This House That We’ve Built

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

2 Samuel 7: 1-16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Ambiguity

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

Isaiah 7: 10-17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Turning of the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Changing Expectations

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

Matthew 11: 2-11 (Advent 3A)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Remember Who You Are

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

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 another familiar passage for this season.  It’s part of the Year B Lectionary but, again, I’m “filling in”.  It speaks of hope.  (You’ll remember that it also appears in Luke 4:18-21, which is sort of Jesus’ first sermon, if you will.)  In both passages, God has sown God’s own Spirit into the one who speaks, breathed God’s breath into the one who will carry out God’s will.  And, here, 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 within that hope is also a call to remember—remember who and whose you are, remember what you had, that we might work to build it again.  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 notice that in verse 3, 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. The prophet is not called to “fix” things; the prophet is called to proclaim that all are called to this work of transformation and to call on us to remember who and whose we are. In other words, all that work that you think needs to be done?  Remember who you are.  Remember that vision God calls you toward.

(OK…TRIGGER WARNING…)  I try very hard on this platform to NOT get political (I have another platform where I intentionally get blatantly political and that will suffice).  But I may be going up to the line here.  Honestly, I’m scared.  I’m scared that our society and our world are being slowly and intentionally taken over by different degrees of authoritarianism.  We Americans seem to somehow be content with handing over the reins to a newfound authoritarian oligarchy.  I have read too much history and traveled too many places to naively think that this will end well if we don’t turn a corner.  I’m scared that while we’re waiting for things to change, we’ve forgotten who we are.  We’ve forgotten what we’re called to do and called to be.  So, how do we build up and raise up and repair?  How do we listen to the prophet’s words?  How do we become instruments of change, instruments of God’s vision for what the world could be?

In 1998, I visited Russia. (During the worst heatwave they ever remembered!  I learned to drink straight frozen vodka at lunch because it felt like ice going through my body and it was lovely.)  Anyway, that was during the height of something different happening in Russia.  Gorbachev had introduced Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) in the mid-1980’s, the Communist regime Soviet Union had officially fallen in 1991 and there was a new life.  People were excited.  They knew they had it rough.  In fact, they had had it rough for centuries.  (“Doctor Zhivago” is not completely fiction.)  But there was hope.  Things were changing.

I visited Russia again in 2008.  I stayed for three weeks.  (Ironically, during the record-breaking snowfall and below-zero temperatures.  What is it with me?)  It was very different than it had been ten years before.  I stayed in a “luxury” apartment that rattled with the train down below, had peeling paint and cracking walls, no electricity that would withstand a curling iron, strange-colored water coming out of the hydrants, and was, oh my, so incredibly cold.  But truly, it WAS luxury.  I visited apartments of members of our sister church.  There were 15 people living in about 400 square feet.  The walls were covered in faded newspaper in an attempt to insulate it.  And food was scarce.  And much of it was rotting.  Perestroika was beginning to fade.  When I attended our sister church, I sat there (in a language that I only knew about ten words and how to read three words in Cyrillic) in an “illegal” church service because of the building in which it was held.  I remember thinking, “you know, this could end badly for me!”  But the point was that the society, the economy, and the newfound freedom and openness were failing.  They knew it was failing.  Rather than the feeling of hope and promise that I had observed ten years before, I had a sense that they were just trying to exist, just trying to go around all the issues without tripping on them.  They were just trying to avoid poking the bear, so to speak, and live their lives as best they could.  They were existing.

I don’t want that for us.  I want to listen to the prophet.  While we wait on the world to change, we cannot ignore if it is going backwards.  We HAVE to remember who and whose we are.  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. 

See, 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.  Newness will arise from destruction or smoldering ashes or misspent interpretations.  God calls us to something new.  Remember that.  Do not be content to just exist.  God calls us to something more.  You can’t wait on the world to change without remembering who and whose you are.

