ADVENT

Recollection

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Joy, Recollection

Last night was the longest night of the year, when the earth’s axis tips the farthest away from the sustaining light of the sun.  In our part of the world, we experienced nearly fourteen hours of darkness.  Known as the Winter Solstice, it also means that winter has officially begun.  Last night was our Service of the Longest Night, which we have every year.  It is a service of acknowledging sorrow in the midst of celebration, grief in the midst of happiness, and light in the midst of darkness.  It is a service that reminds us that God is in all of life.

Recollection, in the context of one’s spiritual walk, means attention to the presence of God in one’s life. Living a recollected life has little to do with happiness or calm.  It’s not about things always going our way.  It’s certainly not about God answering all our prayers in the way we think they need to be answered.  Living a recollected life means living a life that is balanced and enduring.  It means being alive.  It means knowing in the deepest part of our souls that God is with us and that there is always something more than what we see.

As I sat in last night’s service, I couldn’t help but look back over the last year.  Some of those who came up to the altar to light a candle were those with whom I had walked through the most profound loss and grief imagineable.  But I have also held brand new life in my arms and celebrated the hope and promise that comes with that.  In the last months, I have been with those who are staring death in the face and those who in that very moment were crossing the line between earthly life and the next journey.  (And we sang!)  You would assume that that range of experiences comes with being a pastor.  It does, but I think that, more importantly, it comes with being human, being fully human.  Being fully means being totally immersed in the full range of humanity–sorrow and happiness, grief and celebration, life and death.  And in it all is joy–not happiness, which is momentary and fleeting–but true, profound, abiding joy.

This morning I watched an interview with another pastor from Houston (who shall remain nameless but whose initiatls are J.O.) who depicted the Spirit of Christmas as happiness.  Well, I will say that I respectfully disagree.  The Spirit of Christmas, the Spirit of Christ’s coming, is not to bring us happiness and health.  Those are temporary, fleeting.  God was born into this world as human, as fully human, set to experience the full range of humanity.  God brought the Divine Presence into all those things.  And, there, was joy–abiding, eternal, neverending joy!  (And we sang!)

Being fully human means being recollected, seeing the Presence of God in all things and all things in the Presence of God.  Only three more days to go!  The air is so thick with the Presence of God you can almost touch it.  I suppose that’s the whole point.  For what are you waiting?  Recollect yourself.  Become fully human.  There’s a baby coming!  And take joy!

The day is almost here!  Gift yourself the gift of recollection.  Take all that you are and that you have, the full range of who you are, and begin traveling to Bethlehem.  Give yourself the gift of joy, no matter how happy your life is at the moment!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

For the Sake of the World

shelliwilliams ADVENT, KINGDOM OF GOD, Savior

Mary and Joseph have been traveling for a couple of days.  It’s so hard.  The days are sweltering; the nights are cold.  The wind hasn’t stopped.  It’s just that time of year.  Why are we doing this?  Why are we trying so hard to do the right thing?

The truth is, “God With Us? ” is just sometimes a little uncomfortable.  How can we comfortably live our lives with Emmanuel hanging around?  I mean, really, what are we supposed to do?  I saw a bumper sticker several years ago that said, “God is coming; Look busy!” You laugh (because, granted, it’s funny!), but isn’t that what many of us think deep down? No matter what we say intellectually (that God is with us, that God is everywhere, that God is everything), the truth is that we STILL sort of think of God as some sort of far-away supervisor that is “up there” keeping score of our lives. 

Maybe that’s the point!  Maybe Emmanuel, God With Us, means that we ARE to get busy, that we ARE supposed to do something.  Maybe God just got tired of being relegated to scorekeeper and wanted to show us how to play the game!  The miracle of God’s coming is not about a manger, or a star, or a baby.  It’s not about whether or not Mary was a literal virgin or not! (Really, does it matter that much?) And it’s DEFINITELY not about making sure that we buy each person the same number of presents!  The miracle of God’s coming is that the Divine, conceived as removed and secure from the muck of the world, poured into our midst.  God came that the world might change and that we might change along with it.

