmanuel, “God With Us”.

Well, I’m betting that Joseph’s first thought when he awoke was that he had eaten some bad lamb or something.  He probably laid there for a few minutes processing it all.  I mean, remember, the verses before the ones we read remind us that Joseph was descended from a long line of dreamers.  In fact, old Grandpa Jacob (like 34 “greats” ago) had fought back, wrestling until the break of day!  Remember that?  And then Joseph got up and moved out of the way and followed.  He had plans.  He had a reputation to think of.  He had a face that he had to present to the temple.  He had a life.  But Joseph moved aside and fell speechless.  And then, and then God gave him his voice.

The 20th century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who died for speaking out about the Nazi regime, once said that “We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us.  We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.  The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.”[i]

Lays claim to us…This Scripture makes us realize that God’s coming into the world did not just involve God, an angel, and Mary.  Joseph was there too, as were all of those who came before and all of those (including us) who came after.  God’s coming is not just the birth of a baby in a pretty nativity story; God’s coming is the way that God lays claim on us.  God’s coming is the way that God turns all of our lives upside down.  God’s coming is the way that the story changes.

The truth is, there was a story.  And Joseph had written some of his chapters in not realizing that they didn’t lead to the vision that God had in mind.  When I was in seminary, I was privileged to be a part of a small group of students (there were maybe thirty of us) that had a wonderful conversation with John Irving (the author of “A Prayer for Owen Meany”, “The Cider House Rules”, and “The World According to Garp”).  Someone asked what was probably an expected question:  How do you craft your stories?  The answer was probably not as expected.  John Irving said that he always writes the end of the story first and then fleshes out the plot and the characters and the themes to get to that ending.

Don’t you think that’s what God has done?  God has this vision for what the world should be.  And along the way, God calls and comforts and cajoles to coax us toward that ending.  The early chapters are not written.  That’s up to us.  But the ending is the very vision of God.  So, God called Joseph.  Joseph had a story.  He was writing it.  And when he was called, he changed it.  What about us?  We are waiting on the world to change.  What if that vision has already been written?  What if the way we get there, the way the world changes, is us?  What if the change is not the ending but the way the story plays out?  What if our calling is to write a better story?

Home is where your story begins. (Anne Danielson)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

[i] From “The Coming of Jesus in our Midst”, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Watch for the Light:  Readings for Advent and Christmas, December 21

A New Kind of Beautiful

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Luke 1:26-38

26In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

The text says that Mary was much perplexed.  I’ll bet she was!  The truth is, this young girl was so confused at first. Well, of course she was confused!  And on top of that, she was terrified.  You see, to put it into the context in which Mary lived, there is a folktale that is told in the Apocryphal Book of Tobit that tells of a jealous angel who would appear on a bride’s wedding night each time she married and kill her bridegroom. This story, of course, was part of the culture in which Mary lived.  She had grown up hearing that story. And remember, that even though Mary and Joseph had yet to be formally married, they were betrothed.  This is more than just being engaged.  The commitment had already been made.  There had already been a dowry paid. So, Mary could have thought that this angel was coming to kill her bridegroom.  Not only would she lose her intended spouse but she would be left with nothing.  As one who was already betrothed, she would essentially be relegated to the class of widow with no resources.  Then the angel tells her not to be afraid.  Don’t be afraid? Good grief…she was terrified!

I think Mary’s initial response (as its translated in our Scriptures) is one of the most profound phrases ever: “How can this be?” How can this happen when it doesn’t make sense?  Why me?  Why of all the people in the world that you could have chosen, why choose me?  In other words, you have got to be kidding me!  We identify with this.  Even when we intend to obey God, we struggle when it is so far out of the parameters of the life we have or the life that we have planned that is makes no sense.  It is the question of faith. It is what we all ask about our lives.  Because, surely, in this moment, Mary saw her world toppling down.  And the world waited.  God waited.  How can this be?  Because, you see, it CAN’T be–not without God and, interestingly enough, not EVEN without Mary.

The passage tells us that Mary pondered these things.  I love that image of pondering.  So, what does it mean to ponder?  If you read this Scripture, it does not mean thinking something through until you understand it or until you “get it”.   Nowhere does it say that Mary was ever completely sure about what was going to happen.  Nowhere does it say that she ever stopped asking questions, that she ever stopped pondering what this would mean for her life.  It really doesn’t even tell us that she actually stopped being afraid.  Nowhere does it say that she expected this turn of events. 

