Author: shelliwilliams

Even If We’re Squinting At the Light

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Advent 3B Lectionary Text:  John 1: 6-8, (19-28)

6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

I love Christmas lights.  When I was little, my family would pick at least one night right before or immediately after Christmas and drive around and look at the Christmas lights.  Later, as a young adult, I several times drove my Grandmother Reue around to look at them.  My Grandmother seemed to have as much of the childlike appreciation of the lights that I had always had.  Many of us are like that.  There’s something about Christmas lights—full of wonder and awe, a sort of call to the season for us.

The Gospel passage that we read for this week uses that image of light.  For the writer of The Gospel According to John, the Logos was the light of humanity, the true light.  It was there from the very beginning.  Now there are no customary announcements here of Jesus’ coming and there is no birth story. I guess the writer of this Gospel left that to the other Gospel-writers.  But this is essentially the equivalent:  the coming of Jesus, the Incarnation, is the coming of the true light, the Light that always existed, which enlightens everyone and illumines everything.  We once again see Creation in its splendor, as the light folds into the dark void that was and life begins.  Think about it—it is hard for us to imagine—but there was only darkness before and then God said “Let there be light” and life began.  The earth was from then on bathed in light.  And now, now God enters and invites us into the Light.

We like the image of light.  It’s warm and illuminating and sort of comfortable.  But that’s not what this is.  See, John had a “way” about him and sometimes his words were not very popular.  I mean, he went around like some wild man in the wilderness preaching repentance, preaching that we needed to change, preaching about the one who was coming after him, preaching about the light that was just around the bend, a light such that we had not seen, a Light that would change the world and us with it.  “John,” we want to say, “Shhhh!…you’ll wake the baby.”

Admit it.  That’s where we want to be—at the manger, kneeling before our Lord, basking in the illumination of the star above and singing Christmas carols, and yet we still want to hold onto those shadows in our own life.  For there is familiarity; there is safety; there is that which we can control, there is that place to which we can retreat when life is just too hard.  And the light…We would rather the light be allowed to remain in our thinking depicted as a warm and comfortable place to be.  Just let us sit here awhile with this sleeping baby, the Christ child, there in the manger while the Star in the East dances overhead.  This is a sign of the season!

But John the Baptist, John the Witness, was right.  This light is not a twinkling, intermittent light like those that light our houses this season.  This is not a warm, glowing, candle-lit light that makes us feel comfortable even as we are content to sit silently in its shadows.  And it’s closer to us than any star in the universe.  This light is different.  This light is so big and so bright and so powerful that sometimes it hurts to look at it.  Sometimes it is just too painful.  This light is so pervasive and so encompassing, that it casts no shadows.  The light of Christ, this light to which John pointed, is not a warm glow but is rather a radical illumination of everything around it.  This light shows EVERYTHING.  Yes, EVERYTHING.  The world is about to be unable to hide its shadow side.

In her book, Lighted Windows, Margaret Silf tells the story of when her daughter was born and how one of the first problems that they encountered was light.  She said that “to make sure that [our daughter] would always experience the presence of a gentle, comforting light if she awoke during the night, we installed a little lamp close to the nursery door.  It also meant that if she cried we could grope our way to her even in a half-asleep state.”  But they soon realized that even the little nursery light burned their eyes, especially after the third or fourth time they went into the nursery during the night, groggy from sleep with eyes burning.  “So,” she says, “we went to the local electrical shop to ask whether they had any bulbs lower than 15 watts!”  “It’s strange,” she comments, “how light that is so needful for growth and life can also be so hurtful when we are unprepared for it.”

