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Advent – Salvaged Faith

From Terror to Awe

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Text: Luke 1:26-38, Isaiah 11:1-10

This morning, we find ourselves in the second Sunday of Advent… this season of waiting for the coming of Christ. 

This Christmas story is so familiar and comfortable, we could curl up in it like a blanket.

 We are ready for the heavenly choirs of angels mingling with the smelly shepherds in the field, for the time when wise men led by celestial signs witness the fragility of an infant of a manger.

It is a season of holy anticipation – not for experiences beyond this world – but ones that are embodied in things that we can touch and feel, live and breathe.

We are ready for God to come and be with us!

This morning, we hear again the story of the annunciation – the announcement! – from Luke’s gospel.

The angel Gabriel appears to Mary.

The angel proclaims that Mary is favored in God’s eyes – blessed among all women – for she will bear a child who will be called the Son of God.

Mary asks but one question: How will this happen?

After a brief and yet wholly inadequate explanation, she responds:

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

I first heard this story as a child and so the image seared in my mind of Mary is of a wise and beautiful woman, full of the grace of God, who was ready for whatever came her way.

She always seemed so much older than me, but truth be told, she was probably only sixteen or seventeen years old at the beginning of this story.

This young woman was living in a world of prearranged marriages and had likely been promised to her husband-to-be, Joseph, for many years.

It was a world where a woman’s only education would have been in the home.

It was a world of Jewish faithful living under a Roman occupation, a time of darkness and poverty, disappointment and despair.

And yet, she found the courage to say yes.

Because of the nature of the season, often we hear the annunciation on Sunday, and just a few days or weeks later we have a beautiful, bouncing, baby boy in a manger.

There are so many details we skip over… in part because we don’t know what happened.

The scriptures leave us to fill in the blanks.

Or as AJ Levine reminds us in her book, Light of the World, “Matthew and Luke are not writing for children… nor are they writing newspaper reports striving for historical accuracy. [They] are designed less to ‘record what happened’ than to set the scene: to explain to readers removed from that time and place what the birth of Jesus signifies.” (p. 11-12)

There are truths in this story that are more important than the details.

Truths we have handed down from generation to generation.

Last week, we heard the record of ancestry of Jesus Christ from Matthew’s perspective.

Matthew traces a Jewish history of Jesus from Abraham, to David, through Exile and to the father of Mary.

He shows the arc of the promises of the Jewish story and how Jesus is fulfilling them.

Luke is telling a different sort of story. 

In the first verse of our reading for this morning, he notes that an angel appears to a virgin, engaged to Joseph, who was a descendent of David’s house.  Her name was Mary.

Her name means Bitter Tears, but it also calls us to remember the “Mary’s” who would have been in her spiritual ancestry… like Miriam, the sister of Moses.

Miriam who rescued her brother from certain death, helped to lead the people out of Egypt, and was later known as a poet and a prophet. 

The focus here is not just on the lineage from the house of David.

It is on the woman.

One woman.

And the decision that is before her. 

But there is more to this one verse.

We often read it out of context, but this angel, Gabriel, is the same who showed up to announce the birth of John to Zechariah and Elizabeth… we heard a piece of that story earlier in November. 

He offers a warm and joyful greeting, but you have to remember, this is not just a friendly neighbor stopping over.

This is an angel of the Lord. 

When a messenger of God shows up in scripture, there is always a catch, as Levine describes it.

You are expected to give a response.  

Our minds are taken to Abraham leaving behind everything he knows and moving to Canaan, or Moses leaving his quiet shepherd life to confront Pharoah. 

When an angel of the Lord shows up, your life changes.

Mary’s response to these words is understandable.

She is filled with confusion and terror. 

Everything that she has known in her quiet life in the small, quiet village of Nazareth is about to change. 

Who will she become? 

Where will she be asked to go?

What will she be asked to leave behind?

We all carry with us fears of the unknown, fears of standing out, fear of loss, fear of failure…

And… she doesn’t even know about the baby yet!

Gabriel sees the fear flicker in her eyes and reassures her even while sharing the news.

“Do not be afraid.”

These words come to us in the scriptures 365 times.

One for every day of the year.

“Do not be afraid.”

Dr. Christine J. Hong writes about how these words don’t actually make us less afraid. 

“Every day, people are faced with untold grief and pain, and the gospel, or the good news, is not enough to take that pain and fear away.  Hope sounds hollow to those who are enduring the wretched parts of life… courage rises despite our fear, not in its absence.” (A Sanctified Art Sermon Planning Guide)

And I think courage rises out of our fear when we know that we are not alone.

When we can trust that we will be given what we need to move forward.