And then this angel shows up.  What if Mary had said no?  What if her fear or her plans had gotten the best of her?  What if she was just too busy planning for whatever was going to happen next in her life?  What if she was waiting for the world to change before she committed to something that would so drastically change her life?  What if she really didn’t have time to do any pondering today? Now, as much as we’d like to think that we have the whole story of God neatly constructed between the covers of our Bible or on that nifty little Bible app that you have on your iPhone, you and I both know that there is lots of God’s work that is missing.  We really just sort of get the highlights (or at least what the writers think are highlights).  Who knows?  Maybe Mary wasn’t the first one that God asked to do this.  Maybe she was the second, or the tenth, or the 386th.  After all, this is a pretty big deal.  I mean, this pretty much shoots that whole long-term life plan thing out of the water.

But, you see, this story is not just about Mary; it’s also about God.  And through her willingness to ponder, her willingness to let go of the life that she had planned, her willingness to open herself to God’s entrance into her life and, indeed, into her womb, this young, dark-haired, dark-skinned girl from the wrong side of the tracks was suddenly thrust into God’s redemption of the world.  We don’t really know her.  We’re not given a resume’.  We don’t know her family (except for the one cousin that would birth the one known as John the Baptizer).  Who are her people?  Maybe that’s the point.  Because it is in this moment that all those years of envisioning what would be, all those visions that we’ve talked about, all of the waiting, all of the preparing, all of the journeying and planting that the people of God have done, it is here, in this moment, that they begin to be.  This is the moment.  Just let it be.

That’s what this whole Advent journey has been about:  Preparing us to respond, to respond not to the gifts that we think God will bring, not to what we have experienced before, but to what God offers us in this moment. We are no different from Mary.  God is waiting on our response; waiting to hear whether or not we, too, will say “yes” to birthing the Christ Child in our own lives.

What do we miss as we wait for the changes we so desperately want in our world today?  What do we miss when we are unwilling to put ourselves out there, to risk that our lives might dramatically change?  What do we miss when God calls us and we make excuses or turn and look away?  We miss what could be.  We miss the world changing, if only a little bit.  We miss becoming who God sees we can be.  We miss the new kind of beautiful God has waiting for us.  When the world begins to change, even in small ways, have we situated ourselves to see it?  When the world begins to change, where are we?  When the world begins to change, are we so grieving our losses and our sadness and our regrets over the past that we let the beauty that begins to be slip through our fingers?

So, God waits patiently for Mary to respond. The world stops, hangs suspended if only for a time, its very salvation teetering on the brink of its demise. This is a world that is wrought with injustice and poverty, with corrupt leaders and wars, with economic peril.  This is a world like ours.  Oh, sure, if Mary had said no, God could have gone to someone else. Surely God could have found SOMEONE to birth the salvation of the world. But it wouldn’t have been the same. After all, the Divine did not just plunk a far-removed piece of the Godself into a womb. Our understanding is that, yes, the Christ was fully Divine; but Jesus was “born of a woman”, fully human and, as a human, Jesus carried Mary’s unique and specific DNA with him. Mary was not just a container through which God came into this little world. Mary’s DNA, Mary’s response, Mary’s “how can this be?”, Mary’s “yes” is written all through the salvation of the world. In this moment, this moment for which the world has waited, the moment for which we have prepared…in this moment, the history of the world begins to turn.  The Light begins to come into focus and the heavens begin winging their way toward us, full of expectancy, full of hope.  Mary said “yes” and the Divine began to spill in to the womb of the world. Salvation has begun.  The world is with child.  The world is beginning to change.

“What is the good if Mary gave birth to the Son of God 2,000 years ago, if I do not give birth to God today?”  He says that “We are all Mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.” (Meister Eckhart)

Lyrics

… Told my troubled heart don’t worry
Hope is here
The tides are turning

… I can see
I can see
A new light shining down on me
A new way
A new road
Oh to a new kind of beautiful
A new kind of beautiful
Not like it was before
It’s a new kind of beautiful

… Take my hand
The worst is over
Weight is lifting off our shoulders

… I can see
I can see
A new light shining down on me
A new way
A new road
Oh to a new kind of beautiful
A new kind of beautiful
Not like it was before
It’s a new kind of beautiful

… Oh, ohhh
Whoa
A new kind of beautiful
Oh, ohhh
Whoa

… I can see
I can see
A new light shining down on me
A new way
A new road
Oh to a new kind of beautiful