In this Advent season, the way that we prepare ourselves for the coming of the Light is by looking at that light.  That is why God came and burst forth into our humanness—to show us what full illumination looks like and to call us into the light.  So, during this season, we squint and rub our eyes.  But we continue looking even if sometimes we’re squinting at the light.  But the Light will remain as we get used to it.  And then it will guide us Home.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t. (Blaise Pascal)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Sorry, There is No Snooze Button

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Matthew 24: 36-44

36“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

You know that moment in the darkness of the early morning when the first light begins to peak in over the horizon and make its way through your bedroom window?  You know better than to look at it, knowing it will surely sting your eyes that are groggy from hours of being closed off to the world.  So you look away, trying to let your eyes get used to it.  And slowly, very slowly the new morning begins to come into focus.  At that point you don’t know what the day holds-you don’t know what will go as planned and what will not.  You do not know what you will learn or what you will lose or what you will gain.  But, no matter what, you have to get up.  WAKE UP!

Today we find ourselves about halfway through this Advent season, halfway through our waiting, our preparing, our looking at ourselves in a new way, our listening, our remembering, our looking forward….zzzzzzz…..WAKE UP!  It’s time to wake up. And sorry, there is no snooze button.

Theologian William Long equates Advent to an “echo chamber” that heightens our senses, that makes us realize that those small sounds of salvation that we hear are all around us.  I think it holds the sounds of the past and the future that reverberate in our present and reminds us that salvation is not something “out there” or, even worse, “up there”.  Whatever you may think that heaven or whatever is next is, it is not way up ahead.  It is not shielded from view.  It is all around us.  The air is thick with God’s presence.  Barbara Brown Taylor says that “Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.” The only reason it is veiled is that we have too much clouding our view and we’re not yet prepared to see.

The vision is ever and ever closer.  We cannot be lulled into a comfortable, sleepy complacency.  Think about this.  Years ago, a Lutheran preacher, Edmund Steimle, preached a Christmas Eve sermon entitled “The Eye of the Storm”.  He compared that serene view of Christmas Eve, the stuff that is depicted as we sing “Silent Night” and light our candles, to the eye of a hurricane.  We’re familiar with that.  The winds swirl and the rains come until we almost cannot bear it.  And then they stop.  And the calm descends upon us.  But, lest we get too comfortable, we are reminded that they will come again, seemingly unwinding themselves from where they were before.  We just have to stay awake because God is in it all, both darkness and light.  Robert Benson has a book entitled “Punching Holes in the Dark”.  In it, he speaks of our faith journey as being one where we are called to continually punch holes in the darkness so that more and more of the light will be able to enter.  But we have to be awake to do that.  And being awake, being ready, is not something to be feared.  It is a gift.  It is us at our fullest self.

A legend tells how, at the beginning of time, God resolved to hide within the Creation that God had made.  As God was wondering how best to do this, the angels gathered around.  “I want to hide myself somewhere in Creation,” God told them.  “I need to find a place that is not too easily discovered, for it is in their search for me that my creations will grow in spirit and in understanding.”  “Why don’t you hide yourself deep in their earth?” the first angel suggested.  God pondered this idea for a while, then replied, “No, it will not be long before they mine the earth and discover the treasures that it contains.  They will discover me too quickly, and they will not have had enough time to do their growing.”  “Why don’t you hide yourself in their moon?” a second angel suggested.  God thought about this idea for a while, and then replied, “No, it will take a little longer, but before long they will learn to fly through space and will find their way there and know its secrets.  They will discover me too soon, before they have grown enough.”  The angels were at a loss to know what hiding places to suggest.  There was a long silence.  “I know,” piped up one angel, finally.  “Why don’t you hide yourself within their own hearts?  They will never think of looking there!”  “That’s it!”, said God, delighted to have found the perfect hiding place.  And so it is that God hides secretly deep within the heart and soul of every one of God’s creatures, until that creature has grown enough in spirit and in understanding to risk the great journey into the secret core of its own being.  And there, awakened, the creature discovers its creator, and is rejoined to God for all eternity.” (From “One Hundred Wisdom Stories From Around the World,” by Margaret Silf, p. 32-33)

So, Advent comes and disrupts our comfortable lives.  And we are called to wake up to God breaking through the darkness into our lives—2,000 years ago, in the promised future, and even today if we will only awaken to the dawn.   Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “people only see what they are prepared to see.”  That’s what we’ve been doing—preparing to see.