The reality of Advent isn’t that we are waiting for the birth of the Christ Child.  The Christ Child is here and is waiting for us to come.  He is crying out to us from the border.  He is calling to us from the voices of the poor.  He is shouting out to us from prison.  He is waiting for us to live out our faith.  He is waiting for us to seek justice.  He is waiting for us to pursue peace.  Let us go, for He is waiting. (Susan Henry-Crowe)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

God Is Here

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

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, in case you haven’t figured it out, I’ve tried to at least try to line up with our lectionary texts from Year A.  But, since there’s only three Scriptures plus a psalter each week, writing daily calls for some “fill in”.  This passage is normally read in the third week of Advent during Year C.  We actually only read from the book of Zephaniah three times throughout the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, so we’re probably not experts on it.  The book is probably set during the time of King Josiah.  It was a time of indifference by the people.  Maybe they were tired; perhaps they were just a bit too comfortable; or possibly they just forgot who and whose they were.  They have been hearing an ongoing foretelling of a time of destruction, a time of divine judgment. (I guess that would make me tune out too!)  But then we come to this passage.  It is a voice of hope, foretelling salvation rather than destruction.  And it proclaims, “the Lord, your God, is in your midst.”

Think about what that means.  We’ve talked a lot in this series about waiting for the world to change, about what we do while we’re waiting, about ways to wait and ways to change.  And a lot of our Advent waiting is couched as waiting for God, waiting for the coming of God into our midst.  But this passage says that God is here.  What do we do with that?  So, if you’ve been waiting for a God that is “out there” or “up there” or somewhere “up ahead” waiting for us to catch up, this throws all of that off.  God is here.  God is with us.  God is here, waiting with us now.

I often wonder what the Old Testament prophets would say to us today.  I often think it’s possible that they would be shocked and disappointed that we haven’t come farther than we have, that we still operate out of weakness and fear, that we still allow our leaders to pursue power over justice, that we still do not offer care for the lame and outcasts, that we are still desperately waiting for the world to change.  Go back and read this.  How much of Zephaniah’s words apply?  Probably most of them, as much as I hate to admit it.  But then we read that God is in our midst.  God is here.  God is here now.  So, don’t you wonder what God thinks of our world?  Don’t you think God is sometimes frustrated with us, maybe even angry at times?  I mean, we haven’t come that far from those to whom Zephaniah spoke.

God is here.  Imagine God there with you, sitting with you, experiencing what you are experiencing, rejoicing in your joy and suffering in your sorrow.  When we do not welcome the immigrant, God is here.  When armed troops march into our cities to purge the other, God is here.  When we kill survivors clinging to boats, God is here.  When we do not provide food to the hungry or healthcare to the sick, God is here.  And when our world rocks with war and power struggles and desperation, God is here.  When our public rhetoric becomes wrought with exclusion and racism and xenophobia, God is here.  God is here.  God is not waiting until the world changes.  God is here now.

It reminds of W.B. Yeats famous poem, “The Second Coming”.  He wrote it at the end of World War I and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, when the world was in chaos, when there was a fear that a new and brutal era would emerge.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

And God was there.  The Scripture we read ends with a promise, a promise of a gathering in, of a homecoming.  It ends with the promise that the world will change.  And God is here, in our midst.  We’re not waiting for God.  God is here, waiting, waiting for us, waiting with us for the world to change.  God did not come when things were perfect.  God waits with us, waiting with us for the world to change.  God comforts us and soothes us and, if we listen, WHEN we listen, will also give us ways to get closer to the vision that God holds for us all.  The Lord God is in your midst.

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

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Patiently Imperfect

shelliwilliams Uncategorized ,

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

James 5:7-10 (Advent 3A)

7Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. 8You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. 9Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors! 10As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

Don’t you hate it when someone tells you to be patient?  I am, admittedly, not the most patient person in the world.  I mean, there’s so much stuff we have to do!  Am I right?  We’re told that we are supposed to be a part of this Kingdom of God.  We are told that we are to be instruments of bringing it into being.  And then we’re told we have to learn to wait.  And now we’re told that we’re supposed to do that patiently.  It’s enough to try one’s patience.