So do I know Jesus Christ as my personal savior?  (OK, I’ll probably get in trouble here!)  God didn’t come in the form of Jesus to be my brother, or my friend, or even my personal savior.  God came for the sake of the world.  God came bursting into the struggles of this world so that people like me would wake up, recollect myself, and go forward to do what God calls me to do.  God came that we might be for the other.  In all truth, the meaning of Emmanuel, God With Us, is that God’s coming means that it is time for us to go to others, to the world, to wherever God is calling us to go. God’s coming is our call to going.  We hear it over and over in the Scriptures that will come after this story as the child grows and enters ministry–“rise, take up your bed and go home,” “you give them something to eat,” “love your enemies,” “let your light shine,” “love one another,” “take, eat,” “they know not what they do.”  These are as much a part of the Christmas story as “in those days, a decree went out…”, or “laid in a manger,” or “no room in the inn.”  In fact, this is the way that Emmanuel comes over and over and over again.  God came to us as “fully human” and yet still remains as “fully divine.”  Both are made in the image of God, the image of the God’s unfailing and unfathomable grace in the world.

So, is Jesus my personal savior?  For the sake of the world, I pray so.  It’s not about being on my best behavior; it’s about birthing the Savior of the world into the world for the world. 

Lift up your heads, ye mighty gate; behold the King of glory waits;
the King of kings is drawing near; the Savior of the world is here.

Fling wide the portals of your heart; make it a temple, set apart
from earthly use for heaven’s employ, adorned with prayer and love and joy.

Redeemer, come, with us abide; our hearts to thee we open wide;
let us thy inner presence feel; thy grace and love in us reveal.

Thy Holy Spirit lead us on until our glorious goal is won;
eternal praise, eternal fame be offered, Savior, to thy name.

(Georg Weissel, 1642, trans. by Catherine Winkworth,, 1855)
 
God is coming!  Give yourself the gift of being God With Us, of being God in the world!  Give yourself the gift of making Jesus your personal Savior by being Christ for the sake of the world. 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

        

So What, Exactly, Were You Expecting?

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Expectations, Openness to God

What were we expecting?  Well, of course, we were expecting someone obvious, someone  who would make himself known in the world, someone who is a little bit better than you or I.  We were expecting power and might and grandiose presentation.  But instead God walked into our very human existence.  God traversed time and space and the perceived separation between the sacred and the ordinary and entered our everyday world.  On some level, that bothers many of us.  After all, we are trying to do BETTER than this; we are aspiring to be more than human.  What in the world is God doing messing around in the muck of this world?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said that “by virtue of the creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.”  So, perhaps God came into this very ordinary world to show us the holiness that has been created, the sacredness that in our worldliness, we were somehow missing.  Perhaps God steps into our lives to show us the depth that we haven’t dared to dig into our lives.  Perhaps God came and walked with us not to show us how to be but to show us how to see.  But when it’s all said and done, this practice we have of “looking for God” has been proven bizarre.  After all, it was never God that was lost!  We were never separated from the sacred; we just missed seeing it because it wasn’t what we were expecting.  So, again, what were we expecting?  Maybe the the whole lesson is that God will come when and where and in the way that God will come.  But if there’s a “pattern” to be figured out about this God who cannot be figured out, it’s that God comes into the unexpected, into the unplanned, and into the unprepared places in our lives and lays down in a feed trough and patiently waits for the world to wake up and notice.

Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to sety thy people free, from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee. Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art, dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver, born a child and yet a King, born to reign in us forever, now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal spirit rule in all our hearts alone; by thine own sufficient merit, raise us to thy glorious throne.

(Charles Wesley, 1744)

In these final days of Advent,  we are all busy preparing for the day of God’s coming.  But whether or not we get it done, whether or not the house is clean or the goodies are baked or the presents are wrapped, God will come and the world will never be the same.  Expectation is about moving into what will be rather than preparing to bring it into what is.
 
