ADVENT 3B: Hallowed Be

Lectionary Passage:  1 Thessalonians 5: 16-19 (20-24)
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.

How do you pray without ceasing?  I mean, OK, now, let's pray.  We pray and we pray.  Things are going OK.  We're praying along.  Wait, who's phone is that?  Hold on, it's mine.  Stop praying.  Answer the phone.  OK, now, I need to pick up the house a bit.  And I need to write the blog for tomorrow.  And tomorrow is trash day.  And Maynard needs his dinner. And, to be honest, I think I do too.  Pray without ceasing?  Really?  How do you fit that in?  And, sadly, the Spirit is quenched.

Paul was not laying down a rule for prayer.  Paul never envisioned us living body-bent and knee-bowed 24/7.  After all, there is WAY too much work to do.  We've got some Kingdom-building to accomplish, don't we?  No, Paul was not calling us to a life spent in prayer; He was calling us to a prayerful life, a life that is sacred, hallowed, a life lived in the unquenchable Spirit of God.  It's not about logging prayer hours.  Rather, it's about perspective, about seeing everything that is your life as hallowed and holy, as of God, as prayer.  Olga Savin says that “[the Scriptures] tell us that ceaseless prayer in pursuit of God and communion with [God] is not simply life’s meaning or goal, the one thing worth living for, but it is life itself.”  And a life lived the way it is called to be lived is the very will of God.  It is prayer.

And so, pray without ceasing.  When you answer the phone, cherish the family member or the friend or the co-worker who has called you.  In fact, give thanks for the person on the other end who inadvertantly dialed the wrong number.  After all, they, too, are your brother or sister.  God has called us to love one another.  And as you clean and straighten, look around you.  Your dwelling is more than shelter.  It is an expression of you.  Give thanks for the you that God has made.  And then do what God has called you to do.  Use your talents.  Give thanks for them.  They were given to you by God to use in the building of God's Kingdom.  And that big black lab that wants his dinner?  Personally, I thank God everyday for bringing us together.  How did I find a companion like this on the internet?  He needed me; I needed him.  Isn't that why Creation exists?  Then sit back and taste dinner.  Taste that which has been lovingly grown by the Divine.  And give thanks.  Every household task, everything thing you do, do as a prayer.  And all of those never-ending interruptions?  Think of them as holy.  (After all, think about it--when did God show up as planned?)  Make everything you do an offering to the Divine.  Let everything you have and everything you are be a preparation for God's coming.  Embrace it.  Rejoice in it.  Give thanks.

In this season of waiting for the coming of God, pray without ceasing.  In other words, live your life to the fullest and the best.  Offer it to God.  And rejoice in what you have--companionship, beauty, work, love.  G.K. Chesterton exhorted us to “let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.” I love that.  You know, God is coming. It will happen. But don’t forget that God is here. Rejoice! And live your life waiting and rejoicing, rejoicing and waiting.  And, most of all, love.  That is how you pray without ceasing.
 
In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of seeing your life as prayer, of living in a love affair with God.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT: Awakening

ADVENT 1B:  Isaiah 13: (24-31) 32-37
³²“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.³³Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.³⁴It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.³⁵Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn,³⁶or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.³⁷And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

The first day of Advent...the first day of the Christian year...and (I know), the first day that I've written a blog posting in a really long time.  We begin this Year B of our Lectionary year with a reading from The Gospel According to Mark, whose writer really just sort of skips over the whole Advent / Christmas thing and cuts right to the chase.  Most over-personalized readings of this Scripture leave us with a fear of what comes next.  (Oh my, am I ready?  What's going to happen to me?) We quickly go to visions of those who are unprepared being uncomfortably ripped from what they know or, as a series of cult fiction writings would depict it, being flat out left behind!  But keep reading...this is not meant to scare us; it is meant to wake us up.  Sure, it is meant to remind us that there is something coming!  We do not want to miss it.  But, more than that, we do not want to miss the present spiritual awakening that we are all having in this very moment.

