Scripture Text: Romans 16: 25-27 (Advent 4B)

²⁵Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages ²⁶but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— ²⁷to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.

This passage that our lectionary assigns us for the fourth Sunday of Advent is essentially a doxology.  Just like the Old Testament passage that we read a couple of days ago, it usually doesn’t get much attention.  I mean, would you want to hear a sermon on this or the Anunciation?  This comes at the end of Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  Interestingly, though, it’s not found in every translation of the letter and in some it appears in a different place (like after Chapter 14 or something).  So, truthfully, we’re not sure what it is. Scholars think that it is quite possible that Paul did not write these verses but that they were attached to the end of the letter perhaps AS a doxology, a statement of praise and proclamation, by a later redactor.  But regardless of who wrote it, this is a statement of response.  It is, to use Paul’s words, an “obedience of faith.”  The Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ invokes our response; otherwise, it is virtually meaningless.  German theologian Helmut Thielicke said that, “faith can be described only as a movement of flight, flight away from myself and toward the great possibilities of God.”  The whole Scripture in its fullness is about our response, about our movement, our journey.  It is our faith that moves it and opens up the possibilities that God envisioned.

We read this doxology alongside the veritable imminence of Jesus’ birth, the story of Mary as God-bearer, as the one who responded to God’s call to birth the Savior into the world.  The story is about to unfold.  And, yet, the story has been there all along.  As Christians, we come into a story that is already there.  God has been calling and people have been responding for thousands of years before Jesus.   It’s not new; it’s continuing.  The Letter to the Romans is the Apostle Paul’s understanding of that story.  (It’s really incredible.  You should read it “cover to cover”, so to speak, if you haven’t already.  It is truly a masterpiece.)  And at the end, either Paul or someone who read Paul’s letter and then wrote a response of praise, added this doxology.  It was the writer’s praise to God for the unveiling of something for them that had been around from the very beginning.

So why are we reading a doxology?  Doesn’t that come at the end of something?  Isn’t that the point where we pick up our purse or put our jacket back on?  Isn’t that the point where we put our bulletin away and get ready to get out of there first so we can go eat?  Well, here’s the deal.  We are days away from Christmas Eve, days away from the end of all our looking and waiting and preparing for the coming of God yet again.  And part of our preparing is thinking about what comes next, what we’re going to do with all this preparing, all this waiting, all this changing that we’re doing to ready ourselves for God.  See, if you’re not thinking about what you’re going to do with it, what actual response you’re going to make, then the preparation is worthless.  The call means nothing without a response and the proclamation is empty without the doxology.

Advent is not just the “pre-Christmas” season.  This is a real stand-alone season.  These days leading up to Christmas Eve call us to envision what God envisions and then move toward it.  I think it’s a season that teaches us to see through the shadows of the world.  Because this world often seems random and meaningless, full of pain and despair, sickness and loneliness, and even death.  But into this world that is often callous and lacking in compassion, directionless and confused; into our lives that many times are wrought with grief and a sense that it is all for naught; into all of it is born a baby that holds the hope of the world for the taking.  We just have to be ready, open, and willing to take it—and respond.  The great illustrator and writer, Tasha Tudor said, “the gloom of the world is but a shadow.  Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.  Take joy!”  This is what this doxology says:  All of this that has been laid out for you, all of this that has been created; all of this that has for so long been moving toward your life…take it.  Take joy! 

As we’ve said, Advent is a season of preparation.  It is a season of becoming one who can welcome the Light of Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us, into our lives.  So, as we come toward that here at the end of this season, we have to clear a path for what is coming into our lives.  We often don’t equate Advent with things like surrendering and letting go.  Those seem to be more “Lentish” to us.  But Advent is about making room and that is about surrendering and letting go of those things that will impede us.  So, put down all those heavy things you carry.  The baby is coming!  Rejoice!  And listen for how you are called to respond. 

