Keep on living the life after death

 Philippians 4:1-14

Is this the first time you’ve heard those names? Euodia and Syntyche?  I mean, they haven’t made the rounds in preschool classrooms or high school graduating classes lately, anyway.  These two women are evidently leaders in the early church. That alone should give us pause. 

Only, if we’ve heard of them at all, that’s not how we think of them. It seems that Euodia and Syntyche have come to represent not early Christian pastors or elders, but catty squabbling, you know, like women can get into.  Most of the time that sermons and commentaries mention them, it’s nearly always speculating what kind of drama was cooking up between them and how badly they must have been arguing for Paul to bring it up in this letter. But the gossip fizzles beyond that, because scholars don’t discern any pressing conflicts in Philippi, and Paul mentions nothing else in the letter itself. But it must have been juicy, right? 

I mean, in the paraphrase we read today there is a whole sentence about Euodia and Syntyche being in an argument and disagreeing, and Paul telling them they’re going to need to work it out. (Ending with a potentially exasperated, Help these women). But that is not in the actual letter of Paul.  Half the translations out there reflect what Paul actually writes, which is, “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche: be of the same mind.”  That’s it, that’s the entire sentence. Then he goes on to say to the community, these two women worked alongside me, and now I want you to look after them like you’ve done for me.

We are going to pause dear Euodia and Syntyche here in their contentious reputation, sit them down with Paul’s exhortation, and come back to them in a few minutes. 

I want to paint for you the picture of what these little first century churches and communities were like, and what Paul was trying to do with all his letters to them that have become letters to us.
A couple months ago, some of you were praying for me, when I went, in fear and trembling, to speak about Christianity to a class of high schoolers studying world religions. In my conversation with them, I used a video, made by some theologians and artists from the church Andy and I were with in Switzerland in May. It painted a picture of the early church and described what it was like for Rome to have to deal with this new upstart religion. 

This new movement was turning households and families on their heads. Instead of each person playing their proper societal role, these little bands of believers had women and slaves leading, embraced worthless children at the center of their life, ate all together at the same table, in short, they disrespected the hierarchy and sensible foundations of the whole society that kept order and stability. Their very way of life threatened anarchy against the empire!

Then, when Rome tried to stamp out “The Way” and scatter and destroy its followers with the greatest power it wielded, the power to inflict death, in all the creative and terrible ways of killing that the Romans were famous for, it got even trickier. Because when Christians were put into the arena with the wild dogs, they didn’t run screaming in terror, like normal people, they accepted their death with a strange peace. They were not afraid to die, like death didn’t mean the end of everything for them.  This actually made people start admiring them, instead of mocking them! 

These people claimed to belong to a different kingdom, and they seemed to believe it. They worshipped a God who had made himself weak, who gave up all the godlike powers to became human, and then even died! None of this made any sense. No god, of any peoples or lands the Romans knew of, made itself weak. No god would allow humans to kill it.  And no god who could be killed could be worth following.

Nevertheless, these followers of the Way were steadfast. They could not be controlled by the empire’s rewards, or manipulated by the empire’s threats, and they felt no compulsion or duty to uphold any decency or order that held the realm steady.  They even did not just look after their own; they welcomed in strangers and especially took care of the sick, the poor, prisoners and outcasts. Then, throw them in prison themselves, and they sing, for pete’s sake!

Our bible is filled with letters from Paul to these little communities all over, who are daily living faithfully in another realm, even in the midst of this one. They are real people with real questions and real struggles, losses, and joys, trying to work out how to live in a hostile regime with completely contrary values to the kind of life they’ve been brought into and are now seeking to live out.
And while the people change, and the details change, and the empires change, the calling and the struggle are the same today as they were then. How do we keep on living in the freedom we’ve been given in Christ to remain in our belonging to God and all others, and not fall back into the mindset of the empire?

The purpose of all Paul’s letters, is to remind the people of The Way that nothing is the same because of Jesus.  The cosmos has shifted, reality has broken open, the end is written, and our own lives are now caught up in the life of Christ, lived out in community with one another, in service to the world.  And wow, do we need reminding. 

Some of his letters, like the letter to the Romans, are treatises, where he’s trying to lay it all out to people he hasn’t yet visited. Several of his letters address specific arguments, issues or problems in the community he is writing to or between himself and them.  This letter before us today is neither. It’s a joyful thank you letter. The main message of the letter to the Philippians is, “Keep on doing what you’re doing.” (as summarized by Matt Skinner, Working Preacher).

It’s amazing, by the way, how much this message helps us in even the smallest of ways. On Thursday I had physical therapy for my bum hip, and my PT told me again how I should be doing the exercise I’ve been doing for two months. She described the a shallow pool of water, and imagining trying to slowly dip first one foot in, and then the other, while holding my core steady. When I demonstrated, she smiled and nodded affirmatively, “Yes! Just like that!” I was astonished how good it felt to hear someone who was guiding me at something say, “Keep doing what you’re doing!” 
 
