January 1: The Holy Name of Jesus

Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 8: Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21

What’s in a name?  A lot, actually.  The name fixes that identity and gives a shape to what has been fluid and vague.  The name enables people to point at one another and say, “she’s like that,” or “he’s just that way.”  Names make the world into things.

This is why the Israelites learned not to name the Holy One.   “God” is not only not a boy’s name, as Lyn Brakeman reminds us; it is not a name at all.   “The LORD” is a substitute name, a gesture rather than a proper name.  But over time gestures become names, until we think we know the one named.  Then we run the risk of idolatry, of making our image become a thing that we can control or invoke.

And yet, we humans need to be able to relate to this energy and source in human terms.  We need names and faces to approach and worship the divine.  And so we meet Jesus, the name that lets us approach and worship.  We meet the one whose name means “God saves,” and in that encounter we can approach `God.’  

At Coffee Table Communion we talked about this conundrum of needing names and knowing their limits.  We talked about Jesus’ emptying himself completely.  If Jesus did not empty himself and become like us, he would have fallen prey to the temptations represented in the desert: ego inflation, self-gratification, abuse of power.  It is safe for Jesus to be glorified precisely because he has emptied himself.  I don’t mean it’s safe for us to glorify him; I mean it’s safe for Jesus.  It’s not a danger to him, to his human self, to be exalted.  We need to see him, and we need to be able to see the glory of God shining through.  But only one who let go of self could do that without falling prey to idolatry.

This may sound abstract, but it’s important for us all.  As we go through our days we routinely name ourselves, and others, and our world.  We say “how it is” as though it’s fact, but often we miss the ways we shape others by our perceptions and names.  We lose the mystery and settle for certainty.  

Today I invite you, and myself, to notice the names you use and how you use them.  Yes, we need names; and yet everyone, every thing, exceeds its name.  Surprise yourself by encountering an object without relying on its name.  If you don’t name it, how does it show up for you?  You might then try a person.  Then, you might try “God.”  What shows up for you beyond the name?

December 31

1 John 2:18-21; Psalm 96:1-2, 11-13; John 1:1-18

"From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace."  This fullness, this glory, is grace and truth.  And there's so much of it, such a fullness, that it spills over to us.  As we live in it, we fill up and have to spill over in turn.  Like the loaves and fishes, this grace just keeps expanding the more we receive.  We inevitably end up sharing it, out of the fullness.

This is so contrary to what our culture knows of scarcity and abundance!  We applaud those who share, but we don't really believe that they gain from it.  They give from their "fullness," meaning excess.  But Jesus' fullness is not like that, not like excess.  Jesus' fullness is always full, part of an endless flow of grace and truth.  He's not a storehouse so much as a channel.

When I first entered religious life I had no ideas about ministry or service.  I wanted to pray, I wanted to help others pray, but that was all I knew.  As I prayed, I filled up.  Day after day I sat with Jesus, and I gradually filled up with love and joy until I had to go share it.  That was powerful, but I still had the old idea of scarcity in me.  I insisted on enough prayer time, or the right prayer time, to "get my tanks filled."  I hoarded my silence.  I stored up treasure, to dole out when I chose.

I'm gradually learning that I don't have to work so hard.   I don’t have to hoard in order to have something to share.  God's grace is grace, freely given if I will open to receiving it.  My place is not to "work for it," but to receive it, grace upon grace.  And when I trust that, I can open the channel and let grace flow through me to others.  I’m not a silo anymore, but a channel.  

Where are you hoarding grace?  Where can you open your heart and mind today to receive this amazing gift?

December 30

1 John 2:12-17; Psalm 96:7-10; Luke 2:36-40

Many people love the way that Luke includes women in his stories.  He often pairs a parable about a man with one about a woman, and he is the only one to tell the birth narrative through Mary and Elizabeth.  I don’t think this is a sign of his high estimation of women; I think he’s trying to share the message of Jesus with a wider audience, but also modeling how women should serve.  That’s a rant for another post.  