What are you expecting?  That’s probably not it!  Give yourself the gift of being open to the way that God comes without expecting it to happen in a certain way!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Nativity, Openness to God
“Journey to Bethlehem”
Joseph Brickey, ca. 1973

So, what does it mean to say “God With us”?  The name, Immanuel, that the child is to be given is a symbolic name, a short Hebrew sentence.  We like the idea of God being here to pull us out of our next quandry in life in which we will find ourselves.  But isn’t it more than that?  God has finally, after an entire history of generations of humanity, sought us out.  In essence, God put aside, if only for a little while, all God-liness, to come and join our little world.  God breaks into humanity not with a triumphant shout but into one of the lowliest, one of the most god-forsaken, one of the most human places of all.  Our image of this patriarchal God sitting on a golden throne somewhere up in the clouds looking down upon this struggling world just doesn’t work anymore.  The God who we could not see, the God who we could not name, the God into whose face we could not look or surely we would die has just become one of us. So what do we do now?

When I was little, I used to lay in bed (when I was supposed to be asleep) and think about the notion of God being “everywhere”.  Well that was something that I just couldn’t get my head around.  I mean, there had to be limits.  There had to be a place where God could not see me.  So I would pull the covers over my head and try to figure out if God could see me there.  We all do that, if only figuratively.  Oh, we SAY that God is with us, we SAY that God walks with us, but then we try to find a temporary hiding place from this God who is “up there” or “out there” or wharever “there” we think God is.  After all, it’s kind of like living with your boss, isn’t it?   I saw a bumper sticker a couple of years ago that read “God is coming.  Look busy!”  Oh, we laugh, because it’s way too close to the way we think!  I mean, we’re all so wrapped up in our lives.  There’s just so little time.  There’s just too much going on!  And the world is changing so rapidly.  It’s not like it used to be.  But we’ll keep working to get to God.  Well, SURPRISE!  God came to us.  Not only that, God came WITH us, entering into the bottom of our house of cards that is our world.  So, it seems now, “getting to God” is really no longer necessary.  Maybe we just have to open our eyes, and hold out our hand, and, oh yeah, it helps if you don’t have the covers pulled over your head!

Modern-Day Israel just outside of the Region of Galilee

Mary and Joseph are journeying toward Bethlehem, silently walking through the dust and sands.  This trip was not convenient but they had no choice.  It normally takes four days or so but it is difficult for Mary to travel.  The world is crazy right now, busy and spinning out of control.  Everything is changing.  There is talk of some unrest and some skirmishes up ahead.  This is not the time to be traveling.  This trip is dangerous.  But they have to keep going.  There’s a baby coming!

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O Come, thou Wisdom, from on high, and order all things far and nigh;
to us the path of knowledge show and cause us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, O come, great Lord of might, who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height
in ancient times once gave the law in cloud and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, thou Root of Jesse’s tree, an ensign of thy people be; 
before thee rulers silent fall; all people on thy mercy call.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, thou Key of David, come, and open wide our heavenly home.
The captives from their prison free, and conquer death’s deep misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, thou Dayspring, come an dcheer our spirity by they justice here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, Desire of nations bind all people in one heart and mind.
From dust thought brought us forth to life; deliver us from earthly strife.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

(9th century Latin, with translations by Laurence Hull Stookey; vs. 2 by Henry Sloane Coffin, 1916)

 
The time is almost here!  In this final week of Advent, give yourself the gift of pulling away everything that clouds your view that you might see the God who Comes.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT: Right Side Up

shelliwilliams ADVENT, KINGDOM OF GOD

As we light the fourth candle on the Advent wreath today, we began to be aware that things are changing.  Christmas is only a week away.  The world leans toward the light just a bit, if only a bit, trying to get a glimpse, trying to see what is coming.  And as the world leans toward the coming of Christ, we are aware that something is not quite right.  We are aware that perhaps this is not the way the world is supposed to be after all.