The Advent mystery is the beginning of the end in all of us that is not yet Christ.  Thomas Merton

Lyrics: ”The Point of Arrival”, by Carrie Newcomer

First it is a bitter pill
A rubber band stretched til it snaps
Sitting crossed legged on the floor
My empty hands are in my lap
What is to become of me
Here at my surrendering
Where I arrive at the end
The place where I begin again
First we fold in then open out
There is a faith that’s only found in doubt
Acceptance is the closing of the cycle
The end that marks the point of arrival
This is where I lay it down
What I don’t want to haul around
The buzzing of what can’t be seen
And living always in between
First we fold in then open out
There is a faith that’s only found in doubt
Acceptance is the closing cycle
The end that marks the point of arrival
Looking down at my hands
Finally I understand
The empty space has changed somehow
And it’s filled with hallelujah now
Hallelujah hallelu
It’s hard as stone but yet it’s true
Acceptance is the closing of the cycle
The end that marks the point of arrival
If I let go of who’s to blame
Of what can’t be changed
And will never be the same
Close the book with one last look
Letting go of all the time it took
Hallelu hallelujah
Hallelu hallelujah
Hallelu hallelujah

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: Genesis 1: 1-5

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. ⁴And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Today is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the shortest day (and the longest night) of the year.  The actual solstice occurs where I live at 9:27 (CST) this evening (3:27 a.m. Universal time on December 22^nd).  That moment is the point when Earth’s axis will be tilted the farthest away from the sun than at any other point in the year.  It is the point where the sun is as far south as it will ever be relative to the Earth.  (And winter has begun, so Happy Winter!)  The word “solstice” is derived from the Latin “solstitium”, from two words meanings “sun” and “stand still”.  Technically, this comes from the fact that during the days surrounding the solstice, the sun appears at its lowest point in the sky and then seems to have the same noontime elevation for several days in a row.  To early astronomers, the sun appeared to hang in the sky, suspended, paralyzed, as if waiting for some word to move on.

So today we read the passage that speaks of the first light, the first time that the light was spoken into being.  I think some people have this notion that nothing existed prior to that.  But it did.  God was there.  God was there in the midst of what is described as a formless, disordered void, as a darkness that covered and consumed everything as winds swept over the waters.  There wasn’t “nothing”; there was a seemingly dark, chaotic, noisy something.  It was actually a something that God had created.  And then “in the beginning” (not the only beginning, just the beginning of this part of the story!), God, in God’s infinite wisdom, spoke the light into being.  And the light pushed its way into the darkness, parting the grasp on everything that the darkness had held.  Now note that this isn’t the sun.  (That came later.)  Sometimes we make the mistake of reading this passage and we tend to think of the sun as the source of all light.  But go back and read beyond the passage I showed.  The sun doesn’t come into play until the “fourth day” of the passage so there must have been eons of time between when light came to be and the creation of this sphere of hot plasma that reflects it.  The First Light was something different.  The First Light was a new creation, parting and intersecting the darkness, weakening its grasp on everything, and shining into what was ahead.  The First Light is what God created to lead the way to everything else.

It is interesting (but not surprising) that, for us, the darkest day of the year occurs so near to the expected illumination of Christmas Day.  It actually wasn’t an accident, even though it was pretty concocted.  When the early Christians (which, granted, were in the Northern Hemisphere) started playing around with the calendar, they took what they knew to fill in the holes, so to speak.  Apparently, no one knew when Jesus’ birth had occurred.  Think about it.  It may have taken the magi months or maybe even a few years to get there and then there was the whole flight to Egypt thing.  Time was just lost.  So, tradition holds (of note, if someone leads into something with “tradition holds”, assume that there is zero substantive proof to anything that is about to be said!)…BUT…tradition holds that creation, the beginning of everything that was, occurred on March 25^th (don’t ask…no clue!).  So, to early Christians, that seemed a great date on which to set the Anunciation.  Fast forward nine months…December 25^th must be the birth. Alrighty then!  It was around the time of the winter solstice (in the northern hemisphere in which it was being chosen).  So, we have a date!