We have skewed our understanding of Advent a bit.  I think all of us know that.  But, really, can you blame us?  The world is so bent on being prepared for what comes next that it tends to live one season ahead at all times--the Halloween decorations go up the end of August, the Thankgiving decorations go up the end of September, and the Christmas decorations go up the end of October.  The twelve days of Christmas tide, will of course, be filled with merchandise sales, a couple of unreplaced burned out Christmas lights, and and a flowering of little red hearts filled with candy to make sure we're ready for the next thing.  Somewhere in there, Advent is lost.  Oh, we Christians, do alright with it.  We faithfully light one candle at a time while we begrudingingly ward off the singing of any Christmas carols.  But Advent is not merely a season of preparation for Christmas.  It is much, much more.  It is from the Latin "Adventus", which means arrival or coming.  It is not really meant to be only a time of shopping and checking off our "to do" list for the December 25th festival. Rather, Advent is our awakening to the realization that the Divine is even now spilling into our lives, even now a new humanity is being birthed, and even now all of Creation is being reformed and recreated.

We cannot live one season ahead.  God will come when God will come.  The full revealing of what God has in store is yet to be.  But this season of Advent, this season of waiting, awakens us that we might see that it has already started to be.  The feast has yet to be set but the dancing has begun.  All we have to do is learn to stay awake.

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of your own awakening to God's Sacred Presence that is all around you.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli   

What is This Thing About Wheat?

Scripture Reading: John 12: 24-33 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

Do you remember running through the sprinkler when you were kids? You want to do it. You want to feel that cool, refreshing feeling right after you do it. But it’s that first blast of cold, paralyzing water that takes your breath away that you dread and so you put it off. And then, finally, you hold your breath and run through it as fast as you can. That’s almost what we have a tendency to do with the cross. We dread it as we slowly walk toward it, dragging our feet a bit, not really wanting to experience it again—the memories and reliving of the horror, and the violence, and the suffering, and the pain. And as we approach, we then let our minds run quickly through it toward Easter morning.

But now is the time for the Son of Man to be glorified. For, as Jesus says, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just single lone grain, worth nothing; but if it dies, it bears fruit and lives on. You see, wheat is known as a caryopsis, meaning that the outer “seed” and the inner fruit are connected. The seed essentially has to die so that the fruit can emerge. If you were to dig around in the ground and uproot a stalk of wheat, you would not find the original seed. It is dead and gone. In essence, the grain must allow itself to be changed.

So what Jesus is trying to tell us here is that if we do everything in our power to protect our lives the way they are—if we successfully thwart change, avoid conflict, prevent pain—then at the end we will find that we have no life at all. He goes on…”Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. And whoever does this, God will honor.” This is the only time that the Gospel speaks of God honoring someone. And we begin to see the connection unfolding. Whoever follows Jesus through his death, will become part of his everlasting life.

Jesus wanted us to understand not just that he was leaving, not just that his death was imminent, but that this journey to the cross was not just his to make, but ours. Now is the time to walk with Jesus to the cross.

And, yet, we still struggle with the whole meaning of the cross. We still struggle over why Jesus had to die at all. Why couldn’t Jesus just figure out a way out of this whole sordid thing and stay around? The world needed to hear more from him. Because then it just would have stayed a seed. But, you see, because Jesus was willing to die, was willing to be changed; God could raise him from the dead and give fruit to the world.

And the cross…whether you believe that God sent Jesus to die, or that human fear and preoccupation with the self put Jesus to death, or whether you think the whole thing was some sort of colossal misunderstanding…the point of the cross is that God took the most horrific, the most violent, the worst that the world and humanity could offer and recreated it into life. And through it, everything—even sin, evil, and suffering is redefined in the image of God. By absorbing himself into the worst of the world and refusing to back away from it, Jesus made sure that it was all put to death with him. By dying unto himself, he created life that will never be defeated. And in the same way, we, too, are baptized into Jesus’ death and then rise to new life.

This is why we walk this journey toward the cross. This is why we spend time there before waking to the Easter lilies. This is the paschal mystery—that true life comes only through journeys through death where we come to understand who God is for us. Christ is died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. God has given us a new consciousness and a new way of seeing life and in an act of ultimate divine love, the cross became God’s highest act of Creation. It is God’s recreation of everything. "But if it dies, it will bear much fruit."

So go forth toward the cross, die to self, and bear much fruit in Christ!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Oil and Water

Scripture Reading: John 12: 1-11
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii* and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’ When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

Holy Week has begun. We have walked this road to the cross throughout this Lenten season and now it is upon us. Most of us don’t really know what it is that we’re supposed to do with this week. We have gone through this season hearing its call to repentance, to emptying, to looking at things differently. But, still, the ending is beginning to loom bigger than we imagined it would be. What is it, exactly, that we’re supposed to do this week?