As the angel Gabriel speaks, “Do not be afraid,” Mary is also given a glimpse of the future that awaits her.

She will have a child.

Not just any child, but the Son of God, who will inherit David’s throne, and reign over an eternal kingdom.

In other words… everything that they have been waiting for will come to pass. 

And that can be scary.

And it will take acts of courage in order to bring it into being.

So Mary has a very important question to ask.

“How?”

She isn’t focused on the whole eternal reign of David’s kingdom piece… but wants to know what is going to happen to her own body. 

As Wil Gafney notes, “Before Mary said, ‘yes,’ she said, ‘wait a minute, explain this to me.’”

“In a world which did not necessarily recognize her sole ownership of her body… this very young woman had the dignity, courage, and temerity to question a messenger of the Living God about what would happen to her body before giving her consent.”

Gabriel’s answer is less about biology or the mechanics, and more about a spiritual reality.

It is about the presence of God with us.

It is about the action of the Holy Spirit – a core theme in the gospel of Luke.

It is about impossibilities becoming real – evidenced by the pregnancy of her very old cousin, Elizabeth.

It is about a kingdom of oppression being taken over by a kingdom of love. 

When we find the word “fear” in our modern translations of scripture, it can come from two very different root words. 

Here, in Luke, we find the Greek word, phobos, from which we get the idea of phobias today.

Fear stops us in our tracks, holds us back, and can be destructive.

But we are also told to fear God in other places in scripture.

In Isaiah 11, we are reminded of this shoot growing from the stump of Jesse… a symbol of the heir of David’s Kingdom.

The Spirit of God will rest on him… a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord and he will delight in fearing the Lord. 

The Hebrew word here is, yirah, and it implies a sense of reverence or awe. 

I think part of what happens in this moment, and in the angel’s answer to her question is that Mary moves from terror to awe. 

She moves from a fear of the unknown to a sense of awe about the impossible becoming possible. 

In her memoir, This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley writes, “I believe fear has the holy potential to draw out awe in us.  To lead us into deeper patterns of protection and trust.  To mold us into people engaged in the unknown, capable of making mystery of it instead of terror.” (p. 86)

As Isaiah tells it, and the hymn “O Come O Come Emmanuel” reminds us, God will come to be with us. 

Christine Hong writes – “God’s spirit will intervene, leading to a world of righteousness and peace.  Prey will no longer fear their predators.  The vulnerable will be protected.  All of creation will be filled with the wisdom of God.” 

You see, God enters our fears.

God enters our struggle.

God enters our grief and pain.

It doesn’t always go away… but God is with us in the midst of it.

And in that presence, our fear is transformed. 

We find the courage to say, “yes.”

We find the ability to say, “Here I am.” 

We are given what we need in order to move past our apprehension and accept God’s invitation. 

Two thousand some years ago, a young woman, a girl really, said “yes” to God’s invitation – and just look at how the world has changed.

It is how God has always worked.

From the very beginning, ordinary nobodies who hesitantly said “yes” to God were transformed by the spirit of God.

From the nomad Abram, to the murderer Moses, and shepherd boy David.

Each of them, in their own way, said “let it be with me according to your word.”

They opened themselves up to God’s will in their lives, despite their fears.

They answered the call and tried to live obediently. 

And God accomplished amazing things through them.

Does that mean it was easy?

Did they suddenly face straight paths with no obstacles?

Of course not.

Mary could not know the course her life would take.

She would have to struggle to protect her child by fleeing to Egypt.

She would live to see her son crucified by the Romans.

Still fearing the unknown, she said, “let it be with me according to your word.”

The Word came and lived among us.

God took on flesh – God worked through human lives, and God’s will was embodied in the small “yeses” of many insignificant people.

And the world was changed.

Each of us have fears in our own hearts.

But God shows up in the midst of those fears and invites us to be transformed. 

We find the ability to say yes, because we know the stories of these faithful ancestors who said yes.

But we also find the ability to say yes, because we hold onto beautiful impossibilities and the promises of what God’s love means in our lives.

In the midst of our grief and struggle and of all that is unknown, we know who holds the end of our story.

We stand in awe and reverence of what we know we are working towards:

A world where righteousness and equity reign.

A world where the wolf and the lamb sleep in peace.

A world in which we are led by a little child. 

The fears of my heart cannot be quieted by anything I have at my disposal in this world.

But even in those fears, I need the Holy Spirit to do something new in our lives.

To do something new in our community and our world.

It is terrifying to think about what that might mean. 

Because God doesn’t want to change the world without us.

And that means letting the Spirit of God dwell in my heart.

Not just on Sunday mornings, but every day, every moment. 

