Christmas 2008
Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Psalm 96; Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
What we’d planned and what was real crashed head-on, these past several days.
What we’d planned was a peaceful Christmas. What we’d planned was our travel. What we’d planned was our church schedule intact so we could celebrate those lovely liturgies, sing all the lovely music we planned to sing, celebrate the astounding news of God taking flesh when we planned to. And then we planned to get home, celebrate with loved ones, and have some time and resources left over to help the poor.
What was real was record snowfall: snowdrifts piled into side streets, planes grounded, trains stalled, even buses stuck. One of us slept on the airport carpet off and on for 24 hours before her plane left for Chicago. The deacon got stuck on a side street just this past Thursday. What was real were hard decisions to forego Mass at church on the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Brigid’s Table Christmas meal, and then Mass for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
I stood in my neighborhood with my aging boots sunk deep in a big slushy pile of what-is-real waiting for the Chihuahua to figure out how to manage his personal business in the snow. I thought about what is real.
What is real is our life here on this living, unpredictable planet. What is real is how little control we really have over our lives. What is real is the work we do to live, the love we share to be human, our care for the poor who teach us how privileged we are. We slowed down and got in touch with ourselves, with one another, and with God. We got in touch with what’s real these past days.
That’s the Good News of Christmas. Christmas is real.
The Christmas Gospel says: No more promises and no more waiting. No more wishing and no more hoping. The gift is given. The Word of God, the vibrant living flaming Word, is among us. Fire and wind has taken flesh and blood. Mystery has become a tiny vulnerable child.
The night was silent, when Caesar’s legions covered the known earth and men now forgotten were in charge and a distant emperor taxed the world. In Rome they built him altars—the divine Caesar, the Savior of the world. This age is the age of peace, said Rome, the Roman peace, won by war and by blood and by treaties and by policies and by deals. The world was silent, watching, knowing there was no real peace that could come from a city of stone and a man on a throne.
Then what was Real became flesh.
The night was silent as all things were re-arranged for all time and a child was wrapped in cloths and laid in a feeding trough. Long ago the prophet said, “The donkey knows its manger, but Israel does not know their God.” That old wound was healed. Shepherds gathered and knew the one given to feed and free his people. We are still in shock.
Perhaps it is easier for our weary hearts and our disappointed souls and our perplexed minds to live in our plans and our wishes. But what is Real cries out in Bethlehem’s night. Often we do not recognize the sound. But today we do. The cry is God’s and the one who is Real is God, and at Christmas all is possible and all that was promised is here.
We see his glory. We hear his cry. We awake as if from a troubled dream to see and touch what is truly Real.
archived musings and preachments
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Christmas Masses postposed until Sunday December 28
Friends in God:
I never thought I would be involved in a decision to "cancel Christmas", as stop-action Santa did in that old Rankin-Bass cartoon that I was raised on. But Portland and the immediate area has been flattened by this round of snowstorms with more on the way, and we better observe "tradition" by obeying the Christian tradition of taking care of people's safety and well-being and not asking them to come out in this hazardous weather.
Sunday December 28 will be Saints Peter and Paul's parish observance of the feast of Christmas. The Mass schedule will remain the same as at any Sunday--8, 9:30, and 12 Noon Spanish. The 9:30 AM Mass will be "Carols and High Mass of Christmas" with all the lovely music and liturgy we planned for Christmas Eve.
Christmas is indeed "a season, and not a day", and this year we get to live into that. The culture will have moved into post-Christmas sales and forgetting, but we will gather to break the living Bread of the Word and the Bread of Life, knowing that the living Word has come and taken flesh among us. And we have seen his glory.
And hey...let's be careful out there.
I never thought I would be involved in a decision to "cancel Christmas", as stop-action Santa did in that old Rankin-Bass cartoon that I was raised on. But Portland and the immediate area has been flattened by this round of snowstorms with more on the way, and we better observe "tradition" by obeying the Christian tradition of taking care of people's safety and well-being and not asking them to come out in this hazardous weather.
Sunday December 28 will be Saints Peter and Paul's parish observance of the feast of Christmas. The Mass schedule will remain the same as at any Sunday--8, 9:30, and 12 Noon Spanish. The 9:30 AM Mass will be "Carols and High Mass of Christmas" with all the lovely music and liturgy we planned for Christmas Eve.
Christmas is indeed "a season, and not a day", and this year we get to live into that. The culture will have moved into post-Christmas sales and forgetting, but we will gather to break the living Bread of the Word and the Bread of Life, knowing that the living Word has come and taken flesh among us. And we have seen his glory.
And hey...let's be careful out there.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Candles and snow: 4 Advent
Not for years have we “canceled church.” But snow and ice that reminds me of New York winters when I was a kid, which would result in one day off from school at most, paralyze our dear Northwest where we are used to gentle climates, reliable brown mud on Christmas, lots of water, roses blooming in December. Biblical tales of deserts and the dry imagery of Advent, as well as poetic snowy Christmas scenes, are usually a stretch of the imagination for us. But this year my dry soul is matched by a wholly respectable snowfall mixed with our regional nemesis, freezing rain. So game called on account of weather, and we get to “be the church” where we are, alone or with loved ones, pondering how little control if any we have over weather, or over much of anything when we really think of it.
