Meeting Jesus--December 24, 2021

Meeting Jesus--December 24, 2021

Today is simple.  Well, clear, anyway.  Today's faith practice for embodying hope--the last in this series for Advent, since today is the end of Advent and the beginning of Christmas--is only this: go to meet Jesus in worship.  Today.  Tonight.  Empty-handed.  Unsure of what to expect, that's fine.  Dressed in whatever you already have on--perfect.  Go.  Encounter the God who has come among us in worship this Christmas Eve.

That's what the story is all about, anyway: a whole bunch of people, most of them unrelated, all brought together and gathered into one place simply because that's where Jesus is--and God has drawn them to Jesus.  Shepherds who had no clue what to expect when they got there.  Joseph, still trying to figure out what his role is supposed to be in all of this.  Mary, absolutely exhausted as she looks at her newborn child.  And eventually, wanderers from even further away, who know only to follow the light in the sky that keeps pointing them to this child.  They all have one thing in common: they have been led to that place to meet Jesus.

We trust he is still waiting to meet us.  Not bound up in the same old swaddling clothes and stuck in an ancient manger, but still present.  Still ready to be met.  Still coming into places and times even when we make no room for him, or in situations where we can only offer what we have and trust that will be enough.  Still welcoming us into his presence with empty hands and surprised looks on our faces.  Yep--that's what Christmas is all about, after all.

So come.  Come in person to a house of worship today or tonight.  Come through technology and worship with a live-stream if that's the best means for where you are right now.  Come and set the other concerns in your life aside for a little bit--the flocks will still be there tomorrow, shepherd!  Come and meet Jesus, the One in whom God dwells with us.

We are ready, Lord Jesus, for your presence among us. Be real to us in new and deeper ways--and then be real for others by your presence embodied in us as well. Come, Lord Jesus.

Touching the Real--December 23, 2021

Touching the Real--December 23, 2021

Sometimes it's hard to believe that it's real, you know?  Christmas--at least the story of Jesus' birth, and with it the whole story of our faith--it's something we can forget involves real people living real lives.  It is, on the whole, a story that can sound too good to be true: the Creator of the universe, mending what is broken in the world, not by brute force or shows of coercive power, but by entering into the creation itself in the fragile form of a human, even as a fragile human baby.  I would say it's the stuff of fairy tales, except that even our fairy tales tend to have someone saving the day in the end with brute force by slaying the dragon, overpowering the wolf, or banishing the witch.  The story of the Incarnation can sound even more fantastic, even more fanciful, by comparison because the presence of God is entirely centered on this helpless newborn.  And yet, the Gospel insists, as incredible as it may sound, this story takes place in the real world.

In truth, that's the very thing that makes this story worth telling. It's because the story of the manger-child is real.  It's because God comes into the lives of real human beings, as messy and complicated and contradictory as we all are.  It's because Jesus' birth isn't merely a myth like the Greeks told about Zeus or the Romans told about Romulus and Remus.  It's because the journey to Bethlehem isn't just an allegory or a tale like Orpheus in the Underworld that it has power.  It's because Mary, Joseph, and the whole lot of shepherds are real people that we can dare to believe that God meets us in our real lives, too.

So today, let me offer this invitation.  Go find your own nativity scene.  Maybe you've got one set up under your tree.  Maybe it's on the mantel above the fireplace, or on a shelf or the top of a curio.  Maybe there's a long family history to yours, or you've just recently gotten it yourself.  Maybe you've made your own somewhere along the way.  But go get the pieces out, and take turns with each piece, holding it in your own hands, turning it over, experiencing the touch, and considering the real-life story of the person whose figure is in your hands.  And then let your mind do some faithful imagining--who is it you have in your hands, and what is this person like?  What was going on in their lives before they arrived in Bethlehem?  What was their childhood like?  What's their favorite color or favorite song?  What places do they go to when they need to find a bit of peace and quiet?  What's their favorite food?  In other words, ask the kinds of questions you ask about real people--because they are real people indeed.

Sometimes we don't make that connection, do we?  We have a hard time considering that Jesus, the divine Son of God, had to learn to walk, and had to learn how to eat solid food after nursing with his mother.  We have a hard time imagining Mary being absolutely exhausted after the delivery (and have even invented songs about drum solos being played with her cheerful approval after the baby is born!).  We don't think about the shepherds being people with low-paying jobs that carried very little status or prestige, who were tired from the end of their shift.  We don't dare imagine the worry lines on Joseph's face as he figures out a plan to keep this unusual family safe when they have to go on the run from Herod and his military police force, and how Joseph concludes that becoming refugees in Egypt is the safest--or the least-worst--of all their options.  

But if we are going to stake our lives on the idea that God actually cares about our own lives, in all our very real troubles and the messy situations we find ourselves in, we are going to have to get used to the idea that the people in the Nativity story are not merely fairy-tale characters but real human beings struggling through the pains and joys of this very real world.

Today, then, let it be enough to experience this story with the touch of your Nativity set, with the imagination that allows you to picture these as real people, and then with the expectation that God is present in your real life as well.  Let that prepare you for what you hear and see at Christmas--that this is no fable or fairy-tale, but the story of God breaking into the world as we know it.

Lord God, help us to trust your presence in this real world, in our real lives, with our real struggles.

In God's Company--December 22, 2021

 

In God's Company--December 22, 2021

If I asked you, "What's the purpose of language?" what might you answer?

Think about it for a moment.  Why do humans go through with this curious thing called speech, which takes sounds in the air or squiggles on paper and turns them into meaning--almost like it's magic?  Why do we bother with the trouble of learning which sounds to make at what times, or teaching our children the rules we have invented, called "grammar," for directing which words go in which orders at which times?  What's the goal in all of it?

If that seems like a pretty broad and unwieldy question, good--I think it is supposed to be.  If I came up with a short and shallow answer to "Why do humans communicate?" you'd be virtually certain it was wrong.

If I just said, "The purpose of language is so we can ask for stuff from each other," that would somehow seem oversimplified.  If I just said, "The point of communication is always about giving new factual information to people who don't have it yet," you would be quick to point out that some of our most important sentences as humans are not new information when they are said, but reiterating what everyone always knows.  They are sentences like, "I love you," or "We will get through this," or "I am here with you."

In other words, it seems like the point of language isn't reducible to soliciting favors or making requests, nor can words be boiled down only to conveying facts.  Maybe even deeper, language is about being present with others.  

I guess it's right there in the other word we sometimes use for it:  "communication."  To communicate is to use words as a bridge to "commune" with others, to create "community."  Language is something that connects us to one another, even when there are no new ideas being passed or updated facts to be received.  Language is far richer than only asking things from other people, even if it also includes things like petitions for help or needs to be addressed.

Language--this funny and sometimes frustrating phenomenon that human beings keep using--seems to be about being-together with one another.  Language is a way of being more fully in each other's company.

Now, take that last sentence and replace the word "language" with "prayer."  I think that's not too bad a place to start with understanding what praying most deeply is:  being more fully in God's company.  Before we get into our own personal wish-lists, requests for answers, complaints, or attempts to give God information we seem to think God does not have (this is not true, mind you), praying is about being more fully in the presence of God.  