The curtain is rising.  Jesus is not waiting in the wings somewhere until the play is done; rather, Jesus is standing on the stage itself, inviting us in. “Come, awaken, wait with me.  You do not know when the Glory will come but this waiting is a holy place.  Stay awake so that you won’t miss the inbreaking of the Divine itself, the dawn of the fullness of the Kingdom of God.”  The reason we read this passage that begins at the end is because it is the same as the beginning.  God is the Alpha and the Omega.  Birth and death are all wrapped up together, needing each other to give life.  Awaken now so that you do not miss one thing.  Open your eyes.  We’re halfway there!  The baby is coming!  The extraordinary miracle of what is about to happen is matched only by the moment before it does—this moment, this time.  The world awaits!  Awaken that you do not miss the story!

So, are you awake?  When God is ready, God will come.  Watch…for you know not when or where God comes.  Watch, that you might be found whenever, wherever God comes. WAKE UP! so you don’t miss one glorious thing.

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with [God]. God walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend. In fact to come awake. Still more to remain awake. (C.S. Lewis)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Things That Make You Go Ahhh…

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Double rainbow forming on the western outskirts of Innerleithen, Scottish Borders

Advent 3B Lectionary:  1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24

16Rejoice always, 17pray without ceasing, 18give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19Do not quench the Spirit. 20Do not despise the words of prophets, 21but test everything; hold fast to what is good; 22abstain from every form of evil. 23May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.

Rejoice always?  Pray without ceasing? Give thanks in all circumstances?  Are you kidding?  In this time of sickness and death and divisiveness and, well, just darkness, how in the world are we expected to rejoice, pray, and give thanks each and every moment? I mean, even if things WERE going all hunky-dory, we don’t have time to do that.  There are things to do. There are people to see, gifts to buy, gifts to wrap, places to go (well, maybe not…you know, Covid and all), and we still need to find time for ourselves to think, maybe read this blog, or whatever our life requires.  So when we read this passage, we are a little bewildered.  Because we are used to looking at how to do something.  We want to know the easiest, cheapest, most energy-efficient, or most fulfilling way to accomplish things.  And, most of all, we want to be assured that we’re doing it the right way, that we’re on the right path.

But as much as we desire a “how to” booklet for our lives, that’s not what this is. (Honestly, that’s not really what the Bible is at all!) Paul was not laying down rules.  I don’t think he ever envisioned us living body-bent and knee-bowed 24/7.  I mean, how do we respond to that call to be a Kingdom-builder if we’re praying all the time?  No, Paul was not calling us to a life spent in prayer; Paul was calling us to a prayerful life, a life that is sacred, hallowed, a life lived in the unquenchable Spirit of God.  It has nothing to do with logging prayer hours. I mean, that’s helpful, even necessary.  But this is about perspective, about seeing everything that is your life as hallowed and holy, seeing all you are and all you have and all this is as of God, as prayer. Olga Savin says that “[the Scriptures] tell us that ceaseless prayer in pursuit of God and communion with [God] is not simply life’s meaning or goal, the one thing worth living for, but it is life itself.”  And a life lived the way it is called to be lived is the very will of God.  It is prayer.

As I said, I don’t think the Scriptures are meant to be “how to’s”; maybe instead they’re meant to shape us into those who can find the “ahhhs” in life.  Let me explain.  Think about all those diverse characters in the Scriptures. Abram and Sarai were just living their best retirement life.  And suddenly God has a new plan to make them the patriarchal couple of a “multitude of nations”.  And Abraham went toward the “ahhh”.  Moses was pretty much minding his own business and then ran across this burning bush.  Now, really, wouldn’t you either avoid a bushfire or try to put it out?  But Moses saw something else and said “ahhh” and his whole life changed. And those prophets?  The prophets tried desperately for generations to get the people to pay attention, to make them understand that the Lord was indeed coming, that things were about to change.  They marched this line of people straight through history, warning of something big and dark and ominous when God would step into the world.  Truthfully, that happened.  But it was very quiet, almost a whisper, as the Light again pushed through the darkness.  If you didn’t have your life honed in on that, you would have missed it.  In fact, God had to sort of announce it to make sure people were paying attention.  And, if you noticed it, you couldn’t help but say “ahhh”. 

