God Is Now Here

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Zephaniah 3: 14-20

14Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! 15The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. 16On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. 17The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing 18as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. 19I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. 20At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.

So, here we are in this short book of Zephaniah, which sets itself in about the seventh century BCE during the reign of King Josiah of Judah.  Josiah is many times characterized as the last great king, whose only equal would have been King David.  The identity of this prophet is not really very clear.  His father’s name is Cushi, which could mean that he was of Ethiopian heritage (Cush being the name for what we call Ethiopia).  This short book is primarily a book of judgment oracles that proclaim and invoke the coming Day of the Lord.  The prophet announces what is essentially cosmic destruction and demise and then at the end, the part that we read, unfolds a ninth oracle of salvation and renewal, a promise of some sort of final resolution of judgment and an assurance that the world will finally stop shaking and moving in what oftentimes seems to be an unnatural and even unbearable way.  And the Lord, no longer a seemingly inaccessible and unapproachable mover of Creation, is actually with us.  The Scripture, using the present tense (rather than the future), says, “The Lord, your God, is in your midst.”  In other words, in the midst of all your worrying, all your bemoaning of lost opportunities of the past, all your despair, is God.  God is there, right there with you.

In this Season of Advent, we spend a lot of time looking forward to God’s coming, both to the “big day” when we remember Jesus’ birth as well as the final culmination of Creation, whatever and whenever that will be.  But then this…God is in our midst.  God is here, now.  There is no waiting for God’s Presence.  God is in our midst.  Yes, it is true that we live in what could be described as an “in-between” time.  The world is now but it is not yet what it should be.  There is still poverty, homelessness, and war.  There is still a veritable shaking of the earth as it groans toward its completeness.  But God is here—right here with us, in the midst of the poverty, in the midst of the homelessness, in the midst of the war, in the midst of the shaking.  God is in our midst.

So what does that mean?  When I was little I used to lay in bed and try to imagine God looking at me. I didn’t really understand what that meant, but I had been told in Sunday School that God was with us. It was odd to me. So I shut my eyes tight and opened them really fast to try to actually catch God peeking from behind some cotton-candy cloud, I suppose. (Apparently God was faster than I was!)  I wondered, though, did God have time to watch me sleep? Did God watch me take a bath? I mean, really, doesn’t God have better things to do than to watch me all the time? So somewhere along the way, we convince ourselves that God is out there or up there or somewhere down that road on which we’re traveling and that our mission is to “find God” (as if God is the one that is lost!). After all, why would God spend a bunch of time in the muck of this messed-up world?  But then we read that “the Lord is in our midst.”—not out there away from us, not up there over us, not down that road patiently waiting for us to catch up. God is in our midst. God is here…among us….with us.

Well, here we were desperately searching for God in our life and this little unsung hero of a book wedged in between all those Minor Prophets had it there all along. God is with US. No wonder we couldn’t find God! We weren’t looking in the right place! So all this time that we’ve been waiting for the Lord, God’s been here, waiting for US to notice. All this time that we’ve spent trying to figure God out and figure out what God wants and figure out how we can get to God when we should have been rejoicing. And the passage says that the Lord has taken away our judgments, just smoothed them right over, I suppose. (Actually, I think that’s called forgiveness.) The Hebrew Tanakh translation talks about it as God “soothing us with love”.   I love that, the thought of being soothed with love.  I mean, I guess it would be uncomfortable for God to hang around with us and continue to pick us apart at the same time and why would God hang around at all if it wasn’t for love?

So, try something with me.  Look at these letters:  G-O-D-I-S-N-O-W-H-E-R-E…What do they say?  Well, it depends on your perspective.  If one is cynical, mired down with despair, buried in what “was” or what “might have been”, one might read these letters as “God is Nowhere.”  Sadly, so many in the world do read it that way!  But if one is open to faith, open to the promise of new life to come, open to the assurance that things ARE going to change, one might alternatively read the letters as “God is Now Here.”  This season of Advent is one that shows us how to relate to the notion that God is indeed now here, that God is not only with us, but has been with us all along, that God is walking with us through the darkness and leading us to the Light.

So, in the midst of a world that sometimes makes no sense, in the midst of a life that is sometimes riddled with questions and heartache, in the midst of the way we hurt each other and judge each other and divide ourselves into camps, in this time straddled between a pandemic that carries death and despair and the hope-filled sight of planes being loaded with a vaccine, God comes.  God comes right there into our midst. You see, God didn’t wait for the world to be right. God didn’t wait for us to stop fighting with each other or arguing over who belongs here with us. God didn’t wait for terrorists to quit attacking innocents. God didn’t wait for us so-called innocents to quit attacking those who we think MIGHT be terrorists. God didn’t wait for us to feed the hungry or shelter the homeless. God didn’t wait for us to figure out what it means to be made in the image of God. God just came. God just showed up, really sort of uninvited because frankly sometimes we forget to do that. I don’t think that matters to God. God is not waiting for us to invite God to show up. God is waiting for us to notice that God is already here.

