ADVENT

ADVENT 2B: As If

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Holy Space, KINGDOM OF GOD, Waiting



The Burning Bush, Nicholas Froment, ca. 1476

ADVENT 2B:  Lectionary:  2 Peter 3: (8-10) 11-15a
Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness,waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish;and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.

God will come when God will come.  We’ve heard that over and over. But, granted, this life of faith is difficult.  How do you keep holding on to a hope when you often see no progress at all?  How can we continue to be forced to wait for whatever it is for which we’re waiting?  Because, as the passage says, we are promised a new heaven and a new earth.  We are promised that all of Creation will be recreated.  We are promised that, once and for all, righteousness will have a home.  Righteousness, then, will be the norm.  Righteousness will be an everyday thing.

And in this Season of Advent, we learn to wait.  Good things cannot be rushed.  The plan for God’s Kingdom was not made hastily and it cannot be just thrown together because we are getting a bit impatient with the whole ordeal.  So, what do we do in the meantime?  We live as if it’s here.  We live righteousness.  We give it a home.  The Holy and the Sacred is not unattainable.  In fact, if we just open our eyes, it is spilling into our lives even as we speak.  God does not sit back and watch us squirm and strain until all is said and done.  Rather, God gives us glimpse after glimpse and incarnation after incarnation and waits with infinite patience for us to respond. Look around…there are more burning bushes and parted seas than we can ever possibly imagine.  As the writer of the Epistle passage that we read this week maintains, it is that Holy Patience, that Waiting God in which we find our salvation.  And so if we live as if the Holy and the Sacred has completely filled our lives, righteousness will indeed have a home and we will no longer be waiting for salvation.

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of living as if righteousness and peace and the fullness of God is all you know.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

 

Announcing the Beginning

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Darkness, Light, Openness to God
The Anunciation
Icon at St. Catherine’s Monastery

Christmas is coming!  We live this Season of Advent as if its purpose is to point to the beginning (or the “re-beginning”).   We prepare for the coming of God!  But think about it.  Something happened nine months before.  This human Jesus, like all of us, had to be grown and nurtured in the womb before the miracles started.  March 25th—The Feast of the Annunciation—is for some traditions the turning point of human history.  It is in this moment that God steps through the fog into humanity and, just like every human that came before, must wait to be fully birthed into this world.

We Protestants sort of skip over the Anunciation.  And then we start with Christmas and count back nine months.  After all, it’s just a bunch of waiting, right?  OK, that works.  Nine months before Christmas…But March 25th is traditionally regarded as the first day of Creation. (Now, really, I don’t even BEGIN to say that THAT is a real date!  But, it’s as good as any, right?)  So, let’s go with it.  March 25th is the beginning.  The Anunciation…the announcement of the coming of Christ, the coming of God, into our little world…IS the first day of Creation. (You know, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was…”)  So, begin at the beginning and count forward…to the birth of God into the world. Like Creation, the coming of Christ was the Light pushing the darkness away.

But the world, like any expectant parent, had to wait.  Advent teaches us to wait.  Advent teaches us that birth does not appear in a flash.  Rather, birth, like all things that matter, is a process.  And, it is definitely worth the wait. 

God will come when God will come.  But we don’t want to miss the process of the birth.

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of being a part of the process of birthing the world into being.  But part of it means that you have to wait until it’s ready to be.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

ADVENT 2B: Something Incredible is About to Happen

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Change, Openness to God, Roads

ADVENT 2B: Lectionary: Isaiah 40: 1-5 (6-11)
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.  A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

First of all, with all due respect to Mr. Handel’s presentation, this passage was probably not originally written with us or our tradition in mind!  This really is talking about the people of Israel.  It really is talking about bringing comfort to a people who have wandered in the Judean wilderness.  Probably written toward the end of the Babylonian exile, this writing offers a vision where a highway (a REAL highway) through the wilderness will be made level and straight.  If, as most assume, this part of the book that we know as Isaiah was written after the exile, it would have been soon after 539 BCE when Cyrus of Persia conquered the Babylonians and, not really caring whether or not the Israelites stayed, allowed them to return to Jerusalem.  So imagine a highway that, typical of the ancient world, would have originally been built to accommodate royal processions.  And so God is depicting a highway made for a grand procession led by the Almighty.

The just-released exiles are returning.  But to what?  Their city and their way of life lay in ruins.  They can’t just go back and pick up where they left off.  They have to feel that God has deserted them.  They are looking for comfort.  They are looking for solace.  They are looking for God to put things back the way they were before.  But God has something different in mind.  Rather than repair, God promises recreation; rather than vindication, God promises redemption; and rather than solace, God promises transformation.  God is making something new–lifting valleys, lowering mountains, and ultimately, when all is said and done, revealing a glory that we’ve never seen before.

