I don't believe in magic anymore, but I do believe in miracles. In fact, I believe they are more common than we are used to thinking.
I don't believe in spells or incantations or lucky charms, but I do see wonders all around me every day--and I believe we are invited to participate in them.
And I want to begin this Advent season with such an invitation--to be a part of a wonder, a piece of something so amazing, despite its commonness, that it certainly feels close to "magic." I want to extend to you the invitation to practice a bit of transformation.
This season, we want to invite you to a faith that goes beyond merely thinking religious thoughts or feeling spiritual feeling. We want to dare something that looks like embodying the Good News. Carrying it in our bones. Letting it direct our words, our actions, our hands, and our feet. Being the presence of the Gospel for people around us, and enacting it with our own bodies. The world around us, after all, has had more than enough of empty talk, and the loud, angry voices bombarding us from screens and social media all around don't make us more like Jesus, but rather they have a way of bringing out the worst in us. So in this year ahead, know that you are invited to be a part of practicing what we believe is true--about the way of Jesus, about the Reign of God, about the depth of grace and the relentlessness of love. In other words, an embodied gospel.
And I want to invite you to let it start with something surprisingly close to magic, but something very, very real.
I want to ask you today to consider the spirituality of recycling something--something you would otherwise probably just call "trash." Yep--an empty can that once held green beans or creamed corn. A plastic bottle. A glass jar. A cardboard box from some Christmas present you have already had shipped to your home. Find it. Pick it up. Set it where it can be recycled--whether picked up by a truck as some communities have, or taken to a recycling center as some do, or choosing to re-purpose it yourself by cleaning it and using it again. But actually do it. Physically take the old thing and make the choice to do something with it rather than letting it go to the landfill or the burn pile. Let it become more than a good intention--let it become an action, even if a small one.
Now, please don't get me wrong. I don't believe for a second that I'll save the world by taking one empty water bottle and putting it in a blue bin for recycling rather than in a trash bag or a dumpster. And I promise you I will not lead you into such illusions, either. I don't want us to get sentimental about tiny gestures. But I do want to get spiritual about small actions... which become habits... which in turn become our way of life and our character.
And there is indeed something spiritual--something deeply Jesus-like, I would say--about the seemingly insignificant choice to reuse or recycle something. That's what I want to explore.
Here's what I mean. The Scriptures, both what we call the Old and New Testament alike, speak of God making a "new heavens and a new earth"--a whole new creation. You can find it scattered throughout the oracles of prophets like Micah and Isaiah, throughout Paul's letters, in the words of Jesus, and as the closing visions of the book of Revelation. But that "new creation" isn't about throwing away this world or the beings who dwell in it--it is about transformation. It is about taking this world, with all its scars, all the ways we have mistreated one another, all the wounds we have inflicted on one another and on the rest of the masterpiece itself, and making something new out of it... but with the same raw materials. It is the risen Jesus stepping into the room with a new body but keeping the scars. It is about crafting a New City "coming down out of heaven" (Rev. 21) but then filling it with us--you and me and all the rest of us humans from the "old" creation, as fragile and vulnerable as we are. It is about taking swords and beating them into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. In other words, recycling. Or, maybe because that word seems so mundane--it is about how God practices transformation on the whole cosmos.
That, we Christians believe, is the destination--the purpose, the goal, you could say--of all creation: to be made new in God's goodness. Not lost or burned up or destroyed, but re-made. Renewed. Sure, re-cycled. To recycle something is to say, "This physical thing, however it has been spent, marred, emptied, or broken, is still good, still of worth, still of value, and still worthy of care." And maybe, in our choice to take things the world would say "aren't worth the effort" of recycling, we can practice a bit of defiance, a bit of holy resistance, against the ruthless logic of "what's good for business" or "what is profitable." Maybe when I take the time, and energy, and effort to cart a tub full of empty bottles to the recycling center, I am saying, in effect, "I don't care whether it makes anybody any more money, but I believe the world is beloved of God, and this small action is a way of honoring what God has made and called good." Maybe when I take the objects that were ready to be thrown out and give them a new use, or make them into something new, it is a way of training my soul to see what God intends for all creation. Maybe when I take the jar out of the trash but instead take the time to rinse it and set it aside, I get the tiniest glimpse of God's choice not to give up on creation--or on us--but to love us enough to enter into the mess we have made and redeem, reclaim, and renew us.
Maybe I don't really understand what the Christmas story is about until I can see in it how God took an empty food trough and re-used it to become the crib of the Messiah. Maybe my small act of re-purposing, re-using, or recycling something will teach me about how God promises new creation through that same child from the manger.
And if that happens when I save the empty tuna can to be melted down and made into something new, or restore a pair of worn-out shoes that were ready for the dumpster, then I'm not merely recycling--I'm practicing transformation. That is a small daily habit, sure. But it is also a holy wonder I am invited to join in. And it is a way of moving hope from being just a bit of head knowledge to something that moves in my hands.
We pray: Lord God, train our hearts for hope of new creation by training our hands to reclaim what the world calls trash for new purposes.
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