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says it this way,  
^“2 Make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ³ Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.⁴ Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. ⁵ Let the same mind be in you that you have in Christ Jesus, who

Then he goes on to quote to them a shared song, a creed that becomes the center of this whole letter; everything he says before or after points to back to this familiar hymn. Scholars believe is perhaps the earliest one in the church – something they all would’ve known and shared. I like to imagine it was taught to him by Ananias and the community in Damascus whom he was intent on destroying but who instead welcomed him in and taught him the faith. It’s a song about Jesus, maybe even an action song that starts high and goes low and goes up high again. If you’ve seen the Odyssey, maybe it was something chanted with pounding stick and sweeping arms. The song says,

though he existed in the form of God,
   he did not regard equality with God
    as something to be grasped,
⁷ but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
⁸     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.
⁹ Therefore God exalted him even more highly
    and gave him the name
    that is above every other name,
¹⁰ so that at the name given to Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.
 
This is the core of it all for Paul.  

The mind we have in Christ is this mind; the reality we live in is this reality. The Christians facing down monsters in the arenas were not people of superhuman bravery in the face of death. The people of the Way to whom Paul is writing are not people of superhuman kindness in the face of evil, or superhuman self control in the face of temptation. 

They were people who have already died. Death has no power over us, nor sin, or temptation, nor evil, nor sorrow, nor pain.  All these things are real and we experience them, but they do not define us and cannot destroy us because we face them as those who have died and been risen with Christ into life on the other side of death, on the other side of fear, on the other side of threat.  
We have been given the life of Christ, the mind of Christ, the reality that Jesus lives in and opens up to us- of complete connection to God and one another forever in the love of God given to us by the grace and power of God.  So when the brain tumor comes, the addiction pulls us under, when the terrible longing for a loved one whose life we cannot set right throbs inside us every day, when we feel lost, or afraid, or overwhelmed, we can throw ourselves honestly, completely, without hesitation or pride on the mercy of God, whose will uphold us and carry us through through the arms and words and faces of those who share this way with us.

Which brings me back to Euodia and Syntyche, who’ve been patiently waiting for us to return.  “I urge Euodia,” Paul writes, “I urge Syntyche, be of the same mind in the Lord.” He continues, using a nickname of sorts for the community, “Yes, I ask also, you true yokefellow, help these, who worked closely with me, and also with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.”

The people of God argue. That is not in question. Paul breaks up plenty of arguments in other letters to other communities, for sure. And maybe he’s doing that here too – there is no reason why that in itself would be a bad thing.  

But the whole letter is urging the whole community to be of the same mind in the Lord, the mind they have been given for their life in Christ, to keep doing what they’re doing, to live in the life-after-death Christ-way of relationship, the Christ-way of seeing the world, the Christ-way of relating to God. 

So, despite centuries of some bible readers largely assuming they were just a couple of gals in a heated spat, it’s possible that the same words mean the same thing when addressed directly to Euodia and Syntyche as they do in the rest of the letter to everyone else, and that these women who have worked closely with Paul, are here being commended to this community, to be welcomed in and cared for, and to share this same mind with them all. 

I kind of loved stumbling into this, because it just goes to show that even when we’re reading the bible, we dear humans often accidentally slip into the mindset of the empire, as though the more real things are the meanness and division, status and power, winning and losing, looking for the bad in the world and each other and having no problem finding it.

Remember, nothing is the same because of Jesus. We are citizens of a different kingdom. No matter how scary, or painful, or desperately sad the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we are not alone, Jesus came into this situation, alongside us, with and for us and brought to life a new reality, and not even death can break the love of God that holds us fast. 

When Paul writes to the Philippians, from his imprisonment under house arrest, Rejoice! Again, I say, rejoice! He’s not just giving pithy advice for getting along or ways to be good people. He’s not just saying, cheer up! Think of good things not bad! Think of happy, not sad! Dig deeper try harder be better!

He is saying we’ve died and been raised to new life, so Be filled with joy! I repeat, be filled with joy!  Pour out all our worries and fears to God, and God will hear us and give us peace. Give our precious and limited attention to what is good and beautiful in the world. Let gratitude well up and spill out because Thank you is the language of the real. Keep noticing hope, and recognizing love, lifting up forgiveness and living sacrifice, keep being open to delight and wonder, beauty and awe. Be one in this mindset of resurrected people, that baffles empires and makes no sense to earthly powers.  Help each other keep living here, as the dead who’ve been raised, surrendering our lives to God and giving ourselves to others.
Keep on doing what we’re doing. And the God of peace will be with us.
Amen.

Belonging In Turbulent Times

Ephesians 2:11-22

Americans are living in an intense time, or at least, anticipating one. After half a century of political peace in this nation, there is brewing a kind of turbulence we’ve had in our past and other nations have experienced more recently or frequently.  And we kind of don’t know what to do with that. Let’s just say, it’s nicer to feel invincible as a country, to assume that what happens other places won’t or can’t happen here. It’s preferable to at least pretend that things will always remain stable no matter what. 

When things get intense, we humans amp up a favorite sin, which is to other each other. To hunker down into our silos of shared ideology and use shorthand labels to sort who’s in and out, who’s an ally we can count on and who’s an enemy we can despise or ignore. We can sum up a whole person in a single word, words like MAGA, woke, immigrant, anti-vaxxer, lawyer, widow, trans, white, sick, retired, Evangelical. We can boil down an entire human being into a simplistic stereotype. And once the label defines who we are, we’d better stick with our own group, because how else will we belong?