So, today, we sit in the darkness, still waiting, still hoping, still looking for the Light.  It is a long and empty darkness, sometimes overwhelming.  This is the day that, even in the joyousness of the season, we can’t help but remember grief and hurt and the pain that still surrounds us.  But, just as in that first moment of Creation, God will come into the darkness and do something new.  When you think about it, just about everything new has begun in the darkness.  Creation began in the darkness.  The birth of Jesus so many years ago began in the darkness.  Even the story of the Resurrection begins “while it was still dark”.  I think God always begins in the darkness because that is where illumination happens.  Light cannot push its way into a well-lit room.  Light comes when it is dark and foreboding.  Light comes when we are straining to see it.  Newness is born in the darkness of a womb and then it comes to be, pushing away the darkness in which it was born.

In the midst of the darkness, God dwells, unknown and mysterious, the Word that was created and dwelled in the darkness even before light came to be.  And even in our darkest places, the first light begins to break through.  That, my friends, is indeed the message of the season.  God tiptoes into the night and gently, very gently, hands us hope for our world, peace for our souls, and light for our longest nights in the form of a baby who shows us the way to walk through the darkness so that everyone might begin to see the world through a new light.  When we are standing in the light, and we look at the darkness, we don’t see darkness.  Light does that—it teaches us to see even through the darkness. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “when it is dark enough, [we] see the stars.” There is a Maori Proverb that says to turn your face to the [light] and the shadows will fall behind you.  This is the longest night, a night of creation, the birth of a new season as the earth miraculously turns on its axis toward light.  This is the night we sit vigil for the Light that is about to break.  And it is very, very good.

Too many of us panic in the dark.  We don’t understand that it’s a holy dark and that the idea is to surrender to it and journey through to real light. (Sue Monk Kidd)

Lyrics: ”Singing in the Dark”, by Carrie Newcomer

We gather in morning
The darkest hour of night
The darkest days of the winter
Feeling for the light
Sitting in the silence
As all the world’s asleep
The monks of Gethsemane
The watch they daily keep

I am a wayfaring stranger
Hungry for some grace
A soul forever searching
A pilgrim to this place
I am here to meet whatever
Is listening for me here
While all the world is waiting
At the turning of the year

Singing in the dark
Calling up the day
Joining with the voices
Opening the way
Sitting here in vigil
Waiting for the spark
That bursts into being
Singing in the dark

It’s there at every hour
It happens everywhere
In the tenderest of times
In faithful common prayer
The seen and the unseen
For the many by the few
There is always someone
Singing in the dark for you

Singing in the dark
Calling up the day
Joining with the voices
Opening the way
Sitting here in vigil
Waiting for the spark
That bursts into being
Singing in the dark

The prayer is never over
And the work is never done
Never done
We all raise up our voices
And our voices become one
Voices become one
Voices become one

When we think that we are lost
And out there on our own
And the dawn is in the distance
Still we are not alone
Heaven is right here
If we open up our heart
And join the choir
That is singing in the dark

Singing in the dark
Calling up the day
Joining with the voices
Opening the way
Sitting here in vigil
Waiting for the spark
That bursts into being
Singing in the dark

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: Micah 5: 1-5a

Now you are walled around with a wall; siege is laid against us; with a rod they strike the ruler of Israel upon the cheek. ²But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. ³Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. ⁴And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; ⁵and he shall be the one of peace.

The time in which Micah prophesied was a time of great turmoil and violence.  The Assyrians had already invaded the region, had captured Samaria (capital of the northern kingdom), and had attacked several towns in Judah.  Corruption was at its height among the rulers and the people were reaching a point of despair.  Their expectations more than likely would have been for God to send a great warrior, a ruler who would quash the growing threat and instill a sense of safety for all against their enemies. But, instead, the prophet promises a ruler, a new Davidic king, who will bring peace.

But keep in mind that the original prophecy and the current-day Jewish interpretation does not associate this promise with the coming of Jesus (yeah, again).  In fact, there’s some disagreement as to whether we’re even talking about the right Bethlehem! (There was one in Zebulun, near present-day Nazareth) I don’t think it matters but I do think that the Old Testament should stand within the context in which it was written.  This was the promise of a king that would bring a time of peace against the Assyrians and for the time thereafter.  But for the Gospel writers, this understanding was illumined through Jesus Christ.  Again, neither is the “right way” or the “wrong way” to understand it.  Either way, God offers hope and promise of new life.  