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

A Ritz Cracker and a Run-On Sentence

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Romans 1: 1-7 (Advent 4A)

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, 3the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, 6including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, 7To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

First of all, and I realize that this is totally irrelevant, but does anyone else notice that this passage is just one sentence?  Perhaps Paul was not one for taking lots of breaths.  Or was he almost in a panic-state trying to get the words out?  It was as if his audience was somehow drifting away, heading down a road that he did not think was good, leaving Paul behind in a sense.  So, Paul, seemingly breathless and with more words than a sentence should hold, went chasing after them.  Whatever it is, Paul is reminding his hearers to whom they belong.  Maybe it was his way of trying to call them away from the lure of the world, from what Paul saw as an almost competing society, a competing way of living and being.  See, these people probably had no problem seeing themselves as belonging to Christ, as part of Christ’s kingdom.  I mean, they were new believers.  They were excited.  They were still pumped up from that first evangelical moment that they had experienced.  And yet, there was the Roman Empire looming large around them.  It was hard to refuse.  Who are we kidding?  It was dangerous to refuse.  One could quickly lose everything.

Now I don’t think Paul really wanted them to leave it all behind.  After all, his own identity as a Jew in the Roman Empire was important to him.  He just wanted them to see something different.  He wanted them to see something bigger, something beyond where they were.  He wanted them to realize that it was not that the Roman Empire was where they belonged now and the Kingdom of God was where they were going; but rather, the two existed together.  He wanted people to understand that the Kingdom of God was not the “other way”, not the veritable opposite of the way they were living but rather the “Thing” that encompassed the “thing”.  And maybe they belonged to both things.  (I mean, in our own context, patriotism is not anti-God; it just has the possibility of developing into sort of a misplaced devotion that competes with our spiritual selves.)  All that we are and all that we have and all to which we belong belongs to God.  It is the way God lays claim on us, bursting into our lives as we know them, pouring the very Godself into each and every crevice of our lives until all (yes, ALL) is recreated in the Name of Christ.  We are called not to choose between Christ and the world but to bring Christ to the world.

I once baptized a young child that was eating a Ritz cracker through the whole thing. Now, we don’t usually pass out hor’dourves with the Sacraments, but, really, did that change God’s Presence in that moment?  For that matter, who’s to say that it didn’t make that Presence more real?  (OK, so maybe I’m not as much of a sacramental purist as you thought!)  God’s presence and God’s promise comes wherever one is.  Our calling is to respond to that presence in the midst of the lives we lead.  But that entails learning to see and listen in a way that many of us do not.  We need to appreciate how God calls others into being so that we might be able to better discern our own unique way that God is entering our lives.  And the Ritz?  Well, who hasn’t eaten a Ritz? (And, for me, a little peanut butter) It is not part of the “other” way of living.  All that we have and all that we are belongs to God.  And, you know, that little bit of water that I sprinkled onto that child’s head does not exist in a vacuum.  The choice is not to choose the water or the Ritz.  The choice is not to choose God or empire.  The choice is to follow God through all that is and all that we encounter, to open oneself to becoming new not instead of the old but as even it is made new.

So, here we are one week from Christmas Eve.  I don’t know about you but this whole waiting on the world to change thing is, well, it’s exhausting!  Our world is exhausting.  Sometimes it seems like the “empire”–the power-hungry, money-hungry, allegiance-hungry, affirmation-begging ones that have put themselves in charge—just doesn’t leave a lot of room for the change we so desperately need.  And so, we stay mired in global wars and national gun violence, in acceptance of prejudice and homophobia and racism, in our refusal to allow others into our society.  Journalist and writer Tina Brown (in her Substack Letter “Fresh Hell”) says that we’ve been “liberated to be our worst selves”.  Don’t you think that’s the way Paul felt sometimes?  Don’t you think there were those in that group of first hearers of his Letter to the Roman that felt the same way we do?  I think so.  I want to feel differently than I do.  I want to see and feel that “peace that passeth understanding”.  But, for now, we’re here.  And so is God.  God calls us to be who God calls us to be even in the midst of the empire, even in the midst of our worst selves.