Which brings us to this letter, written several decades after Jesus died, to people who are doing what people do – they are othering each other. The recipient community is made up of both Gentile and Jewish Christians.  And according to this letter, shorthand labels have been slapped on the groups: “the circumcision” and “the uncircumcision.” 

Why those words? The offspring of Abraham were chosen by God to particularly, knowingly, intentionally, participate with God in caring for the world. This covenant identity and role was marked by circumcision. Called to be the people of God for the sake of all the other nations, they were agents of belonging in and for the world.

And so, this ancient symbol of belonging to God to care for the world is now being used inside a community of Christ-followers to separate and alienate, the very opposite of its original meaning.

Fourteen generations after Abraham, a young, Jewish woman was invited by a messenger of the Divine to be what some ancient Greek icons call, “the container of the uncontainable.” Through her body, God came into this fragile human life of living and dying to reconcile all things to Godself. Born a helpless infant needing to be cared for by those he came to save, Jesus came to break down all divisions and bring all people into the family of God.  

The Magi from afar, kneeling before this impossible child, were the first to worship a Messiah they did not grow up anticipating, (I suppose making them the original “the uncircumcised.”) Then thirty years later, after Jesus died and was resurrected, the party burst the seams and spread everywhere, and people of all languages and cultures were drawn by the Holy Spirit into the covenant family of God and transformed into agents of belonging for the whole world.

We’re now 81 generations after God came in Christ reconciling all people to Godself. But the malicious custom of othering others is alive and well in us. Every culture and people is adept at dividing, blaming and condemning, with their own short-hand labels and dismissive ways to signal who’s in and who’s out, and we are certainly no exception. Nor do we hesitate to use the language and symbols of our faith to do so. Why do we do this?

All human beings share the longing to feel safe and seen, to matter, to contribute. All people feel pain and joy, welcome new life, and experience aging and death. All people suffer. All people long to belong. But with our limited imaginations and seemingly unlimited susceptibility to fear and insecurity, we mostly can’t fathom that the belonging of God includes us all, or that there is no limit on love, no quota on forgiveness, no ranking of human value, no lifetime maximum belonging a person experiences or offers to others before it's all used up. 

Remembering our shared humanity feels easier when life is going along smoothly and we have spare reserves of equanimity and Zen. And perhaps some of us here now do, thanks be to God if that is you today. 

But many of us are a bit worried and raw, a tad edgy and tired, and collectively there’s a looming sense that things are just beginning, whatever that means, whatever those things turn out to be. So, it’s safe to say, even without a lot going on on the health front, or job front, or kid front, or parent front, most of us are already not operating at full capacity. 

For my part, 11 days ago, our jet-lagged family welcomed a new, wildly disruptive puppy who we are already in love with, but the sleep deprivation and vigilant attentiveness is no joke.  My kids keep telling me I’m mean. I don’t feel mean, just tired. But I’m told I walk around all the time sounding mean. 

So, if the message of this text today was: Go be kind and love all people, it would be impossible for me. Because right now, I can barely be kind to the people I already love. 

Add to the fatigue and caffeine a steady flow of news and commentary about political conventions and the horrors in Ukraine and Gaza, and fretting about the future of the planet, and there is no way I’m an agent of love and belonging in the world.  

The way of fear is loud, and I listen to it. And Paul seemed to know his readers did too. So the answer to our petty division and deep anxiety isn’t just to tell us Quit it and be nice!

We are simply, clearly, not capable of that. 

Thank God Paul wrote this letter and not I. Because here’s what he has to say, (aka, hear the good news of the gospel): 

First, the peace, goodness and wholeness we long for so deeply? It is not of our making. Christ does this, is doing this, has done this, will do this. Jesus Christ “proclaimed peace to those far off and peace to those near,” giving us all access to the very heart of God. Well-being within, well-being between, well-being everlasting.  We don’t do this, Christ does.

Second, Paul writes earlier in this letter that it is God’s “plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”  Meaning, this world, and everything in it, belongs to God. We are held in a greater love and a deeper story that outlasts time itself.  So, we can with confidence answer the “what if?” of fear with the “even if!” of hope. This is a lesson we learned during the pandemic when we left the building in Lent and returned two years later having learned the Lenten lesson still hanging on the wall, “Fear asks, What if? Hope answers, Even if!” Even if the worst thing we can imagine happens (like the whole world shuts down in a pandemic!), God is still God. Love is still love. This is all heading somewhere unstoppable. Even if. Always.

So we can look at the world truthfully, without hiding or covering over evil, upheaval, suffering or general disappointment. We will name the reality, “This is part of the story.” But then we’ll keep going, naming also the deeper reality, “This is not the whole story. The world belongs to God.” 

Third, Paul says the divisions we think exist - Christ has shattered them. Christ abolishes hostility and alienation between us and makes out of the fractured bits one human race. We don’t choose this, or create this, and we can’t make it not true (even when we try). In Christ, God reconciled us all to God and each other, and complete wholeness and connection is where this whole story is heading. We can deny it or defy it. Or we can join it, by taking up our calling to participate with God in caring for this world. 

This is not done through our stellar intentions or superhuman efforts, but by our honesty, our humility, our presence alongside, with and for one another. We live the belonging by our vulnerability. By seeking to see others and be truly seen. By asking for, and offering forgiveness. Pursuing invincibility and chasing safety won’t bring us well-being. We live into fullness of life, this peace Christ offers, by opening up and welcoming our shared humanity with those who – no matter how different than us- are also just like us. 

Finally, Paul tells us we are “no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.” 

We, the Church - that is, you and me and all those everywhere formed by the death and resurrection of Christ and drawn by the Holy Spirit into the covenant family of God - we are transformed into agents of belonging for the whole world. And we are marked for this covenant identity and role by our baptism. 

When we live in the actual, particular, singular life we’ve each been given, committed to be in this place with these people, today, no matter what tomorrow brings or the day after that, something happens to us and through us that we can’t control. The Holy Spirit makes the hodge-podge, imperfect collection of ordinary people a holy dwelling place of the Divine. We become “the container of the uncontainable.” Jesus Christ is actually here, among and between us, drawing us into the beloved world where he continues to break down all divisions, and bring all people into the family of God.  

So take a breath and let it out. Settle into the love that holds us all. 

May we trust God, care for others, and live the gift and calling of our shared belonging. Come what may, even if, and always.

Amen.

Song of Joy (Advent 3)

December 17 - Advent 3

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

This is the week of Advent dedicated to joy. Joy is when our very innermost selves reverberate with God’s touch.  Last week we said “peace” means wholeness and fullness – life as God intends it to be. Joy is when that wholeness, that absolute connection to God and each other, is felt with a jolt.  It’s a momentary taste of life as it was meant to be. Anne Lamott says, “Peace is joy at rest. Joy is peace on its feet.” In the past we’ve called Joy “pre-membering” God’s future breaking in now, momentarily tasting what Hope, our theme the first week of Advent, articulates. 

But letting down your guard to be open to joy is extremely vulnerable. To take deep pleasure in a moment of true connection touches us in our very core. It can be scary to be this real, this alive.  We’re exposed as simply human, when so often we protect ourselves from this reality. 

 

Not to mention that these days, joyfulness might seem naive or out of touch.  With so much suffering and violence in the world, perhaps we think that if we’re seeking joy, we must not be paying attention. But scripture suggests it’s actually the other way around: When we are really paying attention, joy finds us.

 

“Rejoice always,” Paul says, but we tend to separate that from the next instruction, to “pray without ceasing.” This has been interpreted and attempted countless of ways over time. From the extreme, like the group that demands people turn away from an ordinary life to keep a 24-hour prayer and worship service going for decades, to the ancient practice of personal breath prayers, trying to match your breathing to scripture of repentance to God, so that it eventually constant prayer becomes an unthought practice, Christians have been trying to understand and practice this praying without ceasing business for millennia. 

 

We most often think of prayer as stepping out of the world momentarily to turn toward God, but Bonhoeffer says prayer is inextricable from our life in the world, merged with our concrete activity and relationships with others.  Christ comes into this world to share life with us, so we meet Christ as we share life with each other.  Prayer – or listening to God, attentiveness, availability -  happens in our concrete life, our daily work and activities. When Paul admonishes us to pray without ceasing is, Bonhoeffer describes this as “finding the You of God behind the It of the day’s work.” 

 

Our prayer reaches beyond the deliberate times of pausing and addressing God, into all parts of every day, infusing meaning, into ordinary life, opening us to joy. So, to pray without ceasing actually means tuning into our belonging to both God and our neighbors, practicing awareness of our connection both to the One from whom our life comes and to those to whom our life flows.  When everything we do becomes a prayer in this way, Bonhoeffer describes it as, “a breaking through from the hard It to the gracious You.”

 

The “hard It” of the day can be horrifying. Right now, we dare not turn our gaze away from Gaza and the terror unfolding minute by minute there. But that’s today’s hard It. Yesterday we were looking at Ukraine – which is still a living nightmare, but our limited attention spans can’t hold everything at once, so we pick and choose which It disasters and crises to highlight. Mass shootings are stacking up multiple per day, people seeking a safe place to live are dying on the seas, and the week before Christmas we keep toying with 50 degrees above zero—our planet is in crisis. 

That’s to say nothing of the more personal realities we carry with us like a heavy cloak around our shoulders – the heartbreaking struggle of someone we love, our own private rage or sorrow, the burdens of addiction or separation – it’s all the It – the ground on which our lives unfold, the stuff of working and relating we do every day as human beings.  

Mix all that intense stuff up with the mundane list-making, germ-fighting, money-counting, deadline-meeting, chore-completing, gift-buying, worry-piling, traffic-fighting pressures of modern day-to-day life in a noisy and busy holiday season, and joy can feel remote and inaccessible, if not superfluous or shallow, pumped through tinny speakers in big box stores, or flashed before our eyes in sappy advertisements interrupting our binge-watching, and gradually the yous around us blend into the hard It that serves as the backdrop of our joyless lives.

 

But this is to mistake mindless cheer or self-satisfying distraction for joy, keeping us focused fully on the It, as though It is all there is. Joy, as the prophets foretell, joy that Advent invites us to hush still and listen for, is a deep, timeless, nevertheless reality that breaks into time. The You who is underneath and behind the It - all the its that have ever been, as dark as they have ever been - the You who sang the world into being, is here now, is coming, is never absent the darkness, but bringing, always, light, in fact, IS the light the darkness cannot put out.  Joy tunes us into the powerful song underneath.

 

Mike Woods, who preached here the first Sunday in Advent, reminded me of a scene near the end of Madeleine L’Engle’s book, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, when Charles Wallace and the unicorn, Gaudior (which is Latin for joy), are on a difficult mission. As they gallop through a starry galaxy, Charles Wallace struggles to stay awake and Gaudior cautions him, “Do not go to sleep.” An exhausted Charles Wallace replies, “I’m not sure if I can help it.”

 

“‘Sing, then,’ Gaudior commanded. ‘Sing to keep yourself awake.’” And with that, “the unicorn opened his powerful jaws and began to sing WITH the stars.” (and heaven and nature sing…)

 

Singing in harmony, the boy and the unicorn “moved through the time-spinning reaches of a far galaxy, and he realized that the galaxy itself was part of a mighty orchestra, and each star and planet within the galaxy added its own instrument to the music of the spheres. As long as the ancient harmonies were sung, the universe would not entirely lose its joy.”

 

There is the terrible and understandable temptation to ignore the deeper song, forget the bigger picture, overlook the longer story. To let the hard It of the moment fill our whole horizon, blocking us from the You of God, the yous of each other, drowning out the song of the stars and the universe. We forego joy for foreboding, trade trust for fear, let ourselves be overwhelmed by the darkness, and cease praying instead of praying without ceasing.

 

But every day, the God who breaks in, is breaking in. Jesus came that we might have his joy, joy complete, anyway joy, the gift of awareness of our aliveness, moments of awakened resonance between the ourselves and all else. 

 

When the podcast in your headphones makes you stop and double over on the sidewalk gasping in laughter, and when your child steps out of the airport’s sliding doors and makes his way to you.  When you ask, and ask and ask, What would make my heart sing? And seek to live that. When, in the midst of your dad’s funeral, the congregation sings the line, “though Satan should buffet” and your teary sister beside you bursts into loud giggles and drags you down with her, and when the spectacular pinks and oranges of the early morning sun stops you still at your window, you’re hearing the eternal song of joy breaking into time. 

 

You’re sensing the God whose love is our origin and destination, puncturing the hard It to reach our soft and tender yous, that raw and vulnerable place inside, all wrinkled and unshaven and without make-up, where our childlike wonder still nests.   

 

We join that song when we listen to another person, unhurried and available. We are praying without ceasing when we make eye contact, human to human with a stranger, or hold onto the humanity of those we oppose, keeping them a you instead of making them It. Receiving the moments of transformative laughter and quiet awe, is praying without ceasing. And in all of these ways we make ourselves available to joy, which the universe has not yet lost.

 

Paul is saying that the will of God in Jesus Christ is for us to live tapped into the deeper aliveness with which the whole universe reverberates. To rejoice always, to live in joy.  And to seek out this reality by praying continually, by embracing and not resisting the Holy Spirit nudging us toward others, toward hope, toward healing, toward wholeness. To not resist being corrected and harmonized again with our true identity as beloved, and our true purpose of calling the world back to its belovedness. To recognize evil and oppose it, to seek out good and grasp onto it. And through it all, to trust that the One who is faithful will keep being so.

 

God’s future that is even now breaking in. Beloved, tune into the mighty orchestra, in which each life is an instrument. Stay unarmed and open to being seized by defiant, nevertheless joy. Practice trusting in our belonging to the You who holds us all and all the yous that pass before us each day. And on behalf of a broken and weary world—a beautiful and beloved world—let down your guard and join in the song: rejoice.

 

Amen. 

Song of Peace - Advent 2

DECEMBER 9, 2023 - Reflection for Contemplative Prayer, Advent Week 2

Isaiah 40:1-5

Here comes Advent, right out in front of Christmas, bringing its on-purpose darkness like a blanket, gently laying it over us no matter what else is going on around us or within us.  Advent is the whisper in the darkness, showing and telling us something that is real but hard to see or hear in the glare of LED light and the non-stop noise of our televisions and smart phones, breaking news, speeding traffic, neon geopolitics, florescent distractions, and 24-7 insistent commentary.

The darkness of Advent is a gift. A desperately needed pause.  To wait on purpose for Jesus to come.  Advent speaks tenderly and offers Comfort. Truth. Honesty. Hope. Peace.

 

It’s a hiatus that takes in reality as we know it, but turns our gaze to another reality too, a deeper one, a realer one, the one that lasts from the beginning to the end and holds us in between, even when we are not seeing it. Advent immerses us in this reality, prompting us to seek the God who comes in.

 

Advent is the night shift nurse after the painful surgery, the quiet, turned-down sheets of healing sleep.  There is nothing here in the darkness that isn’t out there in the light – the wounds remain and the recovery continues.  But here, in the shelter of Advent, waiting for God, we can talk about the hard things and the sad things and the confusing and frustrating things, where they don’t get to make us afraid.  

And where fear is banished, hope is born. And peace grows stronger, and joy is tangible. When Love casts out fear, we are brought back to God’s reality, which looks so different from the red-faced blustering and flippant annihilation of the world.

 

Advent slows the pulse, pulls down the shades, and gently shushes us still.  It readies us for a God who comes in in a ridiculously weak and vulnerable way – a senseless and undermining and eternal way. Not to rescue us out, but to share this life with us, to weave redemption right in the midst of it all and keep it all moving toward love.  

 

Comfort my defeated people, God says. Tell them I see them.  And they’ve paid way more in suffering than they ever deserved for whatever they’ve done. Speak tenderly, though, they’ve been through a lot.  And they’re pretty hard on themselves. Gently, let them know they are free. Lead them into the way of peace.

 

This is the week of Advent that we orient toward peace. Peace is wholeness, fullness, true relationship with God and one another. Peace is life as God intended.  It is the quality of everyone belonging to God and belonging to each other.

Last week, Mike Woods preached about Hope, and invited us into Advent through lullabies.

He said, 

“Lullaby power is about being so grounded in what we believe in, what we love and live for, that we cannot be dragged down into meanness or despair. It holds our hope intact. Let’s think of lullabies as containers of hope.

Singing lullabies in the dark makes us ready to bring to bear in an instant, everything we stand for, everything we love, the principles we live by, the way we wish the whole world could work. This comes from a lifetime of singing, which is THE subversive thing we do in churches: singing with joy, singing in the face of death - singing to build our courage – singing hope into the shadows – singing of a world about to turn -  singing to remember the kind of world we want to live in and hand on, and be the kind of people we God made us to be.  So, the question isn’t whether or not we’re singing a song, the question is, “Are we in tune?”

Tonight we quiet the noise around us to hear the song. And we prepare our hearts to hear the song of peace all week long. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together. This is the promise. Tonight we listen to the promise of peace.

Advent in 300 Words: The Prophets, Joseph, Mary, The Angels

 ADVENT 300 WORD REFLECTIONS

THE PROPHETS (11/26) - by Kara K Root

Isaiah 11:1-10

The prophets, with their vivid eschatological imaginations, lead us into Advent.  Off the grid, out of the empire folks with fantastic stories, absurd confrontations and wild encounters, the prophets criticize and energize. They shake the façade keeping everyone content and accepting the unacceptable. God uses prophets to hold before God’s people a vision of who they really are and who God really is, because they keep forgetting. 

 

The prophets reveal God’s future breaking in now. They anticipate God’s coming, teach us how to watch for it, and show us how to live now from what will be.  In their own lives, they didn’t get to taste the fulfillment they spent their lives promising.  But their holy imagination, ruthless honesty and deep trust shaped our ancestors, our faith, and continue to stir us today.  

 

The prophet Isaiah speaks to a people living in exile, whose imaginations have shrunk to their captivity. Terrible things have happened to them, and they’ve made terrible choices. They’re stuck. Their life is small, their hope is dead. The end.

 

But if it’s not ok, then it’s not the end.  

 

Isaiah paints a poetic image of a new beginning, tender green shoot from the dead ground. Like a whisper, a stirring, a savior comes. Instead of division and striving, self-protection and fear, the savior ushers in a new reality: In the reign of God, all people, all creatures in all the world will live freely, fully, unafraid, connected in peace. Hope is the energy of peace, the anticipation of what is coming, the fuel of our faithful living now.  

May hope grow our eschatological imaginations. With holy imagination, ruthless honesty, and deep trust we wait, with and for each other and for the world, for the coming of Christ.  

We hope with the anticipation of the prophets.

The kind of people who participate

Jean-Marie Pirot (aka Arcabas) The angel of the Lord speaks to Joseph in a Dream

 Matthew 1:18-25

His fiancé is pregnant with someone else’s baby. Joseph’s been made to look a fool. A righteous man, we’re told, with an impressive pedigree, Joseph seems a worthy candidate to parent the Messiah. And let’s be clear. God could’ve easily waited a few months until Mary and Joseph were properly married and saved everyone a lot of trouble.
 
Instead, God puts Joseph in a moral quandary. Heartbroken and betrayed, good guy Joseph will do the right thing – he’ll dismiss Mary quietly, cause as little embarrassment for her as possible, while preserving his own dignity and honor. 
 
Have you noticed how none of our ancestors in faith are ideal applicants for the job descriptions they end up filling?  And the ones who start out looking promising, like Joseph, end up losing something, or everything, for their role.
 
But if our biblical siblings appeared beyond reproach, we might think it was their inherent goodness that qualified them to participate in God’s plans. We might believe God prefers exemplary, upright, heroic types that make God look good.  
And if that were true, then we might presume that humanity is a graded on a scale, and one’s place in God’s good graces can be earned or lost. We might strive instead of rest, compare instead of cooperate, worry more about the virtue of our own souls than the well-being of others, and be tempted to take on God’s role by assuming it’s our job to fix what’s broken in the world. 
 
So, because the way of God is not about us and what we do but about who God is and what God is up to, the cast of characters that populate our scriptures and the great cloud of witnesses watching over us is necessarily comprised mostly of misfits, screw-ups, and the impossibly unqualified – like overlooked youngest sons and ignored foreign women and those with barren, ancient or virgin wombs, incapacitating stutters and colorful rap sheets, all of whom find in their brokenness a new identity as participants with God in healing and redeeming the world. 
 
Gone is Joseph the upstanding, competent, ethical exemplar who holds the reins of his life. This little crisis has ended that guy.  His good-person-ness torn away, Joseph will receive instead the grace of God who claims us nevertheless. When he awakens from his dream, he will be Joseph, misunderstood and misjudged, unable to control his own life or narrative, but claimed by grace, guided by love, brave to trust, and faithful—right up against his doubt, close to his fears, ready to accept what God is giving him and follow where God is leading him.  Joseph will agree to appear to be something that he is not – this child’s father, but he will claim him nevertheless, and in so doing, he will become his father after all.  
 
And so Joseph trades what was for what will be; he will anticipate the future of God by accepting his role in it now.  And Joseph will live a life characterized by grace unearned and forgiveness unmerited, where everybody belongs and nobody is dismissed, quietly or otherwise. 
 
The savior of the world belongs to us all, and first, Joseph, he will belong to you. The angel whispers in his dream. So do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Love her. Name the child Jesus. Love him.  
 
And the child Joseph will raise will not become an upstanding, good citizen, respected in society and honored in the community, upholding his father’s good name and bolstering the commendable, but a vagabond and a subversive, who dines with sinners, prostitutes and outcasts, confronts corruption and evil, and refuses to totalize or dismiss anyone.  He will be a Savior who rests, and trusts, and lives fully connected to God and to every other human.  And Jesus will open up to us all a reality of redemption, forgiveness and freedom, everlasting belonging that will set the world free.
 
Dear little Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church: for 100 years now, people have been gathering on this spot in the name and presence of Christ, to worship God together, to seek the way of Jesus and be guided by the Holy Spirit, to pray and sing, and listen and respond. To grieve and to celebrate. To raise each other’s kids in love, and bury each other’s loved ones with gentleness. To pour love into the community and welcome in the world’s pain and joy. To learn and to change alongside one another, to mess up and practicing forgiving, to reach out and practice receiving, to take the baton from those gone before and pass it on to those who come next. 

And so for 100 years this little congregation has had our own rotating cast of unlikely characters, misfits and oddballs, flawed people living broken, honest and real lives, trusting right up against our doubt, watching for the in-breaking of God around us, sharing the presence of Christ by being with and for others, faithfully accepting what God is giving us and following where God is leading us.  
That is something to celebrate.
 
Today we lit an Advent Candle for Peace. So this week, we will be watching for, praying for, and living toward peace. The Hebrew word for Peace, Shalom, means “fullness” or “completion.”  So when people greet one another or say goodbye, with Shalom, what they are really saying is, “May you be completed.”  Whenever we join in God’s bringing wholeness and fullness for others, whenever our words or actions say, “May you be completed,” we are making peace. We can literally share in the substance of God’s life, here and now.  We can contribute to others’ fullness, fullness in the world around us, and fullness between us.  We can trade what is for what will be. 

But only if we have our ideas about what it means to live a good life torn away, and receive instead the grace of God who claims us nevertheless.  

God’s love comes to and through imperfect people in ordinary ways, and we are drawn in by God’s mercy and grace, to receive the love of God without qualifications or preconditions. God plunges into this world in the person of Christ Jesus, and by the Spirit pours grace and love through us that feels like courage to forgive, and willingness to listen, and an inclination toward wonder, joy, gratitude and generosity.

 This savior ruins people for respectable, mind-your-own-business living, and pulls us head over heels into a life of trusting, and resting, and hoping, that practices our unbreakable belonging to God and each other, and join in the healing and shalom that God is always bringing into the world. So, like those gone before us, both our predecessors here, and all the faithful from every place and time, we too anticipate the future of God by accepting our role in it now.  
Amen.
 

You can relax now

Luke 12:13-21

I don’t know about you, but I am so completely sick of everything always being up in the air. Of having to react and respond all the time. Of not being able to make plans and set those plans in place and count on those plans happening.  If not actual control, I would like to have back the illusion of control. Please.   

The rich man in Jesus’ parable has the illusion of control. He is blessed with an abundance of crops and decides to tear down his barns and build bigger ones to store them all and then finally he will have enough, and then, “I will say to my soul, Soul, You can relax now…”

 

And oh my goodness does this grab me. What would it take to be able to say, Soul, you can relax now? Would you say it when you finally have “enough” money saved? When you have reached a high enough level of education? Progressed far enough in your job? When kids are finally settled and successful? 

When you’ve achieved all your goals for self-improvement and enlightenment, then you can say, Soul, you can relax now?  How about, the mortgage and student loans are all completely paid off, the dream job has been achieved, you’re contributing to real and lasting change in the world as a force for goodness, everybody thinks good things about you and nobody dislikes or distrusts you, your body is a specimen of good health and guaranteed longevity, and your impact, memory and legacy is cemented for several generations. Now you can relax, soul.  Now you can finally live and just enjoy your life! 

 

Oh wait, let’s add some more, Democracy is secure, racism is vanquished, the climate crisis is remedied, now can our souls relax?

 

How about when we do have times we’ve accomplished a goal or reached a milestone, and we feel some sense of inner peace because the hard work we’ve invested has paid off, or friends and family are generally doing well and life seems to be on a good track.  Not perfect, but humming along fair enough.  It feels good to feel this way. Not unlike the man in Jesus’ parable, (who then illustrates that even that doesn’t feel like enough). And as Jesus reminds us, any and all of that can disappear at any moment. Anything can happen to anyone. Like, a global pandemic from the movies could engulf the entire globe for years, or something.  And then the illusion that we have any control over anything is short-lived.

 

This is one of those moments when the lectionary fails us. Because it separates out scripture that make more sense if kept together.

 

This rich man in Jesus’ parable is so often held up as a foil, a ridiculous, greedy fool. (My bible subtitles this pericope "The Parable of the Rich Fool").  We like to use him to remind ourselves not to get greedy and then move on.  But the story doesn’t stop right here. Jesus turns to the disciples and points underneath the pretend rich man’s striving, to the core of him, because it’s the core of all of us. Just like this man, we are all trying to quell that inner terror that things might not be ok. We all worry for our future, our safety, our loved ones, all the time, and our ability to live our lives with a sense of peace is so often dependent on how all these things and people are doing at the moment.  The rich man is seeking a feeling of security. An escape from the worry. The ability to enjoy life and not live in fear. Aren’t we all?

 

The passage continues with these words,
He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 

And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! 

And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. 

For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

 

Around here we remind each other that worrying is practicing fear, and resting is practicing trust.  We let go of worry not by talking ourselves out of it with logic, or by somehow controlling all the external factors around us so that we can finally be at rest inside.  

 

Into our worry, Jesus gives us a very concrete invitation –Look at the birds. Consider the lilies. Notice the beauty permeating it all. Right here in the world around us is evidence of God’s care. God who made and cares for this earth and its creatures values and treasures you, loves you.  

Instead of striving for your own security and wellbeing, Jesus says, point your being toward God’s reality, where we all belong inextricably to each other and to God, and we are here to care for one another and for this world. 

When you let go your attempting to make your own life secure, and return to this reality that the source of all life is holding your live in love, then the inner peace, the sense of deeper grounding, will come to you as a gift from God.  

 

James Finley talks about this in his podcast, Turning to the Mystics. He says our inner peace is so often dependent on conditions being conducive to peace. So when our family is healthy and things are going well in our lives we have peace. But when the condition are not conducive to peace, there is conflict, suffering, war, racism, then we do not have peace. So we try to change the conditions that are not conducive to peace, so that we can have inner peace. And we should do those things- we should address what is wrong in the world and in our lives. But the peace we are offered in Christ is not peace that is dependent on the conditions being conducive to peace. It’s God’s peace, given to us, regardless of the circumstances. And we can experience it even in the midst of great darkness and suffering, because it does not depend on the conditions being a certain way, it's deeper than that. And this peace actually allows us to be able to be present to the circumstances in a different way, in fact, to be with people in suffering and struggle more intentionally, and to bear those things ourselves, because the peace we have is not our own peace, it is God's. And it is not dictated by fluctuating circumstances.

 

From time to time the veil is pulled back, and, no matter the circumstances, we feel a sense of oneness with the universe. Maybe it happens when we’re laughing at a table filled with friends, or alone in the cacophonous silence of a still and busy forest, or suffering a terrible, life-severing loss, or simply catching eyes with a baby in a grocery store. We are occasionally, suddenly grabbed hold of by this love that is deeper and wider, more sure and more steady than everything else that exists. And we sense that not are apart from it, but in it, claimed by it. And for a moment we feel righted inside, and we wonder why it is we ever worry at all. And then, just as quickly as it comes, the fleeting glimpse of Reality fades. But these tastes give us hope, and feed our trust, and invite us to live differently.

 

We can’t make these experiences happen, but we can, “assume the inner stance of least resistance” to being overtaken by this love.  We can seek to be open – to, as Jesus invites us, notice the world around with wonder and gratitude, to be present in our own skin, our own lives, this one moment, unlike any other, and receive it. 

Instead of striving for the ideal someday version of our lives or this world that we can finally one day enjoy, we can welcome and appreciate our lives and this world right now, as they are, and be right here with God and each other. And this, perhaps, is what it means in the parable of Jesus, to be “rich toward God,” being ready to receive our lives as the generosity of God, abundantly poured into the world at every moment. 

 

I don’t think we are ever going back to a time when things can be planned and then carried out smoothly.  Life now is harder than it was three years ago, and all signs point to it continuing to get more complicated on nearly every front. There have never not been, and will never not be things to worry about, and there is not coming, in our lifetimes, the “finally” moment, when the barns are full, all the wrongs are put right, all the conditions conducive to peace are met, and we’ll heave a great collective sigh and say to our souls, Soul, you can relax now! 

And even if there were, it could all end in a second anyway.

 

But through all of it, whatever the conditions, the steady, never-ending, powerful, deeper love of God that claims the universe and is moving it all toward redemption, will continue to hold us fast. And we will be ok. No matter what.  

So beloved, let’s allow our lives to flow from God’s generosity and our souls to find rest in God’s peace.

Amen.