Community Pool

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

Isaiah 12

You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. 2Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. 3With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.  4And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. 5Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. 6Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

This passage speaks of redemption, of God’s always-present faith in us.  Yes, that’s right.  Faith is not just a one-way thing.  We have faith in the faith that God has in us.  We love this passage.  We love to say it.  We love to sing it.  It brings us joy.  It is our affirmation that we trust that God will save us and that we rely on that.  And we wait and watch for those lovely flowing waters of salvation.  The writer’s vision is one of liberation—to the exiles, to the world, to all of Creation, to us.  The destiny is clear.  God is walking us all toward salvation and offering us healing waters and that is indeed something about which everyone should be joyful.

But notice, it’s not just about you and me; it’s about us—all of us.  It’s always odd for me when the language of prophets begins to sound like it’s intended for just one individual (i.e. the reader), as if it is called to direct the relationship that one person has with God.  That’s not usually the way prophets talked.  Their exhortations tended to be more collective.  They tended to talk more to the community rather than to just one individual.  So, I often find myself wondering if there’s some translation problems with some of the pronouns or maybe some confusion with the antecedents to which they refer.  I mean, what if God was OUR salvation.  Oh, wait, God is!

Faith is really meant to be more of a communal thing, don’t you think?  It’s not as if we’re in some sort of game to see who can come the closest to God.  After all, there’s that whole image of God thing.  If we are made in the image of God, then we are called to be trustworthy—for each other.  We are called to be the ones to draw waters that quench both physical and spiritual thirst–for each other.  We are called to be there for each other.  We don’t have individual wells. (Even if you HAVE an individual well, you’re still susceptible to the ground water from which you’re drawing).  The water is all of ours.  The well of salvation is a communal well.

And, yet, we still tend to wall ourselves off from each other and pull ourself into our own lives.  I think that is part of the reason that our society seems to be drowning.  You can’t wall off the water.  You can’t permanently hold it.  You certainly can’t choose who gets it.  It’s offered to us all.  You can’t quit trusting each other.  You can’t quit offering to each other.  God is in our midst, not to see if we’re doing everything right (because we’re probably not) but to show us the Kingdom of God—you know, the one for all of us.

When I visited the River Jordan (which is not the ACTUAL place of Jesus’ baptism but rather a part of the river where humans have again seen fit to wall it off and charge admission for the experience.  I’m not really sure if that’s what God had in mind.), I collected my perfunctory water to bring home.  All I had was a small pill bottle.  Yes, it made it home.  But it didn’t last.  Because water cannot be held.  (And apparently the seal on pill bottles is not all that reliable). It is shared whether we want to admit it or not.  I once was preparing to do a baptism and the mother of the child passed me on the stairs as I climbed to the next floor with the baptismal bowl (to go get water out of the sink in the lady’s bathroom).  She asked where I was going and my immediate response was “the River Jordan”.  She laughed and replied, “well as long as it’s clean.”  It was funny.  But think about it—water molecules don’t disappear.  They drain out, they evaporate, the return in as some form of water over the earth.  It continues forever.  Maybe some of those molecules in the lady’s bathroom HAD once been in the River Jordan.  Maybe some of those molecules were there with Jesus that day.  The point is, we’re really just swimming in a community pool all the time.

God IS our salvation.  God offers us the waters of salvation—over and over and over again.  There is no water destined for me.  There is none destined for you.  We really are just swimming in a community pool.  And while we wait for the world to change, the water remains.  Get out of yourself.  Even if it’s hard right now, realize that we are in this together—all of us.  We have the water, offered to each of us, to quench our thirst and clean our very being.  But it really is a communal well.  So don’t hold on so tightly.  Just let it refresh you and bring you peace.

One cannot step twice in the same river, for fresh waters are forever flowing around us.  (Heraclitus of Ephesus, c. 500 BCE)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Just Beneath the Surface

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

Isaiah 35:1-10 (Advent 3A)

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. 3Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”

5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 8A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Once again, we get a vision of what’s to come.  But this is not some image of a future, far-off world.  It’s not some reward we’ll get for living semi-righteous lives.  It’s not some other place or other realm of being.   This is God’s vision for the world we have now.  And it is there already, planted and growing, in some places maybe even beginning to bloom.  But here we are, supplanted in our current ways, sometimes feeling strangled and parched, often feeling held down by things we create or things others do to us.  But Albert Einstein once said that “your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”  So, what is it you imagine?  What preview do you see?