To be sure, you can find plenty of books by Respectable Religious Professionals about how to "make your prayers heard," or "how to pray effectively," or "how to pray the kind of prayer that God answers," as well as ones not-so-subtly hinting that the "correct" kind of prayer will get you more wealth, a better job, a happy romance, or whatever else is on your wish-list like it's a matter of mastering technique.  But with all due respect, that kind of thinking (and those kinds of books) are a load of dingoes' kidneys.

Prayer can't be reduced to "how to get what you want from God" or "giving God new factual information" any more than all of human language can be reduced to "getting stuff from other people."  It has to be, at a more fundamental level, about connection first.  Prayer, like language in general, is about communion more than commerce.

In other words, praying is contemplative and relational--it is about entering more intentionally into the company of God.  While we are always in the presence of God, the open question is whether we engage God's presence or ignore it, much like you can be sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office with other people and still not have any connection with them until someone strikes up a conversation.  Praying starts when we realize we are in God's presence and try to deepen our connection.  That means it's not ultimately about "getting stuff" from God as it is about knowing and relating to this God who is already in the room.

So now I want to take our conversation a step further.  I want to suggest, too, that praying--at least in this deeper sense of communing with God rather than treating prayer like a cosmic drive-thru speaker into which we obnoxiously shout our orders--is also quite similar to what happened at Christmas.  The coming of Christ--what we sometimes call the Incarnation--is again, about God's choice to enter into our midst and share our company.  It is about God's choice to be present with us, more fully and richly than just sending stone tablets or burning bushes.  It is God's way of communing with us--of being in our presence intentionally.  Jesus, you could say, is what it looks like when God chooses to share our company, rather than just being in the same waiting room with us in silence.

All of that said, then, there is something we can learn from taking the time for contemplative prayer, something that brings us into deeper connection with God, much as the coming of Christ has brought God into deeper connection with humanity.  This kind of praying isn't obsessed with "getting the words right," and sometimes feels like a strange mix of silent listening and bursts of rambling speech.  It is about simply being intentional about recognizing that God is already present in this moment, and then intentionally inviting God's participation in this moment as well.  It is about letting our prayer deepen our relationship with God, even if no specific requests come up or no new answers are given.  Sure, there will be times we ask for things, or raise the concerns on our hearts--but those happen with the wider and deeper relationship we have with God, rather than being the only times we come to God.

The coming of Jesus can't be reduced to items checked off God's to-do list--there is more to it than God needing to answer a certain number of human questions or solve a certain number of human problems.  If that were it, we would have had an already-adult Jesus beam down, leave a book of answers and a jar of miraculous pixie dust, and then beam back up into heaven.  Instead, we have been given an infant who grew up in the midst of human beings, lived through childhood, and ate, drank, wept, laughed, walked, and bled with people in adulthood.  We got a God who communes with us, not merely a genie who grants wishes.  That's important.

Today, take the time to pause from "doing" for simply being in the presence of God.  Whether there are discrete words or grammatically correct complete sentence or not is immaterial.  The question is how we will look up from our magazines in the waiting room and enter into the company of the God who shares this space with us.  And whatever comes of that communing will make us more fully alive.

Lord Jesus, we know you are already here in this moment and this place with us, but we invite you to share the day in front of us, to be a part of our lives in it, and to walk through this day's journey together.  Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.

The Grace of Attentiveness--December 21, 2021

The Grace of Attentiveness--December 21, 2021

For whatever else Christmas means, I think at least it means that God doesn't just love the world in the abstract, as an idea, or (like in the old Bette Midler song), "from a distance."  God's love is also experiential, particular, and comes close enough to touch.

God doesn't just love "the world" as a concept, or from some distant heavenly vantage point from which you can't see the scars we leave on each other. The incarnation of God in Jesus--the news that God takes on our embodied human experience as one of us--means that God knows what it's like to get caught in the rain, or the taste of fresh bread while it's still warm, or the colors of a sunset by the sea.  Sometimes we Respectable Religious Folks can get so laser-like focused on Jesus' mission and on the journey to the cross and resurrection that we forget: in Jesus, God chose to endure our experience of linear time, with decades of life, the passing of seasons, the making of friends, the pain of loss, and all the countless details of life as human beings.  

It's not quite right, in other words, to say, "Jesus was only born so he could die for us," as you sometimes hear TV or radio preachers insist.  I mean, certainly the cross is the climax of the story, but the whole story is there for a reason.  Jesus doesn't just beam down from heaven as a thirty-something man and go straight to a Roman death sentence, nor does the baby die right in the manger.  Part of God's choice to be embodied in the human life of Jesus is to love us, not merely from the "outside" so to speaks, but to love us from within... with our own skin, our touch, our breath, our humanity.  The news of Christmas is that God's love is more than just a mission of divine tasks to be accomplished, "Die for the sins of the world: check.  Redeem creation: check.  Defeat the powers of evil: check..." but God's choice to be among us, loving creation in all the details of who we are.  In Jesus, God knows what it is like to smell fresh spices in the marketplace and feel grains of wheat sifting through your fingers, as well as the way a silence feels on a calm night, or the way tears feel to your fingertips when you are wiping them from someone else's cheek.  My goodness, there are times when I get short-tempered getting one of my kids an ice-pack for a scraped knee if they have been horsing around in the other room--but here God has crossed the infinite barriers of existence to share with us the experience of comforting friends who are grieving and feeling their sorrow along with them.

So let me propose that for this day, a way to embody the message of this season--now just a few days before celebrating Christmas--is to take the time to pay attention to the details of everyday life, and to savor them.  Don't miss the little things of life in this created world.  Take them all in--the smells and the sights, the tastes and the touches, the power of words and of songs... all of it.  And don't just notice them for a moment--maybe even hold a few in your mind to reflect on, to mull over, or to borrow the line from the Christas story in Luke, "to ponder these things in your heart."  

Just the other day, as a group of folks from one of the churches I serve went Christmas caroling down the streets of town, I was struck again at how voices split off into harmonies as we sang old, well-loved carols.  There had been no practices, no decree requiring four-part harmony, and not even any printed notes for our songs.  But enough people knew the notes from years of singing that there was a richness I was not expecting while we sang in the frosty evening.  That is a detail I could have so easily overlooked or taken for granted--and, oh Mercy, how many times before have I taken for granted the sound of voices in harmony.  Or the taste of the first sip of coffee this morning--I was struck as the edge of the mug rose to my lips how rich and complex the flavor was today, even though it's the same beverage I drink every morning, and most of the time in the same mug.  How many times have I just gulped down the ebony liquid as a means of getting caffeine into my system?  Like Dr. Chumley says it in the classic Harvey, "Fly specks!  I've been spending my life among fly specks while miracles have been leaning on lampposts at 18th and Fairfax!"  There is such extraordinary beauty and richness in the details of this life, and part of loving the world that God so loves is to notice them... to roll them over in your minds like turning over a precious stone.  

Maybe that's really the calling of Christmas: to love this world after the way God has loved the world--as embodied beings who can notice and lift up the good in all its tiniest parts.  Maybe the discovery is that the fly-specks are miracles, too, and that loving the world means noticing the world in all its most-overlookable parts.  Like Gustavo Gutierrez put it so powerfully, "So you say you love the poor--name them."  We cannot love what or whom we do not take the time to notice, to recognize, to appreciate, and to honor whatever is good within it all.  We cannot understand how God loves the world if we rush through our own lives so inattentively that we only think of it as an abstract thing, rather than to appreciate it all. If we want to let God's love shape us in new ways, we will have to practice the kind of attentiveness that led God, not just to say, "I read a book about those humans..." but to become one of us.  If we want to get a sense of how deeply joyful God's love for this world is, we need to let ourselves be captivated again by the beauty, complexity, intricacy, and wonder of all this world's tiniest moments and details.

Notice the color in a loved one's eyes.  Smell the coffee.  Listen to the wind rustling the tree branches.  Take it all in.  Be attentive to it all--and maybe you and I will discover a bit more fully how God's love attends to this world in all its particularity.

Lord God, we give you such thanks for this world in all its richness.  Let us not miss it today, but rather, as we attend to it all, allow it to understand more fully the way you love this world, and us within it, as well.

The First Christmas Carol--December 20, 2021

The First Christmas Carol--December 20, 2021

One of the earliest writings we have from the first generations of Christians is a lyric from a song.  I love that--I love to think that from almost the very beginning of our faith story, we have been singing the Good News.

But what is even more powerful to me about that fact is the content of the lyrics--they are all about how Jesus served by placing himself in the lowest position, in order that we might be raised up.  The earliest hymns the church sang--even before we called ourselves "church" in all likelihood--had at their heart the notion of self-giving love.  First, that love is Christ's for us... and then, because we Christians are meant to be his apprentices, it is our love for others.  It is a love that serves, a love that seeks to give itself away, a love that lifts others up.

You can find that hymn fragment preserved in one of Paul's letters--in what we call the Epistle to the Philippians.  Paul, of course, was writing his letters about a generation before any of the gospel-writers finally put their collections of stories down in ink, so that's already pretty early.  But in what we call the second chapter of Philippians, we are quite likely reading an earlier hymn, poem, or song that Paul was quoting.  He is going along, directing his readers to "regard others better than yourselves," and not to "look to your own interests, but to the interests of others," and then Paul points to the example of Jesus, and the language starts to have the feel of poetry, or a song lyric.  Paul says (again, quite likely quoting a hymn that the early church already knew by heart, which means it was already in existence and well-known to them), "Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness..." (Phil. 2:4-7).

You might not think of that as particularly "Christmas-y," after all, there's no manger or angel in the lyrics, and there's not a single use of the phrase "holly jolly."  But I dare say this might actually be the first Christmas carol (well, and if you read on in Philippians 2:8-11, it also becomes the first Good Friday and Easter hymn, too!).  It gives us the reason for Jesus' coming--in him we have God's own self taking on our humanity, even in the lowliest forms of humanity, without power, wealth, privilege, or comforts.  Jesus comes in the role of a servant and empties himself.  You don't need a mention of a star or a shepherd or a "Fa-la-la-la-la" to spot it--that's the Christmas story.  That's the Incarnation--God coming among us, as one of us, and taking the role, not of king, CEO, emperor, or Commander-in-Chief, but as One who serves... because that is what love does.  Today, then, for us who seek to be disciples of this Jesus, the most Christmas-y thing we can do is to find some way to serve someone else without making a big deal about it.  

It can be a discrete act, like washing the dishes without making a fuss about it... or offering to this week's grocery run so someone else can put their feet up for a bit.  Or maybe it's the choice to wear a mask around your workplace or in stores, not because someone is "making you" or "forcing you," but with the thought that someone else is going through chemo-therapy and not advertising it to the world but still needs to buy milk, or that if there is even a tiny chance it will help prevent someone else from being hospitalized so that your local nurses won't be even more overwhelmed with strain and stress at their work.  Or may be serving today is the choice to continue on with the tasks that are a part of your daily and weekly routine, doing your job well, cooking meals, folding laundry, or whatever else is yours to do.  These things aren't glamorous--that's not the point of serving.  But in actions of chosen serving, putting ourselves in the roles of doers whose labor benefits others, something happens to our hearts.  We learn something about the heart of God by choosing to serve others--we are made more fully into the likeness of the One who first served us.

Now, I want us to be crystal clear here for a moment, too: this is not at all a matter of "If I do enough, then God will love me."  No, no, no.  Let's get the horse and the cart in the right order.  You are already beloved of God.  So beloved, in fact, that in Jesus, God has already come and taken the role of servant--going all the way to death for our sakes.  And it is because of what God has already done in Christ that we serve others--not to pay God back, not to rack up points for future rewards, but because God's love for us has a transforming effect on us to make us into the shape of Divine Love as well, as Christ lives in us.  It's not about "what I get out of it," but rather, "who we are becoming" as Christ's love indwells us.  In other words, little acts of serving--from the kitchen sink to the line at the grocery store to the very nose on your face--are ways we embody hope for the world, so that the watching world will see glimpses of the self-giving love we have already come to know in Jesus, who has loved us first.

Today, rather than decking any halls, jingling any bells, or listening for the millionth time to "All I Want for Christmas Is You," let the most Christmas-y thing you do be inspired by that first Christmas carol--let it be a way you choose to give yourself away in serving someone else.

Lord Jesus, thank you for having served us in such love--give us inspiration for ways we might reflect your self-giving love in big and little ways for others today.

A Terrible, Beautiful World--December 17, 2021

A Terrible, Beautiful World--December 17, 2021

I went outside just before sitting down the keyboard to write today, just to stand for a moment in the breeze of a gray December afternoon.  It was a strange mix of the beautiful and the unlovely, to be honest.  The air was unseasonably warm in the mid-60s, but there was a wind strong enough to drag the neighbor's empty trash can across their driveway.  There were patches of green that seemed out of place given that it's just over a week until Christmas, but the ground was muddy and brown, too.  The cloudy sky wasn't threatening rain, but it cast a gloom over the bare skeleton branches of the trees in my field of vision.  And in between the sounds of the wind was a strange blend of birds chirping and traffic moving in the distance.

It was the juxtaposition of all those contradictory elements that stuck with me--the unexpected warmth with the ugly noises of dragging plastic on asphalt, the music of birds and the noise of human machinery, the bright and the dreary, all at once.  And in that moment, it occurred to me again--this, THIS, is the world God has chosen to enter, has chosen to be embodied into, and has chosen to redeem.  This world, in all its wonder and terror, all its excitement and all its ennui, this is the world into which God comes.  This one, and not another.  This one, with its indivisible mix of goodness and rottenness, is the world God so loves enough to have given us Jesus.

The biblical writers are honest in the same way about this world in which we live: it is both a magnificent masterpiece and a rubbish pile all at the same time.  It is full of the music of stars and sparrows alike, and it is also groaning as in childbirth, aching for newness and restoration.  Pretending you can only see one or the other is neither honest nor useful.  To see only the nice and pleasant things means turning your head to ignore what is unjust, mean, cruel, and selfish in the world and to just let it continue.  And if all one can see is the tragic and the broken, there is little reason to fight for it or to do the work of restoration.  If we only see the roses, we will miss the grace of a God who wears thorns for our sake.  And if all we see are thorns, we'll blame God for making a world that that only gives us pain and scars.  

This week, I've been listening again to a song from the Decemberists, written for this very day nine years ago, in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings.  In the song entitled "12/17/12," singer Colin Meloy reflected on his wife who was pregnant with their second son, while other parents were mourning the deaths of their children, murdered by a school shooter while the country as a whole seemed to shrug impotently over the tragedy.  And in that mix of hope and love for his own child and heartache for those grieving their children, Melloy sings in the last stanza, "Oh my God, what a world you have made here--what a terrible world, what a beautiful world--what a world you have made here." That line brings me up short every time I hear it.

That's the truth we have to reckon with, and the truth the message of Christmas has to address, as well: that this world in which we live is both terrible and beautiful. And yet this is the world into which God is born from Mary's belly.  The Christ for whom we wait didn't only come to the flowers and sunny Saturday mornings in June, but also into the dreary grayness of December.  The God who takes on our humanity at the manger enters into a world where empires oppress as well as where the lilies of the field are dressed more splendidly than Solomon.  And seeing the world truthfully that way is important.  It reminds us that God hasn't been fooled into loving creation without seeing the ugly parts.  Maybe that's part of why I secretly appreciate when we don't have a snow-covered "white Christmas"--because it's easy to love the world when it's all covered in a fresh blanket of uniformly pristine snow.  But God comes into a world with sloppy mud, jagged rocks, and dreary clouds, too--that, too, is the world God loves, and God doesn't flinch from loving it just because it doesn't look like the cover of a Christmas card or the scene in a song.

Setting aside a moment to take in the world around me, in all its mix of beauty and terror, of exhaust fumes and the smell of fresh pine, that helps me to consider just what it means that God has come into this world that is both beautiful and terrible.  So today's faith practice is just that simple--and just that difficult as well: go, spend a moment, or as much of your lunch break as you can muster, maybe, and be in creation, in all its ambiguity.  See the beauty of creation alongside the unpleasant things our mental cameras sometimes want to edit out.  See the lovely and be grateful. See what is heartbreaking and be brave enough to face it.  And know that this is the world to which Christ has come.  

And then, let that also direct your steps in the new day as well:  to be a follower of Christ means to go where he goes.  And since Jesus doesn't only keep himself to the pleasant and pristine parts of life, but into the dirty back-alleys, the garbage pits, and the gravesites as well, we are also called to meet--and to love--the people living in the midst of both.  We don't get to pretend the terrible things aren't there, since Jesus doesn't.  But neither are we allowed to give up on what is good and noble and true, either, since Jesus doesn't surrender to that cynical despair, either.

Step out into creation today, and see it for what it is... and then, let it move you both to praise of the God who loves it in all its messiness, and to be some of the hands and feet through which God's love restores it.

Lord God, what a world you have made and entered here in Christ--what a beautiful world, what a terrible world.  Let us see this world as you see it, love it as you love it, and be a part of your mission to restore it as well.

In Shelter With God--December 16, 2021

In Shelter With God--December 16, 2021

My guess, if you are reading this, is that you have a place to sleep tonight.  The fact that you are in a position to read things like this internet devotional post suggests you have a place to sit and read for a bit as well as access to the internet.  I can't guess if you have always known what it is like to have a safe place to rest your head at night, but if you are currently enjoying the blessing of shelter as you read these words, then you probably also know how easy it is to take that blessing for granted.

We who know where our stuff is laying after we come home from work, we who have a consistent bed to sleep in, we who don't have to pack up our belongings every morning before the sun comes up so we can carry them all with us, we are greatly privileged in knowing what it is to have somewhere to call "home."  And of course, one of the terrible side-effects of such privilege is how well it can insulate us from caring about those who are without it.  If you're warm enough, you're not likely to think about who's out in the cold. If your belly is full, it's easy not to think about what it feels like to be hungry without a way to get a meal.  Comfort has a numbing effect on us, to be quite honest.  That's not to say that we should sleep out in the cold tonight as if our added suffering will give shelter to those without--but it is to say, we need to do something to prod our memories when physical comfort is prone to make us forgetful of others.  Once you're inside, it's easy to forget there was anybody else outside still waiting to be invited in.  And yet, as Dina Nayeri put it so well, "It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks."

That is especially true for us as the people who God, and doubly so in this season leading up to Christmas.  It's not merely because of the weather, and the way December often brings a chill in the air in our part of the world, making it is dangerous to sleep out in the cold.  It's because at the heart of the story of Jesus' birth is God's choice to share what it is like to be without shelter, to be without a home.  A first night's sleep in a borrowed food trough rather than a proper crib, and then an infancy on the run from Herod living as a family of refugees in Egypt remind us--that in Jesus, God knows what it is like not to have a certain shelter for the night.  It is God's choice, then, to stand in solidarity with those who have fled their homes out of necessity for safety's sake.  It is God's choice to camp out with all those who do not have the luxury of a warm proper bed.  It is God's choice to bear the experience of those without privilege.

So if we want to get to know this peculiar God of our better, perhaps we should let our priorities and choices align with God's.  Maybe what we need is fewer pieces of cheap merchandise to wrap up and dazzle a friend or relative with on Christmas morning, and more of our resources to go to help give shelter to someone who otherwise has no safe place to rest their head.  Maybe a better measure of "Christmas spirit" is not how many blinking lights you have stapled to your eaves, but rather how we choose to create shelter for folks without a safe room to sleep in... and for the God who is among them, too.

Today's faith practice for embodying hope, then, is a step in that direction: what if we took some amount of our abundance--we who have a warm place to rest our heads tonight--and gave it to the work of an organization that offers shelter.   That could be local, like a temporary shelter for those without housing in your community, or a more involved program like Family Promise (or Interfaith Hospitality Network) that helps connect people with skills, training, and opportunities for permanent housing as well as shelter for families, or a refugee resettlement organization (in my tradition, we are grateful for the work of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, for example).  Our contributions might help resettle Afghan families who had to flee Kabul for helping US forces, or a family in your town whose kids go to school with your own children or grandchildren, or maybe will help the person who scans your groceries be able to have a permanent place of their own.  But any of those is probably going to be more in tune with the God we know in Jesus than another robe, pair of slippers, or new gadget.

This is an important realization for us as the followers of Jesus: the gifts we choose to give have a way of shaping us more than we might recognize.  As Jesus himself says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  In other words, if we make our Christmas gift-giving all about the trendiest fashions or hottest toys, we will be reinforcing the message that these things are what matter most.  If we say, "We could all live without more stuff, but someone else's survival and well-being is far more important than getting another device with a screen," well, maybe we are on our way to having our hearts align with the heart of God.  And honestly, that's what I would rather spend myself on--becoming someone whose heart is pointed in the same direction as God's, even if my list of assets isn't as long as it might have been.

For us who are likely insulated from the cold of sleeping on the street tonight, maybe a way to prevent becoming numb to the needs of our neighbors is to put our treasures where we want our hearts to be--in the place where God already is: among those in need of shelter tonight.

Lord God, you came among us in Jesus as a refugee with a borrowed bed, and here we in our comfort have more than we need.  Lead us to use some of our abundance to care for the people who could use a safer room in which to sleep tonight.

Lyrics to Hold Onto--December 15, 2021

Lyrics to Hold Onto--December 15, 2021

"The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not... you keep moving on." (Sunday in the Park with George)

"Nice is different than good." (Into the Woods)

"You're always sorry, you're always grateful, you're always wondering what might have been... then she walks in." (Company)

In recent weeks, fans of musical theater have been mourning the passing of the great lyricist and music writer, Stephen Sondheim. And now with a remake of West Side Story, for which he wrote lyrics, out in theaters, lots of people are being reintroduced to the poetry and images and wordplay that came from his mind. And while I'm no expert on his musicals, there are more than a few of his lines that keep coming back to me.

In fact, I will confess that on a number of occasions in the last several weeks, I've been digging up old recordings I have, or hunting for videos on the internet, of some of those songs that keep coming back.  I'm not sure why, exactly, other than that somehow it is good to hear those old familiar words again, even when they are not exactly cheerful or purely comprised of unicorns and rainbows (Sondheim never runs from the sadness of life, I must admit).  But somehow, hearing the old words, the words that have stayed stuck in the back recesses of my mind for decades in some cases, helps me these days. It's not like I go looking for specific advice in my life by trying to decipher hidden messages in songs from musicals.  I don't say to myself, "What should I do about my investment portfolio?" and then consult the score of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," or wonder, "Should I get a haircut?" before poring over the lyrics from "Sweeney Todd" for advice.  But somehow the lyrics that have meant something to me before speak again, and I keep holding onto them, even if I'm not quite sure why.

I want to ask something similar of us today, but with the lyrics of the songs from Scripture that keep coming back to us in this season.  I don't think I had thought of the Bible as a musical much when I was a kid or even a college student--too often, the Bible was presented as something like a heavenly math textbook where sample problems were given and lessons were taught, and then you were supposed to do the rest on your own as your spiritual homework.  But truthfully, a lot more of the Scriptures have the feel and flow of a musical, where stories unfold with periodic interruptions from a chorus of angels, or a soliloquy of lament, or a ballad of praise and wonder.  Especially in this season of Advent, we are reminded again and again of those songs, whether it's the ancient poetry of prophets like Isaiah or Zephaniah, or the spontaneous songs of Zechariah or Mary in the opening chapter of Luke, or the chorus from the angels on the night of Jesus' birth.  And again and again, the lyrics come back to us as something to hold onto when other words fail us.

"Comfort, O comfort my people..." (Isaiah 40:1)

"Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might..." (Isaiah 12:2)

"I will save the lame and gather the outcast... I will bring you home, and the time when I gather you..." (Zephaniah 3:19-20)

"In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us..." (Zechariah's song in Luke 1)

"You have fed the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty..." (Mary's song in Luke 1)

The words keep coming back to us--in my tradition, they are woven into our worship on Sundays, especially in this season.  They aren't always preached on, or given extensive commentary or explanation, but they sit there at the back of our mind, like song lyrics that have been ingrained into our memory.  

And they are there, not so much to give us specific advice for what to do today, but to remind us of the story in which we are caught up.  They are lyrics to hold onto, to remind us of the direction of our hope, when the other things vying for our trust turn out to be unreliable.  We keep coming back to those songs because they remind us that our hope isn't in a day the Dow Jones breaks another record or your 401(k) hits a new high, but in something bigger, for all creation, where at last we are at home and at peace.  We keep coming back to these songs to remind us that the goal of Christmas isn't for us to have the perfect celebration, or put on the nicest meal, or find the ideal gift for a loved one--but rather, Christmas is about the lengths God has gone to in order to reach us, reclaim us, and restore all things in creation.  That awareness might not immediately give you a "helpful life lesson" for what to do with a particular problem at work or a trouble relationship with a friend, but it does have a way of reminding us who and what we are.  We need the lyrics of those ancient songs, even if we don't quite know why.

So today, spend time in the ancient musical songbook of this season.  When we gather in worship, listen with new ears to Mary's song, or read through Zechariah's praise of God and direction to his infant son in Luke 1.  Read the visions of the prophets and just let them sit there in your mind, stewing like soup or mulling like cider, until they become a part of you. Let the poetry of wolves and lambs lying down together capture your imagination.  Let the imagery of a peaceable kingdom shape the trajectory of your hope.  Let Mary's praise of a God who pulls down the bullies from their thrones and lifts up the lowly remind you of the character of that God.  Hold onto those songs, until they become a part of you.

And then, let life come at us as it will.  With the lyrics of those inspired voices at the back of our mind, we will know how best to tune out the angry noise of the world around us, and to hear more clearly the melody of God's new creation rising above the din.

Lord God, thank you for the songs your people have sung--which you inspired in the first place--which remind us who we are.  Let us keep them with us today, as we head into the world to which you send us.

The God Who Lifts--December 14, 2021

The God Who Lifts--December 14, 2021

We aren't just waiting for anybody.  That much needs to be clear.

This season we keep coming back to in church time, this thing called "Advent," it's not just about waiting "in general" or about the importance of delayed gratification as an abstract life principle. It's about whom we are waiting FOR--and about the question, "Who is really worth waiting for in this life?"

And the answer to that, of course, is that the particular God we meet in the Scriptures, the God who has come to us in Jesus, this is the One who is worth the wait.  It's a peculiar sort of God at the heart of Advent and Christmas, not just any old placeholder deity.

The Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians and the old Norse peoples, too, they all had their own pantheons of deities on whom they waited, as well.  But they were by and large giant capricious sky-bullies.  They were short-tempered lightning-bolt throwers like Zeus, or warriors with thunder like Thor.  But they weren't particularly known for lifting up the lowly, or strengthening the weak.  They were projections of human imagination, and like all such inventions, they reflected our own capacity to be selfish, fickle, and volatile.  You are free, I suppose, to wait for such gods to show up... but I hardly think they are worth the wait.

By contrast, the Scriptures keep reminding us that the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Moses and Miriam, the God of Mary and Elizabeth and their sons, is always committed to lifting up those who are bowed down.  It's there in Mary's song, as she sings about God filling the hungry with good things while sending the rich away empty, and it's there in her life story, as God calls her to bear the Savior while leaving all the powerful people around her out of the conversation.  It's there in the words of so many of the prophets' visions, too--they spoke of God coming to gather in the outcast, to be gentle with those who were wavering and wobbly, and to strengthen the weak and wayward.  It's there throughout the story of ancient Israel, from liberating the enslaved Hebrews at the expense of Pharaoh's power through the laws commanding debt cancellation and provision for the poor, to little David's victory over the arrogant giant Goliath, to the hope of return from exile.   Over and over, the God we meet in the Scriptures is one who lifts others up who need it.

And at the very same time, this God--whose coming in Christ is what we are looking toward this Advent--always leads us to lift others up as well.  The God who freed the enslaved Israelites then commanded them to look out for foreigners, refugees, and strangers who came across their paths as well, because, as God reminded them, they knew what it was like to be the ones in need and to be lifted up when they were low.  The Savior who was always willing to stop and help the person in need then also called his followers to "Go and do likewise."  The early church, too, was full of people who used their energy to build others up--from Barnabas (who was given that nickname because it means "Son of encouragement,") to the Apostle Paul who instructed his congregations over and over again in his letters to strengthen the fainthearted, to support the weak, and to weep with those who weep.

So, what if today we showed the watching world what sort of God we are waiting for this Christmas--by choosing to lift someone up in our own lives?  It can be an encouraging word, a gesture of kindness, a gift that would brighten someone's day, a compliment to build someone up, or a way of amplifying someone else's voice when you have a platform to help them be heard.  Whatever action it is, let it be a way of letting your own life be shaped by the character of the God who lifts up the lowly, who strengthens the weary, and who encourages the faint-hearted.  Let people see the wonderfully peculiar ways of our God--the God who calls the Marys and Elizabeths of the world while leaving Herod and Caesar out of the loop--in the ways we fill up the people around us who are running on empty.

Lord God, we thank you for your way of lifting us up when we are bowed down, and for your care for the ones who have been stepped on.  Help us to do the same as a witness to your own presence in the world.  Having been lifted up already by you, enable us to lift up others.

Deliberate Communication--December 13, 2021

Deliberate Communication--December 13, 2021

There are a million ways in this techno-savvy age of ours to send a message in an instant.  Text messages, email, instant messenger apps, social media comments, and more are all readily at our fingertips and take virtually no time at all to send.  But the trouble with all of those electronic formats is that it is terribly easy to send a message without actually putting thought into what we are saying.  Through technology, we have made it so easy to send a message that half the time our own devices are suggesting words to complete our thoughts for us (with features like "predictive text" or "autocorrect") or taking our words and reducing them into cartoon faces.  

It takes longer to plan out what you are going to say in a hand-written note.  Not only because our hands our slower to write out words in longhand, but because we actually have to think and communicate in complete sentences.  Without a "delete" button or an "undo" feature, you have to think out an entire idea or phrase before you put it down on paper.  That has a way of forcing us to slow down, to plan what we want to say, and to choose our words deliberately.  It has a way of conveying something of our actual selves to another person, rather than letting an algorithm guess what you were going to say, minus any of your own actual personality.

The beauty of a handwritten note is exactly in its costliness--not just the price of postage, but the gift of time that goes into writing it, the effort that goes into composing it, and the precious glimpse of the sender's own soul that's communicated.  When you get a note in the mail from someone, you are receiving something they themselves have touched, seeing marks their own hands have created, and ideas that came out of their own mind.  There is something beautiful about that, and the patience required of the whole process, from writing and sending to receiving and reading, is part of that beauty, too.  It's rather like the difference between ordering an assembly-line hamburger from the drive-thru and wolfing it down with one hand as you drive with the other and eating a meal that's been cooking for hours in the kitchen and prepared by someone who knew what they were doing, and who knows how much paprika you like in the sauce.

As people of faith, too, there is something really powerful about the act of taking the time to think about what you want to say, committing it to paper, and then sending those words off to someone important enough to you that you have gone to all that trouble.  It is a way of stepping into the perspective of God in a sense, if you think about it.  The coming of Christ at Christmas is all about God communicating to us--first, in the visions of prophets and words of poets inspired to announce the Messiah, and then ultimately in God's self-expression in the baby in the manger.  And that says something about God's willingness to be deliberate... methodical... patient... in the sending of the message.  The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus is "the exact imprint of God's very being" (Heb. 1:3), which is to say that Jesus is what it looks like when God communicates the fullness of God's own identity.  Jesus is God's love letter to us. And the way God took the time in our human history to prepare the way, to nudge prophets to speak, to plant visions like seeds in their minds, to get through to us, and then ultimately to share our own existence as one of us--that reveals God's deep intentionality.  There's nothing haphazard or random about the incarnation of God in Jesus. This isn't a whim of a bored deity, looking for some new thrill of experience otherwise unavailable up in heaven.  This isn't a half-baked scheme, either.   It is God's conscious, chosen path to communicate with us.

We get a glimpse of what that is like in the effort and thought it takes to write someone else a note.  We get a hint of the love, care, and attention God has poured out to humanity in the way we have to craft a letter.  And when the other person receives what you write and reads it, they realize how important they were to you that you took the time to put pen to paper.  That means all the more in a society full of instant communication.  The choice to be patient and thoughtful rather that quick and mindless goes a long way.  Even before you get to any other words, the mere choice to write shows someone else they were worth taking the time for.  What a gift that is.

So today, as a way of learning maybe just a bit more deeply how beloved we are that God chose to communicate so deliberately with us, take the time and make the effort to write a note to someone else.  It doesn't have to be long or poetic--just real, and just you being authentic.  And as you place your envelope in the mailbox, know that God has gone to even greater lengths to communicate with us all.

Lord God, thank you for reaching out to us.  Thank you for Jesus, for all the prophets who got our attention, and for your continuing to speak to us that we might know you.

An Ear for Peace--December 10, 2021

An Ear for Peace--December 10, 2021

You can't rightly celebrate Mothers Day by making mom cook and clean and scrub the bathrooms.  That just violates the spirit of what the holiday is about.

Similarly, it would be a mockery to barge into a Teacher Appreciation Day event while berating public education and destroying the books they taught us to love and learn from.  And it would hardly be a loving way of honoring your friend by cooking all the foods they hate or are allergic to at their birthday dinner.  Please don't do any of those things.  Just don't.

Along the same lines, the preparations we go through every year to commemorate Jesus' birth beg a really important question: how well do our Christmas celebrations fit with the character of the Christ we worship?  How much of our Yuletide feast is Jesus allergic to, so to speak, and once we realize it, will we change the menu accordingly?

As a case in point, I want to ask how we can use this season to become more peaceable people, rather than more hostile, antagonistic, or belligerent.  Jesus, after all, is the One the prophets envisioned as "the Prince of Peace," and they looked forward in hope to the Messiah bringing in God's Reign of endless "shalom"--not merely peace as the absence of conflict, but the presence of wholeness for all.  Those ancient words of the prophet Isaiah have been shouting from the page for thousands of years to us: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given... and he shall be called... "Prince of peace."  The prophets envisioned the Messiah's coming as a time when all the old weapons and trappings of war and military might were done away with, burned "as fuel for the fire" because humanity has no more need of them. They dared to envision the coming of the Messiah as good news for all nations, who would come streaming to his throne to learn the ways of peace and justice.  

And yet--I wonder how well any of us actually use this season celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace actually practicing peacemaking.  And I say this to my own shame as well--it is just so much easier to be angry, dismissive, and bellicose, especially with folks we know we have disagreements with.  It is easier to assume the worst about what they think or why they believe what they do.  It is easier to frame their thinking or actions in the worst possible light than to give them the benefit of the doubt.  It is easier to settle for caricatures of what "they" must think rather than to ask someone else how they come to the conclusions they do.  And it is also easier to try and provoke someone else into an argument because we are spoiling for a fight than to offer in good will to listen as well as to be open to changing your own mind, or at least to revising your assumptions about the other person. 

Honestly, that is the beginning of peacemaking.  It's the willingness to see another person, even when you know you are starting from very different perspectives, as a human being made in the image of God, and to honor and respect that in the other even if there's little else you find admirable in them.  It's the willingness to listen, even to those with whom you disagree strongly.  And it's the willingness where you actually are in the right to work for the other person's transformation, not their destruction. 

Along with all of that, practical peacemaking also means the refusal to make everything into a battle to be won or lost, and the refusal to intimidate, threaten, or manipulate as your way of projecting strength.  For Christians, it means we don't get suckered into seeing things as a "culture war" and casting ourselves as noble victims or valiant crusaders in such a war.  It means we don't try and intimidate others or put others who do not share our faith beneath us.  It means we don't assume we have all the answers, and that we acknowledge there are probably places in each of our thinking and believing where we are wrong.  It means the willingness to let someone else help us to rethink, re-examine, re-consider, and--to use a word Lutherans should like--to "re-form," rather than lashing out every time someone presents an idea or a thought or a fact that makes us squirm with discomfort.

There's today's challenge then: that we would be people who take the first immediate step of genuine peacemaking by deliberately and openly listening to someone we know we disagree with, to find out where they are coming from, how they have arrived at their current thinking, and to see the humanity in them that forums like social media have a way of masking.  Take the step of offering an ear for peace--the willingness to hear someone else's perspective rather than shouting them down as the first step.  Disarm those who have been antagonistic by being willing to hear how they see the world and why they do, and remove from them the ammunition of accusing you of "never listening."  It may not change someone else's mind to take that step, but you will have changed the lay of the land by refusing to make something into a battle that was meant to remain a conversation.  Seeing those we most struggle to love as people for whom Jesus still came (and knowing they may be having just as big an epiphany realizing that Jesus came for you, too!) has a way of changing things.  That's where the work of peacemaking begins in our actual lives.

Look, we've got to be honest: every time some firebrand demagogue takes a photo with everyone in the family packing their assault rifles and slaps a "Merry Christmas" greeting on it, the watching world thinks that's what Christians believe their faith in Jesus is about.  And it's an outright mockery of the One the Scriptures proclaim as "Prince of Peace."  Our calling is to be different--our calling is to celebrate Christ by becoming peaceable people ourselves.  And that will mean we come unarmed and empty-handed to listen to others, with open ears and open minds. That's how to honor the coming of the Prince of Peace.

O Christ, help us to rightly honor your coming among us by letting our lives be shaped by your peace.

The Gift of Empty Space--December 9, 2021

 

The Gift of Empty Space--December 9, 2021

It is so easy for this season to become nothing but a stack of to-do lists.  Resist that temptation.  Choose differently.  

Refuse to get sucked into the vortex of itemized checkboxes and chores to be accomplished--all by December 25th, of course! While the busy-ness whirls around you, keep yourself connected to other people by making time for them.  Hold open time in your day, even if it feels just like empty (wasted) space on your calendar, for the possibility of where you might be needed--just for conversation with someone else.

These days, I find myself keeping all sorts of running checklists: presents that have been ordered or bought, along with presents that have arrived and are waiting to be wrapped... items to do at work for the day, the week, and the season... phone calls to make and emails to reply to... along with the usual routines of laundry, cooking, and keeping some level of awareness of whether my kids are doing their homework or not.  You have your own set of lists, I'm sure.  And there's nothing wrong with having those things to do in life, or keeping track of what you have to do each day, either.  It's better than constantly letting people down because you haven't done what you were supposed to do at any rate. 

But with the busyness of the pre-Christmas season (which adds itself to the regular busyness of life), it is very easy to become cut off from other people... or to lose focus on what is most important--or who, rather, is most important. It's easy to see the day ahead of you only in terms of how many errands can be checked off between work and bed, or how many things can be cleared off the desk before quitting time.  And when we do that--when we slide too far into that mentality of finishing tasks in the name of "preparing for Christmas"--we can forget that it is for people, not productivity, that Jesus came.  We can forget that it is God's love for human beings like us that prompted God's coming in a human life like ours. And we can forget that the Jesus whose birth we celebrate this season was always willing to let himself be held up for a conversation with someone who needed to talk.  

This year, I am trying for my own part to think differently, despite the pull of the to-do list and its promises of rewards for productivity.  I am trying to start from the premise that my ways of preparing for Jesus' coming and celebrating his birth should make me more like him, not less.  That just seems reasonable.  If my pre-Christmas practices are making me meaner, or less compassionate, something has gone wrong.  If my observation of Advent is making me less attentive to other human beings in the name of looking busy, I am missing the point.  And if my focus on filling every moment with as much accomplishment as possible makes me unable to be detoured when someone else needs me to listen, well, I fear that is making me less like Jesus rather than more.

So today, my own dare--and one I'll offer to you as well--is to make the time for conversation with someone.  Hold open time--let there be wiggle room in your day, whether at work or at home or in between--so that you are available.  Give the gift of empty space that someone else might--or might not--ask of you.  And when someone reaches out needing to talk, needing to share something, or needing to process some heartache weighing on them, or even just to check in with you, set aside the idol of accomplishment... and give them the time.

And let that become a gift in both directions--a gift for the person you are making time for, and for yourself as well.  That's just it: our relentless devotion to our to-do lists ends up being a life-draining ordeal for us.  It never lets up, and it never gives us rest, and it certainly never lets us find joy in being with other people just for the sake of being with them.  The to-do list, especially the Christmas to-do list, may be an efficient organizational tool, but it is also a ruthless master.  Holding open time in our day that isn't meant to "check stuff off the list" but is open for reaching out to other people has a way of breaking that master's power over us, and keeping our to-do lists as tools rather than tyrants.

Using time differently will take some practice, to be sure.  It will mean we have to be uncomfortable with spaces in our days that aren't crammed full of things we need to finish, and it will probably mean learning to be ok with having fewer check marks of things we've done.  But it will also mean that we are available to be more human--and to see again our own humanity, with our need to talk and to be listened to, our need for pauses and breaks, our need for the unexpected conversation that was possible because we weren't in a rush to get somewhere else.

So today, let us dare to give the gift that at first looks like nothing but empty space. Let us hold open the space in our days and in our lives for conversation with people we haven't made appointments with, but whose paths will cross our own unexpectedly.  And when they do, we can choose to be ready to receive them... and to have the time to give them.

Lord Jesus, you entered into our time and our lives as one of us, simply for the love of being in relationship with us.  When we forget that, pull us back, in relationship to you and in connection with those around us whom you love as well.

Daring a New Tune--December 8, 2021

Daring a New Tune--December 8, 2021

I've heard it said, "The four most terrifying words in Scripture are, 'Sing a new song'."  I think that's just about right.

That sentence could just be taken as a cheap shot, a criticism of how church folk don't like change, don't want to move out of familiar routines, and don't take too kindly to anybody trying to nudge them to learn a new hymn out of the hymnal.  I don't think it's meant that way.  I think it's more to say, we like our deity to be as predictable as a rhyme we've learned from memory.  We like to already know what God is going to do before God does it, or maybe even better, a God who has already done everything that God is going to do, leaving it just to us to report to others the list of God's accomplished deeds.  We like to think that God has to check with us before doing anything new... and therefore the same old songs we've "always sung" will do just fine.  They hold no surprises for us.  They cannot catch us off guard.

And yet, as the quotation reminds us, it's from the Scriptures themselves that we find the words of poets and prophets daring us to do the thing we are a little afraid of:  to sing a new song.  It is the Scriptures themselves that push us, not just to sing, but to learn, to write, and to share new words, new images, and new melodies to draw us into praise of the God who stubbornly insists on continuing to do new things.

So today, let's allow that dare to be our own way of embodying hope.  Let's make the attempt to sing a new song this Advent.  I mean that as literally as I can.  In Sunday worship, or in a midweek Advent service, or on your own in your own personal devotional and prayer time, or with a group of friends, learn a new song of praise.  It doesn't matter if you are a professional singer or can't carry a tune in a bucket--dare to learn and to sing a new song, and see what it does to your soul.

See, I have a hunch.  I think like so many things in life, our ability to see God moving in the world has a great deal to do with what are already looking for.  We will spot God more often than not in the places we expect to find God, and we'll recognize God's presence in the places we are prepared to see the divine.  But if that's a closed feedback loop where we only ever look for God in the times and locations we assume a respectable deity to be, we'll never be able to see God anywhere new.  And a god who cannot appear anywhere except in your list of pre-approved venues or settings is an idol for sure.

The God whose coming we look for at Christmas, however, is the sort of God who insists on surprise.  The story we retell each year at Christmas is all about overturned expectations, isn't it?  A God who operates, not in the seats of power (Rome) or respectable religion (Jerusalem and its temple), but on the margins in some tiny town that was easily overlookable.  A birth, not in a palace or even a private room, but in the basement with a house full of people upstairs while animals tried to eat out of the trough they were going to put the baby in (remember that there isn't really an "inn"--and definitely not an "innkeeper" in this story; the word that got mistranslated "inn" is better translated "guest room" and suggest that Mary and Joseph have indeed found relatives to stay with, but they don't have their own private accommodations in Bethlehem).  A flutter of angels appearing to night-shift shepherds.  None of these were the expectation. All these details we take for granted in the Christmas story were utter surprises when they first happened--and the only reason anybody dared to believe such things as a Messiah in a manger is that they were open to a God who would do the unexpected... a God for whom new songs would need to be sung.

When we dare to learn a new song, something happens in that place where our minds and our hearts meet.  We learn to see God from a new perspective, to recognize something true about God that we had never known before, but maybe which had always been there.  We come to recognize that God has never been obligated to stay inside the boxes we have created to contain the divine, and yet is also surprisingly willing to be located in the tiny, fragile body of a Middle Eastern baby boy.

And not only that, when we sing a new song, we start to dethrone the idol we've made of predictability, and we can be open to God doing surprising things in the world in front of us.  We can be open to the unexpected guest list of those God will include and invite to join with us in worship.  We'll be better able to spot God's movement drawing in the ones who were told they weren't good enough or are unacceptable.  We'll be equipped to recognize God rearranging what we thought was the "natural" order of things by promising a new creation where wolves and lambs are at peace. We'll be ready to see the expansiveness of God's reign, reaching beyond the boundaries of national borders or political parties or the other lines we draw.  We'll be ready, in short, to let ourselves be surprised by God, too.

I get it, though.  It takes some getting used to.  Singing a new song takes more than one try, and it requires a willingness to stumble through words and notes until the new becomes familiar enough to add our voice.  Fair enough--let's stumble through.  Let's take the time, let's risk the wrong notes, let's dare to be pushed out of our comfort zone, enough to let the practice of new songs do its work on our spirits.

There will be time for all the old favorites, too, in their own moment.  For today, let's dare to sing a new song.

Lord God, help us to be open to the surprising ways you move--and train the eyes of our hearts to recognize you in all the places we weren't looking for you, but where you have set up shop and gone to work.

The Case for Olive Branches--December 7, 2021

The Case for Olive Branches--December 7, 2021

I know in our part of the world, this is the season for evergreens.  This is the time of year when wreaths are made of pine boughs, sprigs of fir or spruce, or circles of holly, and with good reason.  I know the symbolism, reaching back many centuries, of these plants as signs of life that continues even when the winter is at its coldest and the winds blow their strongest.  I know, living in a county that prizes its reputation as the "Christmas Tree Capital of the World," to appreciate the beauty of all those conifers that keep their color all year long, even through a bleak midwinter.

But I want to make the case that--at least in our actions--this is also a time for olive branches.  That is to say, the season of waiting and watching for Christ's coming is ripe for reconciliation, and for mending relationships that have gone too long in estrangement and discord.  Today's dare, then, to embody hope this Advent, is just that: to extend an olive branch and take a small step toward reconciling with someone in some relationship that has been frayed lately.  

Sometimes we forget the biblical origins of that phrase, "extending an olive branch," but it really is fitting for new beginnings in our broken relationships.  You know the end of the flood story in Genesis, how as Noah is waiting to see if the waters have subsided, he sends out different birds at different times and watches to see if they'll return with any evidence that the world outside the ark is coming back to life.  First, the raven comes back with nothing... so he waits.  Then, he sends a second bird (our translations in English often render it "dove," but the Hebrew is the same word for "pigeon," and scientifically, they are the same family of birds, but that's a conversation for another day), and this one brings back a fresh sprig from an olive tree.  Noah understands what this means--there are new plants springing up somewhere nearby, and the bird has brought back evidence.  Ever since that story was first told, we've been borrowing the image of an olive branch as a sign of new beginnings being possible.

That image may go back a long way into our ancient past, but there's also a reason for making amends with others that comes from the future: the Scriptures keep pointing us to a day when God not only renews creation but transforms us so that old enmities are put away.  Wolves and lambs lie down together in safety, without anyone getting eaten. Cows and bears, snakes and toddler, too.  All safely in God's "peaceable kingdom."  The old animosities are gone, and new kinds of relationships can be begun.  The same with the images of swords being beaten into plows and spears into pruning hooks--they speak of God's promise to train our hearts so we will no longer kill one another, when, indeed, we "will learn war no more."  (I have to tell you, just days after another school shooting in our country, those words from the prophets weigh heavily on my heart.)  God's promised future, in other words, is one of restored, transformed relationships, where no one needs to live in fear of being attacked or harmed by others, and where we do not lash out first for fear of someone else hurting us first.

And if this is a season for us to embody hope--to show people around us what our trust in God's good news really looks like--then this is a perfect moment for taking the first steps, even if they are small ones, to make peace with someone whose relationship with you has been strained.  It doesn't mean we'll paper over our past conflicts in the sentimentality of Christmas, only to have the old wounds return in the blah of January.  It doesn't mean we are saying whatever the other person did or said to you once upon a time was OK (nor does it mean that whatever it was you said or did to them was OK, either).  But it does mean we make the decision not to let those past choices dictate our future ones.  It means we don't have to keep weaponizing the past, nor nursing old grudges to keep the pain fresh and bitterness from going away.  It means we break silences we have allowed to go for too long, at least to let the other person know, "I want to try to make things right again."

Look, I don't know what the particular heartaches are that you have been through.  I don't know which particular relationships in your life have been strained.  I don't know what was said to you or done to you, and I don't know what you have carried with regret in your memory, either, that you wish you could take back now.  I don't know the specific pains in your life, but I know what it feels like in my own life to bear those hurts and feel those absences.  I know that it can feel like it's impossible to ever get a strained relationship to grow back, and I know what it's like, too, have just survived in life by leaving old broken ones behind and never looked back.  And I make no promises that our mere good intentions can heal the lingering hurts between us.

But I do believe that the followers of Jesus are called to live now in light of what we believe God promises us.  I believe we are meant to live with confidence that our weapons will be hammered into something actually useful someday, and to act like it now by attempting to hammer out our differences now.  I believe that we are called to trust the prophet that one day we will learn war no more, and to anticipate that day now by risking the vulnerability of offering ourselves, disarmed, to others in a first step of peace.  I believe that a God who can raise the dead can resurrect an estranged relationship.  And I believe that a God who can transform creation itself so that wolves and lambs can be at peace can also transform past dysfunction in our relationships if we are willing to make amends for the past hurts we have inflicted and willing to dare forgiveness for the hurts we have born.  I believe the most courageous, hope-filled, and Christ-centered thing we can do is to step out in a violent and resentful world without a sword, a spear, or a gun in hand, but rather with an olive branch.

Today, what if you and I took the first step?  A phone call, a voicemail, a text, an email.  A handwritten note.  An olive branch.  What if we were so confident that in God's promise that one day our old enmities will be overcome that we started to practice at it now, and offered the possibility of starting over--whatever that might look like--where we have been cut off from one another for too long?  Could we dare such courage?  

Let us dare it.

Lord God, you promise to make all things new, even our relationships. Give us the courage to mend and begin again with one another, in light of the promised reconciliation you have in store for all things.