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.

Third Tuesday in Advent

Zephaniah 3:1-2, 9-13; Psalm 34:1-8; Matthew 21:28-32

Please, God, save me from forgetting.  I spent so many years so far from you, among the tax collectors and prostitutes - really among them, belonging with them.  Gradually I approached you, gingerly and hesitantly; or, rather, you approached me and I stopped running.  And it was hard to turn to you.  My friends didn’t understand; they didn’t seem to miss you or need you.  The people who were there when I got near you weren’t sure what to do with me either: I didn’t dress right or think like them.   To them I was still a tax collector or a prostitute.  But I knew I was a former one; shaped by my experience, but not defined only by that.  And over time I saw that my former life was a gift, bringing compassion and patience for those who were still “out there.”

But God, it could be so easy to become one of the “haughty ones.”  I could forget that you drew me, and take credit for where I am and what I have today.  Please, save me from forgetting.  Save me from pride, from exulting in my own achievements.  Whatever you have to do to get my attention, please do it.  You’ve shown me my weakness many times, in ways I would not choose, and it’s always led me more deeply toward you.  Please, save me from forgetting.

Might this be your psalm too?

I will bless you at all times; your praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul boasts only in you; let the other outcasts hear and be glad.

Magnify God with me!  Let’s worship together!

I sought you, and you answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.

When I look to you I am radiant, and never ashamed.

My poor soul cried, and was heard by the LORD, and was saved from trouble.

Your angel encamps around those who fear you, and delivers them.  I’m proof.

Taste and see that God is good!  Happy are those who take refuge in you.

Please, please, please, help me to say yes and mean it!

Third Monday in Advent

Numbers 24:2-7,15-17a; Psalm 25:3-8 (4-9 in NRSV); Matthew 21:23-27

"By what authority do you do these things?"  This is one of those questions that tells us more about the questioner than the respondent.  It's a question we've been asked a lot as Companions.

From the beginning of our journey people asked us three things about our community: "What's your Rule?" "What's your habit?" And, "What do you have to do to establish a community?"  By that third question they meant, whose permission do you need?  Whose acknowledgment?

We answered, "We don't know about our Rule yet." (We have since written one, after reading many old and new.)  "We don't know about a habit yet." (Now we wear black on Sundays and feast days, with shawls in chapel.  We don't know how long we will do this.) 

But the last question was easy to answer.  We said, "Move in together and start praying."

But of course that wasn't what our questioners were asking.  They wondered about authority, as though being a community required the blessing of a hierarchical gatekeeper.  As though without credentials we don't exist.

After two and a half years, two of us made life vows in this community that is recognized by no authority other than God and those around us.  Our vows are not legally binding or enforceable in court.  They are vows.  They are covenant.  We made these vows in the presence of others who acknowledge them by their participation.  There is nothing to keep us faithful other than our word and our trust in one another and in God.

In their recent book, An Other Kingdom, Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight explore the power of vows and covenant as a way to turn from the consumer culture and legal empire and return to community.  Community is built on trust rather than threat.  

"By whose authority?" is a question for the legal culture, the alienated culture, to debate.  It's usually a trap, aimed to rein in something or someone.  It is not an empowering question.

It's a question Jesus refuses to answer.  He knows a trap when he sees it.  

I don't mean that there's never a place for authority.  But authority questions are not creative, or meant to be.  Knowing when that question matters and when it doesn't is a part of discernment, calling for prayer.

Is there someplace where you are trapped by the need for authorization?  Are you feeling called to do something or be something, and needing community acknowledgment?  If so, let me suggest a clearness committee or its equivalent, a circle of friends.  They won't authorize, they will companion you.  That's the creative community we all need.

Go!  And tell us what you find!

Third Sunday in Advent

Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146:4-9 (5-10 in NRSV); James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

We are halfway through Advent.  Or I should say, Advent season is half over, wherever you are in your Advent journey.  Some of us may not have started.  Others may be running toward Christmas, listening to Christmas music and shopping and baking and partying.  In the secular world, this is the season of Christmas.  It ends on December 26 with the sales, or maybe on New Year's Day.  But here, in our homes and churches, we await the Coming One.

Sitting in prison, John asks of Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?  Jesus invites John's disciples to look around and make their own determination.  He invites us to do the same.  All week we've been in this conversation about what we see and why we see it (or don't).  What we see, and hear, says as much about us as it does about the world around us.

John receives these reports in his prison.  His own small world is painful and ugly, but he hears of wonders beyond his world.  We don't hear what he decides about Jesus.  That's a blessing, I think: rather than being a story about John, this is a chance for us to ask ourselves what we decide.  Sitting in my own darkness, hearing reports of hope and healing, where do I put my trust?  

In fact, my situation is quite the opposite of John's.  My small world is filled with abundance and love.  I am supported beyond my wildest dreams.  But just beyond my door there are people who are hungry, people who are living on the streets, people who are violated and exploited.  Sitting in my small pool of light, where do I put my trust?  I oscillate between self-sufficiency and despair.  Both poles reveal my lack of trust in God.  

Times of endurance and patience call us back to God, to that decision point.  Where do I put my trust?  In what, in whom, will I believe?  Changes in the United States make this question particularly pressing.  Now I oscillate between terror and a certain expectancy, as I wait to see what I will become, who I will choose to be, whether I will be a faithful witness to the light.  Being a witness means honing my patience and my endurance.  Patience teaches me things that cannot be learned by easy success.  Endurance brings hope, and finally leads to joy beyond any particular delight.  This is not a situation I would have chosen, but few of my times of spiritual growth have been chosen.  That's not how it happens.  It happens by letting go into what we are confronted with, reaching out for God in the darkness.  

We're halfway through Advent.  Where are you?  

Second Saturday in Advent

Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 48:1-11 (in the Apocrypha); Psalm 80:1-3,14-18; Matthew 17:9-13

“Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things” (Mt 17:11).  Yet if John is the new Elijah, and he has been killed, where is this restoration?  The world continues on its sinful blind course.  This is one of the paradoxes of the “second coming,” and of the “kingdom of God.”  Jesus says, “The kingdom is here.”  Christians cry, “Christ is risen, and has trampled down death!”  Yet death in all its forms continues to appear, and from a certain view to dominate.  When we celebrate and proclaim the victory of God, we are looking from a different perspective than that of “the world.”  In the kingdom, restoration has happened, is happening, and will happen.

What, then, is restoration?  I’m mindful of the concept of restorative justice, which has become an important part of legal thinking over the last three decades.  For advocates of restorative justice, crimes are seen as a tear in the social fabric.  The offender cuts him/herself off from others, and often cuts off others from one another through death or separation or simple mistrust.  In these cases justice is found not in punishment, in “getting even,” or in “rehabilitation” of an individual offender to make them “useful” to society, but in the restoration of relationships.  Justice may involve direct apology, listening to the victims describe the impact of the crime on their lives, and making concrete reparations or amends as far as possible.  The goal is to heal the wound for both offender and victim so that they can get on with their lives.  It sounds a lot like confession and repentance and conversion to me.

Jesus, like John and Elijah and all the prophets, announces that the fabric of the covenant has been torn.  Many of those prophets died because their message was too challenging for the powerful.  But their insight continues to live and move us.  Repentance is returning to relationship, whether with other people or with God or with all of creation.  Restoration of relationship leads us to renew our vision and our commitment to our common life, and heals breaches of trust.  Jesus announces forgiveness of sins precisely as the key to renewed common life.

Is there someone in your life that you have cut off?  Is there a tear in your fabric that makes it hard to hold onto the message of new life?  Check in with your senses, internal and external, to see.  Where can you be part of the restoration of all things today?  And are you willing to pay the price?

Second Friday in Advent

Isaiah 48:17-19; Psalm 1; Matthew 11:16-19

“Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”  Intriguingly, the NRSV translation says that some ancient authorities read “children” rather than “deeds.”  What’s at stake in that shift?  Jesus was seen by the earliest disciples as the embodiment of Wisdom, the one who "was with God at the beginning" of creation; hence the opening of John's Gospel, and the first O Antiphon, "O Wisdom."  The earliest version of this story said "children," but that implied that Jesus is the child of Wisdom rather than Wisdom herself.  So it became "deeds" pretty quickly.

Isaiah calls the people to wisdom: "O that you had paid attention to my commandments!  Then your prosperity would have been like a river, and your success like the waves of the sea" (Isaiah 48:18).  Jesus comes like Wisdom, who invites people to her banquet (Prov. 9:1-6).  Living with wisdom is a delight, not the hard road at all.  But seeing that takes some discernment.  This is what Jesus' audience lacks.  

Why do they fail to see what Jesus brings, what he is?  Why could they not hear John's call to prepare?  Why is it so hard to hear and see now?  This morning I had a new insight into the structure of denial.

It's easy to think of reasons why we might resist the call of wisdom.  It usually calls us to change our ways, our ideas, our relationships.  It's easier to deny climate change than to reinvent our energy needs and resources (though once again, the easier softer way turns out to be the more painful route).  Or we might go into denial because the one bringing wisdom doesn't look like what we expect: Who expected a Messiah from Nazareth, an itinerant preacher who eats and drinks with anyone who invites him?  But I think there's a deeper reason for denial.

When we are hurt we develop defenses.  Those defenses usually involve freezing some part of our emotions in order to survive.  We deny pain or fear or grief so we can "get on with our lives."  But freezing is not selective.  When we freeze some emotions, we blunt the whole apparatus.  The part that recognizes danger is needed, but if we have shut it down we can't see when we are in real trouble.  The part that senses danger is linked to the part that senses opportunity, so we miss that too.  So we ignore John's warnings, and we despise Jesus' invitations.  We don't do this intellectually; our intellect follows what we can see and feel.  

Advent is a time to renew our senses.  That is a painful and risky enterprise, and for some people it will require a trained companion.  But it's worth it.  Jesus comes with amazing news, good news, and you deserve to hear it.

If you sense that you've been missing something, that some level of love and wonder eludes you, now is the time to go searching for it.  Practice noticing the world around you, and within you.  Ask God to show you what you are missing, and to lead you to companions who will help you access it.  Go to Eucharist and make this request.  You are eating and drinking at Wisdom's feast - let her feed you richly!