The writer of this passage was probably writing to an exiled people, a people who had been so beat up and put down that they were having a hard time imagining anything else.  But this writer looked at a world that was in chaos and saw order, looked at a road so overgrown that it was thought to be impassable and saw a highway, and looked at the thirsty, lifeless desert and saw blooms.  And then we read of a scene that was beyond what anyone ever thought would happen.  He envisions these exiles, these people whose hopes and dreams had long been quashed and whose lives had become nothing more than an exercise in survival dancing and singing with joy as they returned home.

Yes, it’s hard to imagine beyond where we are.  We are waiting, waiting on the world to change.  And we believe it will.  Our faith tells us that.  But belief, even faith, has to include some imagination, don’t you think?  I mean, faith is not an intellectual pursuit.  We don’t read some passage in the Bible and immediately respond with faith.  We’re not called to some blind acceptance of what we’re told.  We don’t have faith in something just because we read some account of it.  Faith comes because God gives us the wherewithal to imagine it, to imagine it into being.  Imagination dares to see what the eyes cannot see.  (That kind of sounds like faith, doesn’t it?)  So, let your imaginations go wild.

It’s always there, beneath the surface.  It’s always there, planted, ready to sprout.  That’s what faith is about—imagining what will be.  I mean, imagine that everyone has enough.  Imagine that the world is at peace.  Imagine that everyone steps up to care for the earth, to slow down the decay and the destruction we humans have caused.  Imagine that everyone has equal rights and acceptance, and a voice, and a vote.  Imagine that our first concern is not ourselves but our neighbor.  Imagine that government is about our voice rather than a fight over control.  Imagine that everyone is safe from harm, safe from gun violence, safe from human trafficking, safe from hunger and hurt and desperation.  Imagine that we all see ourselves as instruments of imagination, people of faith.

In this season of Advent, we are not just called to look toward that day about which the writer of this passage writes.  We are reminded to look FOR that day, to imagine and believe it into being and to see what of it is already there.  We live within a holy tension of the way the world is and the way God calls the world to be.  But we are reminded that the blooms in the desert are already planted.  Barbara Brown Taylor says that “Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world.  But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.  Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars. (An Altar in the World:  A Geography of Faith, p. 15.)  So, what if everything that you saw, everything that you touched, was indeed holy–maybe not holy in the “holier-than-thou, overly-righteous, inaccessible-to-the-ordinary-human” sense, but rather “thick with divine possibility,” filled with the promise of redemption, the promise that buried deep within its being were deserts waiting to bloom?  Just imagine.

Once, when I was particularly depressed, a friend and pacifist from Holland told me something very beautiful: “The people who worked to build the cathedrals in the Middle Ages never saw them completed. It took two hundred years and more to build them. Some stone-cutter somewhere sculpted a beautiful rose; it was his life’s work, and it was all he ever saw. But he never entered into the completed cathedral. But one day, the cathedral was really there. You must imagine peace the same way. (Dorothy Soelle)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

A Reordering

shelliwilliams Advent , ,

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

Psalm 72: 1-7, 18-19 (Advent 2A)

1Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son.

2May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.

3May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness.

4May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.

5May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.

6May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.

7In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more.

18Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. 19Blessed be his glorious name forever; may his glory fill the whole earth. Amen and Amen.

This psalter is part of a Psalm that was probably read at the occasion of a royal liturgy.  The words are the petition for a leader, a good leader, a worthy leader, a leader that will bring the nation into righteousness and peace, a leader that will answer injustice with hope and promise.  It is a prayer not just for a redeemed people but a redeemed nation.  It is a prayer that the vision of the nation might be reordered into that vision that God holds for all of us.