When I was little, I used to love to hang upside down.  Things looked different.  I saw things that I had not seen before.  And then I would turn myself right side up, a little dizzy, perhaps even a little nauseous, but better for the view.  God came into this world to show us a different way, to show us that we have somehow, perhaps without really noticing, without really intending it to happen at all, tipped the world upside down.  We have elevated wealth; we have allowed hunger; we have awarded the powerful with more power and have not always paid attention to the compassionate and just part of us. We have allowed the world to tip over and then we have set up house on an upside-down world.  So, God comes.  God comes to right the world.  Our inclination is to hold on, to grasp and claw our way back to what we think is the way up.  But instead God invites us to just go with it, to turn ourselves right just as the world is turning.  Sometimes it is painful.  Sometimes we get dizzy and maybe even a little nauseous.  After all, change is hard.  We might have to give up something that we think is precious to us.  And so we hold on.  We hold on for dear life.  And all the while God is calling us to open our hands that we might receive what God is giving us.

As this final week of Advent begins, we are called to learn to let go.  If all was right with the world, then God would have come wealthy and gold-laden with the power of the world in tow.  But that’s not the way it happened at all.  God instead slipped in when most of us weren’t looking, when most of us were busy making our lives, slippsed into the bowels of the world.  God chose to come into poverty and helplessness to show us it means for everything to be right with the world.  And God, in God’s infinite wisdom, knows how to show us how to stand and walk and even hang upside down once in awhile on this up-turned world and finally, finally, see the way to go.

Shhhh!  You can almost hear them–a faint sound of bells in the distance.  And the world seems to be leaning toward them, tipping just a bit.  Do not hold on; do not stay behind.  Just dance with the music and move toward the Light that is just about to dawn.

I cannot create the light. The best I can do is put myself in the path of its beam.  (Annie Dillard)
 
In this final week of Advent, give yourself the gift of letting go–letting go of all your preconceptions, letting go of all those things that you think your life would not be complete without–and letting God right you with the world.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

ADVENT 4B: The Holiest of Words

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Incarnation, Mary, Response, Transformation

Lectionary Gospel Text:  Luke 1: (26-27) 28-38
And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He 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. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The 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. And 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. For nothing will be impossible with God.”Then 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.

Of course, this was not in the plan.  She was supposed to get married, have children, and live our her life in quiet anonymity with the quiet and little-known Joseph.  She knew what her life was going to hold. So, when God’s Presence suddenly is revealed, breaking into her quietly-orchestrated little world, of course she was afraid.  After all, things were never going to be the same.  There would be no going back and the way forward was murky at best.  And so, Mary hesitates, if only for a moment.  The angel, God, all of Creation, the existence of all who would come after her, hangs, suspended, not moving.  The world stops, straining to hear the Word. Things would never be the same again.  History was at this moment shifting and swaying, not sure of what it would become.  So, she takes a breath–one last breath as the quiet girl Mary.  And with a voice that shakes all of eternity, she responds, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  “YES.”  Nothing would ever be the same again.

On some level, the word “Yes” is perhaps the holiest word of all. It is what changes things; it is what moves us forward; it is our response on this journey that we call faith; it is our way to God.  God calls us, asking us to go a different way, to change our lives and shift our plans, and for one step, or one lifetime, or one eternity, to follow a sacred road that we did not see before.  For this child Mary, when the mystery of God broke into her consciousness, into her plans, she probably did hesitate.  Good grief, who wouldn’t?  Don’t you think God expects that to be our initial response?  I mean, you’d have to be completely naive or so incredibly self-absorbed and arrogant to not know what was happening to you.  But Mary was anything but naive and nothing near arrogant.  She DID know.  Oh, not the details.  She didn’t know how this would alter not only her world, not only her community, but all worlds and communities that ever were and ever would be. She didn’t know how difficult and frustrating her life would be.  She didn’t know that a little more than three decades later, she would be standing at the foot of two cross-boards helplessly watching this life that she was bringing into the world slip away.  She didn’t know how incredibly blessed she would be.  She didn’t know what she would become–the lovely subject of artists and sculptors, the namesake of great cathedrals and small house churches, the mother of the world.  She didn’t know.  She just knew that it was the way that was hers.  So, yes. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Christmas Eve is only a week away, when the wildly spinning world will stop, if only for a moment and once again welcome hope and peace into the world.  But that moment is not the holiest one.  The holiest moment of all is the one that comes next, the one that after the initial hesitation, after the initial, “How can this be?”, when we put down our carefully-packed baggage filled with plans and preconceptions, when we open our closed minds and and our cynical hearts, and become virgin enough to birth the Christ into our little world.  It is the moment when we say “Yes”, knowing that it will change us forever. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
There will be an answer, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me
Shine until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be
There will be an answer, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

(“Let it Be”, Words by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, 1970)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X_Gd1y2MFo&feature=related

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

 
In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of being virgin enough to move forward, of being open to birthing the Christ into your life, of forming the holy and the sacred on your lips and then speaking the “Yes” that God and the whole world is waiting for you to speak.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Frenzied

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Peace

Well, it’s about that time!  TEN MORE D AYS!!! 20% OFF ONE DAY ONLY!!!  FREE SHIPPING TODAY ONLY!  FIRST 100 CUSTOMERS RECEIVE A FREE ______________ [I don’t know, just fill in the blank!]  The truth is, we are frenzied!  We live at a frenzied pace with which, truth be known, none of us can keep up.  I think about my last couple of days.  I made cheesecakes on Monday night for a staff party.  Tuesday night, the fully Type A in me made a list of what I needed to do in the next ten days.  Really?  A list? Last night I talked to a friend on the phone for way too long, which means the list is already thrown way off.  And today? Well, first of all, I found out late in the day that google had somehow  “mediated” my post from today, which means I had to TELL it that it was not spam. (OK, really, would I “spam” myself?)   I think it’s just a conspiracy to keep us from dancing!  (Anyway, sorry about that!)

But, think about it–we’re probably not the first people on the planet to live frenzied.  Think back–“Joseph, you’ll need to spend the next few days and take off from your carpenter’s job and pop over to Bethlehem to pay this new tax that we’ve concocted.  We hope that works for you. Oh?  Your wife is about to go into labor?  And, really, she is birthing the salvation of the world, the Son of the God, the Messiah?  Well, that’s great, but you still need to pay your taxes on time or we can garnish your wages or take your house or throw you into once of those new Roman prisons.”  And so they went–Mary and Joseph, supposedly on a donkey or a mule or something of the like.  They arrived in Bethlehem.  But apparently everyone had gotten the same notice.  Do you believe all this traffic?  Why didn’t we make a reservation?  (Oh, really, Joseph?  What were you thinking?) Where is that first century Groupon when you need it?  Mary, I know this is hard.  I PROMISE that I will find a place for us to spend the night.  You’re WHAT?  NOW?  Are you kidding me? 

We all know the story.  There would be no room.  There would be frenzy.  And so we made do.  We took what we could get–a sort of back room filled with hay and cast-off blankets.  It was filled with animals cowering from the cold.  And there Jesus was born into the frenzy of the world.  Truth be known–there was never calm but there was always peace.  But the point is that God still came–came into the frenzy of the world.  God does not wait until everything is calm and together.  God does not come because you have all the decorations up (I think most of mine will again stay packed away in storage); God does not come because you finally have all the gifts wrapped; and God does not come because the world is ready, because the world is at peace. God just comes, frenzy and all.  And all we have to do is put on our dancing shoes!
 
In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of not having to have everything perfect, of not bowing to frenzy.  Give yourself the gift of peace!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli