Speak

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john-the-baptist(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. But 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.”  (Matthew 3: 1-12)

We never really know what to do with John.  We sort of cringe when he shows up every year, sort of like a really loud, badly dressed cousin that won’t keep his mouth shut.  John was the wilderness man who dressed badly and ate strange things.  He did have a following apparently and yet it is doubtful that cousin John was one that you would want to invite to your next party.  I mean, really, you never knew what would come out of his mouth and even if he’d bother to take a shower!  And yet, John got it.  Somewhere between being the badly dressed first-cousin-once-removed of Jesus and the wild wilderness man who would never have made it into the holiest holies of the temple, John found his voice.

Somewhere out there in the wilderness, away from the structure and the way things are supposed to be, John found it.  Somewhere beyond himself, beyond the expectations of the world, John’s voice began to build.  We need voices like that.  They twist our carefully-chosen words into sentences of hope and paragraphs of transformation.  They push are tastefully-structured thoughts into places we never dared to go.  And it is those voices that will compel us to journey to the edge of what we know and peer off into the cavernous unknown where God is at work building that vision that is taking hold.

We Western Christians are too safe.  Our sermons (well, at least mine) are carefully written so that we might dare to push people beyond themselves without irritating them too much.  But John just ticked them off.  While others were encouraging people to perhaps inconvenience themselves once in a while, John was telling them that their life needed to turn completely around.  No longer could they rely on who they were.  No longer would their tradition speak for them. They had to find their voice.  They had to become the new creation that God was calling them to be.  It would be risky.  It might even be downright dangerous, threatening the way their lives were and the dreams that they held.  But our faith journey is not about cleaning our lives up; walking in faith is about becoming something new.  What does that look like?  Speak up!

What if Advent was not a season where we prepare by cleaning up our lives but rather one where we might finally find our voice?  What if Advent was the season where we did not just read the Magnificat but found our own?  What if our preparation for the coming of Christ into our lives was not only a quiet, prayerful move to change but at the same time a noisy, risky walk through the wilderness of our lives where we finally, once and for all, speak what the world needs to hear and, more importantly, finally say what God is calling us to say?  Have a wonderful, spirit-filled, noisy Advent!  Speak up!

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us.  We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.  The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience. (From “The Coming of Jesus in our Midst”, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Watch for the Light:  Readings for Advent and Christmas, December 21)

 

FOR TODAY:  What voice do you need to find this Advent?

 

Advent Peace,

Shelli

Hope Despite Evidence to the Contrary

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2016-12-02-hope(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.   (Romans 15: 4-13)

So why do we have these Scriptures?  There are those that will tell you that you need to memorize as many as you can, amassing sort of a mental collection of passages to pull up as we need them.  Well, good luck with that!  I can’t even remember my grocery list unless it’s written down.  There are some that depict that Bible as having all the answers.  Oh come now!  Have you read the accounts of the canonical Gospel writers?  (Not to mention the non-canonical ones—yeah, there ARE more of those writers!)  They can’t even agree on the order in which things happened much less why.  And then there are those that assume that the Bible is the moral code, the list of things you should do and should not do.  How boring would THAT be?  (Yeah, behavior lists also make for profound and exciting reading!)  But, here, the writer Paul says that the Scriptures were written that we might have hope.

For Paul, this hope comes through an awareness and acknowledgment of our shared story.  Hope, then, is realized in community.  None of us have a lock on the truth by ourselves.  Truth comes as we journey through life with others experiencing and balancing our story together.  Think of those that came before us 2,000 years ago.  For generations upon generations they had hoped for a Messiah, hoped for the One who would lead them home.  And their hope was part of their community, it was who they were.  That hope provided the very foundations on which they built their faith.  As each generation learned the stories and practices of their faith tradition, they also learned hope.

So hope is more than just a wish for the future.  It is more than an awkward dream that things will work out, that things will turn out all right.  Hope is found in the very depths of who we are.  Hope springs from the well-worn words of the pages of Scripture that we read and carries us into the future.  It is hope that takes us beyond where we are, that belies our fears and our need for the comforts and security of what we know.  It is hope that reminds us that we are called to be more.  It is hope that gives us life.  That is the promise.  The sign above Dante’s hell reads “Abandon hope all you who enter here.”  Regardless of what your image of hell may be (Dante notwithstanding), as long as we have hope, we have life.

Advent is the season that teaches us to hope, that teaches us to let go of certainty and let go of that need to know exactly where we are going.  Advent reminds us that even in the wilderness, even on those days when we do not think we can possibly go on, even when we forget who we are and feel a little alone, even when we momentarily lose our way or when we think the world has somehow slipped from our grasp and gone into a place that we do not want to follow, there is hope.  To have hope means that we dare to get out of our own way.  To hope is to open ourselves to God, to open ourselves to the God who leads us home.  May 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.

Hope is what sits by a window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there is not one ounce of proof in tonight’s black, black sky that it can possibly come. (Joan Chittister)

 

FOR TODAY:  In what way is God calling you to open yourselves to hope?  What’s in the way?

 

Advent Peace,

Shelli

And a short programming note…Apparently some (or all–I don’t know) of the emails for the 11/30 (Wednesday) blog post did not go for some reason unknown to me and unknown to WordPress.  If you did not get it, it IS there on the website.  Sorry about the confusion!  S.

Between Night and Day

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2016-11-30-between-night-and-day(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. (Isaiah 11: 1-10)

Yes, another reading about that future vision that God holds for us.  Advent is harder than we thought it was.  After all, we assumed that we just had these four weeks to prepare for Christmas (challenging enough by itself!) and we keep getting hit with the prospect of preparing for what is essentially the “Great Unknown”.  I mean, God gives us this vision pretty plainly but wolves cavorting with lambs and calves and lions sharing an abode and all of this being led by a child may be just too much to fathom.  In the words of Mary at that fateful encounter with the angel, “How can this be?”

Maybe that’s our whole problem.  Maybe we have not allowed ourselves or risked ourselves or trained ourselves to imagine something other than what we know.  We are pretty locked in.  Most of us have planned our tomorrows and possibly even the day-afters and we get really irritated when someone has a different idea.  In other words, those pesky new shoots that keep getting in the way of our perfectly trimmed hedge around our lives are sometimes just downright irritating.

So this season of Advent comes along as the great reminder that life does not and cannot go as planned.  Thanks be to God for that!  As we walk this season of remembering that coming of God into the world 2,000 years ago as Jesus Christ and at the same time looking toward the coming of God’s Reign in its fullness into the world that we now know, we are acutely aware that we live between two ways of being.  With our feet planted in this earth that still bears the marks of poverty and homelessness, of terrorism and war, of disunity and disregard of the rights and lives of others even at our own back door, we are called to imagine something different, something more, something beyond what we have.

We are the ones that live between night and day.  The night is reaching toward us, calling us, desperately needing our voices and our hearts to bring it into the light.  And up ahead in the faint distance is the Light that we ourselves crave so badly.  It would be so easy to just go and leave all this mess behind.  But that is not the plan.  Between night and day is where we are called to be.  That is the lesson of Advent.  And here, here is where we are called to imagine God’s vision into being.  We are not called to passively wait for the coming of God but rather to actively imagine this world the way God does and do our part to make it happen.  So, dare to imagine what God does.

If I cannot find the face of Jesus in the face of those who are my enemies, if I cannot find him in the unbeautiful, if I cannot find him in those who have the “wrong ideas,” if I cannot find him in the poor and the defeated, how will I find him in the bread and wine, or in the life after death? If I do not reach out in this world to those with whom he has identified himself, why do I imagine that I will want to be with him, and them, in heaven? Why would I want to be for all eternity in the company of those I avoided every day of my life? (Jim Forest)

 

FOR TODAY:  What do you dare to imagine of God’s vision?

 

Advent Peace,

Shelli

The Next Moment

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presence-of-god(Advent 1A) But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.  (Matthew 24: 36, 44)

It’s probably tempting to read this passage (and the verses that come between these) and imagine that we are parties to some sort of game of Divine hide and seek.  Our story tells us over and over again that Jesus is returning.  It has been augmented (that’s a nice word) by those who claim that they really DO know the day and the hour, despite the Biblical references to the contrary.  So, somewhere along the way, most of us have surmised that we just need to live our lives on our best behavior in case it happens in the next moment. (Or maybe the next…or the next…or the next.)

So, what if the surprise turns out to be that Jesus has been here all along, that ahead of time itself, he has been calling and gathering and enlightening and sanctifying all along?  What if Jesus’ glorious return already happened?  What if that whole Pentecost thing when the Spirit came and rained down onto us all was the return?  What if we’re not called to stay awake but rather to awaken to who we are supposed to be as the Children of Light?  What if God isn’t playing hide and seek at all but is instead desperately hoping against hope that when God comes over and over and over again we will finally notice?  What if the next moment IS the moment not because God finally comes but because you finally wake up and notice that God is here?

Jesus does comes at an unexpected hour and to unexpected places in unexpected ways.  Jesus is not all that good at doing things according to our plans (or perhaps our plans are not exactly the vision that God holds for us.)  In this Advent season of watching and waiting and trying our best to stay awake to it all, God comes again and again reaching and straining in the hope that we might open ourselves to it all.  So, yes, get ready, because in the next moment, God comes (and the next…and the next…and the next.)

 

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn. (Henry David Thoreau)

 

FOR TODAY:  What if in the next moment God came (ok, the next…or the next…or the next)?

 

Advent Peace,

Shelli

 

Almost Daybreak

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2016-11-29-daybreak(Advent 1A) 11Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13: 11-14)

As Paul wrote these words in his letter to the Romans, he knew, just KNEW, that the Reign of God was about to be ushered into being.  The dawn had begun with Christ’s Resurrection but the daybreak of the fullness of God’s Kingdom was about to happen.  So, for Paul, it was imperative that people understand this.  He urges his readers to move and move quickly away from the life that they know into a new with Christ.  This was about to happen quickly.  Quick…come now…change now…this is about to happen.

OK, so it didn’t exactly happen like Paul thought it would.  Paul understood Kairos, “God’s time”, probably better than anyone.  But chronologically, he might have been a little off.  Or maybe not.  It is sad that today we have lost that sense of urgency, that sense of needing, or, even better, desiring to change, desiring to come closer and closer to God’s Kingdom, desiring to being a part of it.  But instead, most of us probably sit back and wait for it to happen.  After all, it’s been nearly 2,000 years since Paul wrote those words.  What’s another couple of days or weeks or months or whatever?  (We’ll get it together when there’s time, when we get all this other stuff done—when the presents are wrapped and the house is decorated and we can finally have a moment to ourselves.)

How would your life change if you felt that urgency that they felt in the first century?  What would be different if rather than preparing for whatever you plan to do Christmas Eve or Christmas, you were instead preparing for the coming of God into your life?  Now I’m not talking about the usual lighting a candle and sitting in the midst of the twinkling lights and singing “Silent Night” and feeling the warm embrace of God’s Spirit in that magical Christmas Eve moment.  I’m talking about your life changing.  What would be different if you were getting ready for your life to change?  Yes, you…Paul wrote this letter not to the Jewish believers who were already on board.  Paul wrote this letter to a Gentile audience.  Paul wrote this letter to you.  So maybe it didn’t all happen when he thought it would.  But Paul really believed that once everyone was gathered in, once everyone was awakened to God’s coming into their lives, then the fullness of God’s Kingdom, the very vision that God had imagined all along, would come to be.

Yeah, maybe it didn’t happen when Paul thought it would.  Or maybe it did.  Maybe feeling that urgency, that deep desire for God to come into one’s life IS what Paul was writing about.  Maybe preparing for your life to change, opening your eyes to the dawn that is already coming to be, IS what your part is in the Kingdom of God coming into its fullness.  But the crux is, as I think it probably was for Paul, you are not called to change so that you will not be left behind (oh, don’t even go there); you are rather called to change because God, in God’s infinite mercy and grace, doesn’t want you to miss out on the part of it that is happening NOW.  So, what will change?  What will change when God comes into your life?  That would be now…the dawn is breaking.  Sure, you can do it later, but think what you would miss!

Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. (Arundhati Roy)

FOR TODAY:  What would be different if God was coming into your life now?  (Oh yeah…God is…now!)

Advent Peace,

Shelli

A Listening Season

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(Advent 1A) The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. 3Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord! (Isaiah 2: 1-5)

We like this vision of peace and tranquility, the days when wars will end and Shalom will finally be.  This was probably written to a people that wanted that desperately.  King after king after king had come with promises that life would be better, that they would somehow reclaim whatever had been lost.  Each one came with promises of prosperity and security.  After all, who doesn’t want that?  Who wouldn’t want a life of ease and plenty?  Who wouldn’t want a life of being “it”, being the people, being the ones to whom everyone looked for the way to life?  But king after king had fallen short.

The truth is, this is not a shallow promise of reclaiming what was lost.  This is an invitation to something new.  This is the vision of the Great Gathering, the Great Awakening.  Imagine it…a metaphorical (or maybe a real) streaming of all peoples and all nations to the mountain of the Lord.  It is the Great Listening too, the pathway when we stop proclaiming our ways over others voices and begin to hear what each other is saying.  The passage says nothing about elevating one people over another.  The passage is not a calling for us to separate according to our perceived tribal loyalties.  The passage doesn’t speak of making us into what we once were, as comfortable and non-threatening as that might have been.  The passage instead envisions us all walking in the light of the Lord–together.

Advent is time to remember not who we were, not who we wish we would be again, but whose we are and who we are called to be.  You know, throughout the Biblical story, God has torn down walls we have built and sent us forth—sent us on ahead to prepare the way.  We do fine for a while.  We journey as pilgrims to a new place and then we get somewhere that feels comfortable and we build a home.  And then we build a wall and claim that the home is ours.  And God tears it down and sends us forth.  And we go and we journey and we stop and we build.  And God tears it down and sends us forth.  God could leave us where we think we should be, where we feel comfortable and safe.  But we’d miss it.  We’d miss that light of the Lord that is streaming up ahead.  Let this Advent be our Great Gathering.  Let this Advent be our Great Awakening.  Let this Advent be our Great Listening.

 If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. (St. Teresa of Calcutta)

FOR TODAY:  To what or to whom do you need to begin listening to prepare the Way toward the Light?

Advent Peace,

Shelli

While We Were Sleeping

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first-light-16-11-27Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion!  Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall enter you no more.  Shake yourself from the dust, rise up, O captive Jerusalem; loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter Zion!.  (Isaiah 52: 1-2)

Wakefulness comes slowly.  It is hard to let go of the darkness.  It is painful to let the first light in.  It stings our eyes and disturbs our comfortable slumber.  It would be so much easier to pull back and dive down into the warmth and comfort of what we know.  But the light is peeking through the window as it ascends from the distant horizon.  It is time to awake.  It is time to get up, put on your beautiful garments, and begin to walk.

This season does that.  It peeks into our lives that we’ve so carefully constructed and it expects us to awake to the first light.  And that light begins to show us what happened while we were sleeping.  Oh, maybe not sleeping REALLY.  Most of us probably haven’t been in bed these last months.  But maybe we’ve forgotten, forgotten that we are called to stay awake, that we are called not to wallow in our own comfort and familiarity, but to move forward toward the horizon and let the light in.  But the light is often too much.  It shines into the corners where we haven’t really cleaned and points to the colors of the world that have faded from our view. The truth is, we dozed off and instead of moving toward the light, we let the ugliness back in.  We opted for preserving our way of life instead of being who God calls us to be.  We chose to wall ourselves off from each other rather than listening to where we should go next.  We allowed ourselves to be swayed by fear and lies and language that we used to not use.  And now waking up is hard.

But while we were sleeping, God did not stop creating newness.  Advent reminds us of that.  This is the season when we remember what God has done before, the season when we look toward the horizon that holds the unknown, and the season when we awaken to the dawn.  This is the season when we start walking through the timelessness that we cannot claim but that claims us.  This is the season when we shake off whatever is sticking to us that does not belong.  This is the season when we let go of whatever it is we clutch out of fear—fear of losing what we have, fear of each other, fear of ourselves if we dare to allow each other to be who we are called to be.  This is the season when we loose whatever it is that holds us back.  This is the season when we awake.

On this first day of Advent, WAKE UP…and begin walking toward the dawn.  Who knows what God will do next or where God will lead us or who we will be?  But we have to wake up first and realize what happened while we were sleeping and realize where we should have been heading.

The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw—and knew I saw—all things in God and God in all things. (Mechtild of Magdeburg)

FOR TODAY:  What did you miss while you were sleeping?

Welcome to Advent!

Advent Peace,

Shelli