Because if I… if you… if we really said yes, then everything would change. 

That’s the point, isn’t it? 

We don’t say yes because we are afraid of the risks.

We are afraid the path will be hard.

We are afraid to leave behind what we know.

And it will be.

And that is all hard. 

But we don’t do it alone. 

The angel Gabriel whispered to Mary, “Do not be afraid.” 

If we say yes, God will be with us.

If we say yes, God will give us everything we need.

If we say yes, and face our fears, we might just see them transformed into the impossible.

May it be so. 

Sanctuary

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Text: Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:39-56

I have a kind of strange question to ask…

Does this dress look familiar to you?

How many of you have noticed or realized that I have worn it every Sunday for the last eight weeks? 

How many of you have noticed that I have worn this dress… I mean, this exact garment, not one like it, for every day for the last sixty-two days? 

I had seen advertisements for this Wool& dress for ages, advertising this magical wool garment that stretches and doesn’t smell and that you don’t have to wash every day.  Something that keeps you cool when you are hot and warm when you are chilled.

A friend did the challenge.  Then another.  And so I thought – why not. 

I needed a new black dress and something that was well constructed and would last me for a while and could be a sustainable addition to my wardrobe made sense. 

So here I am… day sixty-two. 

Why on earth am I talking about a dress on the fourth Sunday of Advent?

Because we all need to have a safe place to run and share and feel safe when the world around us is falling apart.

Our scripture for this morning tells the story of how an unwed, pregnant teenager ran away from home – and ran straight to the arms and household of her relative, Elizabeth. 

Many of us have heard this story before. 

A relative who went off to live somewhere else for a while – to hide from a secret shame, to get clean, to take responsibility for mistakes.

We have stories that have been passed down in hushed tones about the family that took them in while they got their lives back together.

But we also know there are times in all of our lives when we have a struggle that we aren’t quite sure how to share or speak aloud. 

And so you seek the sanctuary of a close friend – someone you can be honest with.  Someone who will believe you.  Someone who will be on your side. 

When I started this silly challenge of wearing this dress for 100 days, I joined a facebook group dedicated to the task.  I was anticipating getting ideas for how to style with items already in my closet, advice for cleaning… that kind of thing. 

What I didn’t expect is that this group would be a place of sanctuary for so many.

Women talking about difficulties in relationships.

Sharing stories of health crises or tremendous loss. 

Wrestling with insecurities about how they look and past emotional abuse.

We all need a place to turn when things are rough…

When we are unsure of what to do or who will love and accept us…

And this facebook group about a dress has become a place of sanctuary for so many.

The responses are full of love and encouragement and grace and support. 

Ya’ll… it feels like church. 

Our text from the Hebrew scriptures talks about a ruler who will be born in Bethlehem. 

It is an insignificant and unlikely place… but he will be our shepherd.

He will help us find safety and peace and security and love. 

And as Christians, we believe that one that was promised was the Messiah, Jesus. 

But he was born to an insignificant and unlikely person… a young woman, pregnant and unmarried, vulnerable. 

Mary is open and willing and ready to be God’s vessel… but also, she must have been terrified.

How could you explain such a miracle? How would others have responded?

Would there have been stares, questions, disbelief?

Despite her faith and her courage, was it simply too much?

She turns to the only person she thinks can understand… her cousin, Elizabeth, who is having her own miraculous pregnancy. 

I have preached on the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth countless times in my ministry.

But I don’t think that I have ever focused on what it meant for these two to find one another in this moment. 

Charles Campbell captures it well:

“The scene is absurd… A baby leaps in the womb.  Blessings are shared.  Astonishment is expressed.  Songs are sung.  By two pregnant women… It is fleshy, embodied, earthy, appropriate as a forerunner to the incarnation… In the women’s actions, the world is indeed turned upside down. Hierarchies are subverted. The mighty are brought low. Two marginalized, pregnant women carry the future and proclaim the Messiah.” 

(Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, p 95)

In this place of sanctuary and safety, the two women offer support.

They share the joys and the triumphs and the stress and the difficulty. 

And they proclaim and shout and sing about how God is turning the world upside down.

We’ve talked a lot over the last several weeks about home. 

About God making a home among us… about the kin-dom taking root right here in this world.

And the truth is, if we really let it, it changes everything.

God is initiating a world of love and grace and mercy and welcome.

God is calling us to repent of the ways we have shut one another out and turned one another away. 

To let go of our tendencies to shame or harass or judge.

To embrace a life of humility and freedom and mercy. 

And while Mary’s song talks about rulers being toppled from their thrones, we are called to live these promises out with actions that are much simpler. 

Who will you welcome today? 

How can you offer sanctuary for someone who is unsure about their future?

What do you need to do to show grace to someone you love?  

Where is God calling you to be a shepherd for others? 

That’s what church is all about, after all, isn’t it?

It is about sanctuary. 

It is about forgiveness.

It is about community.

It is offering hope and love and support and prayers.

It is a pocket of the kin-dom of God right here on earth as we let the love of Christ transform how we treat one another. 

It might be a facebook group about a dress…

Or it might be at the dinner table when your kid comes out…

Or it might be how you respond to the co-worker you disagree with…

Or it might be reaching out to a complete stranger in the check-out line with a smile of encouragement…

But we are called to love our neighbors.

To love with open arms and humility and compassion. 

May we be sanctuary for all who seek it.

May we carry that kind of love with us… may we carry church with us… wherever we go. 

An Altogether Hope

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Text: 1 Peter 1: 3-6, 9-15,22

Keep awake! Get ready! Prepare yourselves!
These are the words that fly at us from the scriptures for this first Sunday of Advent.
But get ready for what?
Get yourself ready for the future that God has already prepared for you.
Get ready to embrace the life that Christ is calling you to embrace.
Don’t just go through the motions of basic goodness, basic practices, and basic sincerity…
Prepare yourself to truly and fully live your life for the Kingdom of God.

Over these weeks of Advent, we are going to be exploring John Wesley’s sermon, “Almost Christian,” where he invites us to hold our lives up against the picture of all that God is inviting us to be and become.
Are we there yet?
Are we doing it perfectly?
Of course not.
But if we never take the time to check in and evaluate our lives, we will never do what it takes to take the next step.
So this year, as we get ready for Christmas, we are also getting ready and preparing to receive Christ even more fully into our hearts and our lives.
This year, we will look at what it might take the get ourselves ready to become Altogether Christians, who wholeheartedly trust God and put that trust into action.
Will you pray with me?

How many of you have ever had a bad day? What about a bad week? Or a whole year?
Life is downright tough sometimes. It is unfair. It is cruel.
We finally find the job we have been searching for, and then our spouse gets laid off.
A misunderstanding destroys a friendship.
Natural disasters wipe homes off the map.
Children go hungry.
And sometimes in the midst of all of the problems this world endures we might start to ask a question that my colleague, Sarah Bessey, asked: “How could we possibly enter into Advent if we are paying attention to this world?”
She goes on to say:
“When, in response to every crisis, our communities seem splintered and divided even in how to bind up each other’s wounds and careless words are flung like rocks at our own glass houses? When perhaps we are lonely or bored or tired or sick or broke or afraid? When we are grieving and sad?
In these days, celebration can seem callous and uncaring, if not outright impossible.
But here’s the thing: we enter into Advent precisely because we are paying attention.
It’s because everything hurts that we prepare for Advent…
We don’t get to have hope without having grief. Hope dares to admit that not everything is as it should be, and so if we want to be hopeful, first we have to grieve. First we have to see that something is broken and there is a reason for why we need hope to begin with.
Advent matters, because it’s our way of keeping our eyes and our hearts and our arms all wide open even in the midst of our grief and longing.” (https://sarahbessey.substack.com/p/does-advent-even-matter-when-the)

When I think back on the tough times that I have been through in my life…
as I have listened to folks share their own stories…
what often transforms the despair of grief into the dawning of hope is that we stop being mad and angry and frustrated and we start living into the reality that we believe is possible.
It seems contrite to say that there are two ways of looking at world – either as a glass half-full or a glass half-empty… but maybe it really is as simple as that.
Either the world is a place of darkness or it is a place where the light of God dwells…
Either God has abandoned us or God is working out a plan of salvation…
Either Christ’s work is done or soon and very soon the Son of Man is coming…
Can you hear the difference in those statements?
Are we going to live as a people of hope?
Or are we going to let the grief and frustration overcome us?
That is our choice.
That is why the prophets and the apostles cry out – Keep Awake! Get Ready! Prepare Yourselves!

Hope itself can seem naïve when the world around us is falling apart.
But I turn to scriptures like the one we have read today from 1 Peter, because they remind me that the trials we are experiencing are nothing new.
In the midst of persecution, Peter wrote to early Jewish and Gentile Christians with advice about “how to survive in the midst of a hostile world” (The Rev. Sharon Ann Alexander – CEB Women’s Bible Commentary)
In the midst of their suffering, they are not promised that everything will be better, but they are invited to be born into a living hope.
This hope is not a pie in the sky wish.
It is a hope grounded in the reality that the one we put our faith and trust in has already overcome the reality of execution and death.
And we do not embrace this hope haphazardly.
We place our hope on Christ with minds that are fully sober and thinking clearly.
Or as the Message translation puts it: “Roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that is coming when Jesus arrives.”