These days many plans have changed, many things have shifted. A lot of rhetoric over the years in churches like ours says things likes “Slow down, be quiet, it’s Advent!” Since this season carries such a burden of activities, buying, and gaiety whether we feel it or not, often I think the churchly command to add reflection to the Christmas list is one more burden. But it has come to us whether we wish it or not! And I for one am ready to take that as blessing as much as anything else.
But for me this time has not been all soft warm spiritual “fuzzies”, a winter feel-good time with God. As the weather closed in and the cold deepened, something very primitive awoke in my soul, something akin to my ancestors’ souls in impoverished medieval Ireland or ice-bound Alaska or storm-tossed Denmark. I felt myself huddling, wanting to stay warm and safe, with the itch to light something on fire that my bonfire-burning forebears would have understood immediately. The days up until today have shortened and, as writer Susan Cooper eloquently said, “the Dark is rising”, the light of kindly sun fading. As the light became scarce and the snow arose, I found myself fighting “irrational” thoughts—what if the light does not return? What if the snow never stops? And have I prepared well enough for winter? No worries about supplies of peat for fuel or sufficient dried salmon and berries, but will the mini-mart be open to sell milk and will the debit card work? Will the 50 year old oil furnace, taxed to its elderly limit, make it one more year, clearing its venerable throat one more time at 2 AM? And then I feel ashamed, as these thoughts are already privileged. For in our midst are those whose needs are more basic, who are without a roof and walls heated or not, who face unemployment or under-employment or eviction. And the season is a difficult one for many among us whose care is not financial but emotional and spiritual—those who feel the loss of loved ones more keenly at this time, those who are alone.
I found myself without inner resources to draw upon, no “health in me” as the Prayer Book language might say. And so my prayer, when I would shake myself free of brooding and of worry as a dog shakes free a coating of snow, was very basic: “O Lord, come” “O Light, return”. As I write this, the aging baby boomer in me is comforted by the image of Linus saying sagely “That’s what Advent is all about, Charlie Brown.”
And so we sing, “O come o come Emmanuel…” And we are given the wintry grace to mean it.
We missed both the RCL readings today as well as the Lessons and Carols format we had prepared for 9:30. And so if there is a chance amidst what home life demands take a moment to check the Hebrew scriptures—Isaiah 11: 1-9 and Isaiah 7: 10-15. In Christian consciousness Isaiah IS Advent to a powerful degree—it is Isaiah’s majestic poetry and astounding images that are enshrined in Handel’s “Messiah”, and reading the Preface to the first Book of Common Prayer one gets the clear sense that not reading Isaiah through during Advent is what drove Thomas Cramner to the English Reformation! (cf Book of Common Prayer p. 866) The first portion of the book of Isaiah is sometimes called by those with graduate degrees and big student loan debts “First Isaiah”, and is directed at Israel before the great traumatic defeats and deportations (“pre-exilic”). Storm clouds politically and culturally were on the horizon and the prophet speaks both of idolatry as well as the abuse of the poor and vulnerable at the hands of the powerful and wealthy. There is a higher Law and One who sees, says Isaiah. But amidst predictions of military defeat and social chaos there are some of the most astounding images of hope articulated anywhere in the Scriptures. One will come, one will be born, a mysterious Servant both royal and humble. And his birth and reign will bring about a transformation of the earth and of our lives, transformation that we cannot begin to imagine. Lambs and wolves will lie down together, children will play on the nests of poisonous snakes. Isaiah’s hunger and hope is awakened in every generation when we are brought up short by the gaping needs of the poor and of our own hearts, and when we look to this policy and this leader, then that leader, for hope and for meaning and for deliverance from the dead end into which we have driven ourselves. Hope is not a What, it is a Who, and now we are given the gift of knowing that no broken promise, no disillusioned voice, no disappointed dream has the final word. The final Word is God’s and is God, and in the dead of our winter that Word is spoken and takes flesh in our very midst.
The other choice in the Hebrew Scriptures for today was 2 Samuel 7: 1-11; 16, where David, now king, wants to do the decent ancient Palestinian thing for God and build a temple. But it is a strange thing that his court prophet Nathan tells him. Nathan’s waking mind says “Sure!” probably already planning how to decorate the interior and where his own chair will go, “Simple, not too showy, but solid, classic!” But Nathan sleeps and in the dream-time the God of dreams comes and tells Nathan and therefore David a counter-cultural thing. No temple needed, no thank you—I’m not just another Fertile Crescent deity who happens to be on top right now. I’m a pilgrim God and journey with you and with my people. Want to find me? Find me in my promise. Find me in the footsteps of your own journey where I have been with you. Find me in the house that I myself will build, not a split-level Parthenon, but in the living stones of a people. I’m not wood and bricks. I’m flesh and bone and promise and breath.