So, who is this “one of peace”?  I mean, as near as I can tell, the world has never experienced peace.  For as long as history has been written, the earth has rocked on its axis with threats or acts of war and violence and intentional ways to divide us.  Sadly, a good portion of those acts have been because of religious differences and between warring religious factions!  Rulers have come and gone, pushing each other aside.  Borders have moved and shifted, sometimes to the point of leaving behind homeless refugees with no place to call home.  And in the midst of it all, Jesus was born.  Great theologians and spiritual thinkers have written of the peaceful time to come.  St. Augustine of Hippo even laid the groundwork for what would become the “Just War Theory” on which all global “rules” of war are based.  (In seminary, I did a whole long project paper on the Just War Theory primarily because I thought the whole thing sounded like an oxymoron.)

But peace still seems to be elusive for us.  Could it be that the promise of peace is elusive because we’re waiting for someone else to do something?  Jesus did not bring peace as if it could be manifest with some sort of magic earthly pill. Instead, Jesus showed us a different Way, a radical Way, the Way of Peace. Jesus did not bring peace; Jesus brought the love of peace.  What Jesus showed us was indeed radical.  It was a different Way than the one to which the world was and is accustomed.  This Way of Peace is not merely an absence of war.  I mean, think about it, there was a cease-fire in place for several years between Russia and Ukraine…until there wasn’t.  There was a cease-fire in place for several years between Israel and Hamas…until there wasn’t.  No, peace has to do with so much more, a pervasive and radical re-imagining of the way we live in this world. 

Peace cannot be until we respect one another, whether or not we agree.  Peace cannot be until we honor one another’s life, respect one another’s sovereignty, until food and water and housing and safety is available for all.  Peace cannot be until we realize that this earth in which we live, all of its creatures, all of its resources, and all of its beauty are entrusted to us not for our consumption but for our care.  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”  The “one of peace” has indeed come but peace itself is up to us as children of God.  Each of us has a part. Our journey toward the Light is a Way of Peace.

During this season of Advent, we have talked a lot about peace.  It is easy to limit it, if not dismiss it, as nothing more than the ideal—the ideal way to be, the ideal way to live, the ideal way for the world.  It’s easy to assume that it cannot come to be in the world in which we live.  I mean, that “little town of Bethlehem” is not in Israel right now.  It’s in the West Bank.  It has a wall around it, a wall that you walk through surrounded by a literal maze of barbed wire and guards.  That doesn’t feel very peaceful.  So, peace remains elusive.  Maybe peace cannot exist on the macro level that we crave so badly.  Maybe the world really isn’t capable of peace at all.  I don’t know. 

But what if our prayer for peace begins with ourselves?  Maybe inner peace IS what we need to pursue because it seems that that would be the beginning of a broader peace.  If each of us chose peace for ourselves, just as we choose light, just as we choose hope, that peace would begin to radiate beyond us.  Maybe that is the way of peace.  Maybe just because we’re not in a position to affect global diplomacy doesn’t mean that part of it is not up to us.  Start with yourself.  Choose peace.  In this season of hope, choose peace.  And go from there. That is my prayer for the season.  And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.…Dona nobis pacem…grant us peace. Amen.

Peace does not come rolling in on the wheels of inevitability.  We can’t just wish for peace.  We have to will it, fight for it, suffer for it, demand it from our governments as if peace were God’s most cherished hope for humanity, as indeed it is.  (William Sloan Coffin) 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: 2 Samuel 7: 1-11, 16 (Advent 4B)

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…

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.  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 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 a week 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.  The text we read wraps up the promise that God made to Abram in the twelfth chapter of Genesis.  The people have a land that they can claim as their own and they can live in peace.  And David’s reign as king has been pretty much legitimized. Things seem to be going well.  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.  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.  So, for whatever reason, he decides that God needs a grand house too.  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.

In this Advent season, we know that God comes.  That is what we celebrate; that is what we remember; that is what we expect.  After all, this God we worship is the one that is with us, Emmanuel.  But in this particular year, so many of us bemoan the fact that our churches are either empty or only 25% full.  We long for a large group of us this Christmas Eve crowded into a sanctuary with our candle as we sing “Silent Night” and usher Christmas in together. Those moments are transcendent.  They make us aware of something beyond us.  But they also bring God’s Presence into our lives.  They are both transcendent, lifting us beyond, and immanent, bringing God into being for us WITH us.

That is also what Advent does.  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.     

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)

Lyrics: ”Sanctuary”, by Carrie Newcomer

Will you be my refuge
My haven in the storm
Will you keep the embers warm
When my fire’s all but gone?
Will you remember
And bring me sprigs of rosemary
Be my sanctuary
‘Til I can carry on
Carry on
Carry on

This one knocked me to the ground
This one dropped me to my knees
I should have seen it coming
But it surprised me

Will you be my refuge
My haven in the storm
Will you keep the embers warm
When my fire’s all but gone?
Will you remember
And bring me sprigs of rosemary
Be my sanctuary
‘Til I can carry on
Carry on
Carry on

In a state of true believers
On streets called us and them
It’s gonna take some time
‘Til the world feels safe again

Will you be my refuge
My haven in the storm
Will you keep the embers warm
When my fire’s all but gone?
Will you remember
And bring me sprigs of rosemary
Be my sanctuary
‘Til I can carry on
Carry on
Carry on

You can rest here in Brown Chapel
Or with a circle of friends
Or quiet grove of trees
Or between two bookends

Will you be my refuge
My haven in the storm
Will you keep the embers warm
When my fire’s all but gone?
Will you remember
And bring me sprigs of rosemary
Be my sanctuary
‘Til I can carry on
Carry on
Carry on
Carry on

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: 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 this season of Advent this year, we have 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.  This one is no different.  I will tell you, though, that this is not usually considered the easiest scripture passage to talk about.  So, it should be noted that this is not even in this year’s lectionary assignments and I STILL chose it!

So, in this passage, 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.  As Christians, we often 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? 

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, here’s the deal.  At the risk of blowing your whole view of prophecies about the coming Christ out of the water, so to speak, this passage in its purest form is not about Jesus.  It’s an account of a promise made to a people in 8^th century BCE that find themselves in the dangerous position of being situated between two warring factions.  Caught between Judah and Assyria, they were afraid.  So, the prophet Isaiah delivers these words.  Essentially, the prophet is telling the people that God is with them, that God will save them, that their enemies will be thwarted, that a child will be born who will become the ruler they need.

Fast forward to the first century after the birth of Christ.  The writer we know as Matthew, who most think was a very devout (and probably educated) Jew, reiterates these well-known words in the first chapter:

²²All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:  ²³ ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’ 

For the writer of Matthew’s Gospel, the birth of Jesus was the coming of God into the world, Emmanuel, God with us.  I’m not convinced that he actually understood the original verse as a prophecy of Jesus’ birth.  I think it was more that he finally understood the meaning of Immanuel.  He finally grasped the meaning of what he had always been taught, what he had always knew.  He finally understood what it meant for God to be with us.  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.  It 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 meant Immanuel.  And so, 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.

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 signs 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”).  The Scriptures are not an historic account of the world.  Oh, they have those echoes because the context in which they were set and written was indeed the world.  But the Scriptures are the story of God, a God who has always been with us, a God who is with us even now, a God who will come in final and promised glory when the world is finally swept in to that peaceable kingdom.

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.  The Season of Advent is one that takes time and sort of muddles it.  We are swept into the past, the present, and the future, all at once. Then it happens again–over and over and over again. Time becomes merely a marker that we might sort of know where we are.  But wherever we stand, God has always been with us, God is with us now, and God will be with us forever.  That is Immanuel, God with us.  Let us go and see this thing that the Lord has made known.

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)

On prisoners of darkness the sun begins to rise, the dawning of forgiveness upon the sinner’s eyes, to guide the feet of pilgrims along the paths of peace, O bless our God and Savior with songs that never cease. (Michael Perry)

Lyrics: “The Handing Over Time”, by Carrie Newcomer

The creek beds dries and then it fills
The shadows lengthen as shadows will
The last wild roses go to seed
The summer birds they take their leave
As the light goes golden golden

Here we are here I am
Here we stand in the handing over time
All that shines all that rusts
In the light and borrowed dust
It all comes round and round again

Curtains of leaves drift away
The fields are filled with wheels of hay
The yellow finches fade to gray
At least the ones who choose to stay
As the light goes golden, golden

Here we are here I am
Here we stand in the handing over time
All that shines all that rusts
In the light and borrowed dust
It all comes round and round again

Something fine and true and deep
Happened when I was asleep
Something there right in my palm
It was here and then it’s gone

The creek bed dries and then it fills
The shadows lengthen as shadows will
As the light goes golden golden

Here we are here I am
Here we stand in the handing over time
All that shines all that rusts
In the light and borrowed dust
It all comes round and round again

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: John 1: 6-8, 19-28 (Advent 3B)

⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light…

¹⁹This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” ²¹And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” ²²Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” ²³He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said. ²⁴Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” ²⁶John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

Well, it’s Advent so we get more John the Baptizer!  It’s definitely sometimes hard for us to get our heads around John, so to speak.  I mean, a person who wears animal skins and eats locusts is, well, strange.  But putting aside his wardrobe choices or his culinary preferences, John is important to us.  He is called the forerunner, the one who comes not to BE the Messiah but to point us toward the Messiah.  John knew who he was and what he was called to do.  He was called to actually BE that veritable voice in the wilderness that we so desperately need.  He was called to speak the truth about who Jesus was and, at this point, who Jesus would be.  He was called to point to the Light that was just beginning to dawn.    

The Gospel passage that we read for this week uses that image of light.  For the writer of The Gospel According to John, the Logos was the light of humanity, the true light.  It was there from the very beginning.  Now in this Gospel, there are no customary announcements here of Jesus’ coming or angels appearing to Mary.  There is no typical birth story. I guess the writer of this Gospel left that to the other Gospel-writers.  But this is essentially the equivalent:  the coming of Jesus, the Incarnation, is the coming of the true light, the Light that always existed, which enlightens everyone and illumines everything.  We once again see Creation in its splendor, as the light folds into the dark void that was and life begins.  Think about it—it is hard for us to imagine—but there was only darkness before (not “nothing”, just darkness—a darkness that God created) and then God said “Let there be light” and life began.  The earth was from then on bathed in light and seasons.  And now, now God enters and invites us into the Light.  And John the Baptizer is there to wake us up and point us toward it.

We like the image of light.  It’s warm and illuminating and sort of comfortable.  But that’s not what this is.  See, John had a “way” about him and sometimes his words were not very popular.  I mean, he went around like some wild man in the wilderness preaching repentance, preaching that we needed to change, preaching about the one who was coming after him, preaching about the light that was just around the bend, a light such that we had not seen, a Light that would change the world and us with it.  “John,” we want to say, “Shhhh!…you’ll wake the baby.”

Admit it.  That’s where we want to be—at the manger, kneeling before our Lord, basking in the illumination of the star above and singing Christmas carols, and yet we still want to hold onto those shadows in our own life.  For there is familiarity; there is safety; there is that which we can control, there is that place to which we can retreat when life is just too hard.  And the light…We would rather the light be allowed to remain in our thinking depicted as a warm and comfortable place to be.  Just let us sit here awhile with this sleeping baby, the Christ child, there in the manger while the Star in the East dances overhead. 

But John the Baptist, John the Witness, the forerunner, was right.  This light is not a twinkling, intermittent light like those that light our houses this season.  This is not a warm, glowing, candle-lit light that makes us feel comfortable even as we are content to sit silently in its shadows.  And it’s closer to us than any star in the universe.  This light is different.  This light is so big and so bright and so powerful that sometimes it hurts to look at it.  Sometimes it is just too painful.  This light is so pervasive and so encompassing, that it casts no shadows.  The light of Christ, this light to which John pointed, is not a warm glow but is rather a radical illumination of everything around it.  This light shows EVERYTHING.  Yes, EVERYTHING.  The world is about to be unable to hide its shadow side.

In her book, Lighted Windows, Margaret Silf tells the story of when her daughter was born and how one of the first problems that they encountered was light.  She said that “to make sure that [our daughter] would always experience the presence of a gentle, comforting light if she awoke during the night, we installed a little lamp close to the nursery door.  It also meant that if she cried we could grope our way to her even in a half-asleep state.”  But they soon realized that even the little nursery light burned their eyes, especially after the third or fourth time they went into the nursery during the night, groggy from sleep with eyes burning.  “So,” she says, “we went to the local electrical shop to ask whether they had any bulbs lower than 15 watts!”  “It’s strange,” she comments, “how light that is so needful for growth and life can also be so hurtful when we are unprepared for it.”

In this Advent season, the way that we prepare ourselves for the coming of the Light is by abiding in that light.  Abiding is a strange word.  It means to await but is more of an action word.  I think abiding in the light means that we have to go and be in it.  That’s what John was doing.  It was as if John was saying, “you there, come now, come into the Light that is even now dawning.” You can’t just stay in the shadows.  God invites us into the Light.  That is why God came and burst forth into our humanness—to show us what full illumination looks like and to call us into the light.  So, during this season, we squint and rub our eyes.  But we continue looking even if sometimes we’re squinting at the light.  But the Light will remain as we get used to it.  We keep looking for the Light thinking it will lead us home but what if, just what if, the Light IS home, the place where we’re called to be.  It is glorious and uncomfortable, illuminating and clarifying.  But what if that’s where we’re actually supposed to be while we wait for whatever God is doing next?

And John the Baptizer?  He kept pointing toward the Light, kept loudly proclaiming who the Messiah was.  He was the voice in the wilderness.  It would end badly for him.  His life would end with his head literally on a platter.  He would die midway through Jesus’ ministry, the victim of a world that thought he was too loud and too zealous and because he actually understood what abiding in the Light meant.  But through it all, he was always standing in that light.  He understood that he was not the Light.  But he always understood that the Light was where he should be.  In this season, we need to go toward the Light.  We need to abide in the Light.  God came and showered Light upon the world.  And this season of waiting, this season of preparation, beckons us into that Light.  Go now.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t. (Blaise Pascal)

Lyrics: “Abide” by Carrie Newcomer

I will bring a cup of water
Here’s the best that I can offer
In the dusk of coming night
There is evidence of light
With the pattering of rain
Let us bow as if in grace
Consider all the ways we heal
And how a heart
Can break

Oh abide with me
Where it’s breathless and it’s empty
Yes abide with me
And we’ll pass the evening gently
Stay awake with me
And we’ll listen more intently
To something wordless and remaining
Sure and ever changing
In the quietness of now

Let us ponder the unknown
What is hidden and what’s whole
And finally learn to travel
At the speed of our own souls
There is a living water
A spirit cutting through
Always changing always making
All things new

Oh abide with me
Where it’s breathless and it’s empty
Yes abide with me
And we’ll pass the evening gently
Stay awake with me
And we’ll listen more intently
To something wordless and remaining
Sure and ever changing
In the quietness of now

There are things I cannot prove
And still somehow I know
It’s like a message in a bottle
That some unseen hand has thrown
You don’t have to be afraid
You don’t have to walk alone
I don’t know but I suspect
That it will feel
Like home

Oh abide with me
Where it’s breathless and it’s empty
Yes abide with me
And we’ll pass the evening gently
Stay awake with me
And we’ll listen more intently
To something wordless and remaining
Sure and ever changing
In the quietness of now

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: 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 is read during the Advent season in Year C (next year!).  The lectionary actually calls for us to begin at verse 2.  I don’t know why.  Maybe they didn’t want God to be getting angry at us in the midst of a pretty hard season. But that verse speaks of redemption.  It speaks of God’s ever-present faith in us.  It reminds us that against all odds, God welcomes us and comforts us.  God is ever-present.  I think maybe we are the ones that need to get it together.

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, 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 that is indeed something about which everyone should be joyful.

But, honestly, I worry that all of these passages from Isaiah, all these promises that the “something better” is just up ahead may become a bit overly-saccharine, like visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads.  I don’t want it to come across like someone is dangling life just beyond our reach to tease us or something.  That’s not the way it is.  It’s easy to claim that things will get better but what do we do in the meantime?  What do we do while we are waiting for the promised liberation or the prophesied salvation?  What do we do while we are waiting for our joy to kick in?  So, did we forget?  Did we forget what we believe—that God, the very Godself, the Creator, broke through all time and space and entered this world as a baby to become Emmanuel, God-With-Us?  So go back and re-read this passage with that in mind.

Notice that it says “God IS my salvation”—not God will be or God might be or God will come when we do something right.  God IS my salvation.  There’s no quid pro quo like so many of us are often led to believe.  That’s pretty major.  The God who is in our midst is here to save us—not to see if we’re being good or doing right—just IS.  So, why aren’t we drawing water from those wells?  Those wells are everywhere, flowing with clean sparkling water.  We just have to get a bucket and draw out the water.  Maybe that’s it.  Maybe we don’t always have our bucket handy.  Maybe we’re so preoccupied with what we will be and the way things will turn out for us that we have neglected what God has given us to draw out water, to draw out joy, to draw out Light.

The thing here is that we tend to push our hope for “that day”, for our joy and our salvation, for peace to surround us, off until tomorrow.  We count on tomorrow.  And, yes, tomorrow is there waiting for us to enter.  But tomorrow is affected by today.  What we do today leads into our tomorrow.  The journey is now.  So, don’t get so wrapped up in what we DON’T have.  Look around you.  Look around at the hints of joy, the hints of peace, even the hints of salvation and redemption.  Prepare to welcome tomorrow.

Remember that the season of Advent is nuanced.  It’s not just about the future.  It’s also about what we do now.  God created us in Joy.  God created us in Light.  God created us in water—lifegiving waters.  It’s all for the taking.  We are called to always go toward who we are meant to be, who God created us to be.  But the journey is here, filled with joy and light.  So, take your bucket and draw out the waters.  Take joy.  Take Light.  It is yours.  God IS our salvation.  Take that too, for “great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel”—in your midst…and will be tomorrow.

I salute you. I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got. But there is much, very much, that while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instance. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy! Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty . . . that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it, that is all! . . . And so I greet you, with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.(From a letter by Fra Giovanni, 1513, as quoted in the introduction of “Take Joy”, by Tasha Tudor) 

Lyrics: “Another Day”, by Carrie Newcomer

Last night I awoke
I just couldn’t sleep
I’d read too much news
There was a dog on my feet
Too much to remember
Or not finished yet
A list of new worries
And older regrets

Let it go says my heart
It’s too late and too dark
This is just a chance to pray
Let it go for now darlin’
Tomorrow is another day

I’ve been looking for beauty
In these broken times
By making some beauty
In the world that I find
Some say it’s too late
It’s too much to brave
But I believe there’s so much
Worth being saved

Let it go says my heart
It’s too late and too dark
This is just a chance to pray
Let it go for now darlin’
Tomorrow is another day

Up on the roof is an old weathervane
In the shape of a fish swinging toward change
Let it go for now let it go

There are reasons to wonder
And witness to why
Troubled times coming
No way to deny
So I’ll lean into you
As you quietly breathe
And sense all that’s right
Still here and unseen

Let it go says my heart
It’s too late and too dark
This is just a chance to pray
Let it go for now darlin’
Tomorrow is another day
Let it go for now darlin’
Tomorrow is another day

Grace and Peace,

Shelli