Henri Nouwen tells us that “passion is a kind of waiting—waiting for what other people are going to do.”[i] He claims that all of Jesus’ life leading up to this week—all of the teaching, all of the healing, all of the miracle-making, the welcoming of sinners, the turning of tables in front of the saints, every action that was part of who Jesus was ends in this week of passion. And the reason is that, as Nouwen says, “All action ends in passion because the response to our action is out of our hands. That is the mystery of work, the mystery of love, the mystery of friendship, the mystery of community…And that is the mystery of Jesus’ love. God reveals [Godself] in Jesus as the one who waits for our response.”[ii] This is the week when Jesus stops doing and waits to be handed over. This is the week when Jesus waits on others.

We are not used to a Christ who does nothing. We are, rather, more comfortable when Jesus is showing us how to do what we’re supposed to do as followers. We are not accustomed to such a passive Christ. I looked up the word “passive” in an etymological dictionary. The root is the Latin passiuus. And then, surprisingly enough, it says “See Passion.” The etymological root of passion, the term that we use to describe Jesus’ suffering journey to the cross, is the Latin passionem, or suffering. And it says “See Passive.” The two words are related. The “Passion”, this time of suffering and being “handed over”, is a movement from planned and intentional action to no longer being in control. All of Jesus’ actions are accomplished. It is finished. It is a time of waiting—waiting for others’ response.

In our lectionary Gospel reading for this Holy Monday, we find this passive Jesus. He visits the home of friends, the home of those whom he had served, those for whom he had done things. And, it says, they give a dinner for him. Jesus is the guest of honor. After all the doing, after all the action, after all the stuff, he now spends time with friends. And they serve him. And then the passage tells us that Mary takes a pound of costly perfumed nard, breaks the seal, and lavishly pours it onto Jesus’ feet. Then as the oil runs down his feet and begins to drip to the floor, she wipes his feet with her hair. The whole house is filled with this overwhelming fragrance.

Well, the disciples just couldn’t leave it alone. What in the world was she doing? Here is this man who has worked for years to bring peace and justice to the world, to heal others, to end poverty and oppression and you waste this oil by pouring it out on him! That oil could have been sold. Things could have been done with that money! We could have done great ministry with what you just poured on his feet! But you have wasted it! You have squandered it!
Then Jesus responds. “Leave her alone,” he says. You see, she gets it. She understands. I do not have long to be with you. She knows where I am going. And she responds. This woman loves Jesus. In fact, she loves Jesus so much that she defies the expected and instead pours out the abundance of her life and anoints Jesus for his burial. This is not the time to talk about budgets or the ways things are normally done. This is the time of Jesus’ waiting and her response. As she anointed Jesus, Mary entered Jesus’ Passion and understood what it meant to have a personal relationship with Christ.

There are those in our society that would describe that breakthrough as being “born again”. But that phrase, commonplace and probably overused and misused as it is today, was not even around over a hundred years ago. Instead, the words that were used to describe this coming into who Jesus is was to say that one was “seized by the power of a great affection.” Isn’t that an incredible phrase—to be “seized by the power of a great affection”? You see, we 21st century folks usually think we have it all figured out. We know what we’re called to do to make disciples of Jesus Christ. We live our lives as best we can within the framework of what God wants us to do. And we do what we can for others by reaching out in the name of Christ. All of that is wonderful. But are we truly “seized by the power of a great affection”? Why do you think Jesus did everything that he did while he was on this earth? Was it just to show us what it is we’re supposed to do? No, Jesus was more than merely an exemplary human being put here for us to emulate. Jesus came to reveal God’s love, to show us how much God loves each of us and how much God desires us, to make known once and for all the affection that God has for all of God’s Creation and for us as children of God. Jesus was God made known, Emmanuel.

There is a story from the Sufi mystical tradition of a disciple that comes to an elder for direction.

“Where shall I find God?” the disciple asked the elder. “God is with you,” the Holy One replied. “But if that is true,” the disciple asked, “why can I not see this Presence?” “Because you are like the fish who, when in the ocean, never notices the water.” It is not that God is not with us; it is that we are unaware of that incredible Presence.[iii]

When we finally stop doing what we think we should be doing and listen for that which God is calling us to be we will become aware of that extraordinary Presence that is God. And in that becoming, we enter the Christ-life.

In our faith understanding, the Sacrament of Baptism is the beginning of our life as a Christian, a new life in Christ, the beginning of a journey toward oneness with God, toward the life of Christ. The waters of Baptism remind us of God’s ever-Presence in our lives, of God’s claim on us, and of the great love that God has for us that was revealed in Christ. It is sacramental because it is God’s love made visible for us. Through this sacrament, we enter this journey with God.
In much the same way, Mary poured the oil upon Jesus. The act was sacramental. Mary understood that love. She entered that love. Indeed, she was “seized by the power of a great affection”. And in pouring the oil, she entered Jesus’ Passion. She became part of Jesus’ journey to the cross.

In Baptism, God uses water to make God’s love visible to us. And as Mary poured the oil on Christ, she made her love visible to God. And, do you remember your basic chemistry lesson? If you pour oil into the water, the oil is raised to the top. Oil and water…God uses both to make this incredible love visible to us. And immersed in that love, we will find ourselves “seized by the power of a great affection.”

This is the week when we come to the end of all our doing. This is the week when we walk with Christ through betrayal and suffering and last suppers and final endings. This is the week when we finally realize that we can do nothing else. And on that final day, as the passive Christ is handed over, there is nothing more for him to do other than wait for our response. Who will follow me? Who will come to me with all your misery and your sins, with all your trouble and your needs, and with all your longings to be loved. Who will follow me? Who will hand over their lives just as I have done that you too might be raised to new life? Because it is then that the oil will be poured out for you in much the same way as you are immersed in the waters of your Baptism.

This week is not an easy one to walk. Sometimes we are still not sure what it is that we’re supposed to do. But this week is not about us; it is not about what we do or how we do it; this week is the week that we are called to be “seized by the power of a great affection”, to become one with Christ, to enter Christ’s suffering and passion and waiting, to make our very lives a sacramental journey. And as we come closer and closer to what seems to be a final ending, we will finally be aware that we are never really alone. God calls us. God is waiting for our response.

In the Name of the One who journeys with us to the Cross!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

[i] Henri J.M. Nouwen, “From Action to Passion”, in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books f/ Plough Publishing, 2003), 179-185.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Joan Chittister, There Is a Season (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 14.

From Palms to Silence

Scripture Reading: Mark 11: 1-11
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” ’ They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Today is Palm Sunday. It was glorious this morning! The day was beautiful. While it was a little dark at the early service, by the time 11:00 rolled around, it was sunny with a little breeze. (Not like last year, when the gale-force winds wrapped a Lenten banner around me just as I was rounding the corner into the church! I'm sure I provided quite a show for the passersby on Main Street.) The crowds poured into the sanctuary, palms waving, while the brass ensemble played. We like parades. We like celebrations. Just for a moment, we are at the height of Jesus' life--his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Just for a moment, we feel like victory is about to be declared, that our player has won the game, that our beliefs have been proven right. We wave the palm branches and sing the triumphant hymns. And then....silence.

Just as quickly we move from the Palm Processional to the Passion. Just as quickly we move from triumphalism to surrender. We read through the account of Jesus' Passion, suffering, and death. The palm branches now litter the sanctuary floor. We step on them to stand and sing "O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done." And reality sets in as the sheer purple fabric is draped over the cross.

I have not usually liked the idea of the whole Palm/Passion Sunday thing. It has always felt like we were trying to cram a whole week of despair and suffering into a few minutes and get it over with--sort of like swallowing bad-tasting medicine quickly before it causes any real damage to our palate. But I am struck with the rawness of juxtaposing the whole triumphalism thing with the images of hopelessness and despair. Perhaps it makes us wake up and take notice. Perhaps it makes us finally realize the ludicrousness of the way we sometimes lives our lives, of the way we sometimes think about things, in the face of what God is calling us to be, in the face of where God is calling us to follow.

And so we enter this week by moving quickly from triumphalism to silence, from celebrating to listening, from action to waiting, and from feeling justified because we believe the way we believe to the Passion of Christ crucified.

Our hosannas sung, our palms waved, let us go with passion into this week.
It is a time to curse fig trees that do not yield fruit,
It is a time to cleanse our temples of any blasphemy.
It is a time to greet Jesus as the Lord's Anointed One,
to lavishly break our alabaster and pour perfume out for him

without counting the cost.
It is a time for preparation...

(From "Holy Week", Kneeling in Jerusalem, by Ann Weems, p. 67.)
So go forth on your journey to the cross and prepare for your Christ!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Becoming Human

The time is almost here. In just a few hours, the door to the Divine will swing open and God and all of heaven will burst into the world. If you stop and listen, just for a moment, you can hear the eternal harps in the distance as they approach our lives. Oh, sure, it's happened before. But can't you feel it? Doors opening, light flooding in, the earth filled with a new vision of peace eternal. Maybe, just maybe, tonight will be different.

The child in the manger is, of course, no ordinary child, but God Incarnate, the Word made flesh. God took the form of a human--just an ordinary human--a human like you and me--and was born and dwelt with us--still Divine, but in every way human (because you see God in all of God's wisdom and all of God's mystery can do that!) This Holy Incarnation was not meant to show us how to be Divine but, rather, how to be human. We see ourselves as "only human", as if that excuses us from being who God called us to be. But the point is that God calls us to be human, made in the image of God (not like God, but in the image--a reflection of God, Incarnate). Jesus the Christ was born human so that we would know what being human means. And when, like Jesus, we become fully human, our hearts are filled with compassion, connecting us to one another; our eyes are filled with a vision of what God made this world to be; and our lives become holy as they are shaped in the image of God Incarnate. And we, even as humans, can reach out and touch the Divine now that God has burst forth into this world.

On the eve of Christ's birth, let us open our lives to receive this holy child and open our hearts and our eyes that we might finally know what we are called to become--human, made in the image of God, a reflection and an incarnation of God here on earth. This Christmas, let Christ be born in us. This Christmas, let us become fully human.

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

(Phillips Brooks)

The time is almost here. The door is opening and we see heaven beginning to pour in. Go forth and become human, become who God called you to be.

Grace and Peace on this Night of Nights,
Shelli

Becoming Mystery

The way that God comes into our being is not something for which we can plan or project. Think about it--what if rather than always falling on December 25th, Christmas Day came on different days each year and we weren't told until after the day that it had happened? How would you prepare for it then? Because, really, that's the way the first Christmas happened. What if, in the midst of your preparing and your becoming, the time was once again fulfilled, whether or not you were ready? The way that God comes is a mystery, a time fulfilled rather than a time scheduled.

And this day before the eve of Christ's coming finds us on a threshold between darkness and light, between human and divine, between reality and mystery. As we approach Bethlehem, tired from our journey, there are great hoards around us preparing to be counted. It is dusty and crowded and unwelcoming and we are tired of fighting the journey. But there, there in the north, are the quiet stirrings of a door that is beginning to open, a door through which heaven will pour and through which our humanity will somehow mysteriously taste and experience the Divine. How is this happening? "Because," as St. John Chrysostom said, "God is now on earth, and [humanity] in heaven; on every side all things commingle. [God] has come on earth, while being fully in heaven; and while complete in heaven, he is without diminution on earth...Though being the unchanging Word, he became flesh that he might dwell amongst us." [i]

The time is approaching when it will be fulfilled. And the only way for us to enter it is to become mystery and count ourselves among those who reside on that threshold between our lives as they are and the mystery that God holds for us.

Go humbly, humble are the skies,

And low and large and fierce the Star;

So very near the Manger lies

That we may travel far.
(G.K. Chesterton)

So go forth and become mystery!

Grace and Peace,
Shelli


[i] St. John Chrysostom, from "The Mystery", in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas (Plough Publishing)

Prepare to Be Surprised

I am a planner. I am a planner of the worst possible kind. Not only do I make lists; I have lists that I should make on my lists! And this season is one of the worst when it comes to planning. There is so much that needs to be done! Will I get it all done? You know as well as I do that part of the reason that we make lists is so that we won't be surprised. We won't be surprised by forgetting to purchase a gift for someone. We won't be surprised by not having the necessary ingredients for that special holiday dish. (Yes, last year, I left the croissants that I needed for my holiday bread pudding at my house in the freezer. Have you ever tried to make bread pudding without the bread? I just wasn't fully prepared so I spent Christmas afternoon running from store to store trying to find someone that was open--and found the store AND the croissants. Whew!) Being surprised is never a good thing, right?

Unless it's Advent! Isn't that what we're working up toward--being surpised? The coming of Christ was planned and anticipated--for centuries. The plan was this: God in all of God's mighty power would burst forth into the world laying all of our enemies to waste, subduing the powers that be as the winner of a mighty struggle, and taking over the rule of the major cities. Those who followed God would finally be on the winning side. And those who opposed God would be left in ruins. God would be in charge, finally!

And then God surprised us all, sneaking in the back door of a stable or through the darkness and dampness of a grotto, coming quietly in the midst of the great count of citizens, politics and earthly powers in their finest hour, and then...in case we had other plans...coming as a helpless, vulnerable baby born to unknown parents who were only in Bethlehem to be counted. And the surprise of all surprises: those who opposed God were given yet another invitation to God's promises and God's hope. You see, God surprised us on that first Christmas. Isn't that enough for you to prepare to be surpised this year. Things do not go according to our well-laid plans. Thanks be to God!

So go forth and prepare to be surprised!

Grace and Peace,
Shelli

Embracing This Act of Preparation

Our culture tells us to "be prepared" from the time we are children. Even the Gospels hold stories and parables warning against unpreparedness. And in this season, in particular, the threat of being "unprepared" on Christmas morning--without the required number of gifts perfectly wrapped and under the tree, without all of the groceries to make what is certainly an over-abundance of food and treats, and without the house filled with tasteful decorations worthy of a spread in Martha Stewart's Living--drives most of us who are level-headed throughout the other eleven months of the year into a certain frenzy of fearful shopping and wrapping, as if the Christ Child will not come if we do not trim that last hearth.

But think about what the Gospel is trying to say to us. Jesus never claims that perfection must be met to enter the Kingdom of God. God does not call us to be perfect; God calls us to "go on toward perfection" in a never-ending journey of pursuit that brings us nearer and nearer to the heart of God. It is not an "either-or" phenomenon that leaves us "in" or "out" but rather a walk of preparation throughout one's life. Jesus' admonitions to us to "be prepared" did not imply that we would not enter the Kingdom if we were not fully prepared but, rather, that journeying through the preparation itself would enable us to encounter the holy, the sacred, a glimpse of the incredible things to come even now. It does not have to be perfectly in order; it is the journey toward it that brings us closer to God. That is what Advent is about.

So go forth and prepare just for the act of preparing!

Grace and Peace,
Shelli

Preparation as Imagination

This Advent season is full of talk about preparations. So, for what are you preparing? For what are you spending these 32 days making ready?

We 21st century journeyers struggle with the unknown, with just leaving things to chance, with admitting that perhaps there are those aspects of our journey that are not for us to know now. That is what Advent does for us...it points us toward mystery. Some would equate that to nothingness or, perhaps, even to darkness--unknown, foreboding, maybe even a little dangerous. But God came and comes over and over again. I think that God's coming does not, much to some of our chagrin, bring with it the surety that we might like. God's coming instead opens the door to our imagination.

God says...walk with me awhile my child and look...look far beyond where you can see...listen far beyond where you can hear...journey far beyond where you think belong...and there, there I will be, and there will be the Creation that I have created for you. Imagination is not some childhood phenonemon that we are meant to lose as we mature. It is part of us and it mature with us. A mature imagination has no limits to what it can envision; it has no boundaries to what it can do. A mature imagination steps beyond reason and intellect, not leaving them behind, but sweeping them up into a new image, a new Creation, the place to which God leads us. Envision it...and then as you are preparing to meet the Christ child once again, imagine what that new world looks like and begin sowing the seeds that it hands you. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:11)

So go forth and imagine!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Illumination (A Mid-Week Homily)

IlluminationLectionary Text: John 1: 6-8, 19-28

I love Christmas lights. When I was little, my family would pick at least one night right before or immediately after Christmas and drive around and look at the Christmas lights. Later, as a young adult, I several times drove my Grandmother around to look at them. My Grandmother Reue seemed to have as much of the childlike appreciation of the lights that I had always had. Many of us are like that. There’s something about Christmas lights—full of wonder and awe, a sort of call to the season for us. These lights are comfortable for us. They are reassuring. From a practical standpoint, they’re virtually useless. But you know as well as I do that they are a sign of the season.

The Gospel passage that we read for this week uses that image of light also. For the writer of The Gospel According to John, the Logos was the light of humanity, the true light. There are no announcements here of Jesus’ coming and there is no birth story. But this is essentially the equivalent: the coming of Jesus, the Incarnation, is the coming of the true light, which enlightens everyone and illumines everything. But where the writers of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke use an angel to proclaim Christ’s coming, this writer uses John the Baptist. Now whatever you have to say about this camel hair-wearing, locust-eating, wilderness wanderer, he took his job seriously. John understood himself as called by God to point to the light as well as to that which is illuminated by the light. He didn’t get lost, as many do, in the rhetoric about Christ as the light without realizing the purpose of the light itself. And sometimes John’s words were not very popular. He went around like some wild man in the wilderness preaching repentance, preaching that we needed to change, preaching about the one who was coming after him, preaching about the light that was just around the bend, a light such that we had not seen. “John,” we want to say, “Shhhh!...you’ll wake the baby.”

That’s where we want to be—at the manger, kneeling before our Lord, basking in the illumination of the star above, and yet we still want to hold onto those shadows in our life. For there is familiarity; there is safety; there is that which we can control, there is that place to which we can retreat when life is just too hard. And the light…We would rather the light be allowed to remain in our thinking depicted as a warm and comfortable place to be. Just let us sit here awhile with this sleeping baby, the Christ child, there in the manger while the North Star dances overhead. This is a sign of the season!

But John the Baptist was right. This light is not a twinkling, intermittent light like those that light our houses this season. This is not a warm, glowing, candle-lit light that makes us feel comfortable even as we sit in its shadows. And it’s closer to us than any star in the universe. This light is different. This light is so big and so bright and so powerful that sometimes it hurts to look at it. Sometimes it is just too painful. This light is so pervasive and so encompassing, that it casts no shadows. The light of Christ, this light to which John pointed, is not a warm glow but is rather a radical illumination of everything around it. Because you see, Christ did not come into the world just to be our personal guiding light so that we could see where to go on this journey. The Christ light is also a light that shows us what needs to be done while we’re on that journey. Christoph Frederick Blumhardt says that “a light has a purpose; a light ought to shine into our lives so that we can see what needs to be done and set our hand to it and clean it up.”[i] That is the Light of Christ.

Yes, it’s uncomfortable. Yes, it will show us things that we’d rather not see, things with which we’d rather not have to deal. I’ll make a confession here. You can tell when I get too busy in my life by looking at my house. Right now, my house is atrocious. If you walked into it, you would experience the worst housekeeping that you can possibly imagine. In my kitchen, I have these really bright overhead canister lights. I also have these wonderful, warm, under-cabinet lights that I absolutely love. I realized the other night that I like my kitchen better right now at night when I turn off the canister lights and turn on those under-cabinet lights. They are beautiful as they reflect off the granite and project a warm, delicate glow to the kitchen. But the real reason is because with them, the kitchen looks clean. How easy it is just to forget about those things we need to do when we can’t see them!

The Christ light is not a warm, delicate light. The Christ light is this incredibly bright, all-encompassing light that enables us to see the world differently. It is a light that illumines not only the present, but also the future. The Spiritual Masters would refer to this illumination as a type of liminality, a way of existing in two worlds, betwixt and between. We are standing in the world in which we live, but the light is illumining the world to come. And when we learn how to see with that light, the world in which we live will look different. We will finally see that some of this is just not right. We can then no longer close our eyes to what the light has shown us. It will be impossible. Because, for us, all the shadows will finally once and for all be exposed. We will no longer be able to live with hunger and homelessness, with destruction of people’s lives and waste of our planet, with violence and war, or with the exclusion of any of God’s children from the light. The light in our lives will find those things not just sad, but unacceptable, inexcusable, incapable of being.

How, then, do we prepare ourselves to look at this light. How do we turn our eyes, so shielded by all the shadows of this world and look at that bright illuminating light without it being uncomfortable for us? Well, you know as well as I do that the way to prepare yourself to look at light is to look at light. And as uncomfortable as that may be, there is no other way. In her book, Lighted Windows, Margaret Silf tells the story of when her daughter was born and how one of the first problems that they encountered was light. She said that “to make sure that [our daughter] would always experience the presence of a gentle, comforting light if she awoke during the night, we installed a little lamp close to the nursery door. It also meant that if she cried we could grope our way to her even in a half-asleep state.”[ii] But they soon realized that even the little nursery light burned their eyes, especially after the third or fourth time they went into the nursery during the night, groggy from sleep with eyes burning. “So,” she says, “we went to the local electrical shop to ask whether they had any bulbs lower than 15 watts!” “It’s strange,” she comments, “how light that is so needful for growth and life can also be so hurtful when we are unprepared for it.”[iii]

In this Advent season, the way that we prepare ourselves for the coming of the Light is by looking at that light. That is why God came and burst forth into our humanness—to show us what full illumination looks like and to call us into the light. Do you remember that bumper sticker a couple of years ago? I haven’t seen it in awhile. “God is coming…look busy.” It’s funny but it’s wrong. God is here…get busy. God has come. The baby IS awake and now it’s our turn to wake up, rub our sleep-filled, groggy eyes, and with every intentional part of our being, look into the light and see what we are called to do. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory...full of grace and truth. THAT is the sign of the season—all of Creation in full illumination so that we may get a glimpse of what is to come.

In the Name of the One who said “Let There Be Light” and then brought the light to earth that we might see the world the way it was created to be. Amen.

So, go and be light!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

[i] Christoph Friederich Blumhardt, “Action in Waiting”, in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, (Farmington, PA: Plough Publishing, 2001), 11/24.
[ii] Margaret Silf, Lighted Windows: Advent Reflections for a World in Waiting, (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2004.), 101.

[iii] Ibid

Making Room

In my somewhat arduous journey into full-time pastoral ministry from a fairly lucrative career as an accountant, I have changed homes twice. Now, to some, that may not sound like a big deal. But I grew up in a family that almost never moved, with the exception of our moving into a new house when I was in Kindergarten that was a whole two streets and two blocks from the first house. (We haven't come that far, I guess!) But each time I moved these last years, I had to shift and actually get rid of some things. This last move was one from a parsonage that was WAY too big for me (even living WITH the 122-lb Black Lab) to a small, 1920's cottage in one of Houston's oldest neighborhoods. My only choice was to downsize.

I have realized that downsizing is a spiritual experience. Downsizing is about making room; it is about making things fit into a life that is different; and it is about finding yourself having to very intentionally cast away those things that you do not need. And what I found was that there are really not THAT many things that I need (contrary to what I thought before). In fact, if one is serious about downsizing, one will even make room for future things that mean something! Making room means that you find what is the most important in your life and you make room for it, perhaps by ridding yourself of things that have cluttered your pathway before.

This season of Advent, too, is about making room. It is about preparing for Christ's coming into your life by clearing space and ridding yourself of things that clutter and distract. It is about emotionally downsizing so that you can spiritually fill up. What do you need to do to make room this Advent? After all, it would be a shame if the Christ child had to sleep on a fold-out sofa! Don't you think God's coming calls for something more permanent in your life?

So go forth and make room!

Grace and Peace,
Shelli

This Season of Preparing

Advent is a season of preparation, a season of making-ready. But lest we get lost in the frenzied shuffle of tree-trimming and gift-buying, cookie-baking and party-planning, present-wrapping and card-mailing, we need to remember that those things are not all Advent preparation is. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us...The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience." (1) After all, what is it for which we are preparing? My friends, we are only preparing for the changing of everything that we know. That's all.

God did not come into the world to simply validate what we were doing with our lives. The Christ child was not born so that we could continue to live as we have. The Spirit did not ascend to us and say "Great job, people...keep it up! Way to go! Rah...rah...rah!" You and I both know that's not the way it happened. Frightening news? You bet. We are not called in this season to prepare to dress up our lives in their best finery so that we can be presented to God. (No need...God is here!) No, we are called in this season to prepare to change. And that should be frightening to anyone who really bothers to think about it if only for a split second. Because you see, so long ago, "the true light, which enlightens everyone, [came] into the world." And if we prepare ourselves to open our eyes, if we prepare ourselves to live our lives focused on that light, if we prepare our hearts to know and speak the truth in love, then we cannot help but be changed. And that IS frightening news but it is also oh, so glorious!

So go forth and prepare to be changed!

Grace and Peace,
Shelli



(1) From "The Coming of Jesus in our Midst", by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, (Plough Publishing)