Today, let’s celebrate that Luke does include Anna as a prophet along with Simeon.  It’s no small thing, naming her a prophet.  She’s got her own God-given voice, she’s not just following Simeon’s lead.  True, we don’t get to hear her own words; but at least she’s here.

Give thanks today for all the prophets of all genders who announce God’s work in the world.  We need people who do good works, who are the hands and feet of Christ, but we also desperately need those who tell us what God is up to through and beyond us.  We need the voices of Christ.  Maybe that’s you.

A shout-out today to the Society of St. Anna the Prophet, a dispersed community with a minimum age requirement of 50.  I love their bold claiming of the wisdom of older women, the ministry of older women, in a world that treats older women (and often older men) as dispensable and burdensome.  When the Companions began we thought we needed an age maximum, to “build for the future” etc., but we have been learning that there is such need and desire for community among people over 50 that we are looking now at who God sends rather than at their birth certificate.  So if you think you’re too old . . . 

December 29

1 John 2:7-11; Psalm 96:1-9; Luke 2:22-35

Back to Luke’s very different infancy narrative.  No magi, no slaughtered infants, no flight.  Joseph’s home is in Nazareth, not Bethlehem.  From there they go to Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice.  There they meet Simeon, who has been waiting for years to see the “light for revelation” or, as the Episcopal Compline service has it, “a light to enlighten the nations.”  Sacramental vision is active in Simeon, letting him see the glory in this child.

But his vision includes the whole scope of Jesus’ life.  He doesn’t leave Mary and Joseph with just the happy parts.  He names Jesus’ destiny, and Mary’s pain.  We don’t have any details yet, but the outline is clear.  The light of Jesus will reveal “the inner thoughts of many,” and some of those will not want their thoughts revealed.  

The light of Jesus does indeed throw our thoughts and lives into relief.  How much of your life would you rather people not know about?  How many of your thoughts belong to your “inside voice”?  Jesus doesn’t have to call us out or shame us; he just comes, bringing the message of peace and wholeness and return, and lets our response reveal who we are.  That is not always a welcome visit.

Invite the light of Christ in today.  Let the light shine in the cupboards of your thoughts and actions.  Some do this daily, whether in the Ignatian consciousness examen or in another form.  Don’t be afraid; there’s usually some good things in there along with the bad.  And even the bad show up only to be repented, forgiven, and released.  In their wake will come all the gifts of the incarnation, and of this season.  You can have them anytime.  Don’t wait a lifetime.  Do it now.

December 28: The Holy Innocents

Jeremiah 31:15-17; Psalm 124; Revelation 21:1-7; Matthew 2:13-18

This is one of the hardest days of the year.  We haven't even heard the story of the magi’s arrival yet, but we’re learning about the fallout from that.  We learn what happens when we don’t see with sacramental eyes, but with the eyes of fear and hatred.

I don’t know when or why the Church decided to remember the Holy Innocents right after Christmas, but it may actually be on to something.  Just as we remember Stephen, the first Christian martyr, right after the celebration of new birth, now we follow John’s vision of glory with the horrible reality of bloodshed and tyranny.  It’s a testimony to the truth: we have to see with all our eyes opened.

I have wanted to shut my eyes this fall.  I’ve had trouble even looking at the headlines, much less going deeper into the news.  50,000 children have died in Syria from this war, 90% of them at the hands of government forces.  Across the United States, as many as 40% of our children are living with food scarcity and dire poverty.  The land, the sacred ground beneath our feet, is being assaulted and exploited more and more fiercely; and human children and animals become sick and die as a result.  And it looks like things will get worse before they get better.  I don’t want to look.

But I have to.  A sacramental eye is an open eye.  Eyes that only open to bliss are open not to God, but to our own egos.  Sacramental vision means finding joy and glory without denying the horror and pain; and it means living in hope that tyrants will be converted, or pass into obscurity.  Herod does die, will die.  The light will continue to shine.  