In this Advent season, we are given the same vision.  We are not promised solace.  We are not promised that Emmanuel, God With Us, is coming to put our lives back together.  In fact, can you feel it?  The world has begun to shake.  The valleys are rising; the mountains are leveling.  Something incredible is about to happen.  The light is just beginning to dawn.  Life as we know it will never be the same again.   Soon the fog will lift and we will see that the road does not lead back.  It instead leads us home.  But we’re going to have to be willing to leave what we know.

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of not going back so that God can show you the Glory that is about to be revealed.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Following Mystery

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Change, Disruption, Mystery

16th century English poet and priest, John Donne said that “to love God is to follow the mystery, to be led by its showing and withdrawing.”  So, what does that mean…to follow the mystery?  We live in a world where truth is defined as a collection of knowledge, as the accumulation of things known, of things proven.  We do not do well with mystery.  We attempt to conquer it, rather than follow it.  We pray that God will somehow swoop in and finally clear all of this chaos up for us once and for all.  We pray that God will give us understanding and easy roads.  We pray for enlightenment.  We pursue certainty.  We try to figure it all out.  And then Advent comes…

Behold!  Hear this!  Keep awake!  Be not afraid!  You see, things are about to change.  The world as you know it is about to be shaken to its core or, at least, to its senses.  All of those things that you have placed around you in at attempt to control your life will mean nothing.  All of those expectations that you have wrapped around yourself in an effort to prepare for the future are probably keeping your hands from doing what they are meant to do.  And as hard as it is for this “Type A” personality to admit, it is not our job to conquer the chaos of the world by organizing it into something that makes sense to us; rather, we are called to follow the Divine Mystery as it illuminates everything around us.  We are called to open our eyes to see what God is showing us.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love preparing for Christmas.  I love buying and wrapping gifts.  I love Christmas trees and lights.  I love baking and giving what I’ve baked away.  And all of those things are on my “to do” list.  But Advent is about mystery.  It is about being open to the revealing of the One whom we cannot define or control.  It is about being open to the possibility that God will enter this seemingly God-forsaken world not with loud, thrashing pronouncements so that we are certain that’s who it is, but more like a whisper in the quiet of the night in a small town and an unkempt grotto in the midst of the chaotic reality of this world.  Advent is about letting go of certainty and following the mystery.

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of not needing to be certain, of not needing to have everything planned.  Give yourself the gift of being open to the mystery that enters your life.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT: Awakening

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Change, Preparation, Waiting

ADVENT 1B:  Isaiah 13: (24-31) 32-37
32“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.33Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn,36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

The first day of Advent…the first day of the Christian year…and (I know), the first day that I’ve written a blog posting in a really long time.  We begin this Year B of our Lectionary year with a reading from The Gospel According to Mark, whose writer really just sort of skips over the whole Advent / Christmas thing and cuts right to the chase.  Most over-personalized readings of this Scripture leave us with a fear of what comes next.  (Oh my, am I ready?  What’s going to happen to me?) We quickly go to visions of those who are unprepared being uncomfortably ripped from what they know or, as a series of cult fiction writings would depict it, being flat out left behind!  But keep reading…this is not meant to scare us; it is meant to wake us up.  Sure, it is meant to remind us that there is something coming!  We do not want to miss it.  But, more than that, we do not want to miss the present spiritual awakening that we are all having in this very moment.

We have skewed our understanding of Advent a bit.  I think all of us know that.  But, really, can you blame us?  The world is so bent on being prepared for what comes next that it tends to live one season ahead at all times–the Halloween decorations go up the end of August, the Thankgiving decorations go up the end of September, and the Christmas decorations go up the end of October.  The twelve days of Christmas tide, will of course, be filled with merchandise sales, a couple of unreplaced burned out Christmas lights, and and a flowering of little red hearts filled with candy to make sure we’re ready for the next thing.  Somewhere in there, Advent is lost.  Oh, we Christians, do alright with it.  We faithfully light one candle at a time while we begrudingingly ward off the singing of any Christmas carols.  But Advent is not merely a season of preparation for Christmas.  It is much, much more.  It is from the Latin “Adventus“, which means arrival or coming.  It is not really meant to be only a time of shopping and checking off our “to do” list for the December 25th festival. Rather, Advent is our awakening to the realization that the Divine is even now spilling into our lives, even now a new humanity is being birthed, and even now all of Creation is being reformed and recreated.

We cannot live one season ahead.  God will come when God will come.  The full revealing of what God has in store is yet to be.  But this season of Advent, this season of waiting, awakens us that we might see that it has already started to be.  The feast has yet to be set but the dancing has begun.  All we have to do is learn to stay awake.

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of your own awakening to God’s Sacred Presence that is all around you.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli   

WALK TO JERUSALEM: The Announcement

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Anunciation, JESUS, LENT, Openness to God
St. Catherine’s Monastery, Egypt, 12 century

Scripture Reading:  Luke 1: 26-38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 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.

Most of us good Protestants seldom talk about The Anunciation at all, let alone in the middle of the season of Lent.  The Anunciation literally means “announcement”.  The word itself probably holds no real mystery.  But it is the beginning of the central tenet of our entire Christian faith–Anunciation, Incarnation, Transfiguration, Resurrection, that cycle of holy mystery that with each turn draws us closer and closer to God as God reveals the very Godself more and more to us.  For us, it begins the mystery that is Jesus Christ, the mystery that will take us to Jerusalem.  For us, the fog lifts and there before us is the bridge between the human and the divine. 

In December, we usually speed past this reading, eager as we are to get to “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus…”  We want to get to the beginning of it all.  But think back.  Jesus was human and just like all humans, something happened nine months before.  And whether or not you take the notion of a virgin birth literally, there was something remarkable that happened.  It is in this moment that God steps through the fog into humanity, that the great I AM reveals the Godself to all of Creation, and, just like every one of us must do, waits to be birthed into the world.  It is not just this young girl’s womb that is suddenly filled with child, swelling with expectant life; it is all of Creation that now waits for Light to be born.  The world is with child.

Can you imagine what Mary must have thought?  She was young, she had plans, she had her whole life ahead of her.  “How can this be?” we read.  In today’s vernacular, it would read, “Are you kidding me?”  And so as everything she knew and everything she planned toppled around her, she said “yes” and entered the mystery of God.  Now, I have to admit, I don’t get so wrapped up in needing Mary to be a literal virgin. (In fact, I don’t care enough about it to need to prove it or disprove it, so you can stay anywhere you are on the issue.) After all, would it really change what happened?  Would it really change who God was or what God has done?  Would it really change that this was the moment when the Light of God came into the world, when the Divine suddenly spilled into the womb of the world.  And that the one who held the birthing of God in her hands said yes.  Now, THAT, my friends, I think is important. 
 
Think about it.  What exactly does it mean to be “virgin”?  It means undefiled, pure, ready and open to receive.  Mary, the virgin, was open to receive God unto herself.  The most scandalous part of the whole story has nothing to do with whether or not the birth was “proper” in terms of our world; the scandal is that the great I AM, the holiest of holies, the One whose name could not be said, suddenly enters humanity with all of its violence and corruption and despair and the reordering of our existence begins.  All that we know and all that we plan is beginning to topple around us.  The Anunciation is the anouncement of hope for all of us.
 
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)
 
So, in this season of Lent, what does it mean for you to be open to receiving Jesus Christ into your life?  Because, you see, that is the way to Jerusalem…
 
Grace and Peace,
 
Shelli

Becoming Human

shelliwilliams ADVENT, Humanity, Openness to God, Preparation

The time is almost here. In just a few hours, the door to the Divine will swing open and God and all of heaven will burst into the world. If you stop and listen, just for a moment, you can hear the eternal harps in the distance as they approach our lives. Oh, sure, it’s happened before. But can’t you feel it? Doors opening, light flooding in, the earth filled with a new vision of peace eternal. Maybe, just maybe, tonight will be different.

The child in the manger is, of course, no ordinary child, but God Incarnate, the Word made flesh. God took the form of a human–just an ordinary human–a human like you and me–and was born and dwelt with us–still Divine, but in every way human (because you see God in all of God’s wisdom and all of God’s mystery can do that!) This Holy Incarnation was not meant to show us how to be Divine but, rather, how to be human. We see ourselves as “only human”, as if that excuses us from being who God called us to be. But the point is that God calls us to be human, made in the image of God (not like God, but in the image–a reflection of God, Incarnate). Jesus the Christ was born human so that we would know what being human means. And when, like Jesus, we become fully human, our hearts are filled with compassion, connecting us to one another; our eyes are filled with a vision of what God made this world to be; and our lives become holy as they are shaped in the image of God Incarnate. And we, even as humans, can reach out and touch the Divine now that God has burst forth into this world.

On the eve of Christ’s birth, let us open our lives to receive this holy child and open our hearts and our eyes that we might finally know what we are called to become–human, made in the image of God, a reflection and an incarnation of God here on earth. This Christmas, let Christ be born in us. This Christmas, let us become fully human.

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!
(Phillips Brooks)

The time is almost here. The door is opening and we see heaven beginning to pour in. Go forth and become human, become who God called you to be.

Grace and Peace on this Night of Nights,
Shelli