Vision of God

Changing Expectations

shelliwilliams Uncategorized , ,

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

Matthew 11: 2-11 (Advent 3A)

2When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” 4Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. 6And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

7As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 9What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ 11Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

We usually think that we have it all figured out.  We walk through our lives with grand plans and grand illusions of what the world should look like and what we should look like to the world.  John was no different.  He loved Jesus, loved the things that Jesus represented–freedom, peace, righteousness.  And so, he had set to work telling everyone how he saw it.  But then all of a sudden, he realized that Jesus was doing things differently. Essentially, what Jesus was doing was not in the mold of what John had envisioned.  John was going around preaching repentance in the face of what was surely the Kingdom of God coming soon.  And here was Jesus healing and freeing and raising the dead.  John probably didn’t see it as wrong—just sort of a waste of time.  After all, in his view, there were people that needed redeeming, and redeemed NOW!  We need to get busy. “Jesus, really, this was not quite what we were expecting!”  So, he asks Jesus, “OK, are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  (As if to imply that we may need to wait for someone that will get this show on the road and make everyone get on board the way we think it should be.)

Well, the truth as we know it is that Jesus WAS Emmanuel, Jesus WAS God Incarnate, Jesus WAS the Savior for which the world had waited for so long.  The problem was that the world (and even John) could not see Jesus standing right in front of them because they were too busy looking for what they had expected.  They had expected a mighty warrior.  (Well, where was he?)  They had expected a king to whom everyone would bow.  (Well, that wasn’t happening!)  They had expected someone who would clean things up and make life easier.  (And you want me to do WHAT?  Hob-knob with the unacceptables and give up my place to those who haven’t worked for it and share my fortune with the less fortunate and essentially begin to go back down the ladder of progress to find what I’ve been missing?)  Truth be told, the world was expecting a warrior politician and got a demure baby in a manger, of all things.  Surely, THIS can’t be right!  I mean, really, how can we put our trust and our faith in one who is essentially one of us?  So, should we wait for another?

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 live the way they were supposed to live, they became them.  Well, isn’t THAT interesting!  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, dressing up like a human, and giving humanity a part of the Divine.  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 see what it means to change the world.   God became like us to show us what it meant for us to be like God in the world.  The miracle of the birth of the Christ child is that God now comes through us.  God’s vision comes alive through us.

Jesus really didn’t “fit in”.  Jesus was not anything that any of us were expecting.  That’s the whole point.  Perhaps Jesus calls us to be what the world does not expect.  God did not come into this world to calm and affirm how well we were conducting things.  God came to show us a different way of living, a different way of being.  God came as one of us, Emmanuel, God With Us, to show us how to be one of us, to show us how to be human, fully human.  Who would have ever come up with that?  That was NOT what we were expecting.  Because you see, the miracle of God is here, dwelling in our midst, dwelling in us.  This is the mystery of the redemption of the world.

And, here we are, still waiting, waiting for the world to change.  What is your vision of that change?  What is it that you want to see happen?  Here’s the thing…what if our vision of what the world should be is not God’s?  What if part of waiting on the world to change is learning to change our own expectations?  What if part of wanting something new is realizing something new?  It’s hard.  I mean, we’re here.  We see what’s failing.  Well, remember God is here too.  And I’m thinking God has a much larger picture than we do. 

So, what are you willing to give up for others?  (Or is the world going to have everything it needs even when we have too much?)  What are you willing to relinquish so that others will have?  (Or is the world going to heal when we are spending time enriching our own lives?)  What are you willing to put forth so that others will hear?  (Or is the world on its own because we are afraid to speak, afraid to speak forward, afraid to risk.)   God didn’t call us to “fix” the world; God called us to be a part of re-creating it, part of a new creation, a new vision of what would be.  How willing are we to give up what we have, what we know, to let that vision come to be?  How willing are we to change our expectations?  Are you the one that is to come or are we to wait for another?  No, the world is waiting for us, the ones that God called to do this hard work.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s hard—REALLY hard.  But God is here, walking with us, doing the work with us.  But we have to be open to the possibility that the change that we want so desperately may look a little different than what we thought.

This text speaks of the birth of a child, not the revolutionary deed of a strong man, or the breath-taking discovery of a sage, or the pious deed of a saint.  It truly boggles the mind:  The birth of a child is to bring about the great transformation of all things, is to bring salvation and redemption to all of humanity.  As if to shame the most powerful human efforts and achievements, a child is placed in the center of world history.  A child born of humans, a son given by God.  This is the mystery of the redemption of the world; all that is past and all that is to come.  All who at the manger finally lay down all power and honor, all prestige, all vanity, all arrogance and self-will; all who take their place among the lowly and let God alone be high; all who see the glory of God in the lowliness of the child in the manger:  these are the ones who will truly celebrate Christmas. (From Christmas With Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. By Manfred Weber)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Remember Who You Are

shelliwilliams Uncategorized ,

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

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

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’s part of the Year B Lectionary but, again, I’m “filling in”.  It speaks of hope.  (You’ll remember that it also appears in Luke 4:18-21, which is sort of Jesus’ first sermon, if you will.)  In both passages, 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, here, 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 within that hope is also a call to remember—remember who and whose you are, remember what you had, that we might work to build it again.  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 and to call on us to remember who and whose we are. In other words, all that work that you think needs to be done?  Remember who you are.  Remember that vision God calls you toward.

(OK…TRIGGER WARNING…)  I try very hard on this platform to NOT get political (I have another platform where I intentionally get blatantly political and that will suffice).  But I may be going up to the line here.  Honestly, I’m scared.  I’m scared that our society and our world are being slowly and intentionally taken over by different degrees of authoritarianism.  We Americans seem to somehow be content with handing over the reins to a newfound authoritarian oligarchy.  I have read too much history and traveled too many places to naively think that this will end well if we don’t turn a corner.  I’m scared that while we’re waiting for things to change, we’ve forgotten who we are.  We’ve forgotten what we’re called to do and called to be.  So, how do we build up and raise up and repair?  How do we listen to the prophet’s words?  How do we become instruments of change, instruments of God’s vision for what the world could be?

In 1998, I visited Russia. (During the worst heatwave they ever remembered!  I learned to drink straight frozen vodka at lunch because it felt like ice going through my body and it was lovely.)  Anyway, that was during the height of something different happening in Russia.  Gorbachev had introduced Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) in the mid-1980’s, the Communist regime Soviet Union had officially fallen in 1991 and there was a new life.  People were excited.  They knew they had it rough.  In fact, they had had it rough for centuries.  (“Doctor Zhivago” is not completely fiction.)  But there was hope.  Things were changing.

I visited Russia again in 2008.  I stayed for three weeks.  (Ironically, during the record-breaking snowfall and below-zero temperatures.  What is it with me?)  It was very different than it had been ten years before.  I stayed in a “luxury” apartment that rattled with the train down below, had peeling paint and cracking walls, no electricity that would withstand a curling iron, strange-colored water coming out of the hydrants, and was, oh my, so incredibly cold.  But truly, it WAS luxury.  I visited apartments of members of our sister church.  There were 15 people living in about 400 square feet.  The walls were covered in faded newspaper in an attempt to insulate it.  And food was scarce.  And much of it was rotting.  Perestroika was beginning to fade.  When I attended our sister church, I sat there (in a language that I only knew about ten words and how to read three words in Cyrillic) in an “illegal” church service because of the building in which it was held.  I remember thinking, “you know, this could end badly for me!”  But the point was that the society, the economy, and the newfound freedom and openness were failing.  They knew it was failing.  Rather than the feeling of hope and promise that I had observed ten years before, I had a sense that they were just trying to exist, just trying to go around all the issues without tripping on them.  They were just trying to avoid poking the bear, so to speak, and live their lives as best they could.  They were existing.

I don’t want that for us.  I want to listen to the prophet.  While we wait on the world to change, we cannot ignore if it is going backwards.  We HAVE to remember who and whose we are.  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. 

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.  Remember that.  Do not be content to just exist.  God calls us to something more.  You can’t wait on the world to change without remembering who and whose you are.

The reality of Advent isn’t that we are waiting for the birth of the Christ Child.  The Christ Child is here and is waiting for us to come.  He is crying out to us from the border.  He is calling to us from the voices of the poor.  He is shouting out to us from prison.  He is waiting for us to live out our faith.  He is waiting for us to seek justice.  He is waiting for us to pursue peace.  Let us go, for He is waiting. (Susan Henry-Crowe)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

A Reordering

shelliwilliams Advent , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

No More Visions of Sugar Plums

shelliwilliams Advent 2C, Uncategorized, Vision of God , , , ,

Refiner's Fire (Lin Lopes, SouthAfricanArtists)
“Refiner’s Fire”, by Lin Lopes

Advent 2C

 

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me… 2But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; 3he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. (Malachi 3: 1a, 2-3)

 

What is all this talk about fire? Fire is painful; fire is destructive; fire leaves ashes in its path. This is supposed to be the season of joy, full of carols and Christmas trees and visions of sugar plums. Why are we reading about this in Advent? The truth is that we would rather jump ahead and let the visions of sugar plums dance in our heads. We would rather this be easier. And so we back away from the fire.

 

Now, read it. It doesn’t predict fire. It says that the coming of this messenger is LIKE a refiner’s fire. In other words, the messenger’s job is to prepare us, to get us ready, to change us. Maybe it is a promise that those things in our lives that do not serve us and do not serve God will be metaphorically burned away or cleaned and bleached and beaten the way a fuller would do to cloth to make it clean and full. Yes, I think we’re talking in metaphors (or, as my translation uses the word “like”, I guess that’s technically a simile.) But the point is that we will all be changed. And so we back away from the fire.

 

The truth is that most of us would rather not have to change. We would rather sanitize our lives and ward off those things that create chaos and shake the foundations of our existence. We would rather just live with visions of sugar plums even though they are not that good for us. But here we are in Advent anyway, trying to navigate the darkness and the unknown, trying to find our way, trying to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ into our lives. But we have the wrong vision. The vision is not one of sugar plums or sappy sweetness. The vision is not one where God comes into our midst to tell us how great we’re all doing at running our lives and running our world. The vision is not one where the Kingdom of God comes in its fullness and looks exactly like the lives we’ve created for ourselves. You might as well put those visions with the sugar plums.

 

We are all called to change, called to grow, called to become a New Creation that God envisions we can be. It is not easy. Sometimes it may be downright painful. But like a refiner’s fire, this process will allow our true beauty to emerge. Like fuller’s soap, it will make us clean and full, a fabric worthy of clothing our King. And, as we’ve been shown before, from the dark of chaos, a new order, a New Creation will come to be—a Creation where those we’ve deemed enemies are our brothers and sisters, where homelessness and hunger and suicide bombers and weapons of mass destruction are archaic words that no longer need translated, and where the visions of sugar plums that we thought would fulfill us have been replaced by the vision that God has always held for us. But we have to be open to change and, especially, to being changed. We can no longer back away. And whatever the Vision holds, assume that it will be different than what you’ve planned! Thanks be to God!

 

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

 

Grace and Peace,

 

Shelli