something to be joyful about??

Something to be joyful about?

121612  Advent 3c readings

Isaiah reading filled with joy….Philippians tells us to rejoice always…then Luke’s reading, all that judgment and doom and gloom and ending with this is good news.   Really?   This good news John preached got him imprisoned then beheaded.  Good news?  This weekend of all weekends?  The candle of joy in the advent wreath shines faintly as anything but joy wreaks havoc with the lives of 27 families in Connecticut.  Something to be joyful about?  Really?

So many of us on Friday, and since, have been driven to TV and radio and social media….some of us were even driven to our knees, 

to weep and wail 

to wonder and wait

John the Baptizer came on the scene as a wild man, reminding the people then of the fragility of their surface society, as did that wild man on Friday.  Perhaps as with John, the wildness and fragility draws us back to the God-who-comes, the Advent God….the God who confronts and judges as well as comforts 

Let’s look at this awful text on this awful day, first in its CONTEXT, the where and who of it.  John doesn’t come into the comfort of the churchy temple places, he comes in the wilderness, the unsafe and unsettled places….outside the comfortable.  Today, that’s good news.

And who comes to hear him?  In Luke’s version it’s the outsiders, the misfits: the poor, the criminal tax collectors, the mercenary soldiers…apparently no-one is beyond the reach of God’s call

Today, that’s good news.

And then the CONTENT, the what of John’s message…repent (remember Chris’ sermon last week about changing, literally, one’s mind?)  and prepare

Repent, this isn’t being sorry for something you’ve done wrong; many of us are pretty ok at that.  Repent means to DO something to make sure you never do it again.  It’s an action, often a repeated, habitual action until its ingrained and the brain IS literally changed as Chris said.   Those people listening to John knew that’s what it meant so they ask, so what do I do?

Practice sharing                                                                                                 

Stop exploiting                                                                                                     

Quit warmongering for gain.

Ouch.  

And prepare.  Get ready to be judged.   The God-who-comes, the Messiah, isn’t a warm fuzzy.  You think my message is tough?

This one who’s coming is going to sort out the wheat from the chaff by that old winnowing activity (explain)… and then we get all that fire language that the Church has used badly over the years to suggest hellfire burning.  This is not about hell fire for the unsaved after they die. This is about here and now in our encounters with the God-who-comes.

Fire is a purifying element.  Jesus is born, God comes, over and over and over in all of us, to sort out what’s worth keeping in me, and to toss aside all the rest.  A painful process, but a healing one. 

One writer I read this week said whatever is based in Christ will survive the fire, what isn’t is burned up….  And this is good news?  Yes, because we know two things from our deepest spiritual life experience:  judgment is for our ongoing good and growth and  the one who judges is the one who loves us the most. (John Petty)

Remember who God is.   God is Love.   Today, that’s  good news.

First to go in the winnowing process has to be this image of God out there somewhere, who chooses to interfere or not, to let stuff happen, or not….the God who is being evoked all over the place at the moment. That God image is Chaff to be blown away or burned.

God’s presence is in here, not out there. God’s activity in the world depends on OUR activation of that Presence/Love.  Wheat to be gathered and used to nurture a starving people.

We ask what kind of world it’s become that Sandy Hook can happen (really assuming that “they”, whoever they are, have made it that way).   We really ought to be asking ourselves what kind of world have WE allowed this to become by our failure to act for good and God as strongly as others manifest evil.  Especially at this especially sweet time of year, when the power of Good does seem strong, we should not be surprised that the power against good is also strengthened.

A couple of weeks ago, Marketta Gregory, newspaper columnist, wrote about retelling the Christmas story differently.  She says, talking about the manger’s humility, in a way that rings poignantly true this weekend,

Jesus welcomes everyone, the grieving, the sick, the financially strapped, the less than perfect and the far from perfect…..Angel, please continue to tell the good news.  Light up the sky and invite people to come as they are to Christmas…

Everyone  means the angry families of Newtown Connecticut and Fairport NY, those whose Christmas has been stolen from them by a rampant gunman, and those whose children die every day from malnutrition or poverty or preventable illness, but whose deaths don’t evoke our compassion or action or prurient fascination….today that’s good news for them

and Jesus welcomes everyone means us too, those of us who haven’t yet allowed the Advent God  to judge us into the kin-dom, who still need to learn to

Practice sharing                                                                                                

 Stop exploiting                                                                                                     

Quit warmongering for gain.

Start activating the Love.