Praying without ceasing, living a prayerful life, is about paying attention.  It is about looking at the pathway that you walk and noticing those things that make you say “ahhh”.   And then, it’s about turning toward them.  Maybe that means that you get off the well-worn path that is comfortable beneath your feet.  Maybe that means that you veer off in a direction you do not know, a way that you did not plan to go, a way that will change your life forever.  Ahhh….

Praying without ceasing is also about not limiting yourself as to what you think prayer is.  You know those times when you have no words?  That’s a prayer.  The times when words seem to spill out of your life uncontrollably is a prayer.  The times when grief consumes you and you feel as if you cannot function is a prayer.  The times when laughter overtakes you in the middle of an otherwise-serene (and perhaps embarrassing) moment is a prayer.  Every menial task is a prayer.  Every walk is a prayer.  Every drive is a prayer.  Every time you log on to your computer is a prayer.  Every time you cook or wash dishes or empty the dishwasher (I hate emptying the dishwasher!) is a prayer.  Every time you hug someone or touch someone or connect with them on Zoom is a prayer.  Your life is a prayer.  That is what Advent shows us.  Advent wakes us up to the coming of God into the world and asks us to prepare.  But Advent also wakes us up to our own lives, prepares us to see what we’ve been missing and perhaps to notice a different way and to pray, to always pray. Look around. All you see, all you hear, all you are. It’s all prayer. Ahhh-men.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. (G.K. Chesterton)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Shoots and Branches

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“Peaceable Kingdom”, John Swanson, 1994

Isaiah 11: 1-6 (7-8) 9-10

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. 6The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them… 9They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  10On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

So, once again we read yet another passage about that future vision that God holds for us—you know, the one that we’re walking toward, the one that we are supposed to be a part of bringing to be, the one that God promised us.  We are given a vision of a shoot, a new shoot that will come out of the dead and decaying stump of the past, a branch that will come out of the original roots of our faith and our lives. It doesn’t replace the old; it just continues growing.

Garden of Gethsemane, Jerusalem, Israel

I have a picture of an olive tree that I took in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Olive trees will actually live for centuries, sprouting new life over and over again.  If you look at this picture, the thing on the left side that looks like a dead and decaying stump (because, well, that’s essentially what it is) is what is left of a tree that was probably in that place 2,000 years ago.  Imagine…that is what is left of a tree that might have been there that night before the Crucifixion as Jesus prayed and submitted his own life to God.  And from that stump came another shoot, that grew into a tree that is probably about 1,000 years old.  And to the right of it is yet another stump that may be 200 years old or so.  And from that is a newer shoot, a live, growing tree that is just a few years old.  It is a picture of new shoots, new creations that God is always creating and always nurturing into being.  But they exist together, sprouting from each other’s strengths into new life.

So, how do we live as new shoots?  How do we embrace that vision we’ve been given and make it part of us?  The message that Advent brings is that God loves us enough to keep showing up—in a vision laid out for us to embrace, in Emmanuel, God-With-Us, and over and over again as God walks with us through our own becoming a new creation.  Maybe the question is whether or not we are holding on to what we know or are we new shoots, giving the old new life?  This is not just a rehash of the same old thing.  William Sloane Coffin once said that “believers know that while our values are embodied in tradition, our hopes are always located in change.”  But change is often uncomfortable.  Change is unpredictable.  Change is hard.  Maybe we can just get through this busy season and then change. 

A couple of 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 be pandas, they became them.