And just as strange is the dangerously familiar story of a message and a pre-marital pregnancy. I say “dangerous”, because familiarity has surrounded this tale with soft sentimental tones, risking that we know what it’s about before we hear it. But in Luke 1: 26-38 the angel, and not just any angel but one with serious biblical “cred”, Gabriel the messenger, is sent slumming. Gabriel is the messenger of God, and by all rights he should be hanging out in Jerusalem, in the temple, with the high priest and the rest of the professionals who are supposed to be looking and listening to angels as part of their position descriptions. But the stupendous being goes to backwater, “sketchy” Galilee, to some flyspeck called Nazareth, which is Nowhere even if the name suggests it’s a place that holy folk may be from (ex. “Nazarites” like Samson). And in Nowhere Gabe finds Nobody, an unmarried young woman. But this is a story about being surprised—the place that you think is really Somewhere may well be nowhere in particular, and Nowhere may be, in the blink of a divine eye, Everywhere and the only Place which is really happening. And Nobody? This young woman, marginal because of her gender in 1st century Israel and in a marginal heterodox town in a marginal province of the Roman Empire, is the tough-minded Everyone in the time it takes for a divine Being, to whom time means nothing, to stand before her and to speak. Mary, Miriam of the prophet’s name, is addressed with respect by great Gabriel with a prophet’s greeting—“Favored one! God is with you! Do not be afraid!” Not an average day in Nazareth—in a divine blink Mary is not just a prophet but is humanity, the earth as well, who is the first to hear Good News in all its joy and its outrageous promise and yes, its great risk to respectability and to convenience and to keeping things Just As They Are. As my monk-friend in Lafayette is fond of saying, “Mary is not rent-a-womb; she had a choice and she chose!” A poet said that the earth and the cosmos held its breath and waited for the answer. A young girl’s “Yes” made possible the silent explosion of the Event of events, the God who takes flesh and “pitches a tent among us.” And so never again be surprised or outraged by what this God can and will do, because nowhere is just nowhere and no one is nobody and God continues the divine Pilgrimage with God’s all-so-human people, walks with them, suffers with them, will even die with them and by them and will rise and so bring them to resurrection, will complete the journey begun with Mary’s “Yes” and Gabriel’s departure, the angelic mission done.
When the darkness seemed deepest and the snowflakes, tiny and savage-sharp as grains of sand, pelted the windows on Saturday night, primitive instincts and Advent hope met when we lit all four candles on the table Advent wreath. Sometimes a candle makes more sense than the most elegant thought. May Light come as promised but may we never think the Light is anything but an astounding, surprising Gift. May the Light shine forth from our lives into a world locked in a cold winter of many kinds.
This is already a long post, but here’s a pair of quotes that normally I would forego in order to keep my Sunday homilies to their trademark brevity.
One short one from Irenaus, 2nd Century theologian: “God is the glory of humanity. Humankind is the vessel which receives God’s action and all (God’s) wisdom and power.”*
A much longer one, that spoke loudly to me this past week, from a reflection by a UCC minister:
“…During this Christmas season, out of a stable, out of the dry, provincial hills of Bethlehem, comes a cry. It is the cry of a baby and it is the cry of God. It is the cry of every mother who has buried a child; the cry of the worker whose hands lie idle because of another layoff; the cry of the husband whose arms are empty this Christmas after 60 years of companionship; the cry of a body in the death throes of AIDS or cancer or heart disease; the cry of every human heart that has suffered.
“But it is also the cry of God, who says, ‘Enough! Enough of blind eyes and hard hearts, enough of compensation instead of justice, enough of slander instead of truth, brute strength instead of gentle power, hunger instead of fullness!
‘The day is coming,’ says the Lord, ‘when I will restore the years lost to you, I will give back the withered legs carried in a wheelchair, I will fill those deaf ears with music beyond all imagining, I will satisfy those longings for which you have wept and pummeled your pillow on 10,000 nights.
‘On the longest night of the year, the word will become flesh and dwell among you. You will behold the glory and the truth of that word in Christ Jesus.’”**
*as quoted by J. Robert Wright in Readings For The Daily Office From The Early Church, p. 24
**taken from “The Cruelest Month” by Norman B. Bendroth, from The Christian Century, December 30 2008, p. 10
These days many plans have changed, many things have shifted. A lot of rhetoric over the years in churches like ours says things likes “Slow down, be quiet, it’s Advent!” Since this season carries such a burden of activities, buying, and gaiety whether we feel it or not, often I think the churchly command to add reflection to the Christmas list is one more burden. But it has come to us whether we wish it or not! And I for one am ready to take that as blessing as much as anything else.
But for me this time has not been all soft warm spiritual “fuzzies”, a winter feel-good time with God. As the weather closed in and the cold deepened, something very primitive awoke in my soul, something akin to my ancestors’ souls in impoverished medieval Ireland or ice-bound Alaska or storm-tossed Denmark. I felt myself huddling, wanting to stay warm and safe, with the itch to light something on fire that my bonfire-burning forebears would have understood immediately. The days up until today have shortened and, as writer Susan Cooper eloquently said, “the Dark is rising”, the light of kindly sun fading. As the light became scarce and the snow arose, I found myself fighting “irrational” thoughts—what if the light does not return? What if the snow never stops? And have I prepared well enough for winter? No worries about supplies of peat for fuel or sufficient dried salmon and berries, but will the mini-mart be open to sell milk and will the debit card work? Will the 50 year old oil furnace, taxed to its elderly limit, make it one more year, clearing its venerable throat one more time at 2 AM? And then I feel ashamed, as these thoughts are already privileged. For in our midst are those whose needs are more basic, who are without a roof and walls heated or not, who face unemployment or under-employment or eviction. And the season is a difficult one for many among us whose care is not financial but emotional and spiritual—those who feel the loss of loved ones more keenly at this time, those who are alone.
I found myself without inner resources to draw upon, no “health in me” as the Prayer Book language might say. And so my prayer, when I would shake myself free of brooding and of worry as a dog shakes free a coating of snow, was very basic: “O Lord, come” “O Light, return”. As I write this, the aging baby boomer in me is comforted by the image of Linus saying sagely “That’s what Advent is all about, Charlie Brown.”