Markeeta’s words also echo beautifully what we heard at the Cantata last week, words that remind us that God DID come to those places in the dreadful humiliation of Mary’s pregnancy,  in the awful humility of Jesus’ birth, in the dirt and mess of field and stable….God came then as now, through people, who activated the Love: the Josephs who said yes in face of all the no’s around them…..the shepherds who  left behind the daily to follow an impossible dream…..the wise ones who kept moving forward in new directions in spite of political opposition…the Mary’s who “rejoiced”, yes rejoiced in God even in the midst of a humiliating experience.

Through them, through us if we choose, God comes still.  And that’s good news. That’s what lets us sing “rejoice” and “he has made me glad” and light the candle of joy.  Thanks be to the God-who-comes.

Advent is not

(Chris Jewell's sermon from last Sunday)

HE WENT INTO ALL THE REGION AROUND THE JORDAN, PROCLAIMING A BAPTISM OF REPENTANCE FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS

Advent places a special emphasis on the mission of John the Baptist. John was a prophet. He was obsessed with the truth. He lived a life of rigorous honesty and was killed for it. In the New Testament John prepares the way for the Christ by telling people there is a problem, there is work to be done. What would we do with John the Baptist? Would we ignore him, or say to him “go away, we like our lives just fine, we don’t want to change”. After all, there are major problems in our lives and many people would rather not hear about them…We have some very smart men and women telling us we are, AS A CULTURE, at an impasse. We need a miracle—only the impossible can help us now. Advent is about preparing for, longing for, the impossible…isn’t the coming of the Christ associated with symbols of the impossible? After all virgins can’t have babies—or can they?

Advent is not ultimately a time of preparation leading up to a celebration of something that happened in the historical record 2 thousand years ago. Christmas, although it symbolizes the birth of a kind of Independence, represents something much more profound than the fourth of July. The fourth of July commemorates a declaration of Independence on the historical or temporal plane of existence—Christmas is ultimately about freedom or independence at the very center or ground of our being.  And just as it was with the American independence—the kind of freedom we are to prepare for during advent also requires radical change, and even deliverance from the control of a king.  But this is not a king ruling us from some distant shore—this is a king we live with day in and day out. Last week I was in Wegmans and I just stood there in the middle of the crowded store listening, and watching. There were advertisements trying to seduce, there were celebrity magazines, there was a child screaming and jumping up and down because she wanted something---men and women with shopping carts so full they could feed 10 families.  If consumption without need is a hallmark of addiction then wegmans and east-view mall are crack-houses. Consumerism is making us all junkies.  And this time of year always reminds me of this—with its explosion of stuff, craving, and over-indulgence. Heck, just like heroin or cocaine addicts, we even rationalize these behaviors—I can splurge—after all it’s the holidays. In the words of one of the leading thinkers on the subject: “addiction is rising like the world’s oceans, and for many of the same reasons—there is a rising flood of addiction all over the world” and another says that she believes the vast majority of Americans bear the psychological marks of addiction.   Why are we at an impasse, why do we need the impossible to happen? Why do we need a miracle? Because as any of the top-guns in the field of addiction would tell you—you simply cannot think your way out of an addiction—in fact the more you try to think you’re way out, the deeper in the hole you go—so once you’re really hooked—you’re in an impossible situation. You need an intervention. You better hope a power greater than your-self shows up. Christmas is meant to represent the appearance of a power greater than ourselves within creation that brings freedom, independence, and deliverance. AND Advent is the preparation for such an appearance. But our consumerist culture has turned this season into a celebration of materialism, dependence, self-centeredness, and addiction—and for those of you that read Richard Rohr, he reminds us that self-centeredness and addiction are synonyms for what the Bible calls sin. In Alcoholics Anonymous, members commemorate the day they quit drinking—they call it their “sobriety date”. This is, if you will a kind of Christmas for them—it’s the appearance in their lives of a power greater than themselves that is also the birth of a New Way of experiencing and living and Being in the World. This is essentially what Christmas symbolizes— and this is what we are to prepare for during Advent. It seems to me that during the Christmas season the modern American culture is like an alcoholic preparing for the celebration of her sobriety date by spending a month doing shots of Jack Daniels.

Embedded in our text this morning is important information about the spiritual practice OR PREPARATIONS of the first century Jews we call the first Christians and this clues us into the real meaning of this season…

As I said before, Advent gives a special emphasis to the mission of John the Baptist. In Luke 3:3 John is preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This is a loaded line packed with a whole culture’s way of preparing the way of the Lord—or in other words their way of preparing for an immediate experience of a power beyond and greater than the self.

For first century apocalyptic Jews baptism was very different than it is for the modern church-goer. Baptism in Christianity is now a rite of initiation that often takes place once and often during infancy; but for ancient apocalyptic Jews like John and Jesus baptism was very different---it was a preparatory rite—a ritual that was meant to prepare them for a direct encounter with the divine.  It was part of a whole series of rituals, part of an entire religious practice meant to cleanse and prepare one for a meeting with God. Such practices would go on for mystics like Jesus and John anywhere from 12 to 40 days. It is said that this was part of the way Jewish mystics would “still their hearts”. Stilling their hearts meant making peace within the deepest part of their being.  And then they would be ready to receive a power greater than self. How do we facilitate such an experience of peace in our lives? How do we quiet ourselves down so that we can receive and commune with the divine? Do we even take religious practice seriously? Peace certainly does not come through craving and buying what a consumerist culture tries to sell us.   

A baptism of repentance—the word we translate as repentance is the Greek word metanoia. This word means “going beyond or changing your mind” it refers to a transformation of consciousness. Anyone that has successfully dealt with an addiction will tell you it required a change of mind—what Bill W. called a profound personality change. It seems to me that our culture desperately needs a change of mind. One of the ways we know ancient Jews and Christians transformed consciousness was through the practice of deep forms of prayer—this is not verbal, petitionary prayer---this is the kind of prayer Jesus described as “going into your inner room”.  Through such a practice one could change his or her mind. Modern brain science tells us that in fact, this kind of prayer does change minds—it actually changes the physical composition of the brain and it has been shown to improve all kinds of conditions from cocaine and alcohol addiction to anxiety disorders and depression. It can also facilitate spiritual experiences that include a sense that one has encountered God. It is good for the body and the soul. John offered a baptism of metanoia or changing one’s mind for the forgiveness of sins. How might changing one’s mind bring about the forgiveness of sins? Well if we look at the Greek word we translate as “forgiveness” we might get a better sense of what Luke is talking about. Aphesin means to release, as in the letting go of a prisoner or the release of someone from obligation or bondage.  In deep forms of prayer one can experience the release or letting go of self and the sense that one is in the presence of God.  This is surely the release or forgiveness of sins or self-centeredness Luke is talking about.  

For ancient Jews these are a few of the practices that would have prepared the way of the Lord. What are we doing to change or go beyond our minds, to release ourselves from the addictive, consumerist culture on full display during this season? Do we take such practices seriously anymore? Are we doing THIS in preparation for Christmas? Or are we giving ourselves over to a market and dollar driven culture that encourages the opposite—the building up of self and self-centeredness?

Taking our spiritual growth and development seriously by actively engaging practices similar to those of John and Jesus is something we can do to “prepare the way of the Lord”. In this way we can transcend self-centeredness in a world that is turning all of us into addicts. If we prepare the way, maybe we can change our minds and be released from the bondage of self and experience the birth of a New Way of Being in the world.  A very powerful consumerist culture says you don’t have much of a chance.  But maybe the impossible will happen; maybe a virgin can have a baby. LET IT BE SO!

preparing for peace

In 2 days we light the Advent candle of peace.  Are we prepared for peace?  This question arose for me in our Heart Listening group this morning as we read from St. Benedict:  "Rid your heart of all deceit.  Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love."
In this season that is too busy for many of us, this takes intentionality and effort.  May we mean what we say and say what we mean.  Peace be with you.  Have a good day.  I mean it.

Advent or Christmas confusion

The secular world tells us this is the Christmas season, mostly in an attempt to encourage spending.  The church operates on a different calendar and tells us it's Advent, the waiting time, the anticipating time.  The trouble with this confusion of course is that both are right (though the secular one for all the wrong reasons!)--Jesus HAS ALREADY come.   All the anticipation of a baby in a manger holds the danger of infantalising the Cosmic Christ--making him safe and secure and settled and not at all threatening.  We set up cute creches and beautiful decorations then put them, and him, away for another year.

advent-ures

I remember when our children were younger, and we'd be out in the car, maybe coming back a different way from some place, our daughter would get a little concerned if we seemed to be lost...I'd say, no, we're on an adventure.  And years later, even to this day, she will occasionally say, now tongue in cheek, "Mum, are we on an adventure?"
Yes, Jessica, we are on an adventure.  Life is full of advent-ures, when God comes, bursting into our life, noticed or unnoticed, bidden or unbidden.
May this Advent bring us clearer vision to notice God's coming, in the mall, the car, the lost-ness and the bustle of pre-Christmas life.

Signs of the times

Signs of the times 120212

Advent 1c prophet/gospel readings

9-11’s terrorist attack pierces the country’s sense of invulnerability….                                                                                                      a mighty oil spill devastates ecological balance in the gulf…      an amazing storm sweeps up the east coast, flattening, flooding and killing as it goes

Signs of the times.

The apocalyptic language in our text from 2000 yrs ago isn't about some future event; it's metaphoric language to remind us that everyone, always, lives in a state of impending doom...things aren't suddenly going to get worse before the end of the world, which incidentally isn't going to happen this month...things are horrible now.

As one blog I read yesterday said:  “Tragedy happens....a layoff, a divorce, a spot on an xray, a car crash.... the vicissitudes of life play no favorites.  At one time or another everything that used to feel solid and sure will start to come apart.” (Kate Huey)

These are already uncertain and unsafe times. Just as they were in Jeremiah's day, and in Jesus' day.  Life is uncertain and we find ourselves wondering what's going on, and where is God.

As we pay attention to the signs of our times, it's easy to get fearful and unsure...and we battle or hide that fear with all manner of attempts at safety:

homeland security at airports and security systems in homes

 flood insurance

     addiction to alcohol or drugs      

                    aggression in our relationships and war at home and abroad  

                              amassing wealth while poverty grows        

                                               dramatic posturing in our politics….you can name your own…

all attempts to feel safe--all also signs of our times

Both texts today refer to signs of their times when people were experiencing that sense  of fear and insecurity; we're not the first people to fall prey to end of the world thinking.

In Jeremiah's day the nation had lost its pre-eminence, felled like a tree they said.   But Jeremiah stands up with a poetic imagination and a word of hope: even in desolation and destruction, a new tree will rise up: not of might, but of right, “of justice and righteousness” he says.

God's dream for the world is continually unfolding through it all.

This is not the shallow hope of platitude:  look on the bright side, or things'll get better soon.  No, this s the deep abiding trusting hope that God is still at work on the divine promise to make all things new, reconciled, restored, whole, in spite of humanity’s best efforts to the contrary..

And it's not going to happen via some cataclysmic cosmic event: it's going to happen through human activity, a new kind of  royal king, says Jeremiah.  Some one, as in individual human beings, or some ones as in human government, will bring this about.

Throughout the centuries they had glimpses of it, but 600 years later when Jesus came, this divine promise still wasn't fulfilled.   People under Roman rule knew might without right, justice came by punishment and revenge, by flogging and crucifixion.

No wonder Luke used this apocalyptic scary language of chaos and unsettledness and end of the world stuff – the Temple had been destroyed, Jesus hadn't come back yet, so he portrays a knight in shining armor “Son of Man” - again a human being -who'd bring about this new reign, this divine promise.

And he says, don't cower when bad stuff happens.  Stand up in its face.  Safety isn't in homeland security or weapons of mass destruction, security isn't in warfare or end times movies of doom.  It's in Christ.  It's in hope. 

We the church are called to stand up and look up in times like these....to act as agents, human agents of the divine promise...to be a house of hope, a sanctuary in an unsafe and unsettle world of fear.  In fact, this week this congregation will vote on that very issue.  What will we be?

What will we be for children who awaken each day to fear, to those who get up into a world of hunger, to those who have been excluded and ridiculed and diminished, not just by society but even by the church, to those who daily feel suffering and pain....while I have the nerve to get annoyed at long lines at the airport.  

What will we be in the face of these signs of the times?

Well, here we are.  Lighting the candle of hope on the Advent wreath.

For Jesus HAS come. Jesus didn't drift off into outer space to wait at a distance for stuff to get so bad he could come back like a knight in shining armor.   No, he's here, in the form of the very Spirit, or breath of the living God. 

 This world of wholeness, this dream of God IS unfolding.

 God is already making all things new.

Our call is to look at the signs of the times, yes, but also to look FOR signs of the reign or kin-dom of God.

Wake up! Says Luke, be prepared.  Advent is an opportunity to take stock of ourselves to deepen our spiritual life, trim our souls as well as our trees, so that when bad stuff happens we have what it takes to stand up to it in faith.

Pay attention says Luke.  But not just to skies and storms and buds and leaves but to yourself, to the things in you that prevent you being awake to what God is doing...that same blog I read says “here and there little branches are springing up from what looked like a dead stump, little communities of faith, rooted in justice and striving for righteousness, listening always for a word from the still-speaking God, little churches, vibrant and full of heart.”

These too are signs of the times.  Hope signs

We cling to the hope that God intends the world and all that's in it to be made whole again.  But not only do we cling, we act, for we are part of its fulfillment...starting with our own souls, then in our relationships, then becoming places and families and communities  of new life that are signs of the times for others  seeking hope.

WE, the people of God in THIS place, are called to see the signs of the times

To stand up, look up, step up, and BE the signs.

May it be so, today, this week, and always.

Amen.

Marks of the Jesus Community: 3 Purpose

Marks of the Jesus Community

3 Purpose

110412

Our story today begins, as the last two weeks' stories have, with another honest conversation with Jesus—this time an anguished, angry cry of grief: if only you'd come on time, this wouldn't have happened....

sometimes bad stuff happens, sometimes death happens sooner than it should

but life experience also tells us that it's not the best thing to 'fix' things, avoid bad stuff at all costs, deny the realities of life.  Personally I know that new life has sometimes come to me from going through the awful stuff, not avoiding it.  Both for Lazarus and his family, and maybe even for Jesus whose own faith may have been challenged by those bystanders who doubted him, a dark and tragic experience brought light and life to them.

so before we get to the JC purpose, perhaps we need to be honest as well....honest first about who we might be in this text

we meaning the congregation, the community, but if you've come with a particular weight on your soul, you might more need to listen for where you individually might be....

Let's first ask ourselves if we are the people around Jesus, alive and well, or are we like Lazarus?

In KJV Martha protests, he stinketh! I loved that when I was a kid.   Leave him where he is,  don't add complications to my life, Jesus!  He's stiff and dead and has no more relevance.   Either the body of Christ, the church is biologically dead, stiff and beginning to smell a bit—and lots of people out in the world think we have no relevance at all.....OR we are a people who've been called and and made biologically alive, unbound, unwrapped, living in light not darkness

If this Jesus community or the church universal, or you individually,  is Laz, we need to hear Jesus command – come out!  come out of your stiff and bound places, come out of our dark holes of inactivity and irrelevance, and LIVE—that's the good news, the best news we have to offer the world!  God brings life!  Abundant life!

We are still a force to be reckoned with!

So, if that's true, and I believe it's on its way to being true here, then we have purpose- in fact a threefold purpose that we take from Jesus' other instructions in the text:

1 believe, and you'll see God's glory

of course there are difficult times when it's hard to believe, when we seem to lose our faith.  And then we miss out on the ways that God is at work.  But in the JC,  when my faith is low, you hold it for me, and when your soul is empty, I stand by with the love of God ready to pour out.   God is always at work, God's glory is always there; sometimes we have to trust the sight of others when we can't see it ourselves.

Jesus came late to this awful time in Lazarus' family. In their belief system, the third day was traditionally when God came...Jesus arrives on the 4th day, the hopeless day. 

2 remove the stone—the JC sets about removing obstacles to Life and wholeness for those who are stuck in dark places.  Stones can be attitudes or situations or people or systems, that prevent God's grace and God's wholemaking way from happening in individuals and society. 

This week as a nation votes, the JC must be concerned first and foremost about removing obstacles for the least, the last, and the lost.

Almost every week, our JC is asked to help someone financially, whether through our pastors discretionary fund or through our 50-50 outreach—we remove stones temporarily, with a grocery gift card, and this week we went one step further and helped a man start to earn money for himself with a leafblower, but there are systemic stones that need much more aggressive removal through social action.  The JC is often strangely inactive in that kind of stone removal.

3 unbind those who are tentatively moving out into the light, but still bound up and wound up, still trapped in the old rags of non-life. (Lois' story)

You see, it's one thing to be brought back to the light of day, but it's quite another to be unbound so you can actually move, maybe even dance, which is probably what happened in the rest of the story!  we are drawn by Jesus from the depths of human pain to the height of God's compassion.  Surely that's worth celebration and joy.  What would it take for you, for us, to be seen as celebrating, joyful, dancing people??

So there we have it; if we listen to the commands of Jesus, we have our purpose, and if we look at what Jesus does throughout this text, we find our calling and our purpose filled out in pretty clear ways:

Jesus enters into human mess, weeps with the hurting, challenges  assumptions about how things have to be, stretches belief beyond belief, reaches into dark places, brings new life and second chances, and prays thankfully.

Can we do any less? 

May God's power strengthen us, God's life flow through us, and God's grace lead us to dance unbound.