And we do that by embracing God’s will, God’s holiness, God’s truth in everything we do.
We do that by putting our faith and trust and hope into action.

The first step, Peter reminds us is to stop living in grief, despair, and the patterns of our lives before Christ.
We need to let go off everything that bogs us down and drains us.
Or as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 13: we can’t afford to waste a minute, we must not squander these precious hours of daylight in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed!
Think about one thing that you can do differently this Advent season as you prepare for Christmas.
What is something that you can do that will renew your hope and your faith… instead of depleting your energy and your faith?
In our Advent study, “Altogether Christmas,” Ingrid McIntyre reminds us of the difference between almost hope and altogether hope.
“One stands at a distance while the other relentlessly pursues; one offers platitudes while the other dives deep into the hopelessness of a situation and offers light in the darkness – light that grows and grows and grows.” (p. 42)
Instead of spending hours shopping for perfect present, could you go to someone who is struggling and spend that time with them, offering hope and light into their life?

The next step is to keep God in the center of all we do.
Sometimes, in our frustrating times, in the days that seem without hope, we turn our backs on God.
We look for salvation in all the wrong places.
We look for things that will make us feel better, self-medicating with alcohol or shopping sprees or social media.
We turn towards the darkness and yell at it for being so dark.
And we continue to feel alone, and empty, and lost.
But instead, when we reconnect with the very one who gave us new birth as a living hope… when we love and trust and believe and rejoice in this God even on the tough days… then the very same power that raised Christ from the dead fills up our lives and gives us the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
So find some time this Advent to spend in devotion and prayer. Take some time to reflect on those questions from the sermon “Almost Christian.” Let the Spirit of Christ fill your heart.

Finally, we need to embrace the truth that hope is not just a sentiment, but an action we are called to embrace with every fiber of our being.
In her article, Sarah Bessey writes that “Advent holds the truth of what is right now up to the truth of what was and what will be.”
As our Advent study, “Almost Christmas,” reminds us:
“John Wesley saw and experienced the same society problems as others, but instead of accepting them, he raised hell about them so that just maybe a few neglected others could experience hope… the Church of England wasn’t living up to the church Wesley saw described in the scriptures. [so] Wesley became prophetic hope for the church.”
“Hope came when a group of people were unwilling to stay silent, who weren’t afraid to stand up and say, ‘We just can’t do this anymore.’… “Instead of just saying the words, ‘thy kingdom come,’ Wesley let God embody the hope of those words through his flesh.” (p50-51)
This Advent, find ways to let the hope of God come alive in your flesh.
Sponsor a family for Christmas.
Speak out against immigration policies that are hurting families.
March for the climate crisis.
Visit our homeless neighbors.
Fill the food pantry with donations…
Whatever it is that is breaking your heart… whatever it is that you are grieving… find a way to hold it up to the truth of what God desires for that situation and get ready to do something about it.
Make hope real with your arms and legs and feet.
Then, maybe God’s altogether hope will be born into this world once again.

Livin’ on the Edge

This morning, we are hanging out in liminal space…

That’s a funny word isn’t it… liminal….

Say it with me… liminal.

 

It comes from Latin and means “threshold.”  It is the space in between.  It is transitional.

Our country is in that liminal space between an election and the swearing in of a new president.

The United Methodist Church is in a liminal space – knowing that we can’t be what we were and aren’t yet sure what we might become.

Many of us are in personal liminal spaces… a time of discomfort, of waiting, of transformation.  We are experiencing transitions in relationship statuses, or maturing from childhood to adulthood.  We are waiting for test results that might forever change our world or experiencing losses that already have.

The theologian Richard Rohr describes liminality this way:

It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else.  It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer.

Or, if you’d prefer the theologians Aerosmith:

There’s something wrong with the world today

I don’t know what it is Something’s wrong with our eyes

We’re seeing things in a different way

And god knows it ain’t his

It sure ain’t no surprise

Livin’ on the edge

Every single one of us is dealing with something in our personal lives that looms large on the edges.  Job insecurity.  Financial woes.  Racism.  Personal loss.  Illness.  Depression.  Sexism. Addiction.  Work or School stress.  Bullying.

Whatever it might be for you… It’s there on the edges.

We don’t talk about it… but it’s there.

 

And it was there for Edmund, Peter, Lucy, and Susan in the Chronicles of Narnia.

As we enter this Advent and then Christmas season and beyond, we are going to be following these four children in this magical land and hear what  the author C.S. Lewis has to teach us about what it means to be people of faith in tough times.

And the story starts with this magical threshold… this doorway between two worlds that the littlest girl Lucy discovers.

 

We focus on the magic of that doorway… but what we sometimes overlook is the difficulty that brought all of the characters to this place in this time.

These children are in a liminal space.

The story is set during the middle of the London Blitz of World War II.  Their home in the city was no longer safe.  Like children in Aleppo, in Syria, today, every day they lived in terror that a bomb would drop on top of their home or school or the hospitals.

Yet these children were able to make it out of the city.  They were sent away to the countryside, sent away from their parents, into a big lonely house.

Everything they knew was in turmoil… and they didn’t yet know what might happen on the other side of the war.

 

This summer, as we preached through the prophets, we heard the passage we shared this morning from Isaiah.  About the people who lived in the land of deep darkness.

Those who lived in the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali knew what it meant to live through wars and conflict.  Their tribal home had been ravaged for so long that they didn’t know what hope was anymore.

There’s something wrong with the world today

The lightbulb’s gettin’ dimmed

There’s meltdown in the sky

If you can judge a wise man

By the color of his skin

Then mister, you’re a better man than I

Livin’ on the edge

Right there… on the edge… where hope had ceased and the shadows seemed longer and longer, light was promised.

Those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined.

 

And so in the midst of this liminal season of her life, Lucy hides in a closet and discovers a magical doorway between worlds.

She finds herself in a forest, surrounded by snow, and she sees a light shining in the distance.

It is a lamppost.

A light shining on the edge.

“It is a beacon in the face of the dark, cold spell that lies on the land,” writes the author of our devotion Advent in Narnia.

Both lands.  All lands.

London and Narnia. Syria and Israel.  The United States. The World.

The lamppost, which stands there at the boundary between Narnia and the “wild woods of the west” remains shining in the darkness.  The power of the white witch who has taken over Narnia… the darkness of despair, sin, and death which threatens to overtake our lives… it cannot put that light out.  It shines.  Always has… always will.

 

As we will hear read on Christmas Eve, the gospel of John reminds us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it.

And we hear… that the people loved the darkness more than the light.

As the Message puts it… the light entered the world “and yet the world didn’t even notice.  He came to his own people and they didn’t want him.”

In the midst of our story of light, we are reminded that that we are human.

It is so often our sin that is the cause of the world’s darkness.

Hatred and greed.  Nationalism and pride.  Consumer impulses that fail to recognize the cost to others and this planet.

That is why we are reminded in the gospel of Luke that the door is narrow and few will enter it.

Mr. Tumnus is the perfect example of this reality.  He is working for the witch, even though he knows it is wrong because he is too afraid to do otherwise.

We are too struck by the darkness.

We are too consumed with ourselves.

Something right with the world today

And everybody knows it’s wrong

But we can tell ’em no

Or we could let it go

But I would rather be a hanging on

Livin’ on the edge

My colleague Dan Dick has some challenging words for people of faith right now.  He writes as Advent begins:

Do we need a Savior?  Do we need a Messiah?  Yes, oh yes, but we really don’t want one – not if he/she is going to expect us to live up to our confession of faith.  If we have to honor the promises made for us at baptism and the promises we have made ourselves since then, well…,  we will take a pass on the Messiah, thank you very much… we really can’t afford/tolerate the Son of God coming to mess things up. (https://doroteos2.com/2016/11/26/wanted-savior-some-experience-required/)

We have a chance to say goodbye to the darkness and let go of our own sin and anger, disappointment and loss, frustration and hatred and focus on the light, the hope, the love, the promises of God.

There is light and right and good in this world… if only we would open our eyes to see it, open our hearts to experience it… open our hands to live it.

There is something so right in this world today and we are too scared, fearful, consumed to believe it!

But as Jesus instructs the people in chapter 13 of Luke’s gospel – unless you change your hearts and lives… unless you repent… unless you turn away from the darkness you will never enter that narrow door.

 

Mr. Tumnus was out there in the liminal space… hanging out by the lamppost.

We don’t know what brought him to that moment, but what we do know is that in the story, he finds a child.

A child that offers him hope and light, love and forgiveness.

A child that gives him the courage to turn away from the shadows.

 

This Advent season, we have a chance to enter that narrow door.

We have a chance to enter that liminal space of transformation.

Friends, all I ask is that you open yourself to the possibility.

I ask that you step outside of your comfort zone.

I pray that you will enter and journey in Narnia with me this season.

Come live on the edge.  Come experience the light. Come and wait for the coming of our savior.

It just might change your life.

Singing for Peace

As we continue to wait for the one who has already come, the birth of Christ into our world and our lives, we are so close we can almost taste it!

Maybe your lights are up and the tree is decked out.

Maybe there are already Christmas cookies sitting on the countertop and presents under the tree.

We are ready for the heavenly choirs of angels mingling with the shepherds in the fields.

We are ready for the moment the wise ones, led by celestial signs, lay eyes on the infant in the manger.

We are waiting in holy anticipation – not for experiences beyond this world, but ones that are embodied in things we can touch and feel, live and breathe.

We are getting ready for God to take on human flesh in our midst!

And boy, do we need it.

Maybe one of the reasons those little lights twinkling on my tree bring me so much comfort is that they are signs of light and life, hope and peace, in a world that is really struggling.

 

Last week, I lifted up so many places where violence has disrupted lives and this week, more cities, more lives are added to that list. San Bernadino, California. Savannah, Georgia.

If you count up all of the tragedies where four or more individuals were injured or killed in this year, there have been more mass shootings than days.

If you look at our own community, Des Moines has seen its 20th homicide this year – the highest number in 19 years.

 

On this Sunday, we are called to lift up the promise of peace as we light the Advent candles.

And peace is my prayer on this morning.

Peace is the deep yearning of my heart.

 

And this morning, we hear from Luke’s gospel songs of longing for peace.

 

Yes, songs.

 

As Magrey deVega reminds us in our Advent Study, if Mark’s version of the gospel is a Reader’s Digest, Matthew is like a Steven King novel, and John is like a Shakespeare play, then Luke is like a Broadway musical.

 

When his son, John is born, Zechariahs heart sings out: The prophets spoke of mercy, of freedom and release; God shall fulfill the promise to bring our people peace! (UMH #209)

 

Elizabeth recognized that the child in her cousin’s womb was the longing of all Israel. She was absolutely overjoyed…. and in her joy and in Mary’s song they recognized deep in their hearts that the promise from Micah – the promise of the one of peace – was being fulfilled.

 

Our hearts in contrast… are jaded and worn and disappointed. And maybe that is because we are looking for peace in all the wrong places.

I remember quite clearly President Obama delivering a speech to the nation and an audience at West Point in 2009.

He had just been named the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and he was announcing a surge in military personnel in Afghanistan.

“I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace on with the other.”

The prophet Micah describes the Prince of Peace in this way:

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace. (Micah 5:4-5)

Mary and Elizabeth and the child in Elizabeth’s womb cannot contain themselves as they encounter this promise of God – yet unborn. They have been longing and waiting and hoping for so long.

 

There was no triumphant singing after Obama’s West Point speech… and while there may have been music in Oslo at the Nobel ceremonies, Obama’s own speech tempered any bit of joy and celebration.

We keep looking to our national and world leaders to bring peace.

We keep waiting for the right legislation or diplomacy or defense policy to make us safe and quiet the world.

But they are not the ones we are waiting for.
We live in a world of cynicism and violence, a world of confusion and hatred. Whatever conflict we are experiencing… whether it is family trauma, violence in our neighborhoods, a civil war halfway across the world, it creates conflict internally.

In my own life, I am wrestling with the distractions of family conflict and must admit there are times it is all I think about.

I desire grace and healing to be experienced and yet I hold onto grudges and my own comfort with the status quo. These things are not compatible. They war within me.

And that internal conflict is magnified on the world stage.

Even as we seek peace, we send troops. Echoing out this week from Christian leaders were calls to sign the death warrants of our enemies and to seek out and destroy those who are against us. We demonize those who are different. We label those who have committed atrocities as outcasts and terrorists so we don’t have to recognize that they are human… just like us.

Yet, if we live in this way, will we ever experience healing or reconciliation? Will we ever know peace?

 

We come together as people of faith and we light the second candle on the advent wreath because we dare to believe that the Prince of Peace will reign.

We dare to hope that there will be day when nation will not rise up against nation.

We dare to hope that a day is coming when innocent lives are no longer taken by gun violence.

We dare to wait for the day when the powerful are brought down from their thrones and the lowly are lifted up.
And so we pray for peace.

The thing about prayer, though is that it is not a passive thing.

Prayer is an activity.

Prayer requires doing.

Richard Foster wrote:

“Prayer is the central avenue God uses to change us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.”

We believe that God is active in the world, bringing peace through us… just a Mary sang out that God was radically transforming the world through her.

As deVega writes in the third chapter:

The church can offer the very thing that would most remedy a world caught in an endless cycle of self-destructive behavior: a subversive, surprising song. A song whose lyrics speak of self-giving love rather than self-addicted agendas. A song whose sounds are counter waves to the thrum of war chants and the clanging of swords [or the sound of gunfire]. A song whose melody drives us upward towards holiness and purity, rather than into the darkest recesses of our sinful instincts. A sacred harmony that pulses with God’s unconditional love, calling us to forgiveness… the church has a song to perform, and we each have instruments to play.” (p. 60-61)

We each have instruments to play.

If we want to pray for peace, then we have to be peace in the world.

Robert Mann calls us to

“Be a reverse terrorist.

Plot. Plan. Scheme and launch random acts of love.

Incite it. Invite it. Ignite it.

Shake this world to its foundation.

And enjoy yourself in the process.”

That might be peace in the Middle East, or peace between you and your neighbors.

It might be peace among loved ones, or peace between you and your inner thoughts.

In this season of Advent, we stand in the face of war and suffering and distress and we not only look for the coming of peace, but we live it.

We stand like Elizabeth and Mary, pregnant with the hope that God’s promises are real.

The reality we long for this and every Advent…

The miracle that we wait for this and every Christmas…

Is that we might wake up one morning and run outside to discover that God is with us – Emmanuel – and that the Prince of Peace rules the earth.

Until then… we pray and we sing and we live for peace.

 

 

**side note** this summer, I attended a concert with Reba at the Iowa State Fair.  She talked about how she had been wrestling with so much going on in the world and asked God what she could do and the answer came back… pray for peace… ***

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHbv4M8d3As&w=560&h=315]

 

Format Aside

Everyone is gone for the day.

The church is quiet and still.

And here I sit, pouring over the words in the hymnal and songbooks.

Looking for just the right combination of joy and reflection. Of longing and praise. Of reality and possibility. Of the familiar and the uncomfortable.

Sometimes I forget we also have to sing the tunes.

Accidental author #NaBloPoMo

As one writing discipline ends, another begins.

It has been good to return to regular blogging through the National Blog Post Month prompts. I have not been entirely consistent, but at least I never gave up.

Today, I had invites to share in two advent disciplines: one writing prayers and the other reflecting on a word each day. They both speak to me, so I might switch back and forth between the two.

Today’s advent word is “write”.

Much of our focus in scripture this time of year is on the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. As we wait for Jesus to be born in our midst, we look back to those who were also watching and waiting.

What must it have been like to write those prophecies? Did they have any sense of the import of their words? Were they speaking with eyes focused only on their present reality… yet by the Spirit transformed into promises for every person in every time?

Today, when we write of our longing and hope for God to come down and tear open the heavens in places like Ferguson and Sierra Leone and Syria and under the bridges of Des Moines, are we merely echoing voices of the past? Are we speaking God’s word for this moment? Will our words carry meaning centuries from today?

I am merely an accidental author. I didn’t set out to write. But I find fulfilment in it. I speak from my life. I don’t really need anyone to read the work. Yet, sometimes a piece speaks to someone. The holy spirit moves. Something bigger than a girl with a blog is taking place.

And I wonder if folks like Isaiah and Nahum were really that much different. Were they just ordinary people, doing an ordinary thing, that by the power of God was transformed into something completely different?

I guess what I’m trying to say is this… If any sermon or blog or book of mine speaks to you, it probably has very little to do with me and everything to do with the how the Holy Spirit goes to work in our lives… translating, interpreting, transforming. I’m just an accidental author.

The Blue Couch #NaBloPoMo

Today’s prompt is:  Do you have a book in you? Fact or fiction? Related to your blog or totally different?

Well, the first part of the answer is that I have already worked on two books!

The first is an Advent study that is available here.  It weaves between the story of the magi and the book of Hebrews in order to show how the gifts brought to Jesus foreshadow the roles he plays in our lives.

The second is a lectionary based study that is available for Lent 2015 and can now be preordered! It takes a broad view of salvation and discusses a variety of atonement theories along the way.

 

IMG_2460There is a book that someday I would like to write, however, that is more autobiographical in nature.  As the post title suggests, it revolves around a blue couch, but more than that, it would be the story of my call and my relationship with my husband.  While in large part it is a book I would love to write, particularly for anyone who also is in a relationship with someone who doesn’t share their faith story, it is also a book that a) isn’t a complete story yet and b) might be too personal at the moment to share.

The blue couch is currently sitting in my office at home.  Together, we rescued it from being thrown away from an office building in Wisconsin.  We hadn’t been dating too long at that point, but were pretty attached to each other.  Since then, it traveled with us to college, moved with me to seminary, got destroyed by our kittens when we moved back home, but I just can’t seem to throw it away. It is a super high quality couch with real down feathers and although we have beat up on that couch, it is stick kicking!  (which might be a metaphor in and of itself for our relationship!) I’m trying to figure out how/when I might reupholster it… in blue of course!