Monday, December 31, 2012

Prayer for a new year


Image from a stunning collection by Clare Benson


Standing on the threshold,
all we’ve left undone smirking in our periphery,
all we carry with us a finger’s breath away, waiting, waiting.
Unfinished business clings heavy, disappointment,
pressure, expectations straining at the seams.
And what we would love to step out of
and leave behind in an unwashed heap on the floor
abandoning on tipsy tiptoe, light and free.
It’s all right here, balanced, but barely,
on the threshold.

One day is pretty much the same as the last. 
Let’s not kid ourselves.
One day is completely new and
 altogether different.
Anything can happen.
Anything.
We belong to you. 
(Pause and take it in.
It’s beyond taking in, really.
Just pause, then, as near the reality as you can stand
for as long as you can stand it).
You.
Outside time, but
entering all olds and news,
permeating every yesterday
and each today, inhabiting already all
tomorrows, before they come upon us,
unannounced but right on schedule.
You. To whom
we belong.

Meet us here, Holy One, on this threshold.
Holding for us what was, carry us into what will be.
Drawing from strength we’ve been steadily building
throughout the years,
exhaling the rubbish we’ve been steadily breathing
throughout the years,
taking in instead the clean, the fresh
timeless promises and bracing hope,
sucking them deep into our lungs,
with mouths and hearts wide, thrown open,
featherless, and trusting,
filling our strong bodies
and sturdy dreams, awakening
with gentle possibility and mighty grace,
meet us on this threshold.

For the considerable stumbling we have ahead, grace.
For the remarkable triumphs yet to come, grace.
For the hot tears and searing pain before us, grace.
For the unrestrained laughter on the horizon, 
and the astonishing joy waiting 
around the corner, ready to spring, grace.

And to love.
Oh, to love.
(To You, Love, we belong, after all).
For this we pray.
In all things.  All people.  However
we might, faltering and
faithful, trembling and
tenacious, May we
Love.

For this, then, 
Holy Love, eternal, entered in You,
for the new year and all it holds,
for the past however it persists,
for love brimming over and unrelenting,
and for Us
each one, standing 
here on the threshold of
whatever may be,
grace.

Amen.


 Kara Root 
December 31, 2012

Sunday, December 23, 2012

How Love Comes


Prayer candles at LNPC, (photo all rights reserved)


Listen to "First Coming," by Madeleine L'Engle.

God did not wait till the world was ready,
Till ...nations were at peace.
God came when the heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.

God did not wait for the perfect time.
God came when the need was deep and great.
God dined with sinners in all their grime, turned water into wine.

God did not wait till hearts were pure.
In joy God came to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
God came, the Light that would not go out.

God came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.

We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

Love comes in.  This is the beginning, again.  
The Holy Spirit that hovered over the waters at creation hovers over Mary, and over Joseph, over Elizabeth and Zechariah, over tired, unsuspecting shepherds and strangers in a foreign land, over kings and peasants, travelers and innkeepers. 
The Spirit of God that hovers over the waters of Creation now hovers over this whole situation, and the God who made it all now comes into it all by this same Spirit, the new-thing Spirit, the hope-from-chaos Spirit, The life-out-of-barren-or-virgin-wombs Spirit.  The light that darkness cannot put out comes into the darkness. What has come into being in him was life, and this is just the beginning.

The amazing story of God’s Advent, God’s coming, God’s love, looks pretty, and quaint, and clear in retrospect.  It makes sense after the fact, and when you get to pull back from the details and see the whole thing for what it is.  But in the moment it’s a single dream about an angel, it’s a conversation, some tears, a decision.  In the moment it’s paying taxes and packing donkeys and a dreary uncomfortable journey and painful contractions and nowhere to sleep. 
In the moment it is just a moment, an ordinary moment made extraordinary because it is part of this story of Love, of God loving the world so much that God joined it with us, through us, through our ordinary moments and our yeses to God’s weird requests and to the person, or the invitation, standing before us.  This is how love works. This is how life happens.  And this is how God comes.

Today’s Advent word is love.  We use that word today to pray for love and yearn for love and celebrate all the ways we experience love, and we take those places where love is warped or waning, and we point them out to God and wait for God’s response. 

Love is who God is, it is why God creates any of it in the first place, it is the reason God comes to begin with.  And it is from God’s love, and to God’s love, that Mary says yes, and Joseph says yes, and Elizabeth, and Zechariah, and all the rest of them say yes, maybe without even knowing that’s what they are doing.
Yes. I will be part of your wild plot, your crazy conspiracy of love.  Yes I will welcome this strange and unexpected child into my life long past such things, whatever it might mean.  Yes, I will become the mother of God.  Yes I will choose to take her as my wife even though she’s pregnant.  Yes, I will let go of who I thought I was and what I believed I knew, and I will say yes to being part of this love you’re doing here. 

And we say yes to love all the time without realizing that’s what we’re really doing.  “I will participate in God’s plot of love,” we say, when we uphold another’s humanity, when we listen to someone, really listen, when we give something up for someone else.  “I will be part of your love” we answer, when we share, or forgive, or confess, or embrace, when our ordinary lives bump into others’ ordinary lives and we hang on and dig in for their sake.  When we feel our hearts tear open and another seeping in.  We say yes like a peasant girl and a carpenter and some awestruck shepherds on a hillside outside of town.

We can’t be ready or good enough or prepared for these things. They come when they come, and usually not how we think.  Ready or not, love comes. Ready or not, love draws us in, empties us out, fills us up.  Love always comes.
Christmas is by no means the dreamy, wonderful, fix-everything event we’ve made it to be. It’s untidy and uncomfortable, and anyone who makes it anything else is deceiving themselves.  Peel back the shiny paper and see it for what it is – it’s just like the rest of life.  Awkward and messy, tiring and scary, a little exciting, a little confusing.  That’s how God came in.  Put himself completely in the hands of conflicted people, struggling to do the right thing and wondering even what that is.  Trusting these ordinary folks to trust him.  To take care of him like one of their own. To love him. To say yes to God’s love.
This is the beginning of the story of Jesus Christ.  The new beginning.  

We light the Advent candle of Love to acknowledge that beyond what we may feel at any given moment, or what we may think, or believe, or know in our heads, beyond anything we may produce or do, or outside of anything we can gain or lose or hold or drop, is this reality: God loves us. God has joined us. God will never, ever let us go.

We light a candle for love because our ordinary, bumbling, sacred lives are drawn into God’s love and loving.  We get to say yes to that. 
And no matter how worthy we think we are or how little we think we have to give, the astonishing invitation continues to stand before us every single day in the face of others who are also waiting.  
And we light this candle of love as a prayer to be present as much as we are able, whether we find ourselves full of gratitude and joy, or empty and waiting and longing, we light this candle for the grace to participate in love in whatever little ordinary and unexpected ways that we can. 

The Spirit that hovers over the waters of creation now hovers over our lives, the darkness and light of them, and over our world in all its darkness, speaking life into it, shining light into it, sending love into it.   
May we not fear the darkness, may we not dread the waiting.  God has come. God is coming. Love is here. Tonight we sit in the darkness and rest in the shadows, waiting for the love and light of Christ.

When the world was dark

and the city was quiet,

you came.

You crept in beside us.

And no one knew.
Only the few 
who dared to believe

that God might do something different.

Will you do the same this Christmas, Lord?

Will you come into the darkness of tonight's world;

not the friendly darkness

as when sleep rescues us from tiredness,

but the fearful darkness,

in which people have stopped believing

that war will end

or that food will come

or that a government will change

or that the Church cares?

Will you come into that darkness

and do something different
to save your people from death and despair?

Will you come into the quietness of this town,
not the friendly quietness

as when lovers hold hands,

but the fearful silence when 
the phone has not rung

the letter has not come,
the friendly voice no longer speaks,
the doctor's face says it all?

Will you come into that darkness,

and do something different,

not to distract, but to embrace your people?

And will you come into the dark corners 
and the quiet places of our lives?
We ask this not because we are guilt-ridden

or want to be,

but because the fullness our lives long for

depends upon us being as open and vulnerable to you

as you were to us,

when you came,

wearing no more than diapers,

and trusting human hands

to hold their maker.

Will you come into our lives,

if we open them to you

and do something different?

When the world was dark

and the city was quiet 
you came.

You crept in beside us.

Do the same this Christmas, Lord.

Do the same this Christmas.

Amen.

 (- Prayer from Wild Goose Iona Community)

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Praying in Times of Tragedy: some ideas


This was shared Sunday, December 16 during worship, as we came together in prayer.  It is connected with the message Everything is Broken, and Flashes of Light.

We may feel, in one way or another, so overwhelmed by tragedy that we don’t know how to pray.  And not only do we not know how to pray for a tragedy, it also sometimes keeps us from praying for anything else. We don't know where we fit. Any needs we have may seem to pale in comparison. Anything happening in our neighborhood or home is nothing next to the sadness and horror of losing everything. So we become afraid to bring up prayers in our own lives because they don’t seem important enough.  It is all important.

We also, naturally, don’t want such horrible tragedy to touch us.  So sometimes we hold these tragedies at arm’s length with our prayers, not intentionally, but it’s too much to take in.  We pray for the people in Connecticut, for Syria and Egypt and Iraq and Haiti and the homeless people in our own town. We pray for those people over there.  And we watch them like a movie.  Our lives colored by their suffering, but our sympathy making no impact on their situation whatsoever.  After a while it becomes something we say to placate our discomfort. We pray for them over there. Amen. 

So how can we pray for them and keep it real, instead of distant and disconnected, and yet not be overwhelmed by it? 

Here are a couple of suggestions.
We might find a single story to follow, one person or family to hold in the light. Perhaps someone that connects to our own experience, that touches our lives in some way. A friend of mine is close with someone who was a first responder, I could find out her name, send her a note, hold her in prayer for a few weeks.
Another friend knows a pastor in a town neighboring Newtown. I could pray for that church community and the love they are pouring out and grief they are bearing for those they know and love.

If you can’t seem to put down the whole tragedy, you could give yourself a set time, such as five minutes in the morning and five minutes at night to pray for all those involved, in whatever way it comes to mind.  Name what you are feeling and bearing, or write down the people and situations in a list.  Hold them up to God. For five minutes give yourself over to the sadness, anger and pleading that God would do something there.  Vent out to God the sorrow and rage and helplessness and frustration. For five minutes pray for all the things you would otherwise carry around feeling heavy about. Then set it down.

You could also give yourself a way to release it when it comes up - to pray in the moment.  When the grief and horror washes over you – hold it a moment, imagine God’s light flooding down on that school, into those homes, around that whole town, whisper, God in your mercy! and then let it go.

Then leave it with God – who is there, with them, as they are bearing this with each other. You are here. Be here, with the ones you’ve been given to. And don’t be afraid to pray for what is real in your life right now, the sorrows and the joys, no matter what else is going on in the world.

Ultimately, no matter how it comes out, or from what motives, or tangled up with whatever fears, doubts, or hesitations, God can take it.  And we can carry our needs to God together instead of alone.  That said, let us bring our prayers to our God, who promises to hear them all.

Everything is Broken...


Milky Way Over Quiver Tree Forest by Florian Breuer




I think it’s safe to say we are all in shock. 
Our hearts are so heavy with grief, confusion and anger, for the suffering of families in Newtown, Connecticut.  And I want you to know that all of these feelings are absolutely appropriate and welcome in this place where we come together in the presence of God.
Their reality seems to hover underneath everything else at the moment, and we are not sure what to do with it. The sadness and horror can be paralyzing.  And yet we cannot turn away.  Turning away would feel like abandoning them – not that we are actually WITH them anyway. We’re just watching their nightmare from afar, glued to every news story, every image, every facebook link, hovering in a state of despair, hopelessness and dismay.  What are we to do?

My sister yesterday was observing that for the vast scope of history, even a hundred years ago, people mostly only knew about what happened in their own community. If a tragedy happened far away it could take days, sometimes weeks or months to find out about it.  Whatever tragedy you encountered, was right near by.  Your neighbor’s house burns down, your pastor’s child dies, your town floods. 
Virtually everything that happened, whether suffering or joy, could be shared.  And you could always act.  There was always something you could do.  You could act on what the person near you was experiencing. Their suffering was your burden, their joy was your celebration.  We are wired to live like this, in the image of a God who made us for connection and even finally plunged in and joined us in this life and death thing so that nothing we ever suffered would be borne alone. We are meant to share life with each other, to bear tragedy together.

So prayers were paired with visits, homes rebuilt, casseroles delivered, side by side piecing back together lives or simply sitting in the grief together and listening.  We know how to act, we want, with everything in us, to act when something terrible happens to another human being.  It is the normal response, the right response. It is the God-given, human response.  But how do we act when people are far away and we do not know them? Where does our compassion and our sadness go? How do we join suffering when it is reported to us in a continual feed of information, disconnected from real lives, real voices and faces and friends?  When there is no ride you can offer or meal you can bring or night you can pass hand in hand in grief and prayer?

Our passage today is the newly pregnant Mary, fresh from the angel’s pronouncement.   Still absorbing what all this will mean for her, she leaves home and heads out to visit the six month pregnant Elizabeth.   Both women have been given this enormous awareness, the weight of a promise that the world is going to change, that God is going to come and do something irreversible to save us all. 
But they cannot carry this weight alone. 
None of us can carry the weight alone. 
And so they find each other.
Before Mary came, Elizabeth had told no one about the impossible baby growing inside of her and hadn’t set foot out of the house. She believed God’s promise, had seen and felt the changes in her own body as this child grew. She had every reason to go and proclaim it to anyone who would listen. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave the front door.
 
But now, here comes Mary, who knows and shares the secret, who is also vulnerable and chosen, who is also participating with God. 
And when Elizabeth sees her, the baby in her womb leaps for joy, and Mary, at being greeted by Elizabeth, recognized as the chosen one of God, bursts out in a song of joy and thanksgiving for the God who sees and saves and calls and redeems.
And now they have each other. 
Together they bear the weight of the world and the promise of God, living side by side until Elizabeth is ready to deliver. 
In one another, God provides sanctuary, and space for the promise to grow, to shape them into people who could face what was to come.  And with one another they could be reminded of the bigger picture, could imagine together the future God was unfolding, could literally see in each other what God was doing for the future of the world.  They were given to each other to share together in this promise of God.  To bear the weight of it together.

Christmas says that God in Jesus Christ came into real life, into people’s real lives, in a real time and place, embodied in flesh and blood and experiences.  And we meet Christ who shared life with us and bore death for us, when we share life and bear death with one another, in our real time and place.  We are called to live fully with the people to whom we’ve been given, the people who are given to us.

I cannot do that with people in Newtown, Connecticut. I don’t know anyone there. I have never been there.  It might as well be a horror movie, a nightmare looping in the background of my life, for as much as it impacts my own world. 
But I know teachers who must regularly run classroom drills with their students against such a terrible occurrence ever happening on their watch.  
And I know people who struggle with mental illness, gripped by instability and frightening bouts with darkness.  
I know family members who feel helpless and heartbroken that they cannot change the choices someone they love has made.  
And I know people whose child or spouse was taken from them suddenly and unfairly, or who are staring down the barrel of terminal cancer, or battling a life-stealing illness. 
I have a friend whose adopted daughter has been delayed in Haiti, and every day for over a year now my friend waits to hold her little girl once again in her arms, as she gets older and older in an orphanage waiting for the red tape to clear.  
There is suffering in my neighborhood, my church, my family. As much as I long to, I can’t share the suffering in Newtown, but I can share the suffering of those God has given me to, and to whom I have been given.

And I can trust that these people in this tragedy have been given by God to people as well, that these families have communities, have churches, have neighbors and loved ones who are right there, bearing their suffering along with them. Who have voices those people can hear, and arms those people can fall into and weep.  We can trust God with their care and needs.  And the thing we can do for them as much as anything is to love and care for those around us, being human for them, with them, being image-bearers of a life-sharing God, a force for hope and peace and joy in whatever ways, and with whomever, I am able.

This is the week of Advent we focus on Joy. 
It feels strange to talk about joy against the backdrop of such sorrow.  But these things are not isolated and separate in life.  They touch, and intermingle, and deepen one another.  Joy is a miraculous inbreaking of God – a moment where you touch transcendence, or rather, transcendence touches you.  And for a moment, if only a moment, you are complete, and part of the completeness of things.

I heard the terrible news Friday just before Maisy’s first sleepover ever. For Maisy, there was nothing, nothing, as important in all the world, than this friend sharing this magical evening with her.  When they met on the corner in mittens and boots, they burst out in excited greeting, and then they walked home touching each other the whole time, as though this was too good to be true and this friend might just disappear if they did not remain tethered together.  I watched them, their faces alight as they eagerly discussed how their stuffed animals would camp out in a tent next to them, and when I texted a photo of them to the little girl’s mom, she responded, “Everything is broken. And this is beautiful.” 

When the girls got home they arranged the bedroom, planned every moment of pajama wearing and teeth brushing, and then the breathless time came to dress up, find jewelry and shoes, and matching accessories, and prepare to come to the Christmas Razzle. 
All the way there they talked about how they were two princesses going to a ball.  And I was their coach driver.  And every time I wanted to plunge back into tears, to lose myself again in the grief and horror over what had just happened in Newtown, I was inadvertently pulled into their story.

“Mommy, you have two roles- you are our coach driver, and also you are the fairy godmother, which is perfect because you already have a beautiful dress and make up on.  Just pretend you have a wand, ok?” 
“Ok honey,” I said, looking in the rearview mirror at the rapturously content faces staring into the starry night, already nearing their bedtimes as the evening was just beginning. “I’ll pretend I have a wand.”
I took a deep breath and continued, “We are almost at the ball, where may I drop you off, your highnesses?” and they giggled with their heads together.  
And for a moment, these sweet girls in their reverie startled me into poignant gratitude, into joy so unexpected and shocking that I could barely breathe for how holy and surprising it felt.

Life is so hard sometimes.  Being alive, tragedy and heartbreak are inevitable and universal and sometimes powerful beyond comprehension.  But then there’s these flashes of, of all things, joy, unforeseen and astonishing.  And it sweeps in and alters the landscape with its passing power.  Joy is the surprise that satisfies and completes.  Our experiences of joy in this life are momentary, fleeting, impermanent.  They are both glimpses of the future, and a completion of the past. They are the fulfillment we long for and recognize deep in our being as things being right, being restored, being redeemed.  A friend yesterday called joy moments, “premembering” – they are remembering what is to come. 

And as such, joy, experiences of joy, moments of completion and fullness, and glimpses of God’s completeness-, joy is powerful. It is light piercing darkness, it is hope tasted, peace glimpsed.  Joy anchors us in real, tangible experiences transcendence in ordinary life.  Joy gives us strength and courage to face the darkness, even while highlighting just how dark it is against the light that shines.

We are people grounded in time and space. We are embodied, in flesh and blood and experiences; we live in one place, and exist in one time.  As much as I long to and no matter what I do, I cannot save anyone Newtown, Connecticut from suffering, or even truly share it with them.  Not even if I watch the news every second of every day.  But truth be told, I can’t even save the very people I love most on earth from suffering.  But I can be with them. I can stand by them and share their suffering. I can share joy and life with them, and that is being faithful. 

Our lives are a gift. We are given to each other – family, friends, communities, to share life with one another.  We are called to do that faithfully. To be faithful friends, parents, brothers and sisters, faithful members of our communities and responsible for the place we’ve been planted for this time in life.  Everywhere in the world right now, Newtown included, there are people standing with other people, sharing suffering and joy, and that is the place God is present.  We are called to live faithfully where we are and God-with-us is with us. 

Yesterday, over and over, I prayed for families in Newtown.  And I went online and sent some money to the National Coalition to stop gun violence, because this kind of terror is unacceptable and I want it to stop. But I also turned off my phone and headed to the Children’s Theatre with my family for our annual Christmas tradition and enjoyed “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” together. The Dalai Lama has said, “Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.”  Last night I got to share an evening with the beloved souls I have been given to share this fleeting gift of a life with.  And that brought me joy.

Christmas still comes. No matter what happens, and especially when we need it most of all, God enters in.  Advent invites us to long for joy, and to try on the fullness, to choose to notice, embrace and celebrate moments of joy, when lost things are found and relationships are restored, when brokenness is healed or fears overcome, or the delight and innocence of children’s wonder fill us with gratitude.

The light is has come, the light is coming that’s going to change the whole world, and already is, even when darkness is overwhelmingly dark.  You and I carry this truth, but it is too big for us to carry alone. We need others to carry it with us, to give each other strength, to remind one another of the big picture and what God is doing for the future of the world.  What God is doing right now.  We need one another to premember the joy.  Together we bear the weight of the world and the promise of God, together we say “Everything is broken. And this is beautiful.”

The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Live faithfully the life you’ve been given.  It’s not very long.  Invest in peace and point out hope.  Love those around you.  Bear their suffering.  Share their joy.  Grieve when you need to, as much as you need to, however you need to.  Rejoice when joy comes, unexpectedly into your life, let it wash over you and fill you with gratitude.  Pray for the world and live faithfully in the time and place you have been planted. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.

When we gathered in worship on Sunday, December 16, we also shared Praying in Times of Tragedy, as we came together to lift the needs of the world and our community in prayer.



Sunday, December 9, 2012

Peace Not Possible





Zechariah was old, and Elizabeth was old. 
This is another one of those impossible stories, where God comes through barren wombs and to people who had long given up expecting it.  
Elizabeth bore this secret for five months and shared it with Mary when she visited in her six month and the baby John leapt in her womb at the sound of Mary’s voice.  
And Zechariah was struck completely dumb for the duration of Elizabeth’s pregnancy because he had outright questioned the angel when the news was announced to him.  How can this be?  This thing you say is coming, is not possible. 
But here it is.  The time has now come. The baby is arriving.

And Zechariah has had a long, quiet nine months to ponder these things, an enforced peace if you will, with plenty of space for internal dialogue and personal thought and prayer. 
What does all of this mean? could have been his constant companion.

If hope is somehow trusting in the promise that wrongs will be made right, that life will be as it was meant to be, that wholeness and harmony will be restored, then peace is what we hope for. Peace is things as they were meant to be. 
Peace is harmony and wholeness, instead of division and striving.  
It is right relationship with God and one another – the whole world and all its inhabitants is connection, interdependence, fully and trustingly living out their authentic purpose alongside all else doing the same. 
Hope points us to God’s future. Peace IS God’s future.
Hope is what propels us forward; Peace is where we arrive.  
Hope is maybe temporary, maybe a vehicle from here to there, maybe what gets us there but then is no longer needed when the kingdom of God comes in all its fullness.  
Peace is the kingdom of God in all its fullness.

This baby gave Zechariah hope. 
It gave him the vision to see the future that God was calling him, calling the world, into.  It woke up what was dead in him, and called forth his own participation in that which he had so longed for but knew was impossible. Knew could never be.  Both for him and his wife, but also for the whole of Israel and all of creation.

How can this be, since we are both old and my wife is barren? 
How can this be, since I am a virgin?
How can this be? This cannot be.  It is not possible. 
But Peace does not come from what is possible. 
It is not produced from our own virility, or created from our own capacity to plan it or earn it or work hard enough to manufacture it. 
Peace comes from God, maker of heaven and earth, who designed the whole thing and knows how it works. Who made us for relationship with God and each other and knows what that should be like.  Who balanced the seas and the mountains, the insects and birds, species of all creatures who live in woods and desserts, glacial ice caps and tropical rainforests, who knows how much oxygen and carbon dioxide and minerals and particles and mysteries infinitely great and infinitely small are the right amount for equilibrium, and wove them all and us too into one another in everything’s uniqueness and brilliance and inter-reliance, and who holds it all - the whys and hows we haven’t even gotten around to asking yet in this vast world that we could never ever capture the whole of and also the beating of one tiny human heart and soul cradled in your arms and breaking you open with love – peace is all of this in God, and God, in all of this, working in harmony and joy. 

We do not make peace. 
But boy, can we recognize it. 
We know what it tastes and smells like. 
We know what it feels like deep inside of us, or in between you and me. 

And if we can recognize it, we can also celebrate it.  
We can talk about what we see and lift up what we feel and let it give us hope, and others hope as well.  And if we can celebrate it, we can look for it more, in all the nooks and crannies of our own lives, the surprising places peace might hunker and bloom in our neighborhoods and communities and woah, maybe in our institutions, even, and places of power, perhaps, even there, here and there, in small resilient streaks. 

And when we start looking for it, we might start stepping into it, a little at a time, and seeing what living in more peace might feel like.  What would it feel like to rest when we’re tired? To reach out to someone instead of letting conflict fester and grow? What would it be like to speak up for someone else, not even for your sake, but for theirs, or because it’s begun to dawn on you that theirs and yours are not maybe as real of distinctions as you once thought them to be? What would it look like to forgive and let go of some hurt or anger, even if it was justified and you were in the right?  Or to put everything down and shut everything off and find stillness, real and quiet stillness, where you can see stars and feel gentle wind on your cheeks? 

And if we can step into it here and there, we can begin to practice letting it live in us, this peace of God, and even guide us a little bit.  Maybe stopping us now and then before we speak, or prompting us in unexpected ways to do something, say something, give something, expecting nothing in return. 

Maybe helping us even take who we are as a gift, in ourselves and for the world, and watch love begin to be set free a bit more within us where gratitude and joy and generosity swirl together in sometimes indistinguishable output and we find ourselves, even for a moment, embracing others and ourselves as children of God, precious and holy.

And if we can begin to practice letting God’s peace live in us, it might make us begin dreaming.  It might awaken that hope thing we’ve talked about, that trust that there is more –more harmony, more chances for people to be fully, wholly human and completely loved and forgiven and fed and connected and needed, more peace.  And we might begin to live as the people of God-  the dreamers and the prophets, the hope shouters and justice seekers and peace lovers and people who seem utterly crazy and disconnected from reality, only somehow more deeply and profoundly aware of reality than the rest of us, because they live from the impossible that is also coming.

This – I wonder, if this is part of what Zechariah had a chance to ponder during his nine months of silence, as he watched is old wife’s belly swell.  
He might have started somehow trusting hope, and believing that peace is real. 
And that it’s coming.  And that he was part of it. 

And when that little baby arrived, that impossible baby, and he held that impossible little baby in his old and wrinkled hands, there was not a doubt in his mind, and his mouth was opened when he said, His name is John - his name is “God is gracious.  God is merciful, God gives us more than we could ever even know to long for”- that is his name. 

Look at this child! he sang, sang out!, to his neighbors and friends. Look at how God’s promise to our ancestors is coming to fruition, we are part of it! I am holding it.  Oh yes, it is coming! There is no doubt that God’s salvation of us all is coming.  
And for a moment, not a person in the room could doubt it either.

And then he turned and looked into the brand new blurry eyes of this utterly impossible child in his first minutes on this earth and he said,
 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people
 by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
 the dawn from on high will break upon us, 
 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, 
to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

Amen.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Hope, Wild and Beautiful





How’s that for jarring? Merry Christmas!  As we settle in to anticipate the birth of our Lord and linger in hope and peace, joy and love, we are slapped in the face with this dire and frightening passage.  Welcome to Advent.  This is the week of HOPE!

“Advent” means coming, it is anticipation and waiting, eager longing and looking forward.  So today we begin to intentionally look forward to Christmas.

I’m just getting my head in the Christmas game.  Last year, I was all prepared in advance, Advent protected by presents bought and wrapped before Thanksgiving, but not really this year. We’ll get our tree today and take out the decorations, and I’ll probably start my baking this week. And I am dearly craving snow and holiday cheer and Christmas music. And I want Christmas to either be peaceful and joyful, or at least frenzied and fun – a sense of busy cheer, and giving, and good will towards all people.  No too much to ask, I don’t think.

But not this, please. Let’s not start Advent with this doom and gloom - these words of a grown up Jesus heading toward his own death about a future that comes in such force as to shake the very foundations of our earth, rock our seas and cause us to faint in fear and foreboding.  There is no room in my personal Christmas plans for apocalyptic meltdown, thank you.

But here it is, our passage for the first week of Advent. Not even stuck in the middle of Advent somewhere, but right at the beginning. Hey! It’s screaming at us, the first thing that you think about as you head toward Christmas is this!  And this is the stuff to feed our conversation about HOPE?

One undeniable thing about Advent, if we allow ourselves to give it its full due, is that it demands honesty.  Christmas easily fosters denial – celebrations provide the perfect cover for depression, frustration, fear or anxiety.  They distract us so well from the ugliness of war or poverty or loss.

But it’s hard to hide in Advent, a season that begins in darkness and exists in waiting, devoted to recognizing our need for a Savior – it’s hard to hide in that.  Instead, it makes us come to Christmas with open eyes, and noticing hearts.  Advent demands that we pause and recognize our need for a Savior, and then take all of that with us to Christmas.  That we anticipate Christmas and wait for it faithfully.  But, if we gather here and say Christmas solves everything, that we wait for Christmas because Jesus has come and everything is going to be all right now, we are liars. Or we’re not paying attention.

This week, this community lost two friends. Dave- out of the blue, unexpected, too soon. Wrong.  And Agnes- cheated out of years of her life, already gone from us but here nonetheless, for years, slipping further away, and now, she too is gone for good.   And nothing about this feels right.  Losing people always feels wrong. But especially in these ways, I feel my soul ache to shout, it shouldn’t be like this.

There is so much that is wrong.  It is wrong that people’s lives are cut short, by sudden death or prolonged illness. It is wrong that relationships break down, or misunderstandings stand, and we can’t mend what has torn apart or find ways to truly connect.  It is wrong that along with their fire drills and tornado drills my kids have to practice “code reds,” cowering in a corner with their teacher away from their locked doors and closed shades in case an armed intruder enters the elementary school. These things are not as they should be.  And I could easily buckle with despair, or fear and foreboding. 
I could easily look at our crazy “winter” weather, and a hurricane flooding New Jersey and New York City and knocking out power for days on end along the East Coast, and the escalating violence in Syria and Palestine, and the rising financial blood pressure here at home, and I could get scared, and worried, and succumb to the noise and the clamor, and cower in defeat. 

Frederick Buechner tells the story of Christmas in his childhood, where the whole family would gather at his grandparents home and the living room would be piled with presents and filled with sparkle and laughter and tons of relatives, and the magic of the event was almost too much to bear. He tells how Christmas was better than he even longed for in the days leading up to it, and that room, and the evening itself, was filled with light.  But on looking back, he also sees the darkness under the surface, and lurking in the corners – that when he was ten years old, his father committed suicide, and his grandfather died within the year from a broken heart, really, and then a few years later his youngest uncle killing himself as well.

And Buechner writes, “What I think about now is how even before those dark things happened, they had all been somehow in that magical room – along with the tree and the presents and the uncles and aunts and cousins- waiting to happen.  I think of how not all the love there was in that room was enough to keep them from happening.  There was not Christmas enough to save the day. There was not Christ enough.  There has never been Christ enough- not just for my family way back then, but for all of us right now and always. And yet, at some unknowable point in the future, there will be Christ enough. That is what Jesus is saying in this apocalyptic passage that is our text.  That is our wild and beautiful hope.”

We start our waiting for Christmas by waiting for Christ’s return.  He is coming, as sure as the seasons change and the trees blossom, Christ is coming back.  One day, there will be Christ enough.  And all brokenness will be made whole, all suffering will be redeemed, and all wrongs will be made right.  We live in that wild and beautiful hope.

Hope is not wishing, it is not dreaming, it is not disconnected happy thoughts or pie in the sky craving.  It’s deeper, wider, and infinitely more powerful than that.  Hope is always about wrongs being made right. And we cannot truly hope, we cannot embody hope and let it swell within us, and be people of hope, unless we look the wrong in the face and call it that.
Hope can look at these things, and hold them up in grief, and say boldly, things are not as they should be! because hope knows there is more. Hope knows it could be different, it should be different, it will be different.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the Lord remains.  One day, despite all you see and hear and feel, love will prevail.  Peace will reign.  Justice will rule. The weak will be made strong, and what has been lost will be restored.  That is God’s promise.  That is our hope. Stand up, people, and raise your heads, your redemption draws near.

So in no way is Advent a passive, sentimental, silly, shallow waiting.  It is a confident, active, aware and audacious waiting.  We wait because he who came and who comes, even now IS COMING – we proclaim that, we affirm that. We light these candles in the darkness and say that no matter how dark the darkness gets, it cannot put out the light.   And one day the light will put out all darkness, and for that we wait.

Hope, then is an act of defiance.  And Advent waiting is an act of protest.  It names the things we wait for, like hope and peace and joy and love, it names these things and says they are coming, and declares that even now we see glimpses and feel smidges and share tastes and assert them to be real with our words and our actions and our very lives.  And while we’re feeling brave we also name the things we wait in, our fears, our war, our struggles and sadnesses, and so say that these things too belong to God, and that we belong to God even as we wait so often within what shouldn’t be.

Hush now, and close your eyes.  Pause in the silence and darkness of Advent.  Can you hear the human heartbeat in the womb of Mary?  Can you feel the kicking of the tiny feet against the flesh of her belly?  Can you sense the groaning of creation, the building anticipation of the earth and its creatures for the arrival of their Creator?  Quiet yourselves and hold still, Advent whispers, the promise of Christmas is coming.

God so loved the world that he slipped into it, coming first in fragile humanity, in hiddenness and mystery, to live and walk among us. The light has entered the darkness. Christmas tells us this. 
But this first day of Advent reminds us that Christmas is a promise as much as anything, it is the Creator’s commitment in flesh and blood to come again one day.  And next time the light will burst into creation in power and brilliance beyond our wildest imaginings, shaking the very foundations of everything.  The Creator is coming, people.  To reclaim the world, to redeem the world, to restore the world. To make things as they should be.  One day there will be Christ enough for everything.

So we begin our wait for Christmas, gathered here in Advent and we name Hope, and then we share it.  In our prayers and our reaching out and our honesty and our struggle we sit in hope, we both say aloud this ought not be! and together hold the promise of what should be, and will be. And remarkably, when we share our own hopelessness, Hope is real, and Christ who has come is with us even now. And so we also leave here as people of hope – people who know what is coming, and are not afraid to live like it’s true. 

So may we long for the coming of Christmas, and may we cling to its promise, and may we wait with our heads raised in sure hope and steadfast anticipation for our Coming Savior. 
Come, Lord Jesus. 
Amen.



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