There is a story that I love (and have many times used it, so you’ve heard it before) about an American traveler on safari in Kenya.  He was loaded down with maps, and timetables, and travel agendas.  Porters from a local tribe were carrying his cumbersome supplies, luggage, and “essential stuff.”  On the first morning, everyone awoke early and traveled fast and went far into the bush.  On the second morning, they all woke very early and traveled very fast and went very far into the bush.  On the third morning, they all woke very early and traveled very fast and went even farther into the bush.  The American seemed pleased.  But on the fourth morning, the porters refused to move.  They simply sat by a tree.  Their behavior incensed the American.  “This is a waste of valuable time.  Can someone tell me what is going on here?”  The translator answered, “They are waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.” 

It’s about rest.  But it’s also about patience.  It’s about refraining from that continual push to “make” things change, to “make” things happen.  Change will come when it will come.  Yes, we’re called to work toward it.  But we’re not called to make something happen when the time is not right.  (Note to self!)

This passage is pretty familiar.  But we usually take it out of context.  Go back and read James 4:1 through this passage.  The whole thing changes.  This exhortation to be patient is not directed at our patience toward what is happening around us.  Rather, it is an exhortation to be patient with EACH OTHER.  (Ugh oh…that changes everything!)  The patience here is not merely a personal virtue.  It’s not talking about the way we wait for God’s coming; it’s talking about the way we act in relationship with each other.  It is a patience that is deeply grounded in faith, deeply grounded in who we are as the people of God. 

This patience, this strengthening of our hearts comes as the community lives and witnesses together.  It is a patience that enacts as we live as members who watch over and care for one another.  It means taking on a deep compassion and love toward the other.  The writer of James is telling us to be attentive to one another, to be compassionate, to not let things come about that are not conducive to our relationships, no matter how much we think they further God’s Kingdom.  God will grant all in God’s time.  What we’re called to do is love each other and I think that means that we work toward those ways that help each other.

And we thought waiting on the world to change was hard!  Now we’re told that we have to be patient with one another. (So, yes, you have to be patient with all those people that you think are wrong!) You know what?  We also have to be patient with ourselves.  See, we don’t live in a world that’s perfect.  God knows that.  We live in a world that is what God created it to be—for now.  And God calls us to love one another and together (yes, TOGETHER) to work toward that vision that God holds for all of us—together.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)

I discovered that in the spiritual life, the long way round is the saving way.  It isn’t the quick and easy religion we’re accustomed to.  It’s deep and difficult–a way that leads into the vortex of the soul where we touch God’s transformative powers.  But we have to be patient.  We have to let go and tap our creative stillness.  Most of all, we have to trust that our scarred hearts really do have wings. (Sue Monk Kidd)

Lyrics

Has this world forgotten how to love?
Are we blinded by the hate we let inside?
No one’s givin’ in or givin’ up
The lines are drawn and there’s no compromise

This isn’t who we are
It’s time for us to start

Looking for a window in the wall
Maybe we can see the other side
And find we’re not so different after all
Looking for a window in the wall

Sometimes hearts can grow as cold as stone
Then become the borders we can’t cross
The fertile fields of trust where love had grown
Slowly start to die when hope is lost

That’s where we are right now
But we can turn it all around by

Looking for a window in the wall
Maybe we can see the other side
And find we’re not so different after all
Looking for a window in the wall

We’re waging war, we’ve died enough
Fighting for everything but love
It’s time to heal (it’s time to heal)
To turn the page (to turn the page)
Too much to lose, so much to save
We have to change

Looking for a window in the wall
Maybe we can see the other side
And find we’re not so different after all
Looking for a window in the wall
Looking for a window in the wall

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Eddie Kilgallon / Tatiana Cameron / Thomas Paden

Window in the Wall lyrics © Pleezin’ The Breeze Music, Paden Place Music., Tajko Music Publishing

Grace and Peace,

Shelli