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?

Third Thursday in Advent

Isaiah 54:1-10; Psalm 30; Luke 7:24-30

We've seen this Gospel last week, in Matthew's version.  I'd rather focus on the amazing passage from Isaiah.  This is part of the call to return from exile.  It follows on the song of the suffering servant that we read on Good Friday.  Throughout Isaiah we get this dual perspective of warning and promise, consolation and condemnation, remorse and rejoicing.  This is always an important spiritual truth.  Adult human life with God is not just happy and prosperous, it is richer and more ambiguous than that.  We can not escape trial, but we are called not to make suffering the last word.  Hope always exceeds what we can see.  Joy beyond happiness, joy in spite of pain and horror; that is adult human life in God.  Sing!  God is faithful.

Enough words from me.  Read Isaiah 54, beyond what is appointed.  Go on into chapter 55.  And listen to this version of 54 from Sweet Honey in the Rock:

https://youtu.be/e3YOZbpoLmo

Third Wednesday in Advent

Isaiah 45:5-8(9-17)18-25; Psalm 85:8-13; Luke 7:19-23

Today we read Luke’s version of last Sunday’s Gospel.  As always with Scripture, there are lots of things to notice and questions to ask.   Today I want to think about the last sentence: “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

You might wonder, who could take offense at people being healed, the dead raised, the poor receiving good news?  Actually, many people, for many reasons.  We have the stories of the Pharisees who, while applauding good works, wanted them kept within the guidelines for Sabbath (no work, not even good work, allowed).  I can imagine being “offended” at the dead being raised: terrified, in fact.  And yes, I can imagine many wealthy people being profoundly threatened by the poor receiving hope.  We’ve seen it in Latin America, where missionaries and local pastors lost their lives to government-backed death squads.  But those are the easy cases.

The phrase “takes no offense” literally means “is not scandalized,” does not stumble because of me.  Why would Jesus’ actions cause people to stumble?  

If you expect the Messiah to rain down hellfire on those you hate and judge, Jesus is a scandal and a stumbling block.  

If you expect the Messiah to come with an army and take territory and restore ancient kingdoms, Jesus is a scandal and a stumbling block.

If you expect the Messiah to simply remove all our troubles (perhaps by eliminating those you hate and judge, or perhaps by carrying you away from them), Jesus is a scandal and a stumbling block.

You may say to yourself, I don’t expect any of that.

You may not really expect a Messiah anymore.

If all you expect is a nice holiday with carols and candles and a crèche, then Jesus may be a scandal and a stumbling block.

This is the Human One, the divine/human full package.  This is the one who fulfills humanity rather than overcoming it.  This one brings steadfast love and faithfulness, righteousness and peace, without ending our human vulnerability.  

For two thousand years theologians have stumbled over Jesus.  Poets do better.  We move toward the Nativity through hymns and carols and images because any logical statements become stumbling blocks.  

As we move toward the feast, perhaps it’s time to read some hymns and poems.  Don’t analyze them.  Just let them be.  With all their inadequate formulations and gendered language, they gesture at a truth we can never capture.  And for these few weeks, blessed is anyone who takes no offense at them.

May you be blessed today and always.