Advent 4.5 - The Father Jesus Needed

In preparing to preach tomorrow, I came across a wonderful piece on Joseph by Homiletics Professor Alyce McKenzie. I'm actually using a small part of it, but what you'll read below is what most caught my attention. (Too edgy, I think, for where I'll be tomorrow.)

<< “Here,” whispered the angel, “is the key that unlocks your dilemma. Believe her unbelievable story. Marry her, and become the father of God’s child. He will need a father to be accepted by others as he grows to manhood. He will need, not just any father, but a father like you, capable of nurturing him, and giving him a name.‘Immanuel -- God with us.’

“He will need a father like you to teach him to take risks like the one you are about to take, for he will be tempted not to take them.

“He will need a father like you to teach him to withstand the disapproval of others, as you will soon have to withstand it.

“He will need a father like you to teach him what to do in situations like this one, when all hope seems lost and only pain remains; to model how to believe the unbelievable good news and to walk ahead in faith.

“If you do not walk the hard road to Bethlehem, who will teach him how to climb the cruel hill to Calvary?”

In this way, I imagine the father of our Lord was born that night. >>

Image found here; artist unknown.

Advent 4.1 - The Harshness of Belief

"But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.' "

Matthew 1:20

I am preaching this coming Sunday. The lectionary gospel text focuses on Joseph, and so I have been thinking about fatherhood and what it means.

My own father is a good man who has experienced much sorrow in his life: the death of my mother and youngest brother in a car accident when he was 28, the death of his second wife in another sudden accident when he was 38, a difficult divorce much later in life, and the death of his fourth wife from cancer a few years ago. He has a great love of the outdoors and has found much pleasure and solace over his almost-eight decades in the wild and natural places and things of this continent, sharing some of it with us on family canoe trips into the Canadian wilderness.

But he is not a man of Christian faith, and has little understanding of its pull, or of its role in life.

Thus I overheard him say, as I walked through my house in the first days after Josh died, that "at least she has the comfort of her faith."

I shook my head and moved on. I know there are people who find faith comforting in times of hardship, but I have not been one of them.

I have another father, a spiritual father, in the 80-year-old Jesuit who accompanied me through the Ignatian Exercises. He has continued as my confidant, advisor, counselor, teacher, consoler, and friend in the five years since, even after moving to another city. He's an eloquent writer and has a wicked sense of humor, both of which I have needed and upon which I have greatly relied over the past two years.

In one of his e-mails around the second anniversary of Josh's death, he referred to the "harshness of belief" as something with which I have become well acquainted. Indeed.

When I think about Joseph, and Mary, that term comes to mind. The dream and the encounter. The terrifying reality of the angel, and his bewildering message. The resolve needed to follow through with God's project. The circumstances ~ physical, geographical, political, social ~ all of them less than desirable.

We put out charming nativity scenes ~ we have one in this house ~ and sing cheerful songs, but harshness, rather than charm or cheer, is probably a more appropriate term for what Christmas presents.

Comfort, comfort ye my people. There is, as it turns out, a profound comfort hiding within the harshness, but it is not the comfort of platitudes or sentimental reassurances. It is the comfort of Immanuel, God with us, and of the demanding pull toward that presence even when all circumstances seem to indicate that turning away might be the more rational choice.

Advent 3.3 - Sermon Fragment

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples ³and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” ⁴Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them."

Matthew 11:2-5

This is part of the sermon I preached this morning. It was written for a church in transition. But, of course, it was also written for a certain preacher who needed to hear for herself what she had to say.

We tend to run through this list of things Jesus is doing, without giving much thought to the details. We’ve heard the basics so many times. But let’s take a few moments today to pull that list apart, to unpack it and to ask ourselves: What does each set of miracles or signs really entail? To what do they invite us, as individuals? As a church?

The blind receive their sight, says Jesus. Perhaps he is talking not only about literal, physical blindness. What blinds us? What false values, what worn-out suppositions, what past experiences and hurts prevent us from seeing anew? What would it be like to see things differently? Is there something which you’ve always seen and understood in one way that might benefit from another look? Is there something to which you’ve never paid attention that’s calling you to move in for a close-up view?

The lame walk, Jesus tells John. Again, let’s go beyond the literal. What hobbles us? Where do brambles and fallen trees block our path to some place we’ve not been before? Where have we built fences which we now need to take down? Walking involves a complex set of physical interactions which most of us are able to take for granted most of the time: a sense of balance, the co-ordination of muscles and tendons and bones, some strength, some flexibility. If any one of those things gets out of whack, we’re slowed way down, perhaps even stopped altogether. What do we need to tend to in order to be healed of lameness?

The lepers are cleansed. One of the biggest challenges of leprosy in the ancient world was the isolation it imposed upon people. In today’s world, too. True enough, we are unlikely to encounter people suffering from leprosy in our daily lives in northern Ohio. But do we encounter others who have become invisible to us? Have we excluded others in some ways? Of whom we are fearful? And do our resistance and fears in turn isolate us? How might we begin to understand others as people cleansed by God’s love? How might we look for Jesus among the ill and the infirm?

Jesus says that the deaf hear. Hmm, what have we missed lately? When have we failed to listen? Then holidays are prime time for what we might call “failure to hear.” We all have expectations for how events should unfold, expectations that sometimes render us completely deaf to new circumstances and new needs. And even in the most ordinary of times and situations, study after study tells us that listening is a skill we fail to practice. Let’s be honest: How many times are we “listening” – by which we mean waiting for a chance to jump in to tell our own story or to voice our own opinion? What if we decided that learning to listen well might be one of the best ways by which we could show the presence of Christ to others?

The dead are raised, proclaims Jesus. Now, that’s a tough one. In literal terms, who does Jesus raise during his human walk among us? A very few people. But perhaps we need to look at the phrase more expansively. What in us has been deadened, flattened? Where have we become incapable of response, of love? What in us needs to open up, flower into new creativity, be raised anew? Within ourselves? In our personal relationships and friendships? At work? In church? Where is Jesus working to bring forth new life and inviting us to participate in what he wants to accomplish?

The poor have good news brought to them. Are we among the poor? You’ve got this turned around you may be saying to me by now. We are Christ’s church. We need to bring good news to the poor, in the form of both warm blankets for these bitter nights and the warm message of salvation. All true. But let’s humble ourselves a little bit and think: where are we impoverished? Where are we limited? Where is good news being brought to us in ways that will enrich us – not in terms of material wealth, but in ways that will enable us better to show Christ’s love to a broken world?

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann tells us that our God is not a God of scarcity, but a God of abundance. Abundance! Walter Brueggemann tells us that because it’s true, because it’s reflected in these very words of Jesus. Whether as individuals or as a church, we are not called to be fearful or unwilling. We are not called to be people of limitation, impoverished by past disappointments, hesitantly creeping along well known paths.

We are called to be people of vision. We are called to walk forward in confidence. We are called to break down the walls of resistance that isolate us from one another. We are called to hear something new. We are called to new ideas, new approaches, new hope, new life. We are called to the riches of the Kingdom of God.

Advent 2.4 - Unease

This is another repeat from six years ago. Who knows? Maybe it will speak to you. As for me, I see stark changes. We no longer go to Chicago for Thanksgiving. We no longer host elaborate Christmas dinners. Today, instead, I made an announcement at church about our "Blue Christmas" service scheduled for December 20, an announcement in which I tried, in the couple of minutes I had, to balance the personal and the universal. And after the service a young man made his way to me, introduced himself and his family, and told me about two immediate family deaths from suicide in his youth.

The part about the low always being lifted high? Let us hope, and let us pray.

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In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"
Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Matthew 3:1-12

There is no way to get around it; this material always sounds a jarring note prior to the Advent we like to experience, the one where we sing carols and anticipate angels and shepherds and wise men from afar. Sheep and cattle and camels, too -- no scowling tigers or lunging bears. We like to limit our Advent discord to family squabbles over fake versus real, pine versus spruce, steady versus twinkling. No vipers and burning chaff for us, thank you very much.

But there it is, right at the beginning of the Gospel, and what are we supposed to do with it?
I always wondered about John the Baptist. I mean, he sounds quite ill. Who would listen to a man wandering around in animal clothing, crunchy locusts and honey dripping from his hands as he shouted his unique mixture of invective and ecstatic proclamation?

Years ago, I used to work downtown, and a large lady with a tamborine made frequent lunchtime sojourns up and down the block in front of a major department store, shouting the good news of salvation to all the passers-by, who studiously looked the other way. A gentleman in a suit often roamed the same block, preaching fire and brimstone at the top of his lungs. One day he walked right up to me, pointed his finger in my face, and intoned in a deep bass voice worthy of James Earl Jones, "God sees all of your secret sins!"

That was not good news to me.

I spent this past Thanksgiving week-end in Chicago with my family, and we went to see the Christmas displays at Marshall Field's. Sure enough, the Chicago version of John the Baptist inhabited the corner in front of one of the Snow White display windows. This one was a young man, earnestly insisting into a bullhorn that the oblivious shoppers needed to hear the words of the Gospel and ensure their salvation. Most of the crowd, of course, ignored him or, if forced by the crowd in his direction, turned politely away.

John is extreme, for sure, and his harsh words interject, at minimum, a sense of unease into our holiday festivities. But Christmas is an uneasy holiday. There is such a gaping disconnect between the meaning of Christmas and the endless round of shopping, decorating and partying that we try not to notice it. But there is John, to remind us.

I'm not, by nature, much of a shopper, so I think it's wise for me to refrain from criticizing people who are. I can think of few less appealing ways of spending my Thanksgiving holiday week-end than racing through stores. But we did have fun inspecting the elaborate Marshall Field's window displays and checking out the giant tree inside. In years past, we've taken kids to see Santa, attended Nutcracker and Christmas Carol productions , and made a family tradition of one big night of downtown shopping. We host a huge dinner on Christmas Day, and a couple of years we've taken elaborate trips. We could by no means be mistaken for clones of John the Baptist.

But that unease is always there. Christmas, after all, is really about Easter. And before Easter comes the ministry of Jesus, with its passionate focus on the poor and distressed. And after Easter comes Pentecost, the baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire of which John speaks, which we are supposed to use to bring Christ into the world. There's just nothing in there about maxing out credit cards to buy stacks of plastic kitchens and toy weapons.

One of my favorite Christmas songs, which I've heard only at the church I now attend, is entitled "And Every Stone Shall Cry." You can read the lyrics and listen to a portion of it here. Its haunting melody reminds us that

Yet He shall be forsaken
And yielded up to die
The sky shall groan and darken
And every stone shall cry

but also that

But now as at the
low is lifted high
The stars will bend their voices
And every stone shall cry*

That song, I think, reflects on what we are meant to hear in the story of John the Baptist each Advent. The outrage is there, of course -- outrage over a world which persists in focusing on the glitz and the tensions of holiday preparation rather than the incarnate presence of God, and which finds expression in a concluding prediction of angry judgment. But so is the disappointment, at our sad inability to recognize that, in the economy of the Bible, the low is always lifted high.

Advent 1.4 - Keep Awake!

I wrote this reflection for the first Sunday in Advent six years ago. Some things have changed. The child applying to college has died, and as a result I have come to understand that some of us live in tension for long periods of time indeed. I am now profoundly alert to the Gospel message, but in a context far different from any one I could have imagined six years ago. Still, I think it holds up well, and so I offer it again.

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But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

Matthew 24:36-44

A couple of years ago, when our son was waiting to hear from college admission committees, he and I were in what might understatedly have been referred to as an attentive posture of being. We could have been more accurately described as about to explode from the volatile combination of apprehension and hopefulness. We were on constant red-alert for e-mail and snail mail, attentive to the slightest alteration in the letter carrier's schedule. And when the news finally arrived, most of it good, we had waited so long and so hard that it was actually something of a let-down.

You can't live in a state of such tense alertness for long, at least not at my age, without doing some serious damage to your heart. Of course, there are far worse situations: a hospital room where a child lies in critical condition, the front lines of a war, the smell of smoke and the crackle of flames in the middle of the night. At such times, our sensory perception goes into high gear and the little things that we would not otherwise notice become etched into our very long-term memory.

Fortunately, most of us are not required to live in such tension for long periods of time. In fact, most of the time, we are barely aware of our surroundings. How many times have you driven dozens of miles down the interstate without really knowing it? Could you tell me what you had for lunch yesterday? You know your paid your bills last month, but do you have any clear recollection of having done so? No, most of the time we are on automatic pilot, just doing what we need to do more or less when we need to do it.

It has been posited that it is precisely that automatic-pilot approach to life that will leave some of us in the breach. Today's Gospel passage has become the foundation for the Left Behind novels. In that series of a dozen or more bestsellers, the end of the world as we know it begins with the disappearance of the "saved," in the course of an ordinary day and right before the eyes of friends and family. The premise, also based on the Book of Revelation, is that those who have been "saved" in this life will, on the Day of Rapture, be called to God's side in the blink of an eye, while the rest of the sorry human population will be left to its dread fate in the ensuing conflict between the battling forces of the Christ and the the anti-Christ.

They aren't pretty books. The explicitly depicted violence is revolting, but no more so than the articulated vision of a god of violence and judgment who is out to render the universe into two opposing camps. Is that really what God means to do? Does God want us to be attentive only to the consequences of our actions in the context of an ultimate judgment between good and evil? The parallel to the Biblical flood story might seem to indicate that such is the case. Certainly the fear of a final catastrophic judgment seems endemic to human nature, as evidenced by those flood stories told by virtually every ancient culture.

However, I don't think that today's passage is placed here at the beginning of Advent, completely out of context, to remind us of the potential for disaster, or even to be attentive to the possibility of an event of gargantuan proportions, like a hurricane or tidal wave. I think it's here to remind us to be attentive to the possibility that a colossal shift in the cosmos might be hidden in the smallest and most ordinary of events: the birth of a child in a cave on the outskirts of a small town.

"Keep awake," Jesus says, years later, to his followers. "Keep awake, " we are reminded, a month before Christmas. Keep awake for what?

I will be the first to admit that I do not "keep awake" for the Gospel message, for the good news that the world, and the part each of us plays in it, has been transformed. Mostly, I do my regular stuff. I check my e-mail and I prepare my lessons. I wash the kitchen floor and clean out the litter box. I teach my classes and go to meetings, at the school where I teach and at the church where I worship. I nag my children about their responsibilities. I do the laundry and ignore the vacuuming. Occasionally I remember to give thanks, for a crisp and blue-skied morning, for a child who has navigated a rocky passage, for a student who makes a leap of achievement. Sometimes I remember to pray ahead of time; for instance, before I open my opinionated mouth. (Not usually.) But mostly I am not awake or aware to the power or even the love of Christ in my life.

Sometimes. The truth about my walking has far less to do with my middle-aged quest for fitness than with my need for such awareness, which I tend to experience, if at all, when I am moving on my feet through God's created world. I walk largely as an exercise in attentiveness. There have been many occasions when I have paused as I have circled the small lake to which I often walk, noting a migrating bird or a startling shimmer of light across water, and been aware that the passing cars are missing something important. One afternoon I crouched behind the full-grown reeds of late summer, observing three green heron siblings learning to fly. Baby down feathers still stuck out here and there from their increasingly adult plumage, and as they hopped awkwardly from branch to branch, I worried like a mother heron that they were all about to fall in. Cars sped behind me and bicylists zipped down the nearby path. I was the only human witness to that first flying lesson.

Even that level of attentiveness is hard to maintain. Most of the time, we fancy ourselves too busy for the daily mindfulness to which both Buddhism and Christrianity call us. John Kabat Zinn entitles one of his books Wherever You Go, There You Are -- a point worth noting. Most of us are usually too busy with where we think we are going to attend to where we actually are.
Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister says that "The role of religion is to bring us to an awareness of life. The role of religion is to transform the world, to come to see the world as God sees the world and to bring it as close to the vision of God as we possibly can. Why? Scripture is very clear. What God changes, God changes through us."

Part of the good news is that we are now reminded, as the earth swings on its annual orbit, to "Keep awake." We have another opportunity, every year in the longest and darkest days of winter, to wake up and pay attention.