During Advent, we talk a lot about God’s vision.  We talk a lot about the Kingdom of God becoming what it should be.  And we hope and we dream and we look for it to happen.  But do you think sometimes we’re not looking through the right lenses? I mean, I pray for this to happen.  You pray for this to happen.  And when we live in a time such as this, we wait, we wait for the world to change.  But are we hoping that will happen for us or are we hoping it will happen for the world?  I know that’s a weird question.  What if we’re so shaped right now by the difficulties we are experiencing that our view of God’s vision has become an end to those difficulties, a way of moving ourselves into a better scenario.

Years ago, in one of the large meeting rooms at Lakeview Methodist Assembly in Palestine, TX, hung a huge poster.  When you went up to it, it was this wonderful mosaic of maybe 100-125 pictures of people doing ministry, of the church being the church, of Christians being Christians.  It was inspirational.  But if you went to the other side of the room and looked back at it from a distance, you couldn’t see the individual pictures.  What you saw instead was an image of Christ.  All of those tiny pictures came together into an image of the Holy.  It was powerful.  I’ve spent years trying to find that picture.  But I’ll never forget it.  When you quit looking at the individual pictures, together they become a picture of the Holy.

Another metaphor…have you ever sang in a choir?  I’ve recently gone back to singing in a choir after “doing other things” for about 25 years.  Learning to sing in a choir is not just about learning to sing.  It’s more than that.  It’s almost kind of practice for God’s Kingdom.  Because a choir is not just a conglomeration of individual voices.  At its best (when the choir is truly at its best), you can’t hear the individual voices.  You actually hear what sounds like one multi-layered voice.  There are no individual “solos” sticking out over the music.

That’s it.  The Kingdom of God is not about me or you; it’s about us—all of us.  So, we have to back away from ourself.  We have to back away from those things that make us uncomfortable, those things that make life difficult, those things that we want desperately to control.  The Kingdom of God is not a fulfillment of all the things for which we wish.  God is not Santa Claus.  Rather, God’s vision is a reordering of Creation, a re-creation of everything. 

So, I had an interaction on Facebook yesterday.  (Yeah, I know…)  Anyway, the person wanted to give people money for food but do away with systemic programs, such as SNAP.  In other words, SHE wanted to pick and choose who deserved her money rather than at least attempting to create a system that helps that along.  Here’s where we need to back away.  Here’s where we need to see that outline of Christ.  Here’s where we need to tone our “solo” voices down and become a choral ensemble.  I don’t think God’s vision is one that gives us everything we want; I think it’s a vision that fulfills everyone’s need.  Remember that whole manna thing?  The manna came.  They ate.  And then the manna left.  The Daily Bread is given over and over.  It’s not for us to decide who gets is.  It’s not something that some will be given more.  It’s God vision—a vision where everyone is filled and no one has too little or too much–a picture that we have to sometimes back away to see.

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. (John Donne)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Pointing Toward the Moon

shelliwilliams Advent ,

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

Matthew 3:1-12 (Advent 2A)

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 3This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” 4Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

7But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Oh…John.  We talk about him every Advent.  Sometimes it seems that he’s the one, the gatekeeper, so to speak, that we have to go through to get to Christmas Eve.  As most of you know, I was “late” to this clergy thing.  I’m what they call “second career”.  And on this second Sunday of Advent in 2001, I gave my first sermon.  I was asked to step in at FUMC, Fulshear, where my then-mentor was serving, while she was out of town.  Truthfully, I had no idea what I was doing.  I hadn’t taken a preaching course yet, so, basically, I was just making stuff up.  And the Scripture for the day was this…John the Baptist.  Most people, if they’re given the chance, choose the Good Samaritan story or the Woman at the Well or even The Prodigal Son as their first sermon, things they can easily overly-romanticize into feel-good messages.  But, no, I get John the Baptist!

We all know the story.  He was the son of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth.  So, he is Jesus’ cousin (or maybe his second cousin) And he is quite the character.  He is a wild wilderness of a man donned in animal skins and a leather belt.  And he eats locusts and wild honey.  And he is REALLY LOUD.  He is always shouting to his hearers to repent and to prepare for the coming of the Lord.  And he baptized them.