I think that’s the point of Advent—not to lift us out of where we are but to remind us that there is another way to be where we are, that we are not destined to be mired in this, that we are destined to lift it up with us as we journey beyond the muck and the mire.  Maybe God’s Presence is not some big, flashy extravaganza like we’ve been expecting.  Maybe it’s been there all along, sort of like a little bit of water and a Ritz cracker, or maybe more like a baby born into a world that was not ready, that was never ready, a world that couldn’t move over and make room.  Advent is not only about welcoming a King; Advent is about making room for a God who comes into our ordinary lives as an ordinary person into an ordinary (and, yes, very flawed) place and makes it all extraordinary.  Advent is a lot like eating a Ritz cracker through a Holy Sacrament or a run-on sentence that only makes sense when you figure out the context.

There must be always remaining in every one’s life some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and, by an inherent prerogative, throws all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness, something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab to commonplace areas of living and glows in on bright white light of penetrating beauty and meaning —then passes.”(Howard Thurman)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

This House That We’ve Built

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

2 Samuel 7: 1-16

Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” 3Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.”

4But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: 5Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? 6I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. 7Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” 8Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; 9and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. 12When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. 15But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. 16Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.

The Bible is a story of a journey, a movement from one place to another, one time to another, one way of being to another.  It is full of stories of going beyond and coming home. And woven through those stories are stories of us building and constructing and attempting to wall off our understanding of God.  (And it’s often also the story of us destroying what is built.)  Throughout the Scriptures, God sends us forth, we begin to walk, and then we build something, then God sends us forth, we begin to walk, and then we wall something off, on…and…on…It has continued for thousands of years and continues today.  See, we understand the notion of God being everywhere, of God not being limited to what we build and what we wall off.  But most of us still find ourselves in the midst of building projects throughout our lives.  Some of those projects are for houses, some are for churches or grand cathedrals, and some are for ourselves, our traditions, our ideals, and our own lives.  Does it make it seem better?  Does it bring God closer?  Or does it just make us a little more comfortable?

This poor Scripture doesn’t get a whole lot of Advent attention because it shares the fourth week of Advent in Lectionary Year B with Mary’s story and, not surprisingly, most people would not choose Nathan and David over Mary and the angel in the middle of Advent.  I’ve never preached it.  I’ve barely written on it.  But it’s still a great story and reminder for the season.  And it’s important.  Dr. Walter Brueggemann once made the claim that this chapter was the most important chapter in the Samuel saga and was one of the pivotal chapters in the entire Old Testament.  Think about it.  It seals the Davidic dynasty and it turns the entire human story toward God’s vision of it.

The text we read sort of wraps up the promise that God made to Abram in the twelfth chapter of Genesis.  The people have a home and they can live in peace.  And David’s reign as king has been pretty much legitimized. Things seem to be going well.  (Well, for the most part.  I mean, it’s David, right?)  And so, David envisions now a more permanent structure to house the ark of the Lord.  In other words, David now desires to build a temple in Jerusalem. I don’t know if he feels a little guilty that HE has a house and God doesn’t (as if God isn’t IN the house of cedar already and as if the moveable tent that had “housed” God for so long as the Ark of the Covenant moved from place to place was somehow no longer sufficient.).  Maybe he really felt that God needed to be given God’s due, that a grand and glorious structure would show honor to God (as well as perhaps raise David’s reputation).  In a shamefully cynical view, perhaps David wanted to just know EXACTLY where God was, as if he could once again wall God off into a limited space, thereby protecting God or maybe even himself.  In other words, he wanted to know that there was a place where he could go where he KNEW God would be.

But that night the Lord intervenes by way of Nathan with a promise not necessarily of a permanent “house” but, rather a permanent dynasty, an everlasting house of the line of David.  David has risen from shepherd boy to king and has apparently felt God’s presence through it all.  He now sits in his comfortable palace and compares his “house” to the tent that “houses God” in his mind.  God, through the prophet Nathan, responds by asking, in a sense, “Hey! Did you hear me complaining about living in a tent? No, I prefer being mobile, flexible, responsive, free to move about, not fixed in one place.” God then turns the tables on David and says, “You think you’re going to build me a house? No, no, no, no. I’M going to build YOU a house. I’ll build you a house that will last much longer and be much greater than anything you could build yourself with either wood or stone. I’ll build you a house that will shelter the hopes and dreams of your people long after ‘you lie down with your ancestors.’” And God promises to establish David and his line forever. 

The truth is, we all desire permanence; we want something on which we can stand, that we can touch, that we can “sink our teeth into”, so to speak.  We want to know the plan so that we can fit our lives around it.  Well, if this was going to make it easier to understand God, go ahead.  But Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr warns us that “God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so do not waste too much time protecting your boxes.”  (from Everything Belongs) (That’s actually one of my favorite quotes!)  The truth is, this is a wandering God of wandering people.  This is not a God who desires to or can be shut up in a temple or a church or a closed mind.  This is not a God who desires to be (or can be) “figured out.”  This God is palatial; this God is unlimited; this God will show up in places that we did not build. (and sometimes in places that we really wouldn’t go!)  This God does not live in a house; this God dwells with us—wherever we are.  This God comes as a traveler, a journeyer, a moveable feast.  And this God shows up where we least expect God to be—such as in a god-forsaken place on the outskirts of acceptable society to a couple of scared people that had other plans for their lives.  This God will be where God will be.  And it IS a permanent home.

So, here’s the problem with David’s thinking.  God has made and stood by lots of promises.  But God’s promise of a home, God’s promise of permanence, God’s promise of a “place” that the people of God can call their own came with another directive.  With that promise of home, was the exhortation to “go”, to leave this place with which your familiar and go to the place to which you’ve been called.  It doesn’t mean we’re homeless; it means that we’re journeying with God.  I think part of the reason God never really told anyone to build a “house” (sorry, David) is that when we start DOING for God, when we start building and hammering and making noise, things have a tendency to get out of control.  The “house” becomes about us and we forget why we built it in the first place.  So, God doesn’t call for a permanent house; God calls for one that exists within us, a place where God can sit with us, and eat with us, and make plans for the future.  It’s the place where we make room for God. 

So, returning to our ongoing theme of “waiting on the world to change”, I’m going to ask a hard question.  Are we waiting for the world to become what God wants us to be, to become that holy vision about which we’ve talked and dreamed?  Or are we just really mad right now that people seemed to have come into our house—the house that WE built—and moved the furniture around?  It’s hard.  I’m not sure I like the answer.  Because, remember, when God promises us a place, God also tells us to “go”.  I guess this Advent waiting is a way of beginning to move, starting to follow the journey, the Way of God. 

Advent both makes us aware of a God who is beyond our reach and opens us up to a God who is present and immanent among us, to the God who desires to dwell within us.  The mystery of God is that One who cannot be contained in the largest of cathedrals, One who is beyond our reach, beyond our knowing, beyond our understanding, comes to us as one of us, as a baby, in a seemingly godforsaken place for which the world had no room or on a cross on the outskirts of town.  God indeed makes a home for us.  Sometimes it’s in a packed cathedral with a candle pointing us beyond what we know.  And sometimes God comes to us when we are alone, perhaps when we wish we could be somewhere else, perhaps when there is no room, and makes a home in us.  That is the mystery of God.  But you have to make room.  Transcendence is sometimes hard to attain but immanence, the notion of God dwelling with you, dwelling within you, is even harder.  I think God DOES want a sanctuary.  But it doesn’t look a temple or church.  This Advent, make room for the God within you.  While you’re waiting on the world to change, God’s vision of the world is waiting for you to go out into it.  Don’t worry about the furniture.  You can fix it later.

If indeed we love the Lord with all our hearts, minds, and strength, we are going to have to stretch our hearts, open our minds, and strengthen our souls, whether our years are three score and ten or not yet twenty.  God cannot lodge in a narrow mind.  God cannot lodge in a small heart.  To accommodate God, they must be palatial. (William Sloane Coffin)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Ambiguity

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Isaiah 7: 10-17

10Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, 11Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. 12But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. 13Then Isaiah said: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? 14Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. 15He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.

17The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria.”

During each season of Advent, we read texts that get louder and louder with prophetic messages of what is to come.  This is the thing of which Christmas’s are made.  And now we read of the signs and wonders that were shown to the House of David.  “Here, listen people, there is a young woman with child.  She shall bear a son and the world will change.”  That’s essentially what it says.  But wait a minute!  We always read this as a prophetic sign of what will come, a prophet’s vision of the coming of Christ, Immanuel.  But, read it again.  This is in the present tense.  The young woman IS with child.  (as in already) So, which is it?  Is it a child born immediately after this writing or are we talking about the birth of Jesus?  After all, the writer known as Matthew depicted it differently.  Is it then or is it later?  Yes.  Really, does it really matter.  Because it’s all of the above.

The sign is a child.  The child’s name, Immanuel (or “God with us”) reinforces the divine promise to deliver the people from sure demise.  The child is born of a young woman, the Hebrew “almah”, which means a young woman of marriageable age.  Many scholars think that the young woman may have been Ahaz’s wife and her son the future king Hezekiah. If the author had wanted to depict the woman as a virgin, the word “betulah” would have been used.  But in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word was translated as “parthenos” or “virgin”.  So the writer of The Gospel According to Matthew understood the verse as a prediction of the birth of Jesus.  And then all those translators that came after that capitalized on that notion, perhaps in an effort to explain the unexplainable, to rid the text of the ambiguities that were probably meant to be there in the first place.

So, which is it?  Is it a virgin or a young woman?  Is it talking about Hezekiah or Jesus?  Is it what the writer known as Isaiah probably wrote or what the writer known as Matthew assumed or what the later redactors translated?  Yes.  All of the above.  The text and, indeed, the whole Bible is ambiguous at best.  Who are we kidding?  Faith is ambiguous.  Faith is everything.  I mean, maybe the ambiguity was actually a sign of what was coming.  Faith encompasses surety and doubt, light and darkness, life and death.  I don’t really get wrapped up in what “really” happened.  It doesn’t bother me if this is actually talking about Hezekiah.  But it was part of the Matthean writer’s tradition.  It meant something to him.  Somewhere in the words, in the text of his faith, he saw God.  He felt God.  To him, it means Immanuel.  And what better way to depict the first century nativity story that we love?  The coming of God WAS foretold–over and over and over again–through sacred stories told and shared by a waiting people.  It continues to be told, the story of God who breathed Creation into being, who entered the very Creation that held the God-breath, and who comes into each of our lives toward the glorious fulfillment of all that was meant to be.

Signs…are we missing them?  Are we looking for some that aren’t there or dismissing some that are perhaps too obvious to us.  I don’t think that God ever intended to lay it all out for us like some sort of lesson for us to memorize.  God doesn’t call us to have it all figured out but rather to live it, to open our eyes to all the sign and wonders of the world, to all the ways that God walks with us, to all the ways that God calls us to follow, to become.  All of the above, the obvious and the ambiguous, are part of the Truth that God reveals (whether or not our human minds can fathom it as “true”).  We are about to begin our journey to Bethlehem.  It is a road that is filled with ambiguities–loss and finding, sorrow and joy, fear and assurance, doubts and fears, a manger and a cross.  But along the way are signs of the God who is always with us, Immanuel, who carries us from moment to moment and from eon to eon with the promise of new life.  Let us go and see this thing that the Lord has made known–you know, all of the above.  It is this for which we were made.

Yes, we’re waiting on the world to change.  Are there signs?  Are we missing them?  Are we not paying attention?  Perhaps we think we have everything so figured out that we’re not open to what is.  Signs are not always overly obvious.  They are not always accompanied by flashing lights and sirens.  They sometimes come to us quietly, faintly.  Sometimes we might miss them.  And sometimes they’re just not what we want to see.  Maybe as your waiting on the world to change, there are signs that its actually happening.

If God’s incomprehensibility does not grip us in a word, if it does not draw us into [God’s] superluminous darkness, if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely close-hugged truths…we have misunderstood the words of Christianity. (Karl Rahner)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Turning of the World

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Luke 1: 46b-55 (Advent 3A)

“My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” 

We love this passage.  It is Mary’s Song, the Magnificat, the poetic rendering of her realization that she has truly been blessed, that she has been called to do what no one else has done, what no one else will do.  She has been called to give birth to God in this world, to deliver the promise that her people have always known.  But don’t get too lost in the poetry and the familiarity. For one thing, from Mary’s standpoint, this is turning her world upside down.  American Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones called The Magnificat “the most revolutionary document in the world”.  It is said that The Magnificat terrified the Russian Czars so much that they tried to dispel its reading.  More recently, it was banned in Argentina when the mothers of the disappeared used it to call for non-violent resistance.  In the 1980’s, the government of Guatemala banned its recitation.  It is an out and out call to revolution.  Less subversive language has started wars.  Edward F. Marquart depicts it as God’s “magna carta”.  It is the beginning of a new society, the preamble to a constitution that most of us are not ready to embrace.  We’d rather chalk it up to the poetry of an innocent young woman and keep getting ready for Christmas.  But we can’t do that.  It’s something much, much more.

See, this is God’s vision for the world. It is not a world where the best and the brightest and the richest and the most powerful come out on top. It is not a world that we can control. It is not a world where we can earn what we have and deserve who we are. It is rather a world where God’s presence and God’s blessings are poured onto all. But it comes with a price. Those who have, those who are, those whose lives are filled with plenty are called to change, to open their lives to God and to others. Because God will scatter the proud, those who think they have it figured out, those who are so sure of their rightness and their righteousness.  In other words, those of us who think that we have it all nailed down will be shaken to our core.  The powerful–those with money, those with status, those with some false sense of who they are above others–will be brought down from their high places.  The poor and the disenfranchised, those who we think are not good enough or righteous enough, will be raised up. They will become the leaders, the powerful, the ones that we follow.  The hungry will feel pangs no more and those who have everything–the hoarders, the affluent, those are the ones whose coffers will be emptied to feed and house the world.  God’s vision of the world is not fair in the terms that we are used to considering; it is, rather just, a justice that is nothing like we’ve ever known. 

God is about to turn the world upside-down.  Look around you.  This is not it; this is not what God had in mind.  And God started it all not by choosing a religious leader or a political dynamo or even a charismatic young preacher but a girl–a poor underage girl from a third-world country with dark skin and dark eyes whose family was apparently so questionable that they are not even mentioned and whose marital status seemed to teeter on the edge of acceptable society.  God picked the lowliest of the lowly to turn the world upside down.

But this is not some isolated poem in the middle of Mary’s story.  These words are the Gospel. Let me say that again.  These words ARE the Gospel.  If you were to put the Gospel into its Cliff Notes version, I would think you could take the words of The Magnificat, Matthew 22: 37-39 (love God, love neighbor), and Matthew 28:20b (“I am with you always until the end of the age.”) and have a pretty good idea of what Jesus was trying to say—love God, love each other, know that I am there, and let my vision be your world. 

I know, that doesn’t fit with the direction we’re going now in our society.  In fact, there seem to be factions everywhere that are explicitly fighting AGAINST this turning, dismissing its ideal as some sort of utopian socialist notion.  Is it a misunderstanding of the Gospel?  Is it fear?  Is it something else?  There are those that would indeed call this socialist or communist or some other “ist” that they don’t like.  But the turning of the world, the gentle, but intentional act of taking what is and making it be what should be, is painful.  It’s painful for us all.  It means we have to let go of everything to which we’re holding.  Even in our current discomfort with what is happening, we are way too comfortable.  We have raised Mary to something that is inaccessible, donning her with golden statues and painted masterpieces.  We have forgotten who she was and what she gave up—for us.  And then we allow those with pride and power and wealth to pursue their own interests and then hold on to their place.  We chalk it up to free capitalism and we forget that pride and power and wealth have often been earned on the backs of the hungry, on the backs of those whose lives are hard, on the backs of those that our society often dismisses.  The turning of the world is dangerous business.

Because when you’re turned upside down, things tend to spill. No longer can we hold onto what we know. No longer can we rest on the laurels of our past. If we’re going to be part of God’s vision of the world, we have to give up those things that are not part of it. We have to change, learn to live a new way, look upon the world and others not as competition, not as threats, but as the very vision of God pouring into the world. So, THIS Advent, what are you willing to let go of so that you will have room to offer a place for God? How willing are you to turn your world upside down? How are you being called to give birth to Christ in this world?  Mary did it.  Now it’s our turn.

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. (Thomas Merton)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Changing Expectations

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(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)

Matthew 11: 2-11 (Advent 3A)

2When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” 4Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. 6And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

7As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 9What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ 11Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

We usually think that we have it all figured out.  We walk through our lives with grand plans and grand illusions of what the world should look like and what we should look like to the world.  John was no different.  He loved Jesus, loved the things that Jesus represented–freedom, peace, righteousness.  And so, he had set to work telling everyone how he saw it.  But then all of a sudden, he realized that Jesus was doing things differently. Essentially, what Jesus was doing was not in the mold of what John had envisioned.  John was going around preaching repentance in the face of what was surely the Kingdom of God coming soon.  And here was Jesus healing and freeing and raising the dead.  John probably didn’t see it as wrong—just sort of a waste of time.  After all, in his view, there were people that needed redeeming, and redeemed NOW!  We need to get busy. “Jesus, really, this was not quite what we were expecting!”  So, he asks Jesus, “OK, are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  (As if to imply that we may need to wait for someone that will get this show on the road and make everyone get on board the way we think it should be.)

Well, the truth as we know it is that Jesus WAS Emmanuel, Jesus WAS God Incarnate, Jesus WAS the Savior for which the world had waited for so long.  The problem was that the world (and even John) could not see Jesus standing right in front of them because they were too busy looking for what they had expected.  They had expected a mighty warrior.  (Well, where was he?)  They had expected a king to whom everyone would bow.  (Well, that wasn’t happening!)  They had expected someone who would clean things up and make life easier.  (And you want me to do WHAT?  Hob-knob with the unacceptables and give up my place to those who haven’t worked for it and share my fortune with the less fortunate and essentially begin to go back down the ladder of progress to find what I’ve been missing?)  Truth be told, the world was expecting a warrior politician and got a demure baby in a manger, of all things.  Surely, THIS can’t be right!  I mean, really, how can we put our trust and our faith in one who is essentially one of us?  So, should we wait for another?

Years ago, the Today Show had a feature story about some young Panda bears who had been brought up in captivity.  But the plan was to eventually return them to their natural habitat.  So, in order to prepare them for what was to come, their caretakers thought that it would be better if they had no human contact.  So, to care for them, the people dressed up like panda bears.  In order to show them how to live the way they were supposed to live, they became them.  Well, isn’t THAT interesting!  I think that’s been done before!  In its simplest form, the Incarnation is God’s mingling of God with humanity.  It is God becoming human, dressing up like a human, and giving humanity a part of the Divine.  It is the mystery of life that always was coming into all life yet to be.  God became human and lived here.  God became us that we might see what it means to change the world.   God became like us to show us what it meant for us to be like God in the world.  The miracle of the birth of the Christ child is that God now comes through us.  God’s vision comes alive through us.

Jesus really didn’t “fit in”.  Jesus was not anything that any of us were expecting.  That’s the whole point.  Perhaps Jesus calls us to be what the world does not expect.  God did not come into this world to calm and affirm how well we were conducting things.  God came to show us a different way of living, a different way of being.  God came as one of us, Emmanuel, God With Us, to show us how to be one of us, to show us how to be human, fully human.  Who would have ever come up with that?  That was NOT what we were expecting.  Because you see, the miracle of God is here, dwelling in our midst, dwelling in us.  This is the mystery of the redemption of the world.

And, here we are, still waiting, waiting for the world to change.  What is your vision of that change?  What is it that you want to see happen?  Here’s the thing…what if our vision of what the world should be is not God’s?  What if part of waiting on the world to change is learning to change our own expectations?  What if part of wanting something new is realizing something new?  It’s hard.  I mean, we’re here.  We see what’s failing.  Well, remember God is here too.  And I’m thinking God has a much larger picture than we do. 

So, what are you willing to give up for others?  (Or is the world going to have everything it needs even when we have too much?)  What are you willing to relinquish so that others will have?  (Or is the world going to heal when we are spending time enriching our own lives?)  What are you willing to put forth so that others will hear?  (Or is the world on its own because we are afraid to speak, afraid to speak forward, afraid to risk.)   God didn’t call us to “fix” the world; God called us to be a part of re-creating it, part of a new creation, a new vision of what would be.  How willing are we to give up what we have, what we know, to let that vision come to be?  How willing are we to change our expectations?  Are you the one that is to come or are we to wait for another?  No, the world is waiting for us, the ones that God called to do this hard work.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s hard—REALLY hard.  But God is here, walking with us, doing the work with us.  But we have to be open to the possibility that the change that we want so desperately may look a little different than what we thought.

This text speaks of the birth of a child, not the revolutionary deed of a strong man, or the breath-taking discovery of a sage, or the pious deed of a saint.  It truly boggles the mind:  The birth of a child is to bring about the great transformation of all things, is to bring salvation and redemption to all of humanity.  As if to shame the most powerful human efforts and achievements, a child is placed in the center of world history.  A child born of humans, a son given by God.  This is the mystery of the redemption of the world; all that is past and all that is to come.  All who at the manger finally lay down all power and honor, all prestige, all vanity, all arrogance and self-will; all who take their place among the lowly and let God alone be high; all who see the glory of God in the lowliness of the child in the manger:  these are the ones who will truly celebrate Christmas. (From Christmas With Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. By Manfred Weber)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli