Scripture Text: 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24 (Advent 3B)

¹⁶Rejoice always, ¹⁷pray without ceasing, ¹⁸give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. ¹⁹Do not quench the Spirit. ²⁰Do not despise the words of prophets, ²¹but test everything; hold fast to what is good; ²²abstain from every form of evil.

²³May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.

Rejoice always?  Pray without ceasing? Give thanks in all circumstances?  Are you kidding?  In this time of war and death and divisiveness and, well, just darkness, how in the world are we expected to rejoice, pray, and give thanks each and every moment? I mean, even if things WERE going all hunky-dory, we don’t have time to do that.  There are things to do. There are people to see, gifts to buy, gifts to wrap, places to go, and we still need to find time for ourselves to think, maybe read this blog, or whatever our life requires.  So, when we read this passage, we are a little bewildered.  Because we are used to looking at how to do something.  We want to know the easiest, cheapest, most energy-efficient, or most fulfilling way to accomplish things.  And, most of all, we want to be assured that we’re doing it the right way, that we’re on the right path.

But as much as we desire a “how to” booklet for our lives, that’s not what this is. (Honestly, that’s not really what the Bible is at all!) Paul was not laying down rules.  I don’t think he ever envisioned us living body-bent and knee-bowed 24/7.  I mean, how do we respond to that call to be a Kingdom-builder if we’re praying all the time?  No, Paul was not calling us to a life spent in prayer; Paul was calling us to a prayerful life, a life that is sacred, hallowed, a life lived in the unquenchable Spirit of God.  It has nothing to do with logging prayer hours. I mean, that’s helpful, even necessary.  But this is about perspective, about seeing everything that is your life as hallowed and holy, seeing all you are and all you have and all this is as of God, as prayer. Olga Savin says that “[the Scriptures] tell us that ceaseless prayer in pursuit of God and communion with [God] is not simply life’s meaning or goal, the one thing worth living for, but it is life itself.”  And a life lived the way it is called to be lived is the very will of God.  It is prayer.

As I said, I don’t think the Scriptures are meant to be “how to’s”; maybe instead they’re meant to shape us into those who can find the “ahhhs” in life.  Let me explain.  Think about all those diverse characters in the Scriptures. Abram and Sarai were just living their best retirement life.  And suddenly God has a new plan to make them the patriarchal couple of a “multitude of nations”.  And Abraham went toward the “ahhh”.  Moses was pretty much minding his own business and then ran across this burning bush.  Now, really, wouldn’t you either avoid a bushfire or try to put it out?  But Moses saw something else and said “ahhh” and his whole life changed. And those prophets?  The prophets tried desperately for generations to get the people to pay attention, to make them understand that the Lord was indeed coming, that things were about to change.  They marched this line of people straight through history, warning of something big and dark and ominous when God would step into the world.  Truthfully, that happened.  But it was very quiet, almost a whisper, as the Light again pushed through the darkness.  If you didn’t have your life honed in on that, you would have missed it.  In fact, God had to sort of announce it to make sure people were paying attention.  And, if you noticed it, you couldn’t help but say “ahhh”. 

Praying without ceasing, living a prayerful life, is about paying attention.  It is about looking at the pathway that you walk and noticing those things that make you say “ahhh”.   And then, it’s about turning toward them.  Maybe that means that you get off the well-worn path that is comfortable beneath your feet.  Maybe that means that you veer off in a direction you do not know, a way that you did not plan to go, a way that will change your life forever.  Ahhh….

Praying without ceasing is also about not limiting yourself as to what you think prayer is.  For some reason in writing this particular season of this blog, I have been more acutely aware of what happens when you write every day.  It’s hard.  It sort of saps you, leaving you sort of…the only way I can describe it is…raw and vulnerable.  But at the same time, it leaves you filled. It makes you new. It’s not just writing that does that.  That’s my thing.  Think of what you do that makes you feel like you should be doing it.  THAT’S yours—that’s the things that will leave you vulnerable and new.  Maybe that’s what prayer should be—a raw and sometimes uncomfortable vulnerability that leaves you filled with what you did not have before. 

You know those times when you have no words?  That’s a prayer.  The times when words seem to spill out of your life uncontrollably is a prayer.  The times when grief consumes you and you feel as if you cannot function is a prayer.  The times when laughter overtakes you in the middle of an otherwise-serene (and perhaps embarrassing) moment is a prayer.  Every menial task is a prayer.  Every walk is a prayer.  Every drive is a prayer.  Every time you log on to your computer is a prayer.  Every time you cook or wash dishes or empty the dishwasher (I hate emptying the dishwasher!) is a prayer.  Every time you hug someone or touch someone or connect with them on Zoom is a prayer.  Your life is a prayer—ALL of it.  That is what Advent shows us.  Advent wakes us up to the coming of God into the world and asks us to prepare.  But Advent also wakes us up to our own lives, prepares us to see what we’ve been missing and perhaps to notice a different way and to pray, to always pray. Look around. All you see, all you hear, all you are. It’s all prayer. Ahhh-men.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. (G.K. Chesterton)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: Isaiah 35: 1-10

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.

OK, I think we’re officially halfway through our somewhat shortened Advent season.  We’ve traveled through the darkness hoping that we are at least coming near the Light.  It’s easy to get tired, frustrated, and even be tempted to give up the journey completely and in the midst of those feelings, this Scripture probably conjures up that somewhat an unreachable and perhaps inaccessible utopian paradise.  I mean, we keep hearing about it but sometimes it’s hard to keep focused on that in the midst of our lives.  When you read it in the context of where it resides, it almost doesn’t fit.  This passage seems to just come into the middle of rumors of war and desolation.  It seems a little out of place.  And, like us, those so long ago were asked to imagine beyond where they were.  They were asked to imagine a desert filled with flowing waters, a wilderness that blooms.  They were asked to participate in a vision of life anew.  They were asked to see something that, for the most part, might have seemed inaccessible.  They were asked to see something that really didn’t seem like it fit.

But it’s not inaccessible.  The whole idea is that it WILL come to be.  And Advent reminds us to look for that day, to imagine it into being.  It is a tension in which we live every day of our lives.  We want it, we imagine it, and, on a good day, we believe it will happen.  And then we turn on the TV—war in Eastern Europe, war in the Middle East, rampant gun violence, people being threatened, rights being taken away, and people that find themselves with, well, a fearful heart.  That’s actually not a great translation.  It’s probably better to read it as “ones whose hearts are racing.”  So, whether we live in fear or we live in stress, when life becomes just too much for us to imagine something different, we are called to walk in holy tension, a liminality, if you will, betwixt and between the turmoil and grit of our lives and the promise that we believe.

This is Creation’s repentance.  It is Creation turning around and going a different direction.  We’re familiar with that.  When we talk of our own repentance, it is uncomfortable to turn and launch off into another direction, to begin to travel where GPS is not available and to a place with a story that we are writing as we go.  But here we are told that the desert will bloom.  The desert—that mass of dry sand that blows in our eyes and clouds our views, the place where we cannot map where we go, the land where water is scarce and sustenance is hard to find—will bloom!  The desert will turn and become something new.  Blindness will become sight; deafness will become music; the lame will leap and the mute will sing.  The waters will flow with thirst-quenching sound and the lost way will become a clear path.  Yeah, I know our translation says that God will come in vengeance.  That is probably better translated as the promise that God will “deal with it”, a recompense, a compensation of sorts.  In other words, God will respond.  That is the promise.  And God’s response is that Creation will become something new.

So, if Creation can do that, why can’t we?  Why can’t we let go of our fears and our preconceptions?  Why can’t we become something new?  Why can’t we rejoice and bloom?  I think as much as anything, it’s because we’re human.  And God knows that.  So, we’re given this season of Advent, this time where we walk holding both the tensions and chaos of our world while at the same time, allowing ourselves to imagine something different.  Advent calls us to begin to see our potential and the potential of the world. Have you ever thought that perhaps our faith journey is not about finding God at all but rather finding ourselves?  God is here.  Whether we feel God or not, God is here.  But us?  How much faith do you have in yourself?  God has faith in you.  God created you to do this, to turn, to change, to repent, to bloom.  

We’re halfway through this season of journeys through darkness and holy tensions.  Here we turn, we turn toward the Light.  It’s only a seed right now but if we keep walking, this desert will spring to life and the world we know will become more than we ever could have imagined.  And so will we. So, keep walking. We have it on good faith that it gets better!

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

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: Luke 1: 47-55 (Advent 3B)

⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” 

So, I noticed something in the lectionary that I never had.  We have the option of this passage or a psalm for Advent 3B and again for Advent 4B.  (Apparently, the lectionary compilers REALLY wanted us to read it!)  I think they’re right.  We need to read it.  It makes those of us who are living a life of over-entitlement a bit uncomfortable but that’s all the more reason to read it. It is well known and, depending on how it rests on you when you hear it, it is either the beautiful and poetic “Song of Mary” or it is the hard-hitting, uncomfortable Magnificat.  Magnificat is Latin for “magnifies”, from the root magnificare, which means “greatly” or “to make much of”.  E. Stanley Jones, an American Methodist missionary from the early 20^th century, once called the Magnificat “the most revolutionary document in the world.”  It is said that The Magnificat so terrified the Russian Czars that they tried to outlaw its reading.  It’s been used in Argentina to call for non-violent resistance and the government of Guatemala banned its recitation altogether in the 1980’s.  It is a call to revolution, the beginning of a new society, the dawn of a New Creation.  It is the words that the rising authoritarian movement that is pervading our globe would dread.

These words depict God’s vision for the world (which is REALLY different from the world we have now!)  It is not a world where the best and the brightest and the richest and the most powerful come out on top.  It is not a world that we can control.  It is a world where God’s presence and God’s Light are poured onto all.  But it comes with a price. Those who have, those who are, those whose lives are filled with plenty are called to change, to open their lives to God and to others.

Because God will scatter the proud, those who think they have it figured out, those who are so sure of their rightness and their righteousness.  In other words, those of us who think that we have it all nailed down will be shaken to our core.  The powerful–those with money, those with status, those with some false sense of who they are above others–will be brought down from their high places.  The poor and the disenfranchised, those who we think are not good enough or righteous enough, will be raised up. They will become the leaders, the powerful, the ones that we follow.  The hungry will feel pangs no more and those who have everything–the hoarders, the affluent, those are the ones whose coffers will be emptied to feed and house the world. (Yeah, we probably need to stop right there, go back and read the passage again, and sit with it!)

⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” 

These words are indeed a magnification, a magnification of Light.  We have journeyed through the darkness toward the Light expecting it to save us, expecting it to shine its warm glow into our lives.  But when we read these words, we realize how bright the Light really is.  This Light doesn’t just shine on us.  It shines on everything, illuminating the dark corners and dirty vestibules of our world and exposing the pain and injustices that still exist and of which WE are still guilty.  It’s uncomfortable.  So, we are tempted to shrink back into the darkness once again.  The problem is that this IS a revolution and revolutions do not tend to be warm and fuzzy.  Revolutions have jagged edges that will cut into your heart and, yes, change you.

The Light is coming.  It is bright and magnified and something we’ve never seen before.  God came into the world to turn the world upside-down (or maybe right-side up).  God didn’t start it by choosing a great religious leader or a political powerhouse or even a charismatic young preacher.  God chose a girl, a poor underage girl from a third-world country with dark skin and dark eyes whose family may be so questionable that they are not even mentioned and whose marital status seemed to teeter on the edge of acceptable society.  God chose to shine the Light on the WHOLE world.  Our response is to reflect that Light and magnify it further.

Today is St. Lucia day in Sweden, Norway, and most of Scandinavia.  Now, to set the stage, keep in mind that we are a week away from the longest night of the year.  But in far-north Scandinavia, that is a time when there is barely light at all, The sunrise in Stockholm today is at 8:41 a.m.; the sunset is 2:37 p.m.!  The legend says that Lucia, a martyr from the 4^th century, carried food and goods to those imprisoned in the catacombs beneath Rome, wearing a wreath dotted with candles on her head to light the way.  It is a day of welcoming light into the darkness, of leaning in to a light that otherwise might not be at all.

Advent is the season when we learn to lean toward the Light, when the steady ground on which we stand seems to fly out from beneath our feet.  We struggle to regain our footing.  Lean in.  You know what’s happening?  You know what the uncomfortable nagging feeling is?  It’s the New that is sprouting to life.  God does this a lot.  Y’all, we’re getting closer! We just have to be willing to lean into it a little.

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

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11 (Advent 3B)

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; ²to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; ³to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

⁴They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations…⁸For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. ⁹Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

¹⁰I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. ¹¹For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

This is another familiar passage for this season.  It speaks of hope.  God has sown God’s own Spirit into the one who speaks, breathed God’s breath into the one who will carry out God’s will.  And standing amid the ruins of what was once a thriving Jerusalem, the prophet depicts the perfect Reign of God, the time when all of Creation will be renewed and fulfilled.  It is the hope for the future even in the midst of the smoldering ashes of what is now.  And the prophet acknowledges and affirms an individual call from God, a call to bring good news, to bind up, to proclaim liberty, to witness, and to comfort. Well, that’s good…because we need someone to fix this mess, right?

But notice that in verse 3, the pronoun changes.  No longer is the prophet affirming an individual’s call.  The calling is now to the plural “they”.  It’s not just the “me” that is the prophet; it is the “they” that is everyone. The prophet is not called to “fix” things; the prophet is called to proclaim that all are called to this work of transformation. In other words, all that work that you think needs to be done?  Get busy!  You’re supposed to be part of that.

All of us are part of what the Lord has planted and nourished and grown to bloom.  All of us are “they”.  We are the ones that are called to become the new shoots sprouting to life.  We are the ones that are called to bring good news, to bind up, to proclaim liberty, to bring justice, to witness, and to comfort.  This Scripture may sound vaguely familiar to us for another reason.  In the fourth chapter of the Gospel According to the writer known as Luke, Jesus stands in the synagogue in his home temple in the midst of a world smarting with Roman occupation and cites these same words.  He acknowledges his own calling, his own commissioning to this holy work.  And he sets forth an agenda using the words of this prophet.  So, here we are reminded once again.  We are reminded what we as the people of Christ are called to do–to bring good news, to bind up, to proclaim liberty, to bring justice, to witness, to comfort, and to build the Kingdom of God.

But this is not a vision of repair.  It is not describing God’s work of putting things back the way they were.  That was never the deal.  Think newness.  Think something that’s never looked quite that way before. Maybe even think something you’ve never even thought of before.  That’s sort of the ongoing theme of God’s work when you think about it. I often tend to depict God’s Kingdom as a big dining room table.  There are chairs around it where we can all come together.  But when space becomes limited, when we don’t let everyone in the room, when there is no room at the table, we try to pull up more chairs.  Perhaps our differences and our varying notions of who God is makes for a crowded meal.  But, think about it.  God doesn’t pull up more chairs; God doesn’t even put more leaves in the table; God builds a brand-new dining room.

Many of you probably know the story of England’s Coventry Cathedral.  On November 14, 1940 in the midst of the Luftwaffe, the grand medieval Parish Church Cathedral of St. Michael was devastated by bombs and burned to the ground with the surrounding city.  Shortly after the destruction, the cathedral stonemason, Jock Forbes, noticed that two of the charred medieval roof timbers had fallen in the shape of a cross. He set them up in the ruins where they were later placed on an altar of rubble with the moving words “Father, forgive” inscribed on the sanctuary wall. Another cross was fashioned from three medieval nails by local priest, Arthur Wales. The Cross of Nails has become the symbol of Coventry’s ministry of reconciliation.

Today, the new modern Coventry Cathedral stands dedicated to forgiveness, unity, and redemption.  And next to it are the remains of the medieval cathedral. Emblazoned on the front of the altar are the words “Father, forgive” and flanking the altar are two statues—one given by Germany and one given by Japan.  And although physically attached to the new Cathedral, the Chapel made of ruins is not consecrated as an Anglican space, but instead is on a 999-year lease to an ecumenical Joint Council.  In the Chapel of Unity, people of any faith may gather to worship and receive the sacraments.  The old cathedral that once lay in smoldering ruins became something new.

In this Season of Advent, we are called to prepare ourselves for what is to come.  We are called to wait in hope and walk in light.  And, yet, so many of us are experiencing a world right now where we are barely able to sense that hope and see the light. In this hurting, divisive, warring world, many of us may identify more closely with the destruction in this passage than the good news.  See, we like the image of our faith being one of light and promise and that seems like what it should be.  But maybe even of more profound importance is our faith as one of shadows and remnants.  The truth is, God doesn’t call people to “fix” the world or, perhaps even worse, “repair” it so that it was what it was before.  At the risk of getting a wee bit political, when I hear the word “orthodoxy” (in the case of the church) or “originalism” (in the case of the interpretation of our laws), I think I tend to roll my eyes.  Maybe the reason we moved on, maybe the reason we changed, was that it wasn’t working for everyone.  Maybe God is calling us to something new. Maybe that is what our faith is about.

See, God calls people to transform the world.  And we are “they”.  We are the ones that are called to stand in the ruins, to step through the smoldering ashes, to take the remnants of destruction and hate and despair and to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and to comfort all who mourn.  And as the earth brings forth shoots, as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.  Newness will arise from destruction or smoldering ashes or misspent interpretations.  God calls us to something new.  Imagine it.

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 to “I Will Sing a New Song”, by Carrie Newcomer

I don’t know how
No I don’t know how
I’ve never done this before
At least until now

Learned by heart
The hard and easy parts
But I’m feeling it clearly
The old song’s grown weary

I will sing a new song
The old one’s carried me this far and for so long
But it’s time to walk on
Lifting up my voice and heart with a new song

How it grows out of the last echo
A new song for new needs
So I’ll follow its lead

Here I stand all I truly am
So I’ll rise and lift up
This new curious cup

I will sing a new song
The old one’s carried me this far and for so long
But it’s time to walk on
Lifting up my voice and heart with a new song

In each life of worry and strive
Must be room to untangle
And the singing of angels

All that lasts and must surely pass
All that’s common and holy
All that’s shot through with glory

I will sing a new song
The old one’s carried me this far and for so long
But it’s time to walk on
Lifting up my voice and heart with a new song

All that’s breathless and beautiful
All I’ve lost and I retrieved
All the songs that I was born to

Sing a new song
The old one’s carried me this far and for so long
But it’s time to walk on
Lifting up my voice and heart with a new song

I don’t know how
No I don’t know how
I’ve never done this before
At least until now

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: Zephaniah 3: 14-20

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

This passage is normally read in the third week of Advent during Year C.  We actually only read from the book of Zephaniah three times throughout the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, so we’re probably not experts on it.  The book is probably set during the time of King Josiah.  It was a time of indifference by the people.  Maybe they were tired; perhaps they were just a bit too comfortable; or possibly they just forgot who and whose they were.  They have been hearing an ongoing foretelling of a time of destruction, a time of divine judgment. (I guess that would make me tune out too!)  But then we come to this passage.  It is a voice of hope, foretelling salvation rather than destruction.  And it proclaims, “the Lord, your God, is in your midst.”

What does that mean?  In our midst?  Like, here, now?  What do we do with a God who is here, who is with us, now?  We’ve been waiting for a God who seemed “out there” or maybe “up ahead”.  But God is here?  The Light is here?  The Light is with us?  That notion changes everything.

When I was about six years old, I remember laying in my bed one night, staring at the closet where the light was still lit.  It always was at night.  (Honestly, I still can’t sleep in a completely dark room.) But I had been told in Sunday School that day that God was always with me, that God could see everything.  I remember thinking that God seemed to be someone similar to Santa Claus, all-seeing, knowing everything that happens.  But to a six-year-old that presented a theological dilemma.  I mean, it was a little scary.  (Perhaps if you tell a six year old that, you need to clarify it a bit)  I remember thinking how scary that was, as if God was keeping track of all the ways I had been bad.  I laid there and thought about what that meant, what it meant for God to always be with me.  Was God here, now?  Was God in that closet with the light on?  Was God in bed with me?  If I closed my eyes, was God still there?  What if I got under the covers?  Could God see me if I hid under the covers?  It was confusing.

Most of us as adults probably are not much more theologically advanced than that six-year-old.  It’s not because we haven’t advanced; it’s because we don’t allow ourselves to think differently, to question.  We tend to neglect even thinking about God unless we think we need God.  Somewhere we have indeed convinced ourselves that God is “out there”, an elusive deity that we are trying desperately to approach.  We have been somehow convinced that all of our hope rests in this “out there” God, that getting to God will once and for all save us.  And, yet, we also know that God is everywhere.  God is here, here with us.  So, which is it?  I think perhaps the reason we don’t see God and don’t feel God upon demand is not that God is elusive or hiding in plain sight.  The reason is that we are not fully prepared to know the fullness of God, the fullness of life that God has in store for us.  In the language of some of the New Testament scriptures, we live beneath a veil, a veil that we have sewn, a veil that we are not prepared to shed, a veil that somehow obstructs our view of the Light or shields us from what we do not know or do not understand.  And, yet, there are holes in the veil, places where the threads are worn and beginning to tear.  And through those holes we sometimes get glimmers of light.  This Light in our midst is always peeking in, beckoning us forward, guiding us into the Light that we might become full, that we might finally know this God who is in our midst, finally be prepared to see what we’re meant to see and be what God means us to be.

So, what do we do?  What do we do with a God who is even now in our midst?  We do what we’re called to do in this time, in this place beneath the veil.  We prepare ourselves to see the Light.  This season of Advent is the season of that preparation.  We’re not waiting for God; God is waiting for us.  Walk into it.  You will never be alone (yes, even under the covers!).  Open your eyes. Prepare your heart.  The Lord, your God, is in your midst.

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

Full Lyrics: “All Saints Day” by Carrie Newcomer

All around us and within us
And yet it’s only at times we notice
As real as rain and soft as stardust
We know deep down what nobody told us

Can’t you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

Now is just a moving image
Not a ribbon a start and end
There is a bird a hidden singer
That calls and listens and calls again

Can’t you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

Centered down and moving outward
Sometimes almost too sweet to bare
There are endless ways to reach home
Just keep walking and I’ll meet you there

Can’t you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

Can’t you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

There’s a blurring of the borders
And I swear that I heard voices
But every act of simple kindness
Calls the kingdom down and all around us

Can’t you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil
Standing closer to the veil
Standing closer to the veil

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: Mark 1: 1-8 (Advent 2B)

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

²As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
³the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”

⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Well, it must be the season of Advent because John the Baptizer has appeared!  We all know John.  Many may have sort of a love-hate relationship with him of some sort.  I mean, he’s a little weird.  He may even scare us a bit.  He wears camel’s hair secured by a leather belt (quite the fashion statement!) and we are told that he dines on locusts and honey.  And he sort of has a reputation for being loud and overly-zealous. I, for one, probably would have opted for someone a bit more, well, traditional than this wild-eyed wilderness man.  But look at the passage: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  John is the messenger that is sent ahead.  John is the beginning of the Gospel story.

Think about what that means—the beginning of the story.  A people have walked in darkness.  We have walked in darkness.  And here, as John breaks into the story, is the beginning of the Light.  Now John himself would correct me a bit and say that he was definitely NOT the Light, that the One who was Light, the One who is more powerful than John, was coming.  But it’s almost as if John begins to move the drapes a bit so that the Light that will come in full vision soon can begin to be seen.  Think of it as filtered light.  Maybe it’s harder to see.  Maybe it doesn’t illumine everything.  Maybe it’s not even bright enough for us to give it much notice.  But it is a beginning.  The Light is beginning to break.

In this version of the Gospel by the writer we call Mark, we get no build up to the story.  There is no Mary and Joseph, no angel annunciating while treading air, no long journey to Bethlehem, no stable, no shepherds, no magi, and no angels.  We have to turn to the writers known as Matthew and Luke for those familiar settings.  Mark just starts, diving in and declaring the beginning.  This is it…this is the beginning!  And then we are left hanging, not yet bathed in Light but aware of its presence.  We are beginning to see the Light that is beginning to filter in.  It is as if we are a little suspended in time waiting for the dawn to come. But it has begun.  The light has shifted toward us a bit.

Most of us spend our lives surrounded by light.  There is sunlight, electric light, candle light, dashboard lights, and our sometimes too-bright phone screen.  My dashboard has this circle of light that changes colors depending on how efficiently I’m driving.  It is odd.  (Hmm…I guess I wouldn’t notice it if I drove more efficiently more of the time!)  The thing is, we don’t always notice light itself.  We see what it illumines.  We seldom see light unless it is dark enough for us to see it.  What an odd concept!  We pay more attention to the sunrise or the sunset than we do the noonday sun.  We don’t really appreciate the notion of filtered candlelight unless the surrounding light is dim.  When it is dark, we can see the light. 

This image of John the Baptizer as the forerunner, as the beginning of the Light coming into the world is not because the light has begun to illumine and clarify what is around us.  John stands in the waning darkness and points us toward the light, tells us it’s coming into the world.  Advent is like that.  We begin in darkness, traveling through the wilderness, and we come closer and closer to the light.  It is still off in the distance.  It is still not bathing our world or showing us what we need to be.  It is beginning to peek through the darkness.  We see the Light.  It is not that for which we have waited or that for which we have hoped.  But this is the beginning of the story. 

So, look toward the light and wipe the grogginess from your eyes.  This is the moment.  This is the first light that is beginning to peek into the world, the first notion of that light coming down to us.  Look at it now because soon it will be so bright that you won’t be able to look at it.  You will only see what it illumines.  But this, filtered as it is, dim as it may be, is the beginning of the Light coming into the world.  The purpose is so that we will now know where to look. 

In every beginning, there is darkness.  The darkness of chaos seems eternal, Yet form emerges: light dawns, and life is born. (From The New Union Prayer Book)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Scripture Text: Isaiah 11: 1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. ²The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. ³His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; ⁴but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. ⁵Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. ⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 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.

This is another familiar reading from Isaiah and comes from our lectionary from Year A, which we read last year.  It’s yet another depiction of the future vision that God holds for us, the one we’re walking toward, the one that we are supposed to be part of bringing to be, the one that God promised us.  We are given a vision of a shoot, a new shoot that will come out of the dead and decaying stump of the past, a branch that will come out of the original roots of our faith and our lives.  It doesn’t replace the old: it just continues growing.  (So, true confessions here.  I’m taking a lot of this post from one I wrote three years ago.  (Can you plagiarize yourself?)  So, if you’ve been with me awhile, it will sound familiar.)

I have a picture of an olive tree that I took in the Garden of Gethsemane.  It’s one of my favorite photos.  To explain, olive trees will actually live for centuries, sprouting new life over and over again.  If you look at this picture, the thing on the left side that looks like a dead and decaying stump (because, well, that’s essentially what it is) is what is left of a tree that was probably in that place 2,000 years ago.  Imagine…that is what is left of a tree, a remnant, if you will, that might have been there that night before the Crucifixion as Jesus prayed and submitted his own life to God.  And from that stump came another shoot, that grew into a tree that is probably about 1,000 years old.  And to the right of it is yet another stump that may be 200 years old or so.  And from that is a newer shoot, a live, growing tree that is just a few years old.  It is a picture of new shoots, new creations that God is always creating and always nurturing into being.  But they exist together, sprouting from each other’s strengths into new life.

So, how do we live as new shoots?  How do we embrace that vision we’ve been given and make it part of us?  The message that Advent brings is that God loves us enough to keep showing up—in a vision laid out for us to embrace, in Emmanuel, God-With-Us, and over and over again as God walks with us through our own becoming a new creation.  Maybe the question is whether or not we are holding on to what we know or are we new shoots, giving the old new life?  This is not just a rehash of the same old thing.  William Sloane Coffin once said that “believers know that while our values are embodied in tradition, our hopes are always located in change.”  But change is often uncomfortable.  Change is unpredictable.  Change is hard.  Maybe we can just get through this busy season and then change. 

A couple of years ago, the Today Show had a feature story about some young Panda bears who had been brought up in captivity.  But the plan was to eventually return them to their natural habitat.  So, in order to prepare them for what was to come, their caretakers thought that it would be better if they had no human contact.  So, to care for them, the people dressed up like panda bears.  In order to show them how to be pandas, they became them.

I think that’s been done before!  In its simplest form, the Incarnation is God’s mingling of God with humanity.  It is God becoming human and breathing a piece of the Divine into humanity.  It is the mystery of life that always was coming into all life yet to be.  God became human and lived here.  God became us that we might change the world.   God became like us to show us what it meant for us to be like God envisioned (not to be God, not even to be “Godly”, but to be just like God envisioned we could be) in the world.  God didn’t walk this earth to teach us to be divine; God came to show us what it means to be human–caring, loving humans that envision that the world could be different.  The miracle of the birth of the Christ child is that God now comes through us.  We ARE the new shoots of transformation.

So perhaps the reason that the earth is not yet filled with the knowledge of the Lord, that the Reign of God has not come into its fullness, that poverty and homelessness and injustice and war still exists is because we do not dare to imagine it any other way.  This is not some vision of an inaccessible utopian paradise; this is the vision of God.  The passage says that a shoot shall come out of the stump and a branch shall grow out of the roots.  In other words, life shall spring from that which is dead and discarded.  Because in God’s eyes, even death has the foundation, the roots of life.  Even death will not have the last word.  We just have to imagine it into being.  So, imagine beyond all your imaginings; envision a world beyond all you dare to see; and hope for a life greater than anything that is possible.  Imagine what it means to become a new shoot and prepare yourself to be just that. And then you’ll start to be. 

But here’s the thing…you can’t just be a shoot, wandering off on your own, growing where it’s comfortable to grow.  Shoots that do that are, well, compost.  You have to stay rooted.  You have to remain attached to the source from which you sprouted.  We are no different.  This Advent season does indeed call us to figure out what it means to be a shoot.  But it also means we have to know that to which we’re rooted.  God walks with us.  God roots us, letting us grow and sprout and wander a bit.  But always, always, staying attached to the One that feeds and nourishes us and connects us to Home.

Only those who live beyond themselves ever become fully themselves. (Joan Chittister)

“There Is a Tree”, by Carrie Newcomer

Last night I dreamed you very near
Though the night was dark beyond the glass
I knew you’d left before I woke
But you’d fogged the window when you passed

The air was still and smelled like rain,
Though I’d never known so dry a spell
And what I heard there in the dark,
Are the secrets I will never tell?

There is a tree beyond the world
In it’s ancient roots a song is curled
I’m the fool whose life’s been spent
Between what’s said and what is meant

I didn’t mean what went so wrong
Some things I wish I didn’t know
I’ve always lived inside my head
And often utterly alone

I will be a pillow for your head
You can make me promises you can’t keep
And I’ll believe each word you’ve said
And hum to you while you sleep

There is a tree beyond the world
In it’s ancient roots a song is curled
I’m the fool whose life’s been spent
Between what’s said and what is meant

You took me by my shaking hand,
Laughed at me and closed the door,
Put your hands to my waist,
And waltzed rue round the kitchen floor

There is a tree beyond the world
In it’s ancient roots a song is curled
I’m the fool whose life’s been spent
Between what’s said and what is meant

So I will wander without fail
In circles that grow ever wide
The sky expands and then exhales
With an ache that never subsides

There is a tree beyond the world
In it’s ancient roots a song is curled
I’m the fool whose life’s been spent
Between what’s said and what is meant

Grace and Peace,

Shelli