Yeah, he’s loud and he’s brash and he doesn’t pay attention to the dress code and what do you do with him?  You listen.  Because, off putting though he may have been, he really did get it right.  He just didn’t fit into our ideal form of what an evangelist should be.  When I gave that sermon, my parents came.  It was 2001.  We had just gone into Afghanistan.  And my dad took the description of John the Baptist and imagined John Walker Lindh, that American that joined the Taliban and was arrested in November of 2001.  So now I can never imagine John the Baptist as anything else.  Like I said, he was wild and bizarre.  And he was Jesus’ cousin.

So, in that sermon, I didn’t get anything wrong.  I mean, John was wild and brash but he was also faithful.  He understood his mission.  He understood what he was called to do. In her book, Called to Question, Joan Chittister tells a Sufi tale of disciples who, when the death of their master was clearly imminent, became totally bereft.  “If you leave us, Master,” they pleaded, “how will we know what to do?”  And the Master replied, “I am nothing but a finger pointing at the moon.  Perhaps when I am gone you will see the moon.”  I think that was what John understood.  He never put himself out there as some sort of evangelist.  He was the forerunner, the one who came before.  He was the finger pointing at the moon.

I actually didn’t get any of that first sermon wrong.  I just didn’t finish it.  We can talk all we want to about John.  But the truth is, John’s story is not just about John.  It’s also about us and how we’re called to be like John (well, maybe without the locusts!).  It’s about what we’re called to do.  As John was waiting on the world to change, he stepped out.  He stepped forward and he spoke.  It wasn’t always accepted.  I mean, he was loud and brash and often off putting.  But he understood what he was called to do—to be a finger pointing at the moon, to point to what was coming, to point to what would be. 

So, here we are…waiting on the world to change.  We are called to glean our mission from John.  We are called to speak, to step out, to point the world to the change that God calls us to do.  John wasn’t just a cousin; he was the finger pointing at the moon, the forerunner to the Messiah, the Savior of the World. 

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences. (Susan B. Anthony)

Something better’s coming
Just you wait and see
Something better’s coming
It’s your job to believe
May not be what you wanted
But always what you need
Something better’s coming
Just you wait and see

To every mother’s daughter
To every father’s son
It may look like it’s over
And the other side has won
But, if there’s any truth to
The greatest prophecy
Something better’s coming
Just you wait and see

Oh, we’ll be dancing on the water
Yeah, where the music has no end
There’ll be no lost and no forgotten
There’ll be no us versus them

So, are you ready? Are you ready?
Are you ready? Are you, people?
Yeah, are you ready? Are you ready?
Are you ready? Are you, people?
Oh, are you ready? Are you ready?
Are you ready? Are you, people?
Won’t you tell me now
Yeah, are you ready? Are you ready?
Are you ready? Are you, people?

Oh, ooh ooh hoo, ooh ooh hoo
Oh, ooh ooh hoo, ooh ooh hoo

And I know it’s easy for our hearts to harden
But, that’s exactly what they want us to do
We’ve got to keep the vessel open
So, the love can keep pouring through

Yeah, ’til we’re dancing on the water
Where the music has no end
There’ll be no lost and no forgotten
There’ll be no us versus them

Oh, we’ll be dancing on the water
Yeah, where the music has no end
There’ll be no lost and no forgotten
No more original sin
No, no, no

Yeah, are you ready? Are you ready?
Are you ready? Are you, people?
Yeah, are you ready? Are you ready, people?
Oh, are you ready? Are you ready?
Are you ready? Are you, people?
Tell me now
Yeah, are you ready? Are you ready?
Are you ready? Are you, people, people?

Oh, ooh ooh hoo, ooh ooh hoo
Oh, ooh ooh hoo, ooh ooh hoo
Yeah
Ooh ooh hoo, ooh ooh hoo
Yeah
Ooh ooh hoo, ooh ooh hoo

Something better’s coming
Just you wait and see

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Darrell Brown / LeAnn Rimes

something better’s coming lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

There’s Always Hope

shelliwilliams Advent

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

Romans 15:4-13 (Advent 2A)

4For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

5May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, 6so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

7Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. 8For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, 9and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name”; 10and again he says, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people”; 11and again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him”; 12and again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope.”