December 27: St. John, Evangelist

Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1:1-4 (5-12); John 1:1-14

(Again, not his readings, though we do read him.  These are the readings for the third service on Christmas.)

“And the Word was made 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” (Jn 1:14).

This sentence shines light in so many directions!  This is the sacramental vision that sees miracle in the everyday.  John doesn’t have a birth narrative, there are no angels or magi to attest to the unique glory of this birth.  He doesn’t need them.  This person came among us, and for those who saw him with sacramental eyes he manifested glory.  But notice how John describes this glory: “as of a father’s only son.”  OK, I’d like John and his culture to value daughters as highly as sons, but let’s take him as he is.  He’s describing a mystical perception of a cosmic Savior, but he needs human referents to do it.  In so doing, he shines a light on just how amazing all life is.  He reminds us that the only son, the only human son of a human father, is also a pinnacle of glory, grace, and truth.  

Today children are being born.  Imagine how different their world can be if we look at them and, turning this sentence around, describe them thus: “And s/he came into the world and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we have seen her glory, the glory as of the Word made flesh.”

Sacrament runs in two directions.  In one direction, we use everyday visible and tangible referents to gesture at a truth beyond sight and touch and sound.  Sacraments are “outward and visible signs of inward invisible grace.”  But in the other direction, sacrament points to the holy already present in the tangible.  When we look with sacramental eyes, every child, every adult, every animal and rock is holy.

During this season where the divine and the human (and all the rest of creation) come together, practice seeing with sacramental eyes.  Each day look for the signs of grace and truth creation, in those around you, and in yourself.  Where do you behold the glory?

December 26: St. Stephen

Isaiah 62:6-12; Psalm 96; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:1-20

(Note: I'm not using the readings for St. Stephen, appointed for the day.  We deserve to spend time in the Christmas story.)

Just as he did back at the beginning of his Gospel, Luke juxtaposes “secular” history and salvation history.  We’ve heard the simple recitation of the census, the journey, the birth.  (We don’t hear again about the miracle of this conception, so the first seven verses could be about any couple of the time.)  

Now we shift gears dramatically.  Angels!  Shepherds!  The heavenly host! Prophecy fulfilled!  “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”  

Do they give glory because the prophecy was fulfilled?  Do they give praise because they saw angels?  Why exactly are they so moved, and which part of the story amazed their neighbors?

I’m not trying to dismiss the miraculous elements of the story.  I want to deepen them, if anything; I want to notice the miraculous here and now, which means seeing the miracle in the simple story.  I want to multiply chances to give glory and praise, which means opening my eyes to the wonder that is present even when I don’t have such visitations or prophecies.  The world in which we live is a miracle.  Our consciousness, our ability to be aware of creation and of ourselves in it, is an amazing miracle.  The “facts” are as wondrous as any angelic visitation.  

So often we use explanation to demystify the world, and so we learn to take it for granted.  The process of spiritual growth is in part a reversal of that process.  We do not cease to explain, but explanation cannot be allowed to kill the wonder.  Scientists know this; people of religious faith often fail to get there.  Miracles surround us, messengers surround us, if we open our eyes and ears.

Take time to look for miracles today, and every day.  

Christmas Day

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20

Read the first seven verses of Luke 2 and stop.  We’ll look at the later verses tomorrow.  Today, on this holy day, I invite you to notice the simplicity of this story.  There was a census.  Everyone went to be registered.  Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem, his family’s town.  The town was so full they stayed in a stable.  She came into labor and gave birth there, and laid the baby in a feeding trough.  

Simple.  Nothing dramatic or supernatural.  Just a pregnant woman and her almost-husband, part of the overflow crowd forced to travel to satisfy the desire of a tyrant.  Just a baby born into extreme circumstances.  Simple.

Sometimes it’s the simplest places where we see holiness most clearly.  Beautiful cathedrals and exquisite music can bring us to reverence, but so can a leaf hanging alone on a tree.  Angels and shepherds with strange messages are one way for us to learn that something special is happening, but they aren’t required.  What is needed is simply for us to be fully aware and alive to our surroundings.  The incarnation is here and now, with every breath pulsing through our bodies and every magnetic field running through rocks.  Jesus is here, God is with us.  Every child is holy.  Every struggling parent or step-parent is holy.  Every stable, every manger, every tenement or trailer or shack is holy.  Even the mansions are holy places, if we see right.

She gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Whatever you do or don’t do today, whatever you give or receive, however you celebrate this day, look up and around and be amazed.  The world is alive, the reign of God is at hand.

Merry Christmas!

Thank you for reading and being with me this season.  I will continue to blog through the 12 days; after that I’ll be in retreat until January 12.  Then we’ll see!

Christmas Eve Day

2 Samuel 7:1-16; Psalm 89:1-4, 19-29; Luke 1:67-79

In this last moment before Jesus is born, we are minded to spend some time on the promise that comes to us in Christ.  John’s birth story is completed with Zechariah’s prophecy.  Some say John is the last of the OT prophets, but I think his parents are the real bridge.  They announce the coming Messiah to their son.  John will announce him once he is here, but Elizabeth and Zechariah are the first to tell him about Jesus, and about his own role.  

Those of us who pray the traditional monastic offices recite this canticle every day, and it can get overly familiar.  It helps to read another translation, or several, to get fresh with it.  Today I notice that this is a commissioning.  Just as Gabriel’s announcements were not just statements, not even requests, but commissions to Mary and to Zechariah and Elizabeth, now Zechariah commissions his son.  ‘You will go before the Lord to prepare the way, to let people know about salvation through forgiveness (not the salvation they thought they needed, but the one God gives us), and God’s in-breaking reign of peace.’  As his mouth is opened after nine months, Zechariah is ready to be part of God’s purpose.  He’s ready to let go of his own dreams for his son and let him take his part in God’s purpose.  That’s what it means for these parents to give him the name spoken by the angel; they are acknowledging that God has a plan beyond their own comforts and patterns.

This is a huge gift.  We’ve all known, or been part of, the struggle of parents to let go of their hopes and dreams for their children.  Some force their children into the mold, with disastrous results: frustrated desires and creativity, bitterness, and often failure as the only way out.  Others are more subtle, steering their children in certain directions in such a way that they emerging adult never really knows what is their own desire and what is their parents’.  And some just wish and hope, while letting go bit by bit.  Their struggle to let go is part of their own growth, and their children gain from it.

Zechariah and Elizabeth cut right to the chase.  John is God’s child.  He has his own destiny, and they affirm it from the beginning.  In time, Mary and Joseph will do the same thing.  Both their sons will lead lives full of trouble and scandal, and both will die at the hands of tyrants.  But both will have known what it is to be fully alive, fully used, fully united to God.  They will have known joy and peace.

Gabriel called it back at the beginning: “With the spirit and power of Elijah [John] will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children” (Luke 1:17).  Give thanks today for those who have parented you along the way, releasing you to be who God intends.  And pray for parents, that they might know their children to be unique vessels of the Divine and care for them accordingly.  May you, and all, find our feet led into the way of peace. 

Fourth Friday in Advent: December 23

Malachi 3:1-5; Psalm 25:1-4 (1-5 in NRSV); Luke 1:57-66

“What then will this child become?”  What a great question this is.  Those gathered for John’s naming ask it, and the angel seemed to answer it when he came to Zechariah, but we don’t really know how John will become the man he becomes.  What counsel, what encounters, what concerns will lead him into the desert and the river?  What factors will make him so fearless and passionate?  Could things have been otherwise?  The Gospel makes it sound so simple: God wills it, plans it, it happens.  The Holy Spirit comes upon him - the universal explanation.  But that’s just another way of seeming to understand mystery.  Naming it doesn’t answer it.

“What then will this child become?”  Any time a child is born, this question arrives with her or him.  Will this child be enabled to grow into their full potential, or will they be abandoned by the society?  Will this child be loved and encouraged, or abused and distorted?  Will this child be a burning and a shining light, or will she become a scourge and a terror?  What then will this child, this child born this second, become?

Every second around the globe children are being born.  They are born with differing genetic endowments, differing gifts and liabilities, but so much of their lives will turn on how they are raised.  Will they have enough healthy food for their brains to develop?  Will they get enough sleep to process what happens each day?  Will they learn to trust others and themselves, to risk enough to learn and grow?  What sort of schools will be available to them?  Who will mentor them?

Those who speak of the sanctity of life are not wrong, but often this comes up only when discussing unborn children.  The sanctity of life demands that we share responsibility for what our children become.  This week is full of toy drives and sentimentality, but January will come and a huge percentage of our children will be hungry and cold and unable to learn.  As you walk through these holy days, please pray for all the holy children being born and raised this minute.  Pray about what you can do to see that they become what God dreams for them.  And, like Zechariah and Elizabeth and the neighbors in John’s story, talk about these things.  Share the news - God is doing something among us!

Fourth Thursday in Advent: December 22

1 Samuel 1:19-28; Psalm 113 or 122; Luke 1:46-56

Mary’s Song: or is it?  Some early manuscripts attribute this to Elizabeth.  The difference matters.  If Elizabeth is singing, we have overtones of Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel.  The barren woman rejoices because she has longed for a child.  And Elizabeth is the one filled with the Holy Spirit here.  Makes sense.

But if Mary sings it, the meaning is deeper than “sense.”  For Mary to sing this, she has to have shifted context as Elizabeth invited her to do.  For her to sing this, she has to have moved from submission through obedience all the way to joyful participation.  Her first “yes” might have been simple acceptance of what was to be, the way people today say the Serenity prayer: I can’t change it, but there it is.  I’ll do my best with it.  But this “yes” is much more.  This is the “yes” where Mary grows up into the stature of the Theotokos, the Mother of God who brings forth divine life not as a receptacle but as an agent.  She is not just a womb.  She is a co-creator of the new life flowing through her.

You know the difference in your own life between the first “yes” and the second.  For centuries the Church(es) modeled that the first “yes” of submission was the ideal for women (and for non-elite men).  But that “yes” is not the deepest “yes” God calls out of us.  The second “yes” is where we come fully alive, where God is incarnate in us.  

If you aren’t sure you’ve experienced the second “yes,” there’s no time to waste!  Your life is waiting for you to claim it and celebrate it.  Look back at yesterday’s post and see where your context needs shifting.  What do you need in order to say the big “yes”?

May God give you the grace and strength to be all that you are meant to be.

Fourth Wednesday in Advent: December 21

Zephaniah 3:14-18a; Psalm 33:1-5, 20-22; Luke 1:39-45

This is the most joyful story of the week.  Blessed Elizabeth, who knows a thing or two about being blessed, blesses Mary when they meet.  Mary, who likely felt all alone and confused, who left home “with haste” and went far away to her cousin, is received as a favored one.  In a few sentences, Elizabeth gives Mary a whole new context.  Mary has heard before from Gabriel, but this is the first human, the first ordinary relative, who sees her situation as blessing.  What a relief!  But in another way, what a challenge: for Mary is confirmed that this is not just a bad dream.  Until now she might have thought her period was late, that she dreamed of Gabriel, that it was all heartburn or rationalization or - anything else.  But no, her relative not only confirms the announcement but rejoices in it.

Context is decisive.  A group I work with emphasizes this point in their work with ministers of all sorts.  When we get bogged down in our ministry or mission, it’s often because we’ve framed that in a way that disempowers and discourages us.  The answer is not to “fix” a “problem,” but to shift the context so we can see again why we’re doing what we’re doing, what our purpose and passion are.

Right now I’m writing this reflection.  I could be doing it because I have to, because I’d look bad if I stopped.  I could experience it as a burden.  Or I can be sharing the word of God with others.  I can get to read the Scripture every day, to listen for something worth sharing, to feel the satisfaction of knowing others read it.  I could get discouraged if the number of readers isn’t what I think it should be; or I can be excited that one or two people get something out of it.  Context is decisive.

This is part of the work of spiritual direction.  The question, “Where is God in this?” is a question that shifts context.  The answer is less important than the shift, the reminder that God is in it somewhere.

Elizabeth gives Mary an amazing context.  She is the “mother of my Lord,” blessed because “she believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”  Wow.  It’s big, but Elizabeth is sure that Mary is up to the task.  As we will see tomorrow, she has inspired Mary to go all out and take her stand with God.

Where does your context need a little shift?  Who helps you with that?  

If you don’t have someone, write me!  Blessed are you.

Thank You!

Thank you to all of you who have responded to our first appeal for donations. So far we have received donations from 55 people for a total of $9410. We are far short of our target of $20,000, but we are grateful for the many friends old and new who are coming forward. If you like the blog, or our retreats, or - oh, anything about what we're up to, please consider donating this year. We are a 501 c(3) non-profit, so your donation is tax-deductible. 

You can donate online at companionsofmarytheapostle.org.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! And may you be blessed every day!

Fourth Tuesday in Advent: December 20

Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24; Luke 1:26-38

“Do not be afraid.”  It’s gotta be trouble when we keep hearing that.  People who have no reason to be afraid don’t go around reminding themselves not to be afraid.  Messengers of good news would normally not be so insistent that we not be afraid.  But there is such a thing as good news that is terrifying: for example, “I am (or we are) going to have our first baby.”

Among the Companions we have a phrase to capture this: “Hallelujah, holy s___.”  Sometimes we receive an awareness or a gift that is both wonderful and challenging, calling us to be more and dare more.  I hope you have had those experiences.  

The news that comes to Mary, the blessing, is more than daunting.  She doesn’t know it all yet, but this “blessing” will take her from everything familiar and safe.  She will be talked about and scorned by the neighbors.  Her child will be marked as strange.  He will become an itinerant preacher and healer, and a threat to the established order.  He will die before her eyes, a horrible death on a cross.  Greetings, favored one!

The level of spiritual insight needed to see this as a blessing is beyond my comprehension.  I get to read the story, framed as the triumph of the Messiah.  Even so, it’s hard spiritual work to see and choose that kind of blessing.  But for Mary, and for Joseph, who must choose whether to listen to this message and remember it through the hard times, it must have been beyond anything I can imagine.  To say yes to this paradox - this triumph that looks like abject failure - is nothing short of astounding.

You may not think you’re called to make such a choice.  Sorry, favored one.  We are each called to choose whether to stand with the outcast and hurting or to hide among the crowd.  No one gets through life without pain; the questions are about what is worth hurting for, and how much, and what will come of it.  Mary staked her life on the news that the Messiah would come and save the people through her.  You may not have to go that far.  You may not be called to go that far, but you are invited to go forward into that place where blessing and terror meet.  That is where we are truly alive, where the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our frail bodies and broken world.  

Where are you called to be more?  God is with you.

Fourth Monday in Advent: December 19

Judges 13:2-7,24-25; Psalm 71:11-18; Luke 1:5-25

Now we enter into the mystery of the nativity.  The way Luke frames the story is important for us today.   He tells us when the important things happened by referring to the secular rulers: “In the time of King Herod.”  Recorded history focuses on that official roster and calendar.   In school my history classes focused on the top of the hierarchy: kings, presidents, wars.  Only later did I learn about the important social and cultural figures and movements that occurred beneath and around that layer of history, who shaped that history without acknowledgment.  Luke takes us into the world that the ruling history ignores, the real history of the world.

“In the time of King Herod.”  Herod’s time will end, and become a footnote.  The real action is happening in the most hidden part of the Temple, and in the home of a priest and his wife.  Herod marks a date in a calendar, but John the Baptist inaugurates a whole new era.  Out of this humble house, and in some other humble houses, the real action of history will go forth.  

Today, while the world’s attention is focused on Donald Trump, a baby is being born.  Every day prophets are born, and every day Jesus comes among us.  Every day people without hope are given a message to carry.  No one is too small, too insignificant, or too sinful.  Those who have been “barren” of faith or works can still bear children through their service to others.  Those who have struggled with doubt can still be visited by God.  Even you, dear reader, you can be a vessel of the Holy Spirit.  Start listening.

Do not be afraid,______________, for your prayer has been heard.  God is gracious.  The blessing may not look like what you had in mind, anymore than Zechariah was hoping for a son who would leave home and Temple service and become a desert preacher.  But blessing it was, and is.  Put your fear aside, and look for the blessing.  It may be nearer than you think.

Fourth Sunday in Advent

Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80:1-7 16-18; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

There’s one more outcast in Jesus’ genealogy according to Matthew: his mother.  Matthew doesn’t call her an outcast, but she clearly was about to become one.  She was “found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.”  Well, probably if everyone thought it was the Holy Spirit there would not be disgrace.  Matthew wants his readers to understand that it was the Holy Spirit, but to the neighbors it looked like - something not so holy.  Something disgraceful.  And Mary looked like someone you did not want to associate with, someone you did not invite into your family.  And Joseph agrees with that assessment.  He may be kind about it, he may plan to “dismiss her quietly,” but he is not going to believe any nonsense about a Holy Spirit.

And then he has this dream.  In the modern West we consider dreams interesting manifestations of our unconscious.  Some of us take them seriously as guides.  But few of us would go where Joseph goes.  In his dream he gets that it really was the Holy Spirit, and that he should brave the scorn of the neighbors and claim Mary and her son as his own.  And he does.  Simple.

Where’s his discernment committee?  Where’s the review board?  Where, for that matter, is his therapist?  Who does he think he is, welcoming this outcast on the basis of a dream?

I know that Jesus got a lot of his openness to God from Mary, but Joseph is no slouch either.  Joseph knows when he hears God, and he hears God saying “Do not be afraid.”  Do not be afraid of what the neighbors think.  Do not be afraid of the purists or the pundits or the people whose compassion ends at their nose.  Yes, welcoming this woman and her son will bring trouble into your life; but that trouble is nothing compared to the saving grace that will come through them.  Do not be afraid to welcome this outcast.

So often it’s the scariest, hardest situations that bring the blessing and the awareness of God.  

May you be blessed and challenged by dreams bigger than you can imagine, and may you have the grace to follow where they lead.

Third Saturday in Advent: December 17

Genesis 49:2,8-10; Psalm 72:1-8; Matthew 1:1-7,17

Today we begin the final countdown, leaving the adult Jesus and entering into the mystery of the Incarnation.  We begin with the first part of Matthew’s genealogy (which differs from Luke’s, if you’re curious).  Matthew tells this story to frame the Messiahship of Jesus as the fulfillment of the history of Israel.  But tucked in here is a bigger story, a story that is carried by women.

Four women are named in this first fourteen generations.  Aside from them, Matthew only mentions the fathers.  Judaism may reckon one’s Jewish identity through the mother, but you wouldn’t know it here.  If they reckoned through the woman all the time, Jesus wouldn’t have been Jewish.

In fact, all four of these women are “foreigners,” not Israelites or Hebrews.  And all of them are marginal figures, not the sort of women we want in our family.  So why does Matthew go out of his way to include them in Jesus’ genealogy?

Jesus may come to the people of Israel, but he is not only for them.  The love and the peace he brings flow beyond the borders of any national or ethnic or even religious group.  He is not bringing salvation to “Christians”; there is no such thing when he comes.  He is coming to fulfill the promise of Israel, which is not a promise about Israel’s good fortune as much as a promise to the world manifested through Israel.  His is indeed “a light to enlighten the nations.”

And it’s not only traditional identity borders that Jesus transgresses.  He walks right past the signs that separate the righteous from the sinners, the clean from the unclean.  Somewhere in him, he knows that his foremothers were exactly the sort of people who were kept out of the purity party.  Through their willingness to cross boundaries, and their sheer determination to survive and keep going, they moved the story of Israel along.  Without them, no Joseph; without them, a very different Jesus.

Think back to Isaiah 56.  Foreigners are welcome, Isaiah says, if they “keep my sabbaths.”  The old boundaries are a thing of the past.  Foreigners: welcome!  Outcasts: welcome!  Eunuchs: welcome!  Prostitutes: welcome!  Widowed: welcome!  Raped and forced to bear children: welcome!  In fact, more than welcome.  The outcasts are the ones bringing new life and energy, like immigrants and refugees today.  Like African-Americans who made the Great Migration from South to North, like their ancestors who survived the Middle Passage, the ones who dared and struggled brought hope and resilience to their communities.  Like Jesus.

Is there an outcast among you, or within you?  Where is there a hidden source of strength that you have not dared to welcome?  Look around, look within, and say: Thank you for not giving up.  Do not be afraid.

Third Friday in Advent

Isaiah 56:1-8; Psalm 67; John 5:33-36

December 16: O Sapientia

This passage from Isaiah is full of promise for those who are waiting.  We often encounter the phrase “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” and that is a powerful promise.  But I want to focus on what is needed for that to happen.  God promises to claim and hold all those who turn to God, specifically those who “keep my sabbaths.”  Three times in eight verses we hear this: to “the mortal,” “the eunuchs,” and “foreigners.” All who keep the sabbath of God shall be gathered into joyful prayer.  Isaiah doesn’t say, “Those who don’t murder, or slander, or covet.”  No, that sneaky little commandment, to honor the sabbath day, is the linchpin.

So what makes sabbath so important?  And why is it so hard to keep nowadays?

The real issue in this passage is fidelity, faithfulness to God and the covenant.  Sabbath is entered into not because we humans need rest (though we do), but as a way to remember and worship God.  It is “useless,” and therefore an offering of our most precious resource: time.  Our lives are limited, though we don’t know just how long they will be.  Most of us imagine they will be shorter than we’d like.  It’s tempting to pack more in, either to enjoy more or to imagine that we have made a difference (another enjoyment).  And our culture takes that human limit and pushes it to new limits.  Our consumer economy runs on more: more buying, more selling, more working.  The culture of productivity tells us that empty time is wasted time.   But even in ancient Israel, people were tempted to buy and sell and work on the Sabbath; after all, time is money!  And money, in that saying, is the real God of our world today.

On Monday I mentioned An Other Kingdom, a new book about creating alternatives to consumer society.  The authors suggest three areas to cultivate that other realm: time, food, and silence.  Sabbath touches on both time and silence, as we stop what we are doing and listen for God.  It requires trust that we will have enough time, and enough food and other necessities, even if we take that break.  

Sabbath is not a “day off,” if by that we mean a day away from our “work” in which we sandwich shopping and other chores.  Sabbath is a day to remember God, to slow down and let go.  It may come through hiking, or sitting in a chair.  It may mean being alone, or it may mean seeing friends.  What makes Sabbath is its uselessness, its emptiness, making a space for God to enter.

Perhaps Advent is a giant Sabbath, in which we wait for God to enter.  And perhaps, if we keep trying, our lives can become a giant Advent, a daily Advent in which we wait for God to enter.  Then, truly, we will be gathered into God and be one.  May it be so.

We have one more week to practice Advent.  Where will you make Sabbath this week?