Saturday, December 24, 2011

The Astonishing Event


God. the Creator, the One who spoke into nothing and made everything...
God, had everything been leading up to this?  It was so radical that nobody would have thought to even wonder if it might be possible.  So fantastic, so incomprehensible a move this would be, that all the hinting in the world couldn’t have brought it to mind for anyone.  It was inconceivable. Ludicrous, even. Unthinkable, Impossible.

Ah, but remember? Impossibility is God’s most favorite territory, this Artist’s most preferred medium.

And so the time came for her to deliver.
The time came for the timeless one to enter time.  For the Creator to get created.  To go from beyond to being, from apart to within.  From invincible to oh, so very vulnerable.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing, nothing, nothing.  
Nothing would be allowed any longer to separate God from the ones God loves.  
No more.  
This is it. 

How to prepare? What will it feel like?  
To be one of them, with them, so completely, to dwell within, inhabit, to become flesh. To see human life from the inside, to taste and smell all the things they do, to touch them, to cry the tears of your image-bearers…

Conceiving of it all was one thing.  
Creating it, imagining what they would need, how they would live, and making them for it, watching them in their joy and their struggle, enjoying them and grieving with them, and wishing, always yearning, to be closer, to be connected.  But making it all, seeing it all.  That was one thing.  And that was something.  That was something indeed.  But this, to be what you made –to join them there, to share it all, this is something else entirely.

And now the moment was here. Finally here. God must have been giddy.

And then it happened.  
In pain and confusion, a collision of fear and joy, raw animal instinct and desperate human ingenuity, the extraordinary, ordinary, astonishing event occurred.

I wonder what it was like to draw that first breath? To smell the sharp scent of animals and hear the cacophony of creature sounds and the gentle voices giving you your name.  To feel the scratchy hay, the soft bands of cloth, the strong arms holding you steady, the kiss of a father’s beard, the thump of a mother’s heart beating against your brand new cheek.
But then, no new baby remembers their first things, do they?

The barrier is broken, people. God has come. 
The world will never be the same. 
And neither will God.  

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Being where we'd never choose to be



There are times in life, (we might even say most of life is this way), when things do not go like we’ve planned them to go.  When we find ourselves in utterly new territory, somewhere unimagined, un-planned for, even undesired. 
There are times in life when life directs us more than we direct our lives, and factors outside of ourselves make the decisions for us about where we are going to go, or what we are going to do, and even, who we are going to be.

This is certainly the case for Joseph.  Joseph is not the lead character in this story, so he doesn’t get a lot of press, but even so, he is essential.  The family line of David comes through him, not through Mary – so the prophecies aren’t fulfilled without him.  He is to be the father of this child, the human parent adopting God as God has adopted all of us.  That’s a little mind-boggling.  And yet, Mary at least is given the news awake and in person when an angel stands before her  – she at least has the illusion of control and agrees to participate in this scheme. She is able to ask questions and get clarification about God’s plans and how they might affect her.
But Joseph’s first inkling that his well-laid plans are meaningless occurs when he finds out Mary is knocked up.
The Christmas story – the story of God-with-us - begins with scandal and infidelity (or the strong appearance of infidelity) to this marriage, which was yet to be made complete.  For some reason, when God comes, God comes not only in impossibility– bringing to mind the creation of the universe from nothing, and life and promise from all the barren wombs of old - by taking up residence inside a virgin -  but God also doesn’t seem to mind much what people think about it.  Controversy and the appearance of guilt, the suggestion of wrong-doing cling all over this couple, and would have over just her if Joseph hadn’t decided to go through with the marriage anyway.
We’ve got the Christmas story all soft-lens sentimentalized and “holy”, but these are real people with real relationships and expectations and emotions and secrets, and it couldn’t have felt saintly and nostalgic to Joseph. It must have been a cold shock, betrayal, horror, anger, deep hurt. 

And Joseph doesn’t even get the first-person conversation, the chance to decline before the wheels are set in motion; he finds out secondhand that this is his fate.  Stone her, divorce her quietly, or go along with this whether you want to or not.   Some hand dealt to him.

