Epiphany 2B sermon

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany—Year B January 18, 2015 My heart is very full today, on this 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany. It is my last day here with you, and it is also our patronal feast day, the Confession of St. Peter (which is transferred to tomorrow because it falls on a Sunday this year). It is strangely appropriate, that, as we say goodbye to one another, our propers for the day and the very life of St. Peter invite and encourage us to think about call. We see it in the story of young Samuel, who hears the call of God but has to learn who and what he is experiencing through the wisdom of the older (and flawed) Eli. We see it in today’s gospel reading, when Peter and Andrew and Philip and Nathaniel leave their whole entire lives behind to accept Jesus’s invitation to “Come and See.” As we all celebrate our life here together today and mark the ending of our formal relationship (but certainly not the bonds of our common affection that will go with us into the future), we also are all in this position where we are leaving something behind in order to accept Jesus’s invitation to “Come and See”. In his blog post this week, Parker Palmer shares a poem that I think gets right to the heart of what call is and what it means to follow Jesus’s call in our lives and in our church. It’s a poem about the "thread" that runs through our lives — a thread that can guide us if we hold onto it: The Way It Is by William Stafford There's a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can't get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread. Here is what Parker Palmer has to say about this thread. “Holding on doesn't make life any easier, but it can keep us from getting lost in the dark woods that swallow us up every now and then. Knowing we can find our way home with that thread in hand, we're more likely to explore the darkness and learn what it has to teach us. [He continues]From time to time, I lose track of the thread of my life. I lose it when I succumb to my own fears, or to other people's expectations, or to the non-stop circus of distractions we call the modern world. So I need to take time to ponder a few questions, which is what I've been doing this week: » As I look back on my life, what's the thread that has given me a sense of meaning and purpose? How can I name or picture it in a way that will keep me more aware of it? » Once I've reclaimed my lost thread and have it firmly in hand, what darkness do I need to enter and explore? For example, what fears do I need to face into and walk through to keep them from shutting me down? » In what kinds of situations do I most often let go of the thread? How can I avoid those situations, or go into them better prepared to deal with their risks?”i Listening for the call of God in our lives, finding and holding onto that thread, is the way that we “find our way home.” It is a process that begins at our birth, and it finds clarity in our baptism, when we are accepting God’s claiming of us as God’s beloved. That thread is the love song that God sings to us through scripture, tradition, and our faith communities, and while we hold onto it, we cannot get lost. Be mindful of this, and treat each other with kindness and generosity in the days to come because you need each other to hear the call of Jesus for your lives and for this church. As I was cleaning out my office this week, I discovered a page of prayers and scripture that I had saved. It was from the back of an old Forward Day by Day, and the editor’s note spoke about how he had chosen these prayers for those going through transitions. It seems appropriate to leave you today with a prayer about our calling from our church father, Basil the Great (330-379). Let us pray. O Lord our God, teach us to ask for the right blessings. Guide the vessel of our life toward yourself, the tranquil haven of all storm-tossed souls. Show us the course we should take. Renew a willing spirit within us. Let your Spirit curb our wayward senses and guide and enable us to our true good, to keep your laws and in all our deeds always to rejoice in your glorious and gladdening presence. For yours is the glory and praise of all your saints for ever and ever. Amen. i. http://www.onbeing.org/blog/a-thread-to-guide-us/7206

First Sunday after the Epiphany--The Baptism of our Lord

1st Sunday after the Epiphany-Yr B January 11, 2015 I recently read a review of a book titled Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. It was written in 2011 by a woman named Sherry Turkle, who is a professor from MIT and an internet scholar. In her book, Turkle shares research and her experiences as a mother and a friend. She quotes children and adults who hesitate to use the phone because it seems awkward and intrusive; it is much easier, they say, to dash off a text or an email. At the same time, Turkle points out, because of the convenience, people expect an immediate response. She describes the anxiety of teenagers when they do not get an immediate reply to their text messages. One girl talks about needing her cell phone for ‘emergencies;’ it turns out what she means by ‘emergency’ is having a feeling without being able to share it. In her research, Turkle has discovered that people today report feeling simultaneously more connected and lonelier than ever before. We look to social media and to others to find affirmation, and while we may garner hundreds of “likes” on Facebook, we still hunger for something deeper, something more. Today we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. It is the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry, and it is also the hint of that something more that we hunger for. As Jesus comes up dripping out of the water, God speaks to him saying, “You are my beloved son. With you I am well pleased.” These words are intimately loving, poignantly powerful. In and through his baptism, Jesus is being claimed by God as God’s beloved. This isn’t just the affirmation that we try to glut ourselves with in our modern lives. Because to get affirmation, we often have to change ourselves to fit in, to be acceptable to our peer group. What Jesus receives from God in his baptism is real and true acceptance—of all that he is and all that he will be. Wrapped in these words of acceptance are the blessings of identity, worth, and unwavering regard for Jesus from the Creator of the Universe. So Jesus’s baptism isn’t just the beginning of his public ministry, it informs every single thing that he does from that point on. When he heals the sick, feeds the hungry, casts out the unclean spirits, it is out of this place of acceptance by God. And his actions toward those whom he encounters convey this radical acceptance of them from God, too.i Back several years ago, Bishop Gray started preaching and teaching about the importance of baptism, and as a part of that, he developed a liturgical piece to go along with it. He’s done it at Council before (some of you may have experience there); I believe he’s even done it here. He takes a bowl of water and invites people to come to the altar rail and he makes the sign of the cross on their foreheads with the water and says to each person, “Remember your baptism.” I have always found this to be powerful, to feel the water once again on my forehead, and what I heard him saying to me in that is the echo of God’s call to each of us in our baptism: “You are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” In and through our baptism, God offers us God’s unwavering acceptance of all that we are, all that we will be. It is poingnant, powerful, and profound, and it is so important that we remember, not just for ourselves but for those whom we live with, at home, at church, at work, in the world, even on social media. We are baptized, as Paul reminds the community in Ephesus into Jesus Christ, something so much greater than ourselves and our own belonging in God. It is important to remember, as that water touches our heads, that just as we are God’s beloved, so is the person kneeling next to us, even when we disagree with them or don’t even like them. This is our call as Christians—to remember our own belovedness and to follow Jesus in living that out in the world, sharing the good news of their belovedness with all whom we encounter and offering that gift of healing and acceptance. So today, we are going to remember. After this homily, we will renew our baptismal vows, the promises we make to be in relationship with God our beloved and to live that acceptance out in the world. I will invite you to come to the altar rail, where I will anoint you with holy water, an outward and visible sign to you that you are God’s beloved, accepted and loved by God. We will be fed with the body of Christ at God’s table, reminded that we belong, not just to God, but to each other, and we will go out into the world to share that love and acceptance. In closing, I share with you a blessing written by the artist and poet Jan Richardson. Beginning with Beloved A Blessing Begin here: Beloved. Is there any other word needs saying, any other blessing could compare with this name, this knowing? Beloved. Comes like a mercy to the ear that has never heard it. Comes like a river to the body that has never seen such grace. Beloved. Comes holy to the heart aching to be new. Comes healing to the soul wanting to begin again. Beloved. Keep saying it and though it may sound strange at first, watch how it becomes part of you, how it becomes you, as if you never could have known yourself anything else, as if you could ever have been other than this: Beloved.ii (Words at the anointing: You are God’s beloved. With you God is well pleased.) i. These ideas about acceptance versus affirmation were informed and inspired by the blog post written by David Lose at www.davidlose.net. ii. www.paintedprayerbook.com

2nd Sunday after Christmas

2nd Sunday after Christmas January 4, 2015 I want you to take a moment and think about all that has been left out of this week’s gospel story. Our passage recounts, very matter-of-factly, what Christians call “the flight into Egypt” of the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, and the young Jesus, just after the wise men have departed. An angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt because King Herod is coming for them. They settle in Egypt, and Joseph has another dream where the angel tells him it is time to go back home, but Joseph decides to settle in a slightly different place—Nazareth—because he is afraid to go back to Judea. What is missing from this story that we all know accompanies journeys, new beginnings, changes (sudden or otherwise), and heading off into the unknown? It is the uncertainty. The story makes it sound like Joseph just woke up from his dream and loaded everyone up and headed to Egypt, but we know differently, don’t we? This story intersects vividly with our own stories this week. As I begin to take my leave from you, the most prevailing emotion that I have encountered in both you and me is uncertainty. What is going to happen to us? Who will be our priest? Where will we live? Will I be able to sell my house? What will it be like? Just as we have come over the threshold of a new year, we all stand on the threshold of a new journey. And thresholds are both exciting and difficult, challenging and exhilarating. I read a blog post by Parker Palmer this week that has to do with crossing thresholds and living with questions and uncertainty. It has been of great help to me in living with my own questions, anxiety, and uncertainty, and so I share it with you in the hopes it will help you as well. Five Questions for Crossing the Threshold by Parker J. Palmer "This “New Year” thing is a curious fiction, isn’t it? The planet on which we’ve hitched a ride has been wheeling through space a lot longer than 2,014 years. And the hoopla we make at midnight on December 31st is a tad over the top for one more tick of the clock. But this annual ritual allows us to imagine that maybe, just maybe, we're on the threshold of something new and better — and some of our imaginings might come true, depending on what we do. Here’s a small poem that’s large with wise guidance for threshold-crossing: We look with uncertainty by Anne Hillman We look with uncertainty beyond the old choices for clear-cut answers to a softer, more permeable aliveness which is every moment at the brink of death; for something new is being born in us if we but let it. We stand at a new doorway, awaiting that which comes… daring to be human creatures, vulnerable to the beauty of existence. Learning to love. I’m going to pass on making New Year’s resolutions this time around. Instead, I’ll take Rilke’s famous advice about “living the questions,” and carry into the New Year a few of the wonderings Hillman’s poem evokes in me: • How can I let go of my need for fixed answers in favor of aliveness? • What is my next challenge in daring to be human? • How can I open myself to the beauty of nature and human nature? • Who or what do I need to learn to love next? And next? And next? • What is the new creation that wants to be born in and through me? We look with uncertainty to the year ahead. But if we wrap our lives around life-giving questions — and live our way into their answers a bit more every day — the better world we want and need is more likely to come into being." i May God gives us the faith and the courage to dwell for a season with our questions, our uncertainty: “for something new is being born in us if we but let it. We stand at a new doorway, awaiting that which comes… daring to be human creatures, vulnerable to the beauty of existence. Learning to love.” i. http://www.onbeing.org/blog/five-questions-for-crossing-the-threshold/7167

Christmas Eve 2014

Christmas Eve 2014 There is another gospel that can be read for Christmas eve, but I’ve never been brave enough to supplant the beloved story from Luke (fearing to create the St. Peter’s Christmas eve riot). And yet, this other gospel reading is the one that speaks to my heart this Christmas, so with you having already heard the treasured favorite, let me share with you the alternative: John 1:1-14 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. I am struck by the images of the light and the dark that this gospel gives us, a reality that is actually much more present and a part of our experience than the bucolic scene of a stable-born baby and shepherds in the fields visited by blinding celestial beings. While the traditional Christmas story from Luke touches us because of its familiarity, its connection with innocence, the Christmas story from John is a mysterious kind of challenge. We know this light and dark of which John speaks. We see it in others and in ourselves. Jesus came as the light that shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness is still around. It even sometimes seems to triumph, to squash out the light. That’s why we so desperately need Christmas. Not for the presents or the parties or the food or the family or the carols. We need Christmas because it is a reminder that no matter how it seems, the light continues to shine in the darkness and the darkness does not, cannot, will not overcome it. Christmas also comes around every year with a mysterious invitation, to “make of ourselves the light.” The Quaker writer Parker Palmer writes about this in a blog post where he shares a poem written by the poet Mary Oliver. Palmer challenges us to “be the light for another.” Let me share with you Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Buddha’s Last Instruction” and Palmer’s reflection on it. The Buddha's Last Instruction by Mary Oliver "Make of yourself a light" said the Buddha, before he died. I think of this every morning as the east begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness, to send up the first signal—a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green. An old man, he lay down between two sala trees, and he might have said anything, knowing it was his final hour. The light burns upward, it thickens and settles over the fields. Around him, the villagers gathered and stretched forward to listen. Even before the sun itself hangs, disattached, in the blue air, I am touched everywhere by its ocean of yellow waves. No doubt he thought of everything that had happened in his difficult life. And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire— clearly I'm not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. Slowly, beneath the branches, he raised his head. He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd. Parker Palmer reflects, “We are the frightened crowd the Buddha looked into as he drew his last breath. We are the people who need to be light for one another. There are many kinds of light. There's the light that allows people lost in the dark to find their way home. There's the light of compassion that comforts everything it touches. There's the light of truth-telling about ourselves that allows us to see what we are doing — or allowing — that has helped bring this darkness upon us. There's the light that shows us the way forward toward a better world. There's the light of courage to walk that path no matter who says "Stop!" No one of us can provide all of the light we need. But every one of us can shed some kind of light. Every day we can ask ourselves, "What kind of light can I provide today?"i As we celebrate Christmas this night and beyond, giving thanks for Jesus Christ, the one true light that shines in the darkness, which the darkness cannot overcome, may we all have the awareness to try to reflect just a little of that light for someone else, and may we ask ourselves, each and every day, “What kind of light can I provide today?” i. http://www.onbeing.org/blog/the-light-for-another/7141

3rd Sunday of Advent

Advent 3B December 14, 2014 I heard a story this week about the flourishing of catalogs in our society, and how strange that is given that the Internet has just about killed other forms of printed material—encyclopedias, the Rolodex, the paper map. The news story was asking the question, “So why are catalogs flourishing?” Take a moment and think about your home and your relationship with catalogs. Do you throw them directly into the recycle bin before they even make it into the house? Do you have stacks of them piled somewhere (perhaps with the rest of your mail, like in my house?) Do you dog ear the corner of pages, circle things that you like? My earliest memory of a catalog was being a child and going to see my grandparents, who always had a copy of the Christmas catalog from Penny’s. I was allowed and encouraged by my Ma Ma go through the catalog and circle the things I’d like for Christmas. It was a magical experience, wishing and hoping for all those beautiful toys! The NPR story made me remember all that, and it struck a chord in me as it talked about its hypothesis for why catalogs are still around. They quote Sue Johnson, a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier in Bay City, Mich., who has hauled catalogs and other mail in a satchel for 28 years. "It builds up the muscles in your arms," she says. "A lot." But Johnson also says that she likes to curl up on her couch at home, and look at catalogs. “I'll sit here and read catalogs for hours and just look at stuff," she says. "Stuff I either wish I had, or maybe something will give me an idea to make something." The story also has Felix Carbullido, chief marketing officer at Williams-Sonoma, talking about how catalogs are used in sales in that company. "Our customers come in with the catalog dogeared and refer to the catalog as 'this is the style of my home that I'm looking to achieve,' " he says. That style you've seen portrayed in high-end catalogs is often a tableau: maybe it's a couch, a bookcase, a couple of rugs, plants, sunlight streaming into a casually elegant room. Even if you're not buying, the retailers want you to keep dreaming. And that's one reason the catalogs keep coming.”i In an essay about today’s gospel, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this type of dreaming that is provoked from us by the catalog companies. She writes, “Depending on local conditions, preachers will want to spend some time thinking about the ways in which faith and hope can cancel each other out this time of year. Faith, by definition, is a radical trust in what God is doing, even when the divine mode of operation is far from clear. Even in the wilderness, even without a proper title for himself of a proper name for the coming One, John the Voice goes on testifying to the light…. Hope, on the other hand, can easily assume the dimensions of individuals and corporate wants. I hope for a white Christmas, a less contentious church, a closer relationship with Jesus, a God who makes sense. While there is nothing wrong with any of these hopes, they still carry considerable cargo, suggesting that I know not only what my community and I need from God, but also how God might best come to us. The only hope on this Messiah table is the bare hope of God’s arrival, sweeping all clutter away.”ii Is it true that faith and hope cancel each other out this time of year? I certainly can resonate with what Taylor writes about “the considerable cargo” of our hopes. But I think hope is absolutely essential to a relationship with God, so how do we get around her dilemma? How do we reconcile this thinking with our reading from Isaiah for today that is filled with Israel’s hope for restoration? How do we reconcile this with Paul’s closing line from our epistle reading today: “The one who calls you is faithful…”? Another book I am reading talks about Taylor’s dilemma between faith and hope with a little more nuance. It is called Living With Hope: A scientist looks at Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany by John Polkinghorne, who is both a physicist and priest in the Church of England. Polkinghorne writes about the difference between true hope and two other attitudes which are commonly confused with hope: optimism and wishful thinking. “[Optimism] springs from a calculation of how things may be expected to turn out, with the belief that in the end it will all prove not to be too bad. It is the feeling possessed by the person who things they know a ‘certainty’ for tomorrow’s horse race. Wishful thinking, by contrast, is not at all concerned with probabilities, for it simply sails off into the blue of ungrounded longings. It is the feeling possessed by someone who daydreams how nice it would be if their modest weekly ‘investment’ in the National Lottery made them an instant multimillionaire. Neither of these attitudes is the same as hope, which neither tries to predict the future from the present nor neglects the constraints that the reality of the present imposes. Christian hope is open to the unexpected character of what lies ahead precisely because it relies on the faithfulness of a God who is always doing new things.”iii “The One who calls you is faithful.” So what are we as individuals and as a church to do with all this? Are we supposed to stop our optimism and wishful thinking and opt only for hope and faith in a God who is faithful? First, I think we must spend time analyzing and characterizing what we often assume is hope in our own lives and in the life of our church. Is it really the true hope that Polkinghorn talks about or is it more or what Taylor refers to as hope, a wish fulfillment or optimism? Those things, in and of themselves, are not bad; they just aren’t hope. Second, we can ask if this hope that we assess is something that we want to just happen or if it is something that we are called to work toward? True hope, I think, is one in which we have a responsibility to act with God in order to participate in God’s bringing the hope to fulfillment. If it is true hope, then how are you, how are we being called to act? I’ll leave you with a little story from our history here, that fits I always think about when I read this passage from Isaiah. It gets to the heart of what is hope and what is wish fulfillment or optimism. After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Coast and folks were starting to look out and survey the damage, parishioners here discovered our great, beautiful oak trees were pushed over from the fury of the surge and the storm. These proud, strong “oaks of righteousness” were lying on their sides, with their roots exposed. So the parishioners gathered, with some heavy machinery, and pushed the oak trees back upright so that their roots would once again be down in the ground. They acted and they hoped that the glory of these wise old oaks would be restored. And I am told that we didn’t lose a single oak tree. In closing, I share with you a story, written by a woman named Shannon Lynch. It is titled “More Vinegar than Honey.” She writes, “To my social detriment, I can’t talk music or fashion or movie stars. I can talk about ideas, but I can’t quote books unless the book is in front of me. All the aloneness in my life, in my marriage, has made me a retreater. Now that I’m out of my marriage, mostly I think about finding a job. So easily I vacillate between surrendering and freaking out: How am I going to take care of my boys? Where do I find safety and community for us? What has value? What is valueless? Vinegar is cheap and cleans well. Honey is expensive and sweetens. But what of this? All I’m doing is looking for a job, and I haven’t been able to get even a vinegar job. Is it because I’m 51? Is it because I’m not very likable? In God’s Pauper, a fictional account of the life of Saint Francis by Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis dreams he bathes and feeds a foul-smelling man and, suddenly, he knows how to live his life. I dream about a woman I hardly know, a woman with well-shaped legs and the easy smile of abundance, talking about having a tea before her wedding. She turns away from me and, suddenly, tall policemen drive off with my children and my dog while I stand crouched and screaming in the street. It’s not the best way to wake up. And that job I thought I had, I hadn’t. Then I hear 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai on the radio telling me I have to stand up for myself. I have to put down the shoe. Here I am right now, more vinegar than honey. I have an education. I have a talent. But you, dear sister, have the courage of a thousand women. There’s no one in silence or action to tell me what to do anymore. I have to become a lunatic of courage. Oh God, I’ll just cry and everyone will see me cry, see me for the fool I am. Francis says, “We’re going to start with small, easy things; then, little by little we shall try our hand at the big things. And after that, after we finish the big things, we shall undertake the impossible.” This is my first small, easy thing”.iv i. http://www.npr.org/2014/12/11/369603493/heres-why-retailers-keep-sending-you-catalogs ii.Feasting on the Word Year B Vol 1. Ed. Bartlett and Taylor. Homiletical perspective for Advent 3. Westminster John Knox: Louisville, 2008, p72-73. iii.Polkinhorne, John. Living With Hope: A Scientist looks at Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. WJK: Louisville, 2003, p 4. iv. http://www.onbeing.org/blog/more-vinegar-than-honey/7079

The Second Sunday of Advent Year B

Advent 2 Year B December 7, 2014 Advent is a time of new beginnings. The liturgical “new year,” it can be a time when we make resolutions about how we live our moral and spiritual lives. Our gospel reading for today emphasizes this with its opening line: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Scholars think that this isn’t necessarily the beginning of Mark’s gospel, but it is, rather, the title. And interestingly enough, Mark begins, not with Jesus or even Mary and Joseph but with Isaiah, with God’s messenger, and with John the Baptist. So what does John the Baptist have to teach us about new beginnings this Advent season? In and through John’s ministry, we see that new beginnings are born out of repentance and humility. We only begin anew when we realize that our old ways are no longer working. We only begin anew when we are open to change and when we open our hearts in willingness to leave behind that which no longer fits us, that which separates us from God’s love. I’ve learned something about this repentance and humility this week. On Monday, my husband invited me to join him in reading Morning Prayer on a daily basis. I will confess that I haven’t read Morning Prayer regularly since seminary, but because he invited me to join him, I did. I appreciated the broader exposure to scripture (especially the Psalms) over the course of the week. But what really struck me was the power in doing daily confession as a part of Morning Prayer. I found that my failures were much more present and real when I was examining my life daily as opposed to only weekly (in making confession only on Sunday). I found it was both more powerful and more freeing, when I asked myself daily “in what ways did I fail God and others yesterday?” But, strangely enough, I also found in making daily confession, that my blessings and my gratitude were much more present as well. When we reflect upon our lives daily, then it becomes a rich time of repentance, and humility and also for new beginnings. And so I invite you to join me in this exercise this Advent season. If you do nothing else, say the confession of sin daily and assure yourself of God’s pardon as it is found in the BCP on pages 79 and 80. But it is also important to remember that this is so much more than some sort of spiritual New Year’s Resolution. Going back to the gospel, when we remember how the gospel of Mark doesn’t really end, it means that we also get to participate in the “beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” How we live our lives matters in the story of God’s redeeming of the world. We then become emboldened to look beyond our own individual lives at other parts of our society, our church, and our world that need repentance and redemption. We are an important part of the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ I read a poem this week that was posted on Parker Palmer’s blog. He was writing about living out fully the questions of our lives and he ended with this poem. I think it is a different kind of confession-a way to examine our lives and the world around us daily to assess where we need to repent and where we have encountered God’s blessing already. Questions Before Dark by Jeanne Lohmann Day ends, and before sleep when the sky dies down, consider your altered state: has this day changed you? Are the corners sharper or rounded off? Did you live with death? Make decisions that quieted? Find one clear word that fit? At the sun's midpoint did you notice a pitch of absence, bewilderment that invites the possible? What did you learn from things you dropped and picked up and dropped again? Did you set a straw parallel to the river, let the flow carry you downstream?i i http://www.onbeing.org/blog/the-questions-we-ask-ourselves/7075

The First Sunday of Advent

Advent 1 Year B November 30, 2014 “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence-- as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!” And so we enter this new year of the church, this first Sunday of Advent with a bang! These words of Isaiah are a rather dark beginning as we begin telling the story all over again for another year. It is both strange and appropriate that we begin with a lament where we see both a baffling God who hides from God’s people and a redeeming God who is their father and maker. Composed sometime after the children of Israel are taken into captivity in Babylon and before the rebuilding of the temple, this portion of Isaiah reflects the people of God’s disorientation in the wake of a devastating exile. And we know a little of that disorientation, don’t we? We live in a time of already and not yet; a contradictory time of frenzied activity and a strange sort of emptiness; a time of both unceasing access to other people and ideas and a deep longing for fulfillment and meaningful connection. This season of Advent can be for us a disorienting season that is “marked in equal measures by joyful anticipation and hectic, even pressured, preparation. Dinners, buying gifts, parties, cards, school holiday programs... [And, oh, the decorating!] Each and all of it can be wonderful, and each and all of it can become rather overwhelming.”i But one of the gifts of Advent is that it shakes the church and us out of Ordinary Time with the insistent news that it’s time to think about fresh possibilities for fulfillment and human wholeness. It’s a bit contradictory, this fresh start, this season of hope in the midst of this season of darkness. It is not nearly as easy to be hope-filled and expectant as we slowly slink toward winter and cold, dark days. And many of us fear the dark. It is when the familiar landscape suddenly becomes strange and sinister and unfamiliar. During Advent, we are invited, even encouraged to dwell in the dark for just a season, to search out the hidden God in the dark corners of our world and our souls, searching by the light of just a couple of candles. And that is very counter to what is going on in the world around us. One commentator writes that she recalls a comment that “our country has changed over the past years from one that wanted to be good to one that wants to feel good. We see some of this desire every Christmas season as people run from store to store and shopping mall to shopping mall searching for the things that will bring them and their families some sort of fulfillment and happiness.”ii Advent is a season where we are invited to dwell with our longing without trying to rush to fill it, where we live in the tension of our relationship with a God who is at times hidden and who is at other times fully present and actively redeeming. And what we long for, really, that we rush to fill isn’t more. We long for peace. And we cannot create peace for ourselves through selfishness. Peace comes when we open ourselves to vulnerability, to brokenness. Peace comes when we open ourselves to hope. Peace comes when we are willing to go a little deeper, to dwell in the dark, to peek around and become friends with what we might find there. So perhaps…our task this Advent is to be the ones who look to do good above trying to feel good. Perhaps our task this Advent is to dwell in the dark a little while, to sit with our own longing and with the longing of others. We do this by looking for Jesus in the need of those around us and to be awake to God’s presence in response to our own need. In this season of making lists and checking them twice, I invite you to make a different sort of list –call it an Advent list. You can make this list in your head or on paper, but I want you to list a few of the things that will occupy your Advent this year. Now, think about how in each of those events and activities you might be more attentive to the vulnerability and need of those around you and more honest and open about your own need that you might receive the care of others. iii I’ll leave you with some words from the poet T.S. Eliot to help guide you in the making of your Advent lists: “I said to my soul, be still and let/ the dark come upon you/which shall be the darkness of God.” i. David Lose on his blog: http://www.davidlose.net/2014/11/advent-1-b/ ii. from Feasting on the word Pastoral perpective p 4 iii. This idea came from David Lose on his blog: http://www.davidlose.net/2014/11/advent-1-b/