13May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, we’re still here even as we journey through this Advent season.  We’re still here waiting on the world to change.  But bad news keeps coming.  People keep hurting each other and taking from each other and not listening to each other.  We keep destroying each other.  And, yes, we keep trying to find the things that need to be changed.  We keep waiting for that change.  And then Paul tells us to abound in hope.  Sure, we’ll get right on that!

Hope is one of those words that we throw around a lot.  “Hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ love and righteousness.”  Just have hope.  Always have hope.  But what is it?  We seldom talk about WHAT it is; we just say that we’re supposed to have it. So, we hope against hope that things will change.  (And, I guess, we hope against hope that we’ll have hope, whatever that may be.)

Paul frames this passage around what he sees sparks hope.  Our hope, according to him, begins in the past.  It begins with what is written in the Scriptures, the stories, the history, the acts of faith.  OK, I guess that’s a good enough beginning but it still doesn’t really tell us what it is.  I mean, it would be really easy if hope came in some sort of ancient bottle that Barbara Eden would come out of in a cloud of pink smoke in a genie costume and grant our every wish.  No, wait, that’s wishing.  That’s not hope.  Maybe it’s what we imagine for the future, the “perfect future” that is in our dreams.  No, that’s dreaming.  That’s not hope.  Emily Dickinson said that “hope is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all—”  (Pretty, but is it helpful?  I mean, it sounds like it’s going to fly away at any moment.) Dante wrote of hell as the abandonment of hope. (Well, that’s dark!) William Sloane Coffin said that “if faith puts us on the road, hope keeps us there.” (Closer…)

The truth is, hope is not just wishing that things would change.  Hope has to do with rising to the challenge before us.  Hope is participation in God’s work.  Hope means saying “yes” to going forward, abounding, as Paul said, in hope by the power of the holy spirit.  Soren Kirkegaard defines hope as the “passion for the possible”.  That passion is what prompts us to hope not for things to be “fixed”, not for things to be easier, certainly not for some sort of lost Garden of Eden in our lives when we remember that things were better.  Hope opens the door to what’s ahead and pulls us toward it, pulls us into it.

In a 2008 interview with Matthew Felling of WMAU radio in Washington, D.C., Dr. Gordon Livingston said that the greatest enemy of hope is nostalgia.  He said that “it tricks people into believing that their best days are past.”  (Which is why, I guess, there are so many people right now that dream of returning to what was and, dare I say, what will never be again.)  He went on to say that “A more realistic view of history envisions the past as a theater of experience, some good and some bad, and opens up the possibility of growth and change. Our best days are ahead, not behind. Hope for the future.” I think that’s what Paul was trying to say.  Hope is here, here for the taking.  It is grounded in the past, in what we know. But hope is what goes forward.  Hope is what makes us keep walking.  Hope is what allows our faith to become realistic, gives us something to grab hold of.  Hope is what enables us to look up and see what is just ahead.  Abound in hope.

Hope holds with it the promise that God always answers our questions by showing up, not necessarily with what we ask for but with remarkable gifts that change our lives and the world. (Mary Lou Redding)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Just a Little Shoot

shelliwilliams Advent , ,

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

Isaiah 11:1-10 (Advent 2A)

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. 7The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 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.

As we’ve many times noted, this season of Advent is a practice in visioning.  It is a time of looking toward what “shall” be (as the use of the word “shall” appears at least sixteen times in today’s Scripture).  It gives us something to look toward, something for which we can purposefully and intentionally wait.  It gives us something to hang onto when the storms toss us about.