And then he has a dream, which puts things in a much different light.  And when he awakes he makes his choice.  He says yes to the path he is already on anyway, and agrees to jump in - with all the implications thereof: the guilt it paints him with, the change of his own plans and life direction.  In this unexpected, unwanted life interruption, Joseph finds his new calling.

Would he have said yes to this role if he were asked ahead of time? If he knew what was coming and had a real choice? The fleeing to Egypt to protect his small family from Herod, the returning to Nazareth years later to start all over again, the worry and stress and burden of shepherding this miracle through childhood and adolescence - the enigma of raising God, disciplining God, parenting God, what must that do to you? Would he have said yes to all of it? Would we? 
When you look back at your life, knowing now how painful or challenging some of the things you’ve walked through have been, would you have said yes to them before they came?  

Lucky for us, we don’t have the choice, most of the time, to say yes to all of it, but we usually do have the choice to say yes to one little step in front of us. The one little thing within the bigger picture – for Joseph it was, don’t be afraid to take her as your wife.  That’s it.  Stick with your plans. Marry her anyway. 
And he does.  And his life goes in a massively different direction than he ever could have imagined-  than anyone could.
How do we participate with God in life? Where do we see God? Really, concretely, can you see God in life? Where? How?  I think perhaps, like Joseph, sometimes we see God when we choose to be where we already are. When we decide to open our eyes and our hearts to the possibility that even though we never would have chosen this, we’ll live here anyway. We’ll invest ourselves in this new thing that is our life at the moment. 

I’ve shared with you about my sister and her husband and their 8 year old son’s surprising foray into foster care. They went through the process of entering the system with the dream of one day adopting, and they have found themselves instead with a household full of children that can’t belong to them – a baby and her 2 and 4 year old siblings, and another 2 year old, all with various needs and sufferings. Abuse, neglect, night terrors and developmental delays - my sister’s days are filled with all manner of surprising and unexpected turns. Court visits, home visits, supervised parental visits, doctor visits, and babies visiting college finals.
My sister is exhausted, juggling the child who can’t sleep in the same room as another with the one who can’t sleep alone, the one who cries at night and the one who screams at night and the one who wakes up at 5 am to go and shake the rest of the household awake and bellow at the dogs.  This isn’t remotely what they imagined.
 
But she finds herself in the night, when everyone else is asleep, rocking this sweet baby, with her deep mahogany skin and soft dark curls, resting peacefully in my sister’s arms, she finds herself suddenly wondering how she got to be so lucky.  What had she done to deserve this moment? Holding this little beating heart in a warm bundle in her arms while the moon looks on?  She catches herself, between the fatigue and the chaos, suddenly hearing or seeing one of these little ones in their joy, or in their fear, a moment of washing a foamy head or buckling a small lap into a carseat, and she realizes that she is alive, connected, even, for the moment, contented. 
And I see her, in a situation I could never imagine being in, and one she could never have thought she could handle, and she is somehow thriving, her little family is in this together, making space in their home and hearts for these tiny lives passing through. Being this haven for them. 
And, like Joseph, (and most of us if we’re really living in love), she takes on guilt too.  She is part of a system that is broken, failing them almost as much as it rescues them - she sees how complicated all of it is and that she will eventually give them up too, eventually let them down, and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t save them.  Was it enough? Of course not. But it’s something. And while she can’t tell you with any certainty what will happen tomorrow – how many her household will hold a week from now or six months from now – she has said yes to where she is, and God has met her within it.

This is God-with-us, God who comes in. And God doesn’t always, or usually, give advance warning or veto power. God will do what God will do.
But also, there are no circumstances, no situations, no lives that are outside of God’s incarnation – no places or people with whom God is not already involved, already there, alongside. 
And so often God, life, other people’s choices- or a messy cocktail of all these factors and more - puts us in a place we never would have chosen for ourselves, opens a door and shoves us in a direction that frightens us, angers us, challenges or intrigues us, and then slams the door shut behind us and we’re stranded there - in this new and unrecognizable place, where everything about us looks different in the strange light, and the smell is unfamiliar, and we aren’t sure what to do. 
And while we have no choice, we do have a choice. To say yes to where we are. Or not to.  And I am not even suggesting that the only faithful response is to say yes, necessarily, to wherever this bend in the road takes you.  It might be more faithful to kick and flail and resist with all your might, to die resisting. 
But perhaps, in some of these moments, you are invited to plant your feet, fill your lungs with air and look the moment squarely in the face and introduce yourself.  We’re going to get to know one another, you and I.  We’re going to figure out how to live together, how to share the fridge and take down each other’s messages, because I’m apparently not going anywhere and nether are you, cancer, unemployment, new relationship, empty household.

And there is a freedom that comes from relenting. From choosing, from saying yes to where you already are – even if you didn’t plan ahead of time to be there.  Because the truth is, God can only be found right where you are.  God is not stuck in the past or dangling out the future, and God isn’t writing out some perfect plan you are expected to find and follow – God is right here, in the moment, in the situation, as confusing or unexpected as it may be. You can only really see and welcome God when you let yourself open your eyes and your heart and be where you are. 
This looks different for everyone, but is an invitation for us all.

I have asked a couple of people what it was like for them to be somewhere they didn’t choose, face something they never wanted.

Diane shares her experience this way:
Last May I discovered a lump in my breast.  I had a mammogram and a biopsy and was informed it was breast cancer.  When I learned of the cancer it was a little hard to believe.  I didn't feel sick or look different. Than I got caught up in the swirl of doctor appointments and tests and treatment discussions.  I didn't feel overwhelmed or depressed, and I just wanted to get on with it. 
 I expected to not feel well part of the time and not be able to continue doing all the things I usually do.  But I did expect to continue with most of my work and activities. I thought I would probably join a support group, but then found that there were so many people that I knew or knew of that had had breast cancer that I could just talk with them.
Having breast cancer has affected me a lot with time and scheduling.  I have lots of doctor and treatment appointments and they take priority over other things. And I have a good excuse not to do things I don't feel like doing.  My experience is tremendously affected by my body responding well to chemotherapy and the surgery going well.  My progress has given me lots of hope that I will recover.  Had I had setbacks or not responded well to the treatments, I would not feel as hopeful.
I am grateful that God is part of my life and is there for me.  Also grateful that God has been somewhere in the medical advances that have helped me so much.  God's presence created a sense of peace that no matter what happens God is there. I will probably feel the absence of God if I don't continue to recover, or if the cancer returns.
I feel like I will be a stronger person after this.  There are issues with my business and my family that I will be making some changes in.  Part of that is realizing that life is short and I can't be passive or tolerant about things I am uncomfortable or unhappy with.  The future is right now. It is no longer way off in the distance.
I don't know how it has changed my relationship with God.  This is yet to come and I will be thinking about my relationship with God, family and friends more than I have before.

This month, Barb watched her son, David head down to Florida to face a felony drunk driving charge.  She shared about it this way:
The day of David's trial I prayed for a miracle. Jail time and no felony, time served and no jail, many different outcomes than the actual and deserved verdict. I wanted the phone to show a picture of David when it rang then I would know that he was at his Florida home and safe from all of the dangers he would face in prison. When the call did come and the number was friends of ours who had spent the day with David in court, my heart just stopped and so many thoughts and feelings rushed in that I thought my heart would burst. It was like a part of me died.
Before the trial I had spent a lot of time wondering if only I had been a better mom, if only his father hadn't died, all of the what ifs. Knowing that no matter how much I loved my son, this time I could not fix anything, I just had to stand by and let all of the pain unfold. My mind told me that what happened in court was for the best, but my heart cried for all of the what ifs.
I have encountered God with a ton of prayer. I rely on him to keep David safe.  I do not feel an absence of God, I just know that he is always with me, even when I have pulled away from life God is with this sometimes crazy mixed up person. I may at times be absent, but God has a way of finding me and pulling me back to just where I belong. That may not be where I want to be but I can accept and live with that, given time to think things through.
I do not spend too much time thinking about my future because that who knows if the future is tonight or many years from now. It is very bad medicine for me to go any further than this moment. The future is now.
I have been through some pretty ugly stuff in my life and it was only by God’s grace that I was able to get through it. There have been so many times that I unknowingly put God on a shelf and then realized I had not prayed or thought of him in a very long time, it is usually when I realize that, that pain and sadness has been replaced with the gift of joy and a happy heart. Right now today it is difficult to stop the tears and pain but I do know that no matter who I shut out of my life God will remain steadfast because I am his creation and he loves me very much.

This is the week of Advent that we focus on joy. The week we talk about joy in the waiting.  But as we look at the story of Joseph – at our own lives when we find ourselves in something we don’t choose to be in – as someone said to me earlier this week, joy would be a stretch.
But that’s just it, isn’t it? 
Joy is a stretch. 
It comes when we’re not expecting it, when we’re right in the middle of the sorrow or the fatigue, and suddenly the tiny head shifts on our arm, or the gratitude for family and friends, for the gift of living, floods in and takes us by surprise. And joy stretches us starting right where we are into a moment of eternity.
God is in the midst of it. Whatever it is.  Always.  That’s the promise we celebrate and anticipate in this season.
So let us join our voices with Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist and the Prophets and, not knowing how it might change our lives or what it might do to us, let’s say anyway,
Come, Lord Jesus.




A special thank you to Callie, Barb, and Diane, for honoring us with the sacredness of their stories.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Prophets and Preparers

John the Baptist, oil painting by Jack Baumgartner, used with permission.




What is John the Baptist doing in Advent?  Wouldn’t he still be crawling around on the floor when the first Christmas rolls around? And yet he is a central figure of Advent, the one who prepares the way, or who cries out, “prepare the way!”, depending on where you put your quotation marks, so both, really.  The grown-up John who comes into the scene after Jesus is grown up too, bellowing in the wilderness about what God was about to do, what God was already doing without us even knowing it...  What’s he doing here?

Who are you John? You Advent invader…
What do you think about out there when the crowds have gone home and the stars are glowing above you and the sounds of the desert creatures and the wind are all the noise that’s left? What keeps you awake, tossing and turning?  What gets you up in the morning, for another day of camel hair and locusts and yelling yourself hoarse with passion and fire? 

You are pissing people off, you know.  You don’t live much longer than this – you’ll die soon for telling Herod like it is and calling him out on his adulterous marriage.  And you don’t get much sympathy from the establishment after your criticism of them and your direct competition – baptism for repentance? Really? The people can get that in the temple. The grace and forgiveness of God is already available.  For a fee… But you do it for free? All the while saying something greater is brewing and you’re just a sideshow, a warm-up act?

I’m sure you heard the story over and over in your childhood, in those few short years your ancient parents had left - between all their prophet grooming, their stories of prophets of old and messages to Israel and encouragement to listen, listen, for the voice of God, the surprise of God that would bring life to deadened wombs and laughter to creaky voices, lay mountains low and raise valleys up, bringing hope and wholeness – between all of that I am certain you heard tell time and again of when Mary came to see your mom, the moment the fetus you bumped belly homes with the embryonic Messiah, as you jumped for joy, recognizing already that everything was changing and there was nothing to do but celebrate it.

And the messages, all those prophets swimming in your mind, taught to you from Torah, spoken in story from your priest father and your devout mother – it must have meant more to you than to others…
did you three carry this secret promise, this crazy truth that you had come from impossibility and God had broken in and nobody knew it yet but the time was coming when they would all see…?
Did you ever forget? And wake up knowing there was something to remember and then have the truth wash over you in wonder once again?  That God was making good on all those promises of old, that God was coming in.

Did you recognize him in the prophesies? Jesus, I mean. Did he seem like the one? Tell the truth now – was he just so ordinary? Or did you know all along? 

What was it like, by the way, the day he came to the river, the day you plunged him under the water and the sky opened up and the voice of God claimed him? After the elation that it had come at last, were you psyched to retire? Be finished with your message? Or was it anti-climactic? Or disillusioning? Who are you now once the one you’ve prepared the way for has arrived in our midst?
If you knew then what you know now, would it all have gone the same?

Mark begins all of it with you, you know. “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God,” then he has you bursting out like you could contain the secret in silence no longer, the message ripening within your young body and mind until you had to get out of the city, flee to the wilderness and give the message room to breathe, give it space to expand or it would swallow you and everything else with its magnitude, power and incredibility. 

The others don’t begin with you – Luke and Matthew, they tell Jesus’ genealogy and his birth, and the book of John starts with the very, very beginning, with the Word of creation, but Mark starts with you.
Where would you begin the story?– I bet you’d go back to those prophets – your lifeblood, your mother’s milk, your father’s breath in your ear, whispering their messages and hope.
 
You’d begin the story by saying there were those who said it was coming… remember those voices? Remember those promises?  Then you’d say, It’s true. It’s coming. It’s already begun. You spoke fantastic visions as well, baptized with the Holy Spirit?  The very Spirit that hovered over the water at Creation claiming and cleaning us? Now?  It was a fact, you spoke these things like they were a fact – preached the future with a present tense. With a bold confidence.  Perhaps because you yourself had come from the impossibility that was becoming.  You believed it and made them believe it too.

I heard someone say once that ‘Repentance is what happens to us when the truth of who we are and who God is enters our lives and scatters the darkness of competing ideas.’ (N.B.W)  What did it look like to see so much repentance on people? Could you see it in their eyes? Was it relief? Joy? The darkness scattering, the truth seeping in… Did their faces change as the light entered their lives?  Did people feel lighter coming up out of the water than they did going down? Did seeing it strengthen your own hope and belief?

Did you know how they looked at you? How they saw you? You must have.  You dressed like Elijah, you sounded like Isaiah, you were a prophet and the people came. They came from far and wide to hear you, catch a glimpse of that modern day prophet who was just like the ones of old.  But the others thought you were dangerous, crazy, threatening.  Did that bother you? Once someone well-known and respected who spoke in front of crowds told me that what was hardest was the admiration, being admired, because you feel you either have to live up to people’s expectations or disabuse them of their notions, is that how you felt? Is that why you were always so quick and forceful to point out that it wasn’t about you at all, that you were paving the way, clearing the clutter, making the paths straight because the one who would bring life to the world was coming -?

I know what’s ahead for you too, John – when you’re in prison and you hear about what Jesus is doing and you send your people to Jesus to ask if he “really is the one who is to come or if we should wait for another?”, when you question if it all really is real.  Even you!  That doubt and fear are such an integral part of faith that even YOU wondered, faltered, you, who told everyone else it was coming, had those scary secret moments when things didn’t look like you thought they would and you weren’t sure if you could trust what you had believed. 
And his answer to you was, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the 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.”
Did that bring you comfort as you sat in prison, just days away from dying? Did it put it in perspective, that what the prophets had said was really happening, and they had seen it with their own eyes?  Did it bring you peace?
 
I’d bet you never heard that after he sent away your messengers he told the crowd that you were a prophet, just like those of old, actually, more than a prophet, he declared, the One who announced the Messiah.  Then he said, “Truly 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.” 
I think you would have liked hearing him say that.  About the least being great, the poor and forgotten being lifted up that way in God’s kingdom, I mean.  Maybe even more than his message to you, it would have affirmed that this is all really happening after all- God’s kingdom really is breaking in, showing how upside down we have it all.  You would have liked hearing him say that; I know it.

When you died it crushed him – he left everyone to be alone with his terrible grief.  Did that shake his faith, I wonder, bring him to doubt?  That even though God has begun and the light is in the world, the darkness is still here too, for a time?  How did he reconcile that?
How can we?
What would you say to us now about that, John?

There is no place for you in my nativity, John, you know that, don’t you?  You aren’t even a bit-player here – you come later, and earlier too, actually, but not right then, that cosmos-altering moment when God broke in, when God came for good. 
You come along with your pronouncements in this second week of Advent, and the third too, but you don’t even make it all the way to Christmas Eve.  By then you’ve done your job, you’ve prepared the way and told us to as well, and now it’s all about the main attraction. 
So, what would you have us remember or keep?
What would it look like for us to be ready to receive this Savior when he comes?

You see, we have the benefit of hindsight, we get to see all of this WAY after the fact, so we don’t have to stand on the banks of that river with the mud in our sandals and the insects buzzing around us, listening to you roar out your message and wonder whom to believe –wonder whether what you say is even remotely possible, or whether you’re just another fanatic off his rocker. We know who you are and how it all goes down from there.
So we can ask you now, and we’re willing to hear, what would you have us do? 
How can we be ready to receive our Savior?

Ah, but you’re long gone. You’re silent now.  And so it’s on us. 
See, John, it’s like this every year. 
It might have been all new and amazing to you, but we’ve beat this thing to death with jingle bells and sentiment and buried it in a sea of candy, carols and wrapping paper.  We’ve put Jesus in the manger and we like him there, he’s so cute and clean. 
And it comes around every year, too, so if we really take you seriously, how can we keep on believing? 
Preparing the way, preparing the way, for centuries we’ve been waiting and talking about all of this like it’s real, year after year we prepare the way, like you told us to, but what about it anyway? What should we be doing now? Saying now? Does God still come?  Is God still coming?

We need a little taste of your honey and fervor, I think, a sense of wonder and awe once again, a longing to be stirred enough that it feels like absolute refreshment to be plunged under and feel the water roll off us with all that keeps us in darkness, to be baptized into a promise that holds us even when we can’t see it.  To repent. 
What should we do, John?  Things are a mess, and we’re not very good at doing very much to fix it, and also at the same time most of do the best we can with what we’ve got but still never feel like it’s enough.  What is it all about, John?

But you would never really say, would you?  You’d just point your finger again at him and tell us God has come.  In the flesh.  Right here. 
“I’m just using water, people,” you’d say, “he’ll immerse you in the Holy Spirit, you’ll be surrounded by the life-creating breath of God. 
So get ready.  It will be.  God is coming.  God has come.”
And you’d leave us to the repenting, and let the truth and light invade us once again.

*****

We are here today to do as John did.  To speak fantastic visions of hope and peace like they are a fact, the future unfolding before us, within us.  To anticipate with his same wild joy, the in-breaking of God and prepare for it to happen, whenever, however it happens. 

Last week we took up the call of the prophets, to lament on behalf of a broken world, and today we take up the call of John, to foreshadow a future that is coming, to live from a reality of love and hope and peace that flips all of this upside down.

Today we are eating bread and calling it Christ’s body, even while calling ourselves the body of Christ. We are drinking - grape juice, calling it wine, - then calling it the blood of Christ, and then saying that this means something, that it has something do with life and promise, and it beckons us and seals us into something bigger than we’ll ever understand. Into God’s with-us-ness, and our with-God-ness.
And today we’re welcoming someone into membership, which is to say, we’re celebrating that we are all members of the Body of Christ, but that inside that vast and wonderful identity, those of us here in this place are on loan to one another for this little portion of our journey, and we get to be for each other the ones who fulfill promises made over us by those gone before for this time.  We get to be with each other the lamenters and foreshadowers, the prophets and preparers, who make room for grief, make room for repentance, and who speak words of comfort and hope in a broken world.  We get to be the wild and joyful reminders that God is with us.
So let’s get on with it.
Amen.


How to Repent (It's not how you think)

Psalm 46 ,  Jeremiah 31:31-34 When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3-foot round papason chair cushion o...