And so we sing, “O come o come Emmanuel…” And we are given the wintry grace to mean it.
We missed both the RCL readings today as well as the Lessons and Carols format we had prepared for 9:30. And so if there is a chance amidst what home life demands take a moment to check the Hebrew scriptures—Isaiah 11: 1-9 and Isaiah 7: 10-15. In Christian consciousness Isaiah IS Advent to a powerful degree—it is Isaiah’s majestic poetry and astounding images that are enshrined in Handel’s “Messiah”, and reading the Preface to the first Book of Common Prayer one gets the clear sense that not reading Isaiah through during Advent is what drove Thomas Cramner to the English Reformation! (cf Book of Common Prayer p. 866) The first portion of the book of Isaiah is sometimes called by those with graduate degrees and big student loan debts “First Isaiah”, and is directed at Israel before the great traumatic defeats and deportations (“pre-exilic”). Storm clouds politically and culturally were on the horizon and the prophet speaks both of idolatry as well as the abuse of the poor and vulnerable at the hands of the powerful and wealthy. There is a higher Law and One who sees, says Isaiah. But amidst predictions of military defeat and social chaos there are some of the most astounding images of hope articulated anywhere in the Scriptures. One will come, one will be born, a mysterious Servant both royal and humble. And his birth and reign will bring about a transformation of the earth and of our lives, transformation that we cannot begin to imagine. Lambs and wolves will lie down together, children will play on the nests of poisonous snakes. Isaiah’s hunger and hope is awakened in every generation when we are brought up short by the gaping needs of the poor and of our own hearts, and when we look to this policy and this leader, then that leader, for hope and for meaning and for deliverance from the dead end into which we have driven ourselves. Hope is not a What, it is a Who, and now we are given the gift of knowing that no broken promise, no disillusioned voice, no disappointed dream has the final word. The final Word is God’s and is God, and in the dead of our winter that Word is spoken and takes flesh in our very midst.
The other choice in the Hebrew Scriptures for today was 2 Samuel 7: 1-11; 16, where David, now king, wants to do the decent ancient Palestinian thing for God and build a temple. But it is a strange thing that his court prophet Nathan tells him. Nathan’s waking mind says “Sure!” probably already planning how to decorate the interior and where his own chair will go, “Simple, not too showy, but solid, classic!” But Nathan sleeps and in the dream-time the God of dreams comes and tells Nathan and therefore David a counter-cultural thing. No temple needed, no thank you—I’m not just another Fertile Crescent deity who happens to be on top right now. I’m a pilgrim God and journey with you and with my people. Want to find me? Find me in my promise. Find me in the footsteps of your own journey where I have been with you. Find me in the house that I myself will build, not a split-level Parthenon, but in the living stones of a people. I’m not wood and bricks. I’m flesh and bone and promise and breath.
And just as strange is the dangerously familiar story of a message and a pre-marital pregnancy. I say “dangerous”, because familiarity has surrounded this tale with soft sentimental tones, risking that we know what it’s about before we hear it. But in Luke 1: 26-38 the angel, and not just any angel but one with serious biblical “cred”, Gabriel the messenger, is sent slumming. Gabriel is the messenger of God, and by all rights he should be hanging out in Jerusalem, in the temple, with the high priest and the rest of the professionals who are supposed to be looking and listening to angels as part of their position descriptions. But the stupendous being goes to backwater, “sketchy” Galilee, to some flyspeck called Nazareth, which is Nowhere even if the name suggests it’s a place that holy folk may be from (ex. “Nazarites” like Samson). And in Nowhere Gabe finds Nobody, an unmarried young woman. But this is a story about being surprised—the place that you think is really Somewhere may well be nowhere in particular, and Nowhere may be, in the blink of a divine eye, Everywhere and the only Place which is really happening. And Nobody? This young woman, marginal because of her gender in 1st century Israel and in a marginal heterodox town in a marginal province of the Roman Empire, is the tough-minded Everyone in the time it takes for a divine Being, to whom time means nothing, to stand before her and to speak. Mary, Miriam of the prophet’s name, is addressed with respect by great Gabriel with a prophet’s greeting—“Favored one! God is with you! Do not be afraid!” Not an average day in Nazareth—in a divine blink Mary is not just a prophet but is humanity, the earth as well, who is the first to hear Good News in all its joy and its outrageous promise and yes, its great risk to respectability and to convenience and to keeping things Just As They Are. As my monk-friend in Lafayette is fond of saying, “Mary is not rent-a-womb; she had a choice and she chose!” A poet said that the earth and the cosmos held its breath and waited for the answer. A young girl’s “Yes” made possible the silent explosion of the Event of events, the God who takes flesh and “pitches a tent among us.” And so never again be surprised or outraged by what this God can and will do, because nowhere is just nowhere and no one is nobody and God continues the divine Pilgrimage with God’s all-so-human people, walks with them, suffers with them, will even die with them and by them and will rise and so bring them to resurrection, will complete the journey begun with Mary’s “Yes” and Gabriel’s departure, the angelic mission done.
When the darkness seemed deepest and the snowflakes, tiny and savage-sharp as grains of sand, pelted the windows on Saturday night, primitive instincts and Advent hope met when we lit all four candles on the table Advent wreath. Sometimes a candle makes more sense than the most elegant thought. May Light come as promised but may we never think the Light is anything but an astounding, surprising Gift. May the Light shine forth from our lives into a world locked in a cold winter of many kinds.
This is already a long post, but here’s a pair of quotes that normally I would forego in order to keep my Sunday homilies to their trademark brevity.
One short one from Irenaus, 2nd Century theologian: “God is the glory of humanity. Humankind is the vessel which receives God’s action and all (God’s) wisdom and power.”*
A much longer one, that spoke loudly to me this past week, from a reflection by a UCC minister:
“…During this Christmas season, out of a stable, out of the dry, provincial hills of Bethlehem, comes a cry. It is the cry of a baby and it is the cry of God. It is the cry of every mother who has buried a child; the cry of the worker whose hands lie idle because of another layoff; the cry of the husband whose arms are empty this Christmas after 60 years of companionship; the cry of a body in the death throes of AIDS or cancer or heart disease; the cry of every human heart that has suffered.
“But it is also the cry of God, who says, ‘Enough! Enough of blind eyes and hard hearts, enough of compensation instead of justice, enough of slander instead of truth, brute strength instead of gentle power, hunger instead of fullness!
‘The day is coming,’ says the Lord, ‘when I will restore the years lost to you, I will give back the withered legs carried in a wheelchair, I will fill those deaf ears with music beyond all imagining, I will satisfy those longings for which you have wept and pummeled your pillow on 10,000 nights.
‘On the longest night of the year, the word will become flesh and dwell among you. You will behold the glory and the truth of that word in Christ Jesus.’”**
*as quoted by J. Robert Wright in Readings For The Daily Office From The Early Church, p. 24
**taken from “The Cruelest Month” by Norman B. Bendroth, from The Christian Century, December 30 2008, p. 10
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Mass and activities canceled Sunday Dec 21, 4 Advent
Friends in God--due to unusually severe winter weather, we shall not open the church building for Mass or other activities Sunday December 21, 4 Advent. We fully plan to be open and offering Mass on Christmas Eve (10:30 PM) and Christmas Day (10:00 AM). Check this 'blog tomorrow late morning for a sermon reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. And check the 'blog for updates on weather conditions and how they may impact church activities.
The Collect for this Sunday is particularly beautiful...
"Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that at his coming our Lord Jesus Christ may find in us a mansion prepared for himself..."
Stay safe and warm, and pray for those among us who suffer on account of the weather.
The Collect for this Sunday is particularly beautiful...
"Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that at his coming our Lord Jesus Christ may find in us a mansion prepared for himself..."
Stay safe and warm, and pray for those among us who suffer on account of the weather.
Saturday 12/20 greening party canceled
Friends: the Saturday 12/20 greens-making party scheduled is canceled due to snow. Please check this 'blog for updates in church schedule, including Sunday AM Mass which is in doubt due to predictions of freezing rain.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Brigid's Table meal cancelled
Friends in God: Due to both present conditions as well as predictions for the next 24 hours, we have reluctantly cancelled Brigid's Table Christmas meal. Many thanks to all who have donated generously or who intended to volunteer.
Please check back on this 'blog for updates on parish service or activity schedules. And hey! Let's be careful out there! And keep in mind and prayer those who suffer most from this weather.
Please check back on this 'blog for updates on parish service or activity schedules. And hey! Let's be careful out there! And keep in mind and prayer those who suffer most from this weather.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Third Sunday in Advent - Fr. Phil
THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT
December 14, 2008
Ss. Peter & Paul – 8 A.M.
+++++
Today, the third Sunday in the season of Advent, is known in some places, like this one, as “Gaudete Sunday.” The Latin is “Rejoice” and comes from the beginning word of the Introit – or introduction – to the Latin Mass of this Sunday: “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice” (Philippians 4).
At the risk of being perceived as quite mad – today’s weather [at least predicted by meteorologists as treacherous], the market, the auto-industry, the Governor of Illinois, the cheating on Wall Street, the loss of jobs, the dismal economic outlook – I say to you: there is cause for great rejoicing today. Because whether you or I feel like it or not, the joy of God is with us, and always with us. We really have nothing to do with that joy, other than to find it at times in the most unlikely places.
So, what does it mean to rejoice? It seems rather obvious. But things need sorting out in the harried euphoria of this season, when we sing about joy but many face staggering depths of depression. Our culture generates a kind of frenzy, and the church can do some sorting out.
We may observe that joy spoken of here is not the same as pleasure, nor
satisfaction, nor even the emotional high we call happiness. It is rather a steady assurance of the resolution of all kinds of things that don’t seem to “fit”, an assurance that those contradictions may be blown off by what is about to happen. This is not delight in possession of something, but in passionate anticipation for what is not yet.
We may see that joy is not a mark of our culture. We can discern that by watching folks, especially in this season in the pushing and shoving – even the crushing-to-death – of a shopping mall or any other place where people have their guards down. Most people look bored or distracted or just plain tired. And boredom, distraction, and fatigue are not helpful conditions for joy. Joy is an active enterprise linked with dance and song, not an emotion of the bored or exhausted. So, our texts today are addressed to a social setting in which real joy is a rare practice among us.
The community of faith, a minority community, is invited to the scandalous, subversive activity of joy. This community is authorized to do something the dominant culture is unable or unwilling to do. While the large community prefers its sorry weariness, this community is invited to an alternative way in the world. Joy, genuine Christian joy, undermines frantic activity. It shakes us free from the world that controls us by keeping us tired. And the ground for this alternative action is that something special, not yet widely known in the world, has been disclosed to us. There is announced to us a fundamental transformation of reality. That is the reason for joy. That’s really the center of the Gospel, what John announced, what the path was to be made straight for.
And on this Sunday nearest the 38th anniversary of my ordination as a priest in the church of God, it is what makes me joyful. Being an innate pessimist and a “regretter,” I now am invited to look, in the spirit of Gaudete, at what is “good and beautiful and true” in those 38 years. Like John the Forerunner, I have tried to make the path straight for those who followed me in the various places I was called upon to serve God and the Church. While it is sad to hear that one little mission closed its doors, and another parish where I served as assisting priest and musician suffered an arson fire, and yet another has “joined the Cone” of disenchanted former Episcopalians, I rejoice that another is doing creative outreach when at one time there was practically none. Another now houses a growing Hispanic mission, alongside the “Anglo” one; my last parish before coming to Oregon is in an interim place now with fine, talented lay people holding forth in the absence of clerical leadership; and Ascension Parish here in Portland continues with a fine music program inaugurated by the musician I hired and encouraged, and their outreach has expanded, and this in a place where one of my predecessors had put it down huffily.
So, in the words of our epistle-reading today, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (I Thessalonians 5:16-18).
[The preacher, Fr. Phillip, is indebted to Walter Brueggemann for his notes in the Advent-Christmas portion of Proclamation 3, Series B, published by Fortress Press, 1984.]
December 14, 2008
Ss. Peter & Paul – 8 A.M.
+++++
Today, the third Sunday in the season of Advent, is known in some places, like this one, as “Gaudete Sunday.” The Latin is “Rejoice” and comes from the beginning word of the Introit – or introduction – to the Latin Mass of this Sunday: “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice” (Philippians 4).
At the risk of being perceived as quite mad – today’s weather [at least predicted by meteorologists as treacherous], the market, the auto-industry, the Governor of Illinois, the cheating on Wall Street, the loss of jobs, the dismal economic outlook – I say to you: there is cause for great rejoicing today. Because whether you or I feel like it or not, the joy of God is with us, and always with us. We really have nothing to do with that joy, other than to find it at times in the most unlikely places.
So, what does it mean to rejoice? It seems rather obvious. But things need sorting out in the harried euphoria of this season, when we sing about joy but many face staggering depths of depression. Our culture generates a kind of frenzy, and the church can do some sorting out.
We may observe that joy spoken of here is not the same as pleasure, nor
satisfaction, nor even the emotional high we call happiness. It is rather a steady assurance of the resolution of all kinds of things that don’t seem to “fit”, an assurance that those contradictions may be blown off by what is about to happen. This is not delight in possession of something, but in passionate anticipation for what is not yet.
We may see that joy is not a mark of our culture. We can discern that by watching folks, especially in this season in the pushing and shoving – even the crushing-to-death – of a shopping mall or any other place where people have their guards down. Most people look bored or distracted or just plain tired. And boredom, distraction, and fatigue are not helpful conditions for joy. Joy is an active enterprise linked with dance and song, not an emotion of the bored or exhausted. So, our texts today are addressed to a social setting in which real joy is a rare practice among us.
The community of faith, a minority community, is invited to the scandalous, subversive activity of joy. This community is authorized to do something the dominant culture is unable or unwilling to do. While the large community prefers its sorry weariness, this community is invited to an alternative way in the world. Joy, genuine Christian joy, undermines frantic activity. It shakes us free from the world that controls us by keeping us tired. And the ground for this alternative action is that something special, not yet widely known in the world, has been disclosed to us. There is announced to us a fundamental transformation of reality. That is the reason for joy. That’s really the center of the Gospel, what John announced, what the path was to be made straight for.
And on this Sunday nearest the 38th anniversary of my ordination as a priest in the church of God, it is what makes me joyful. Being an innate pessimist and a “regretter,” I now am invited to look, in the spirit of Gaudete, at what is “good and beautiful and true” in those 38 years. Like John the Forerunner, I have tried to make the path straight for those who followed me in the various places I was called upon to serve God and the Church. While it is sad to hear that one little mission closed its doors, and another parish where I served as assisting priest and musician suffered an arson fire, and yet another has “joined the Cone” of disenchanted former Episcopalians, I rejoice that another is doing creative outreach when at one time there was practically none. Another now houses a growing Hispanic mission, alongside the “Anglo” one; my last parish before coming to Oregon is in an interim place now with fine, talented lay people holding forth in the absence of clerical leadership; and Ascension Parish here in Portland continues with a fine music program inaugurated by the musician I hired and encouraged, and their outreach has expanded, and this in a place where one of my predecessors had put it down huffily.
So, in the words of our epistle-reading today, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (I Thessalonians 5:16-18).
[The preacher, Fr. Phillip, is indebted to Walter Brueggemann for his notes in the Advent-Christmas portion of Proclamation 3, Series B, published by Fortress Press, 1984.]
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Feel the gift
3 Advent B 2008
(Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11; Canticle 15; 1 Thess 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28)
Sometimes we just can’t believe in a gift.
My oldest brother Hank was born in 1939 and came of age during World War II. Times were hard even though there was work for my father. The babies kept coming, and fear in the news went hand-in-hand with ration cards and shortages.
For Christmas each kid got to ask for one special gift. One year Hank’s wish was for a real leather football. That was a big deal on my father’s salary. Christmas Eve came and Hank, about age 7, was in bad shape. It took several tries to get Hank to sleep. Finally Mom and Dad had some space to get things arranged in the living room. In the midst of exhausted Christmas prep, my parents heard a sound. Looking up, they saw what they described as a pale ghost of a 7 year old boy, staring and swaying, sound asleep, muttering something about a football. In desperation Mom and Dad let him feel the football through the wrapping paper. Only then could they coax Hank back into bed.
As I recall Hank had no memory of waking up and feeling that football on Christmas Day. But I guess when he was asleep and lost in his anxiety, feeling was believing.
Feeling is believing today. Today we wake up from our anxiety and doubt. Today on 3 Advent we reach out to touch that which is truly real.
Roses can be touched. Joy can be touched. Beneath the paper-thin veneer of our lives today we feel the solid shape of the gift to be given to us, the Christ, the gift who is already here.
Isaiah sung about it. The promised one is here among us, and he is here to release prisoners, speak good news to the poor, to lift up any who are bowed down. He is coming, but in God’s topsy-turvy way of doing things he is already here. He is here, in Sacrament and Word, in our flesh and lives. He is here when we give him our hands and minds to allow him to do his liberating, healing work. The poor and the captives and the mourners and those who cry out are not forgotten. They are heard, we are heard, and salvation is at work in our midst.
Mary sung about it, in that wonderful startling song where she repeats Isaiah’s promises and makes them deeper and more immediate. As she sung her song she felt the solid life of Jesus within her, moving, awakening, here and yet to come.
And John the Wild Man brings it. Today again we meet John, the Wild Man of the desert. He speaks in the old way that God always spoke, through the lips and the lives of wild men and wild women who stormed out of the desert with their faces and eyes aflame. He speaks of one who is to come. He will himself be the living Bath that will strip away our old life and give us a Life that is always new. Today we welcome the Wild Man of God, because he tells us that the promises of God are wild and untamed, and to follow the way of the Gospel is to live a wild life free in the very wind of God.
Is this life possible and real? Or is it just Advent poetry spoken by one of the more eccentric Episcopal clergy in town? Try and see. Feel the gift beneath the thin paper of what we think of as our lives. Feel the new life awakening in our own flesh and in our midst.
Today claim the gift that is given us by God.
(Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11; Canticle 15; 1 Thess 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28)
Sometimes we just can’t believe in a gift.
My oldest brother Hank was born in 1939 and came of age during World War II. Times were hard even though there was work for my father. The babies kept coming, and fear in the news went hand-in-hand with ration cards and shortages.
For Christmas each kid got to ask for one special gift. One year Hank’s wish was for a real leather football. That was a big deal on my father’s salary. Christmas Eve came and Hank, about age 7, was in bad shape. It took several tries to get Hank to sleep. Finally Mom and Dad had some space to get things arranged in the living room. In the midst of exhausted Christmas prep, my parents heard a sound. Looking up, they saw what they described as a pale ghost of a 7 year old boy, staring and swaying, sound asleep, muttering something about a football. In desperation Mom and Dad let him feel the football through the wrapping paper. Only then could they coax Hank back into bed.
As I recall Hank had no memory of waking up and feeling that football on Christmas Day. But I guess when he was asleep and lost in his anxiety, feeling was believing.
Feeling is believing today. Today we wake up from our anxiety and doubt. Today on 3 Advent we reach out to touch that which is truly real.
Roses can be touched. Joy can be touched. Beneath the paper-thin veneer of our lives today we feel the solid shape of the gift to be given to us, the Christ, the gift who is already here.
Isaiah sung about it. The promised one is here among us, and he is here to release prisoners, speak good news to the poor, to lift up any who are bowed down. He is coming, but in God’s topsy-turvy way of doing things he is already here. He is here, in Sacrament and Word, in our flesh and lives. He is here when we give him our hands and minds to allow him to do his liberating, healing work. The poor and the captives and the mourners and those who cry out are not forgotten. They are heard, we are heard, and salvation is at work in our midst.
Mary sung about it, in that wonderful startling song where she repeats Isaiah’s promises and makes them deeper and more immediate. As she sung her song she felt the solid life of Jesus within her, moving, awakening, here and yet to come.
And John the Wild Man brings it. Today again we meet John, the Wild Man of the desert. He speaks in the old way that God always spoke, through the lips and the lives of wild men and wild women who stormed out of the desert with their faces and eyes aflame. He speaks of one who is to come. He will himself be the living Bath that will strip away our old life and give us a Life that is always new. Today we welcome the Wild Man of God, because he tells us that the promises of God are wild and untamed, and to follow the way of the Gospel is to live a wild life free in the very wind of God.
Is this life possible and real? Or is it just Advent poetry spoken by one of the more eccentric Episcopal clergy in town? Try and see. Feel the gift beneath the thin paper of what we think of as our lives. Feel the new life awakening in our own flesh and in our midst.
Today claim the gift that is given us by God.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
That's Advent
1 Advent B 2008
(Isaiah 64: 1-9; Ps 80: 1-7, 16-18; 1 Cor 1: 3-9; Mark 13: 24-37)
Advent makes me remember stories from when I was young.
They’re not tales of snow and Red Ryder BB guns. The stories I remember are edgy, moments of fear and of truth.
One tale I remember each Advent was when my best buddy and I played in the forbidden abandoned car. The doors locked, and we could not open them ourselves. My big brother Rick heard our seven-year old cries and tore the door open with brute teenaged force. Trapped in the hot dusty car in July, knowing we’d gotten ourselves in there, helpless to open the doors ourselves—that’s Advent. Someone strong coming to save, the sound of that door tearing open, the rush of cool air and the feel of the free earth as we tumbled out free—that’s Advent.
The other tale I remember was when another brother, his friend, and I were caught out on Long Island Sound with the steep waves that built effortlessly with a northeast wind. We had to beat it through miles of open water before heaving to off the harbor mouth. We finally made the one risky turn and rode the breakers past the savage jetties, coasting slowly to a stop on the still waters of the protected harbor—that’s Advent.
Advent is when I realize how I’ve run myself into tight spots like the inside of an abandoned car. Advent is when I realize I need to be brought into a safe harbor. Advent is when I have deeply mixed feelings about what the larger culture calls “the holiday season.” I understand Charlie Brown who, in the vintage cartoon, takes a long look at all the Christmas busyness, sighs and says “Rats.” He’s looking for something real, something worthy of his trust and his joy. He’s not settling for something cheap.
Good friends in God, let’s not settle for anything cheap. The good news is, we do not have to. And we cannot afford to. We don’t have time. Today, Jesus in his teaching ends with one of the clearest commands in the Gospels—“stay awake.”
I wake up and realize that I’ve been expecting the wrong things from my life and from God. I’ve been waiting for complete financial and professional security, for “enough money.” And as time marches on, I’ve been waiting for assurance that I really will not begin to slowly acquire medical issues, that I’ll live nearly forever, completely healthy.
And then I wonder why I sigh and say “Rats.”
Save me God from my messed-up desires. Save me for thinking, for even a moment, that I am not like every other human being on this earth. Save me from thinking and acting like I can control that which cannot be controlled. A storm on open water is less treacherous than the storm I create in my own conflicted heart. An abandoned car is less of a trap than the trap I make for myself.
“Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down…”
In the darkening of the year, Isaiah’s mighty voice rolls out with the deepest cries of our hearts. Come, you our God who has been hidden in the confusion of our world and in our lives. Come, find us where we have hidden ourselves from you and from our own deepest truth. Come, tear open all doors of despair and darkness and gloom, come bring us to safe harbor. Come, make our souls boil with new hope. You are faithful, do this for us. You are wondrous, dazzle us with your wonders. Heal, forgive, raise to new life, as you have done for your faithful people of old, do now for us for we are yours. Spin us again on the pottery-wheel of your creative love. Re-make us as only you know how.
(Isaiah 64: 1-9; Ps 80: 1-7, 16-18; 1 Cor 1: 3-9; Mark 13: 24-37)
Advent makes me remember stories from when I was young.
They’re not tales of snow and Red Ryder BB guns. The stories I remember are edgy, moments of fear and of truth.
One tale I remember each Advent was when my best buddy and I played in the forbidden abandoned car. The doors locked, and we could not open them ourselves. My big brother Rick heard our seven-year old cries and tore the door open with brute teenaged force. Trapped in the hot dusty car in July, knowing we’d gotten ourselves in there, helpless to open the doors ourselves—that’s Advent. Someone strong coming to save, the sound of that door tearing open, the rush of cool air and the feel of the free earth as we tumbled out free—that’s Advent.
The other tale I remember was when another brother, his friend, and I were caught out on Long Island Sound with the steep waves that built effortlessly with a northeast wind. We had to beat it through miles of open water before heaving to off the harbor mouth. We finally made the one risky turn and rode the breakers past the savage jetties, coasting slowly to a stop on the still waters of the protected harbor—that’s Advent.
Advent is when I realize how I’ve run myself into tight spots like the inside of an abandoned car. Advent is when I realize I need to be brought into a safe harbor. Advent is when I have deeply mixed feelings about what the larger culture calls “the holiday season.” I understand Charlie Brown who, in the vintage cartoon, takes a long look at all the Christmas busyness, sighs and says “Rats.” He’s looking for something real, something worthy of his trust and his joy. He’s not settling for something cheap.
Good friends in God, let’s not settle for anything cheap. The good news is, we do not have to. And we cannot afford to. We don’t have time. Today, Jesus in his teaching ends with one of the clearest commands in the Gospels—“stay awake.”
I wake up and realize that I’ve been expecting the wrong things from my life and from God. I’ve been waiting for complete financial and professional security, for “enough money.” And as time marches on, I’ve been waiting for assurance that I really will not begin to slowly acquire medical issues, that I’ll live nearly forever, completely healthy.
And then I wonder why I sigh and say “Rats.”
Save me God from my messed-up desires. Save me for thinking, for even a moment, that I am not like every other human being on this earth. Save me from thinking and acting like I can control that which cannot be controlled. A storm on open water is less treacherous than the storm I create in my own conflicted heart. An abandoned car is less of a trap than the trap I make for myself.
“Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down…”
In the darkening of the year, Isaiah’s mighty voice rolls out with the deepest cries of our hearts. Come, you our God who has been hidden in the confusion of our world and in our lives. Come, find us where we have hidden ourselves from you and from our own deepest truth. Come, tear open all doors of despair and darkness and gloom, come bring us to safe harbor. Come, make our souls boil with new hope. You are faithful, do this for us. You are wondrous, dazzle us with your wonders. Heal, forgive, raise to new life, as you have done for your faithful people of old, do now for us for we are yours. Spin us again on the pottery-wheel of your creative love. Re-make us as only you know how.
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