And, yet, this passage is set in a time not unlike our own.  The people fear they are losing their way, fear that their world is changing into something that they will no longer recognize, fear that it is all slipping away.  And there, there in the midst of the pain and the uncertainty, in the midst of hopes cut off and loss and despair prevailing, in the midst of empires threatening and power wrecking, God comes to sit with us in the season.  And we are given a vision, a vision of a different way, a vision of righteousness and equity and faithfulness and peace, a vision of what shall be.  There is no promise given that the nation would rise again.  Things are not going to return to the way they were.  Time and space will never sync enough for that to happen.  That never happens.  But the prophet’s vision includes a shoot, a tiny shoot that will appear.  The shoot will not become a mighty cedar.  It will not overtake the earth.  Rather, the shoot will begin what shall be.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.  It will be fragile yet tenacious.  It will grow where no one ever thought it would.  It will push back the stone and become life.  It will rise up and be anew.  That shoot, that tiny shoot that many are sometimes tempted to cut down and clear away, contains everything.  In it is the very DNA, the written story, of what God envisions for Creation.  That shoot contains our story.  That shoot contains your story.

What will you do to tend to this seed, this fledgling shoot?  What will you do as it grows and strengthens?  We often talk about ourselves as the harvesters, those that help bring God’s vision to be.  But in this Advent time, we are called to be those who care and tend, those who see this shoot even as the world around us is often filled with weeds and despair.  Do you see it?  It’s there…there on the dead stump, just beginning to grow.  Life is pushing through.  It is yours, your story, your life.

You must give birth to your images.  They are the future waiting to be born.  Fear not the strangeness you feel.  The future must enter you long before it happens.  Just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Lyrics

Song Like A Seed (Sara Thomsen)

Ay, what to sing about in these days
What rhyme or melody, turn of phrase?
What is your story now, where is your gaze?
Ay, what to sing about in these days

Towers are tumbling, tumbling down
Fortresses fumbling, crumbling crowns
Governments grumbling, as they drown
Towers are tumbling, tumbling down

Plant your song like a seed
Hold your heart like a prayer bead
Give your breath like a tree
Set your soul’s deep love free

I know a woman who walks and prays
Follows the river’s old rambling ways
Eagle flies over and butterflies play
Watching the warrior walk and pray

What is your story now, where is your heart?
This is a one-act play, what’s your part?
In every ending there’s some new start
What is your story now, where is your heart?

Plant your song like a seed
Hold your heart like a prayer bead
Give your breath like a tree
Set your soul’s deep love free

There is a garden that grows at night
Then in the winter it tucks in tight
Drifts off in dreams about birds in flight
That carry the seeds of this garden’s life

Ay, what to sing about in these days
What rhyme or melody, turn of phrase?
What is your story now, where is your gaze?
Ay, what to sing about in these days

© 2018 Sara Thomsen

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Within

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

Psalm 122 (Advent 1A)

1I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” 2Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. 3Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together. 4To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord. 5For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David. 6Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May they prosper who love you. 7Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.” 8For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, “Peace be within you.” 9For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.

So, we’re four days into Advent, four days into waiting on the world to change, and, as far as I can tell, there have not been any huge changes made.  I mean, wouldn’t it be wonderful if this was the year, if this was the season, when peace came to be?  Wouldn’t it be grand if this was when people began to recognize that each of us is a child of God?  Wouldn’t it be terrific if this was when poverty and hunger and racism and xenophobia and gun violence and global warming and all those things that clutter our world were resolved?  Wouldn’t it be the most incredible thing if all of us could lay down our weapons and our power and our need to preserve the status quo?  Wouldn’t it be something if we didn’t have to wait anymore for the world to change?  What if we discovered that we really were standing within your gates?

But we all know better.  There is so much that needs to change, so much that needs to happen before the Kingdom of God, the vision that God intended all along for us comes to be in its fullness.  And so, we wait.  And, today, we’re given this psalm.  It is a “Song of Ascents”.  It describes the pilgrim throng entering the “house of the Lord”.  It’s the invitation.  Let us go to the house of the Lord.  It is the eternal peace, that vision that we’ve been talking about.  It is the Kingdom of God in its fullness. 

Advent is indeed a season of waiting.  But it is also a season of imagining.  It is a season of beginning the ascent.  It is the season when we journey to the House of the Lord.  And in this way, our waiting, our waiting for the world to change, begins with us.  For within us, is that peace.  Within us, is that vision that God holds for us all.  The waiting on the world to change begins within us.  It begins with us imagining it and journeying toward it.  Our feet are indeed standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.  Peace be within you.  It’s right there….

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