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 and breathing a piece of the Divine into humanity.  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 change the world.   God became like us to show us what it meant for us to be like God envisioned (not to be God, not even to be “Godly”, but to be just like God envisioned we could be) in the world.  God didn’t walk this earth to teach us to be divine; God came to show us what it means to be human–caring, loving humans that envision that the world could be different.  The miracle of the birth of the Christ child is that God now comes through us.  We ARE the new shoots of transformation.

So perhaps the reason that the earth is not yet filled with the knowledge of the Lord, that the Reign of God has not come into its fullness, that poverty and homelessness and injustice and war still exists is because we do not dare to imagine it any other way.  This is not some vision of an inaccessible utopian paradise; this is the vision of God.  The passage says that a shoot shall come out of the stump and a branch shall grow out of the roots.  In other words, life shall spring from that which is dead and discarded.  Because in God’s eyes, even death has the foundation, the roots of life.  Even death will not have the last word.  We just have to imagine it into being.  So, imagine beyond all your imaginings; envision a world beyond all you dare to see; and hope for a life greater than anything that is possible.  Imagine what it means to become a new shoot and prepare yourself to be just that. And then you’ll start to be.

Only those who live beyond themselves ever become fully themselves. (Joan Chittister)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Shadows and Remnants

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Advent 3B Lectionary:  Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory. 4They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations… 8For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. 9Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed. 10I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

This is a pretty familiar passage.  We often read it as part of this season.  It speaks of hope.  God has sown God’s own Spirit into the one who speaks, breathed God’s breath into one who will carry out God’s will.  And standing amid the ruins of what was once a thriving Jerusalem, the prophet depicts the perfect Reign of God, the time when all of Creation will be renewed and fulfilled.  It is the hope for the future even in the midst of the smoldering ashes of what is now.  And the prophet acknowledges and affirms an individual call from God, a call to bring good news, to bind up, to proclaim liberty, to witness, and to comfort. Well, that’s good…because we need someone to fix this mess, right?

But, then, in verse 3, notice that the pronoun changes.  No longer is the prophet affirming an individual’s call.  The calling is now to the plural “they”.  It’s not just the “me” that is the prophet; it is the “they” that is everyone. (Ugh…bet you saw that coming!) The prophet is not called to “fix” things; the prophet is called to proclaim that all are called to this work of transformation. In other words, all that work that you think needs to be done?  It’s ours to do!

All of us are part of what the Lord has planted and nourished and grown to bloom.  All of us are “they”.  We are the ones that are called to become the new shoots sprouting to life.  We are the ones that are called to bring good news, to bind up, to proclaim liberty, to bring justice, to witness, and to comfort.  This Scripture may sound vaguely familiar to us for another reason.  In the fourth chapter of the Gospel According to the writer known as Luke, Jesus stands in the synagogue in his home temple in the midst of a world smarting with Roman occupation and cites these same words.  He acknowledges his own calling, his own commissioning to this holy work.  And he sets forth an agenda using the words of this prophet.  So, here we are reminded once again.  We are reminded what we as the people of Christ are called to do–to bring good news, to bind up, to proclaim liberty, to bring justice, to witness, to comfort, and to build the Kingdom of God.

Most of you probably know the story of England’s Coventry Cathedral.  On November 14, 1940 in the midst of the Luftwaffe, the grand medieval Parish Church Cathedral of St. Michael was devastated by bombs and burned to the ground with the surrounding city.  The decision to rebuild the cathedral was made the morning after its destruction. Rebuilding was seen not as an act of defiance, but rather a sign of faith, trust and hope for the future of the world.  Shortly after the destruction, the cathedral stonemason, Jock Forbes, noticed that two of the charred medieval roof timbers had fallen in the shape of a cross. He set them up in the ruins where they were later placed on an altar of rubble with the moving words “Father, forgive” inscribed on the sanctuary wall. Another cross was fashioned from three medieval nails by local priest, Arthur Wales. The Cross of Nails has become the symbol of Coventry’s ministry of reconciliation.

