Faith

The Light Shining in the Darkness

shelliwilliams Advent , ,

Scripture Text: Isaiah 9:2-7 (Christmas Eve text)

2The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. 3You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. 4For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. 5For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. 6For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

I used to live in a neighborhood where I always passed this wonderful old French colonial house with wonderful verandas lining both floors of the house.  For years, the house would outline the verandas with twinkling strings of lights during the Advent and Christmas seasons.  It was beautiful.  Then, for some reason I’ve never completely understood, they began to add more and more lights each year.  They started by stringing lights across the verandas three, five, seven, fifteen times.  Then, the next year, they did the same to the house. What was once a delightful twinkling of lights became what can only be described as a veritable blob of lights.  The house had been overtaken by light. And it was no longer beautiful.  In fact, it was a little off-putting.

So, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.  This journey toward the Light is coming to an end, so to speak.  We know now that is does not actually end at all.  It’s more of a turn, a tilt, a leaning in.  But as we do that, we need to think about our time in the darkness.  See, light is not pretty or comforting or even helpful alone.  It’s blinding.  You can’t even see anything anymore.  Light is at its best when it illuminates the darkness and creates shadows and contrasts so that we can truly look at the Light.

Much of our lives, much of our existence is about traveling in darkness.  It is a holy darkness.  God created it.  And then God created Light to push back the darkness.  Now notice that it doesn’t say anywhere that the light is meant to dispel the darkness or cover up the darkness or in some way destroy the darkness into utter extinction.  Darkness is.  The Light is.  They live together, woven into a holy mix of light and shadows and clouds and stars and deep darkness.  That is life.  That is Life.  And that is where the people that walk there see the Light.  So, our act of coming out of the darkness into the marvelous Light is not one of leaving but of looking in another direction and finally learning to travel in the dark.  That’s called faith. 

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.

It gets darker and darker…and then Jesus is born.  (Ann Lamott) 

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

A Light in the Window

shelliwilliams Advent , , ,

Scripture Text: Psalm 18: 1-3, 28

1I love you, O Lord, my strength. 2The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 3I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, so I shall be saved from my enemies…28It is you who light my lamp; the Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.

Remember once again in the first chapter of Genesis when God created Light?  The Light was created to push back the darkness.  It didn’t “win” over the darkness; darkness was not gone.  This is not a light war.  Even darkness was created by God.  But then came Light, pushing back the darkness, re-creating the darkness into Light.  In essence, Light illumines the darkness.  God lights up the darkness.

This Psalm can be traced back to the era of the First Temple (Solomon’s Temple) before the Babylonian Exile.  It was considered a Royal Psalm, words echoing the belief that God would save the king, that God was the one behind the king, the God who had always been strong and reliant, the God whose actions were always just and merciful and would continue to be.

What, then, does it mean for God to light our darkness?  What does it mean for God, strong and reliant, just and merciful, to push back the darkness in our lives and illumine where we stand?  Are we ready for that?  Do we trust in that?  As we’ve mentioned before, sometimes the darkness gets a little too comfortable.  We become accustomed to strategically hiding part of ourselves, which is, of course, easier in the darkness.  And, after all, there’s always still darkness, right?  But if we truly allow ourselves to look toward the Light, the darkness will begin to subside.  We’re not used to the Light.  Our eyes will sting at first until we clear the remnants of darkness from them.  But when we begin to focus, it will all come into view—pushing back the darkness.

Try it.  All it takes is a candle—one candle in the darkness.  If you light one candle, there is Light. Maybe it’s not everything you want.  Maybe it’s not enough to read or something.  But it’s enough to light your way.  It just takes one candle to begin to push back the darkness.  It just takes something small.  I think that’s how God does it.  I think that’s how God has always done it.  God doesn’t turn on all the lights at once.  Sometimes God slips into the darkness like a baby in a manger. 

We’ve always been in darkness.  I think that’s so we can see the Light.  God doesn’t supply us with headlights or spotlights or even a strategically-placed flashlight.  You know why?  Because we don’t need light to find Light.  God created darkness for us.  It was the place that we were born before our eyes could adjust to the Light.  It was the place where we grew and learned to see the Light.  But through our lives, God always put a light in the window, just enough Light so that we would know where to go.  God begins to light our darkness, lighting one lamp after another.  Because that’s all it takes to light up our darkness.  Look toward the Light and the darkness will be pushed away.  Look for the Light in the window.

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

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Whispers of Light

shelliwilliams Advent , , , ,

Scripture Text: Matthew 10:24-27

24“A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! 26“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 27What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.

Have no fear…do not be afraid…fear not…How many times have we encountered that in Scripture? Well, apparently, “fear not” is in the Bible 365 times according to the trustworthy Google machine.  Are you sensing a theme? So, of what are you afraid?  We’ve probably outgrown worrying about the monsters under the bed or the ghosts in the closet.  But we’re all afraid of something—health issues, financial issues, the pandemic, global terrorism, or just being found out.  Yeah, most of us are afraid that others will discover that we’re not as competent or self-assured or as put together as we project.  (Or maybe that’s just me!)  Most of us are afraid that that façade we have so carefully crafted around our lives will be pierced and we’ll have to be honest with those around us and, even worse, ourselves.

Fear not…have no fear of them…well, easy for YOU to say.  The promise is that everything will be made known. That’s what the full Light does, remember?  It exposes everything.  And imagine how glorious that would be to no longer have to hide those parts of yourself from the world!  Be not afraid!  What’s the worse that could happen, right? 

So, do you remember that whole notion of needing to die to live, die to self and be resurrected as a New Creation?  I think that’s the thing.  Living in the darkness makes it easy to hide things.  But this light, this light shows us everything.  So those things hidden in the darkness will die.  They will just fade away.  The things in the Light will survive.  The Light is coming.  Right now it’s just a whisper.  But we know what’s out there.  Our faith tells us that.  And we know that we have to let go of the darkness, we have to let go of the things that we hide.  The whispers of Light are gently showing us how to let go.  Because the Light will give us everything.

God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. (Annie Dillard) 

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

The Speed of Light

shelliwilliams Advent , ,

Scripture Text: Hebrews 10: 5-10 (Advent 4C)

5Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; 6in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.  7Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’ (in the scroll of the book it is written of me).” 8When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. 10And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Yes, sometimes it’s very hard to focus on the Epistle readings that are chosen for Advent.  After all, we’re getting ready for the big day.  We’ve become accustomed to John the Baptist and his parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth.  We like hearing the story of Mary and, once every three years when we focus on the Gospel writer known as Matthew, we get to talk about Joseph.  But this sacrifice and offerings rhetoric doesn’t really fit, does it?

Well, the truth is, when we remember that God came into the world in the form of Jesus Christ, we began to talk about a new way of looking at things, didn’t we?  In spite of what some try to make it, though, it is not a “replacement” of what was there before; it is a fulfillment, a broadening, a clarifying of it. It was a way of seeing who God calls us to be in a new light.  And, as has been said before, “it is very very good.”  See, Jesus did not dismiss sacrifices or offerings but instead put them in perspective.  Sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake is, and has always been, pointless.  But if that, or anything else, is what brings you closer to God, go for it.  That’s the point. 

So, this is a somewhat random question but do you know the speed of light?  In a vacuum, light travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second.  I suppose that would be pure light.  But the problem is that we do not live in a vacuum.  In measuring the speed of light (I guess, when you have nothing else to do!), Einstein surmised that light seen from a moving train traveled at only about 184,000 miles per second.  The point is that the speed of light, the way we see it, is affected by a multitude of factors—the speed at which we’re moving, temperature, wind, our own eyesight—there’s lots of things.  And if the speed of light changes, what we see changes.  Oh, for us, it’s almost nothing, but it affects the length of objects and even the colors we see.  We don’t see pure light.  So, another random point…did you know that sunlight takes approximately 8 ½ minutes to get to us?  If the sun exploded and remnants were strewn through the universe, we wouldn’t know that for 8 ½ minutes.  The point is that Light is always changing.  We can’t just look at it once and think we know what’s in it.

So, back to the God’s Will thing.  I’m sure God has in mind some way we should be.  It’s, there, in the Light.  God shows us over and over and over again.  But we are not capable of seeing pure Light.  We do not live in a vacuum.  God knows that.  God knows that the way we see things changes.  God knows that we do desire to do God’s Will.  God’s goodness and God’s holiness is a gift.  And the way we see it is faith.  It’s always been the same.  WE are the ones that change—sometimes at the speed of light.  So, don’t decide that what you see and what you think is the end of the answer.  What if it was only the beginning of the question?  What if the Light we see is only a reflection of who God calls us to be? (At least for now.)

All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light. (James Joyce) 

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Snake-Handling

shelliwilliams Uncategorized , , , ,

Scripture Passage:  Numbers 21: 4-9 (Lent 4B)

4From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” 6Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

OK, this is just odd!  It’s one of those passages that probably wouldn’t have made it into the lectionary except that the Gospel writer that we know as John included it.  (We’ll read that this week too!)  Personally, I think it’s a little over the top–sending poisonous snakes.  I mean, it seems that the people were only asking for a little variety in their menu.  Isn’t this a little out of proportion?  I mean, really:  complaining…bad; poisononous snakes all over the place…REALLY bad.

But from the very beginning of Creation, as one of the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible explains, the snake has slithered on its belly and eaten only dust and yet it has done so without a word of complaint.  So, then, what better character to rule over the people who have murmured over a choice of food?  Essentially, the snake comes to teach humility and patience.  But we as humans cannot resist being more than a little squeamish at the character.  There is something about a snake that demands our full attention.  When someone mentions that a snake is nearby, we don’t ask what lessons can be learned.  Instead, we climb on the furniture or over one another to get out of the way.

Our full attention…to how many things do we give that?  And how many things would we rather climb on the furniture or run to get out of the way rather than dealing with them?  And it is interesting that in order to save the people from the plague of snakes, God gave them a snake.  So, when someone is bitten by a snake, he or she is to look at a snake.  What sense does that make?  Think about it…we are to look at our fear; we are to look at those things that tempt us; we are to look at those things that distract us and pull us away from God.  (Goodness…that sounds a lot like this season of Lent!)  And God, in God’s infinite wisdom puts them on a pole so that we cannot avoid seeing them.

But only in the wisdom of God do we counter something that we fear with that which we fear.  Here, God’s antidote for the snakes is a snake.  Isn’t that sort of paradoxical?   We have to look beyond that with which we are uncomfortable.  We have to look into a sight that brings such fear, such loathing, that it is hard for us to find God’s presence in it.  And, deep within it, is the sight of humility and patience, a creature that, according to Creation mythology, had resigned itself to surrendering to that which ruled its life.  And by looking into one’s fear, by looking into one’s death, one is freed—the ultimate paradox. 

It is notable, too, that nothing is said to imply that God destroys the snakes.  Essentially, God does not destroy the enemy—God recreates it.  Isn’t that an incredible thing?  You see, we need to recognize that the traditional Jewish reading of the “Garden of Eden” story differs from the classical Christian version.  While the snake has often been identified in both faiths as Satan (or haasatan), the Jewish understanding is not that of something or someone outside of God’s command or a rebel against divine authority.  Rather, it’s sort of a prosecuting attorney, entrusted with testing, entrapping, and testifying against us before the heavenly court.  It’s part of God’s way of maintaining order.  It’s part of God’s way of showing us a mirror to look at ourselves.  So, from that standpoint, these snakes or serpents are not enemies but, rather, part of our ourselves.  (On some level, maybe that’s more uncomfortable even than enemies!  I mean, it makes it a whole lot harder to run away from it then!)

So, the simple equation is this:  the cure for snakes is a snake…the cure for something is to stare it straight in the face.  Where have we heard that before?  Centuries later, God did it again.  The cure for our death is death—death of those things that stand in the way of our relationship with God, death of those things that make us less than human, death of those things that are not part of who we are as images of God.  And, if you remember, the cure for a life of pain and suffering and temptation is life eternal.  Snakes for snakes; death for death; life for life.

Those whose eyes are fixed on the Son of Man as he is lifted up ultimately see God’s healing of the world.  The Cross is that thing at which we are forced to look, forced to see a part of us that we do not want to see, forced to see the way we murmur and complain about our lives when they’re really not that bad.  In an odd way, the cross is that snake on a pole.  So as hard as it may be, stand still.  It doesn’t make sense in this world.  It’s gruesome and loathsome and filled with danger.  But God, in God’s infinite wisdom, takes it and turns it into life.  We don’t need to become snake-handlers; we just need to be aware of that to which we should be looking.  So, in this wilderness season of Lent, walk now, toward the cross—the instrument of death that gives you life.       

Our faith begins at the point where atheists suppose it must be at an end.  Our faith begins with the bleakness and power which is the night of the cross, abandonment, temptation and doubt about everything that exists!  Our faith must be born where it is abandoned by all tangible reality; it must be born of nothingness, it must taste this nothingness and be given it to taste in a way that no philosophy of nihilism can imagine. (H.J. Iwand)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Faith in the Midst of Everything Else

shelliwilliams Uncategorized , , , ,

city-streetsPaul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, 3the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, 6including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, 7To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 1: 1-7)

So many of us spend our time trying to “find” God, perhaps trying to get to the place where God is.  We often forget that God is not sitting in some faraway place until we clean up our act or pray more or get more religious or figure it all out. (OK, THAT’S probably never going to happen.)  God comes into the normalcy of our lives.  God shows up on city streets and country lanes.  God appears in places that we wouldn’t dare go ourselves.  God does not limit the Divine to the places that are cleaned up and presentable.  God comes not just to the places where we think we should be but the places where we spend our days and spend our hours, the times when we laugh and grieve and dance and walk and get all confused and discombobulated and feel like we’re all alone.  The coming of God into our midst in this very chaotic and holy season reminds us of that.  God did not sit in some far-off palace eating hors d’oeuvres until everyone caught up with the Divine.  God came into the lowliest of cities and was born in the dirtiest of cribs and was held by the poorest of the poor who had been refused entrance to what most of us would count as normal.

The point is that God comes not to the ones who deserve God’s Presence, not to the ones that are really all that prepared, not to the ones that have done what they need to do, but to us.  God comes to us.  God comes into our lives just as they are and begins to walk, first taking our hand and guiding our steps until we can run on our own and help others along the way.  God comes into the places where God is unrecognized and needed the most.

Once I baptized a baby who was eating a Ritz cracker.  The mother was, of course, trying to calm the squirming child down enough to get some holy water on his head and hear the words that reminded us who he was and who we were.  It worked.  There, with Ritz cracker in hand, Hudson was reminded (or his parents were reminded) that he was a son of God with whom God is well pleased.  And I’m thinking that if all that took was a Ritz cracker, then we ought to spend our whole journey with an open box in tow.  We do not have to clean up our act before God comes.  God is willing to come into the very messiness of our lives.  If it takes a Ritz cracker to calm us down enough to receive it, then so be it.  THIS Advent, THIS Christmas, in the moment that you are now, look up and know that God comes, with our without hors d’oeuvres.

God did not wait till the world was ready, till nations were at peace. God came when the Heavens were unsteady and prisoners cried out for release. God did not wait for the perfect time.  God came when the need was deep and great. In the mystery of the Word made flesh the maker of the Stars was born. We cannot wait till the world is sane to raise our songs with joyful voice, or to share our grief, to touch our pain.  God came with Love.  Rejoice!  Rejoice! And go into the Light of God. (From “First Coming”, by Madeleine L’Engle)

FOR TODAY:  Pay attention to God’s coming.  It’s happening now.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Unfiltered

shelliwilliams Uncategorized , , ,

 

unfiltered-light10Again 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. (Isaiah 7: 10-16)

As we near the end of Advent and the promised coming of God, the prophetic voices seem to get louder and louder.  The picture of the promise has begun to take shape, moving from a far-off clouded beginning to verses that are more specific of what is about to happen.  We don’t know if Ahaz’ refusal to ask for a sign is because it had begun to be clear or if it was his way of showing his faith.  Either way, he didn’t feel the need to ask for proof of God’s existence or what God was about to do.  But we really don’t know who the child is.  Some think that this might have been referring to Ahaz’s wife, which means the child may have been the future king Hezekiah.  Centuries later when the Christian lens was added, another interpretation of the passage was taken as referring to the coming of Christ, Emmanuel, “God with us”.

There is ambiguity to the story.  Oh, who are we kidding?  There is ambiguity to the whole faith story.  Maybe that’s the point.  If the story were clear and definitive, why would we need faith?  If we knew exactly where we were going, why would we need to walk this road?  Faith is not knowing what the promise is; faith is not being sure of where we are going; faith is journeying toward a promise that is sometimes clear and sometimes cloudy, but always there.

Yesterday, every window in the house in which I live was replaced.  The old windows were dirty and worn.  They had been clouded over with years and years of dirt and grime, years of weather and winds, years of pounding rains.  (And they were so thin and brittle, that Maynard, the black lab had hit one and broken it going after a person or a cat or perhaps a unicorn, but that’s another story!) But when I look through the new windows, the colors are more pronounced and I can see more of what is outside.  The light streams in, unfiltered by dust and grime.  That is sort of what Advent does for us.  This season is a clearing season, clearing away the cobwebs and the dirt and grime, making the colors of our faith more pronounced so that the promise begins to come into focus, if only a little bit.  It is still filled with ambiguity and the unknown.  After all, we’re not meant to ever have ALL the answers.  We’re meant to walk in faith. But the signs are there.  Unfiltered, this season prepares us to open our eyes to the light as it begins to stream in. And when the light is that bright, it walks us through the ambiguity that it illumines.

Spirituality is the ability to live with ambiguity. (Ray Anderson)

FOR TODAY:  What signs do you see when you stop and look?

Grace and Peace,

Shelli