That’s what Christ was trying to show us.  No, things are not the way they should be and they are not the way they will be.  But God is in our midst.  The Season of Advent is not just for us to prepare for God’s coming.  It is to prepare ourselves to see with new eyes the Kingdom of God that is everywhere.  The Kingdom of God is here, already spilled into our midst and as we wait for the coming of its full completion, as we wait and “look for that day when justice shall roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”, as we wait we are called to become the people that God envisions we can be.  And “at that time I will bring you home, at that time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among [and with] all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.”  Look!  God is in our midst.  God is now here.    

Bidden or unbidden, God is present. (Desiderius Erasmus, 1466-1536; also attributed to Carl Jung, who supposedly posted these words above the door at his house in Switzerland)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Memories and Dreams

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Advent 3B Lectionary Psalter:  Psalm 126

1When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. 2Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” 3The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. 4Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb. 5May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. 6Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

This Psalm is one of fifteen Psalms known as the Songs of Ascent or, literally, “Songs of Going Up”.  In The Mishnah, the “Oral Torah”, the first major work of rabbinic literature, these fifteen Psalms coincide with the fifteen steps to the Temple.  They are, literally, songs of going up to meet God. It is a psalm of both preparation and anticipation.  It is a reminder of what the Lord has done and a promise that God will do it yet again. This Psalm came from people that had no voice.  They lived in an empire that was not theirs and whose leaders barely knew they existed. And they knew that they needed to be restored, that they needed to go home.  It is a calling to wait with hopeful expectation. It is a calling to dare to dream of what will be.

We’ve said it over and over but we have to admit that we do not wait well.  We are accustomed to instant gratification for the most part.  We’re used to doing pretty much what we want when we want.  That’s why the world of today that has seemed to slow to a crawl because of the Covid pandemic is so hard for us.  We miss what we used to do.  We miss where we used to go.  We miss who we used to be.  We’ll miss that full, bustling sanctuary on Christmas Eve.  Some of us will miss holiday family get-togethers.  We even miss the crowded, joyous shopping trip.  But we can remember…and we can dream of next year.

Have you thought, though, that maybe this “new” way of living into which we’ve been forced is a way of slowing us down? Think about it.  When the Israelites to whom this song was sung found themselves in these low times, those times filled with despair, those times when hopelessness could have run rampant if not checked, they drew on their memories, their institutional memories.   They remembered what God had done.  It wasn’t things that happened in their personal lives; it was the memories of a people, those stories that were so much a part of them.  And they remembered that God had restored them.  And, through that memory, they had faith that God would do it again.

Advent calls us, too, to remember.  It’s hard for us.  We normally move so fast through life, always stretching toward the next moment, always focused on our present and our future.  But it’s our past, our memory, that holds the foundations for our faith.  The Greek word for it is anamnesis.  Interestingly, it’s used in the medical discipline to talk about medical history, that history that stretches back into blood relatives that came before us, perhaps those that we have never met.  We Christians use it to talk about the Eucharist, when we remember what God has done—not to us as individuals but to us as children of God.  We remember God’s never-ending presence over thousands of years of human history.  It is OUR history; those are OUR memories. And, then, like the Psalm, we look forward to the promise of life ahead.  But that life would make no sense standing alone.  Our understanding of it comes from our institutional memory.  

Memories and dreams go hand in hand.  Memories provide our pathway, our innate knowledge of where to travel, much like a river does.  Like the Negeb in the Psalm, each season it is filled after the winter rains and, rejuvenated, it knows where to go.  It knows where to flow.  It knows the direction to move.  Seeds, too, have a memory, a sort of “code” that was implanted in them from the beginning of time, that tells them what to do, tells them what they will become.  We are not that different.  Our memory reminds us who we are; our dreams show us who we will be.  They are interconnected, inseparable.  So in this somewhat strange Advent season we’re in, remember the songs, those “songs of going up” and pay attention to your dreams. Our faith is made of memories and dreams, past and future, that teaches us to walk and gives us the notes to sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”.   Next year…always next year…but it would mean nothing if we didn’t remember.

A dreamer is one who can find [his or her] way in the moonlight, and [whose] punishment is that [he or she] sees the dawn before the rest of the world.  (Oscar Wilde)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli       

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