Today, the new modern Coventry Cathedral stands dedicated to forgiveness, unity, and redemption.  And next to it are the remains of the medieval cathedral. In the place of the altar are the words “Father, forgive” and flanking the altar are two statues—one given by Germany and one given by Japan.  And although physically attached to the new Cathedral, the Chapel made of ruins is not consecrated as an Anglican space, but instead is on a 999-year lease to an ecumenical Joint Council.  In the Chapel of Unity, people of any faith may gather to worship and receive the sacraments.

In this Season of Advent, we are called to prepare ourselves for what is to come.  We are called to wait in hope and walk in light.  And, yet, so many of us are experiencing a world right now where we are barely able to sense that hope and see the light. We live in a world racked with sickness, and fear, and death, and quarantines, and loneliness.  Some of us have experienced financial hardships and despair.  Many of us may identify more closely with the destruction in this passage than the good news.  See, we like the image of our faith being one of light and promise and that seems like what it should be.  But maybe even of more profound importance is our faith as one of shadows and remnants.  The truth is, God doesn’t call people to “fix” the world; God calls people to transform the world.  And we are “they”.  We are the ones that are called to stand in the ruins, to step through the smoldering ashes, to take the remnants of destruction and hate and despair and to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and to comfort all who mourn.  And as the earth brings forth shoots, as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

  

Faith transforms the earth into a paradise.  By it our hearts are raised with the joy of our nearness to heaven.  Every moment reveals God to us.  Faith is our light in this life.   (Jean Pierre de Caussade)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Preparing for What Is Next

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Malachi 3: 1-3

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 2But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; 3he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

We all know that Advent is the Season of Preparation.  And each of us is all too aware how much preparation that really entails and what we have to do over the next 19 days (Ahem…19 days!).  But, sadly, most of us are kind of missing the point.  Advent is not just meant to be a 4-week lead up to the big day.  It’s really it’s own thing.  And in this time, we are called to prepare ourselves by allowing God to guide us down a new pathway so we really will be ready for what is next.  But we have to be open to change.  We have to be open to BEING changed.  It’s not easy.  It was never promised that it would be easy.  This season is about more than preparing or getting ready for Jesus’ coming.  It is also about preparing ourselves, opening our hearts to the change that comes with that.

The passage from Malachi echoes that same thing.  Malachi literally means “messenger”.  We don’t know if that was someone’s name or what.  But the messenger carries a promise of God’s coming, a promise we’ve heard before.  But this time it is compared to a refiner’s fire or fuller’s soap that will reform the society in preparation for the day of the Lord’s coming. 

But we’re probably a bit uncomfortable with the whole fire thing.  Fire is destructive.  Fire burns.  But it also purifies.  It purifies by burning away the ore so that the precious metal inside is revealed.  It is intense.  But the point is that one has to get close enough to the fire to work with the metal for that to happen.  It is risky.  It might even be painful.  But it is the only way for all the impurities to be gone.  We have to endure our own impurities, our own shortcomings, being burned away until we are made new.  Part of it is up to us.

I’ve used this before but there is a wonderful illustration from an unknown author that tells the story of a woman watching a silversmith at work.  “But Sir,” she said, “do you sit while the work of refining is going on?” “Oh, yes madam, “replied the silversmith, “I must sit with my eye steadily fixed on the furnace, for if the time necessary for refining be exceeded in the slightest degree, the silver will be injured.” So as the lady was leaving the shop, the silversmith  called her back, and said he had still further to mention, that he only knows when the process of purifying was complete, by seeing his own image reflected in the silver.

That’s what God is doing for us—refining our lives, preparing them, burning away the impurities until God’s own image in which we are made is finally revealed.  John Wesley would have called the journey of sanctification, or going onto perfection in Christ.  And then this image of the fuller’s soap may be lost on us who are more accustomed to throwing Tide pods in a washing machine.  When the weaving of a fabric is complete, it is sent to a fuller, who cleans it and gets rid of the loose threads and makes it more tightly bound together.  The process means that the fabric becomes “full”, just as our lives do on this journey toward the Divine.

But we tend to concentrate on the easy and enjoyable part of God’s coming, focusing solely on a God who will make our lives better.  In that way, we are no different than those that looked for the Messiah the first time.  The truth is, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in a 1928 Advent sermon, “We [become] 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.”  Lays claim…asks us to change…asks us to become something new…asks us to let go of all those things that we hold, of all that we are so trying to control in our lives and travel down the pathway that God has laid.  Prepare the way?  Yeah…it’s not talking about your Christmas decorations; It’s talking about YOU.  It’s talking about preparing yourself for what is next.

Make many acts of love, for they set the soul on fire and make it gentle.  (Mother Teresa)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

A Path For His Steps

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Advent 2B Lectionary:  Psalm 85: 1-2, 8-13

8Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.9Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. 10Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. 11Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. 12The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.13Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.

We like the image of God making a path for us to walk, giving us some sense of the direction in which we are called to go.  It just makes it easier, as if we’ve sort of been handed a holy GPS that we can turn on when we get lost. But this psalm presents it a little bit differently.  Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.  What does that mean?  Are WE being asked to prepare that path?

This Psalm was probably originally sung in response to the return from the Babylonian exile.  Think about it.  Their land was being returned to them, their lives were beginning to get a little better, sort of fall into place, and there was a sense of a sort of national forgiveness.  There was hope that had not been present for a long time.  But hope also calls one to take a good hard look at oneself.  And the people knew what had happened and what wrongs they had done to each other.  They recognized the pall of systemic sin that was present, a certain acceptance of poverty and injustices and divisive fractions in their midst.  This Psalm is a lament that is spoken to the past and a reminder to listen to God and then look through the lens of righteousness to the beautiful path before them.

Yes, Psalms are uncomfortably timeless.  They tend to point to the perils and beauty of humanity that happens over and over again.  We, too, have wandered in a sort of exile this year.  The Covid pandemic has forced us away from each other and, for some of us, have taken away so much.  And for our society, this time has uncomfortably shined an all-too-bright light on things that we didn’t really confront in ourselves, in our community, in our nation, and in our world.  Nationally, this pandemic has had more of a dramatic effect on those in our society that were already victims of injustices.  But this time has made it worse and it forces us, like those post-exilic returnees of centuries ago, to look at ourselves and how we participate in allowing poverty and injustice and the isms that exist in our society.  It’s a hard lesson for us.  We cannot separate ourselves from each other.  We are on this pathway together.  And when one person is treated unjustly, when one person has little to eat, when one person doesn’t have fresh water or a safe place to live, when one person is hurt because of racism or sexism or any other type of exclusion, we have to open our eyes to the part we play in that.

Think about this.  God HAS laid a pathway for us.  But we’re not programmed robots.  The pathway winds and turns.  There are often multiple ways to go on it.  Parts of it are drowned in weeds and undergrowth that make it difficult to see and treacherous to travel.  Parts of it are too rocky for comfort or too wet and slippery for safe travel.  The point is that the pathway IS there; but maybe we’re called to pave the way, clearing away the debris and making the way not just for US to travel but for everyone who walks with us.

That’s the way that, as the Psalmist sings, God’s steadfast love and our faithfulness will meet and righteousness and peace will be inseparable.  It is that perfect love, hesed in Hebrew.  And it is in clearing this pathway, readying it for others to walk easily, without the hindrances that we allow to exist, that we will also find our way.  In this Season of Preparation, we are told to “Prepare the Way of the Lord.”  Have you ever really thought about what that means?  The path is there.  It’s been traveled before.  But it needs some of our work to make the Way visible, to make the Way that all of us can travel together.     

God travels wonderful paths with human beings; God does not arrange matters to suit our opinions and views, does not follow the path that humans would like to prescribe for God.  God’s path is free and original beyond all our ability to understand or to prove.  (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli