Light

2 Christmas C 2009
(Jer 31: 7-14; Ps 84; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Luke 2:41-52)

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for 2 Christmas, BCP)

Two men in a small Irish village were always fighting.

If Mike went to pasture his cows, Frank argued that the pasture was actually his. If Frank went to harvest his wheat, Mike said that Frank had cut the edge of Mike’s field. Every season, for whatever reason, there was a fight. Everyone was sick of it. A group of people went to the village priest and asked him to intervene.

The little old priest sat and scratched his bald head and thought and thought. Then he stood and went to Mike and Frank and said, “You’re fine strong men. But I know something neither of you can do.”

Mike and Frank stopped their arguing long enough to stare at the little priest and ask, “And what’s that?”

“I’ll bet that neither of you can fill every corner of your barns on Christmas Eve. By midnight I’ll have filled mine more full than yours. If I win, you have to shake hands and leave off your bickering for good.”

Mike and Frank agreed. And so, all Christmas Eve, while the whole village watched, Mike and Frank filled each his own barn with whatever they could lay their hands on. Animals, bales of hay, furniture, wood scraps—they dragged it all inside and arranged it so as to fill every corner. Meanwhile the little priest sat by a fire in the center of the village, reading his prayers, closing his eyes, sometimes singing to himself, doing nothing to fill his own barn.

Near the stroke of midnight Frank and Mike paused, drenched with sweat in spite of the cold, exhausted. Their barns were filled with all manner of things and all manner of unhappy animals too, but still there was room in some of the corners and near the top.

The little priest stood slowly, stiff with cold. The whole village watched while he went inside his humble little house. He emerged with a single candle. All followed as he stepped inside his empty barn. The little priest lit the candle and all watched in silence as the flame grew and the light filled the inside of the barn, every corner. The priest spoke aloud and said, “The True Light has come into the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

All watched as Mike and Frank shook hands and, true to their word, left off their fighting for good and all.

Well, the 2009 1040 tax forms already came in the mail, the gifts have been opened and in some cases exchanged, we’re slowly learning to write 2010 on our checks and letters. But this is still Christmastide, and the proclamation of the Word made flesh is still ours for the taking, still ours to kindle light and hope in our lives and in our world. One early church figure said that God’s nature was spread through the infant born in Bethlehem like heat spreads through iron until the iron glows. So our lives are also aglow—believe it. We too are changed—live into it. If a word and a candle can make two stubborn Irishman stop arguing, think what our lives aglow with the Christmas Gospel can do.

And as surprising as a candle lit during a Christmas Eve bet, prepare to be surprised by grace and by gift.

There’s surprise in today’s Gospel tale of neglectful parents and a naughty 12 year old kid. After the annual trip to Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph forget to check that Jesus is part of the entourage going back home. Ever know anyone who was left behind at a truck stop?

They head back, probably in a panic and thinking maybe slave traders or worse snatched the kid. Finally they find him, learning that he CHOSE to stay behind, probably hanging out with other students and eating what they chose to share with him. As a parent, I think Jesus’ answer to Mary is kinda middle-school flippant—whattaya mean you didn’t know where I was?

But beneath this scene that any parent or anyone who’s been 12 years old can enter into is something deeper. For people of the Christmas Gospel, there is always something more that trembles just beneath the surface. Frightened parents and a willful kid are more—they are a sign that this kid will be full of surprises, that his life and even this moment is meant to be a gift and a mystery for us all. If nothing is every ordinary again after the birth of Christ, then no moment is without the power to allow God to break through and move our hearts to joy and our feet to dance.

God shared our human life with Christ, so that could share the divine dance and the divine joy.

Hodie

Today Light is born in the world. Today darkness flees and all weariness slinks away to hide and await another discouraged day.

Today heaven and earth are two words only according to punctuation. Today there is no need to seek in the heavens or in the depths of the past or in the intricacies of thought to find Divinity and transcendence and transformation. Today, as Richard Rohr eloquently said, God is perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed, and wholly lovable, in the Child born among us and for us.

The whole world had a Baby by sheer gift and grace.

Last night Saints Peter and Paul, or many of us at least, gathered to stand vigil at that Birth. The new life born was eloquently shown to us by the new life among us, infant Lydia, born to longtime members so that the parish had a baby! What an exquisite even on which to baptize a child, to be reminded without words of the Life given to us poor and vulnerable and a sheer gift in our arms!

Easiest sermon I've ever preached--I only had to hold the child.

And members of the Hispanic community brought food and brought costumes and enacted a brief version of Las Posadas, the rich customary remembrance of the Holy Family asking for shelter and welcome when they were refugees. The homeless and vulnerable among us, in our world, that which is vulnerable and homeless within us, and the incarnate Word born to his people who "received him not"--all were present and asking for "posada", shelter, and the cry of final welcome spoke the Hope that there is by grace a welcome for us and a welcome that will be invoked from our hurting transformed hearts.

And so we welcomed him, with song and silence and word and music and all our glorious, broken, loved humanity, in two languages, on a chilly evening in a church on a gritty urban strip. And so we loved the children and broke pinatas and enjoyed our life with one another. And so we live...as the often-wayward friends of the Friend who mercifully is born daily in our hearts and in our world.

O Oriens

Today's "'O' Antiphon" can be rendered, "O Dayspring, Brightness of the Light Eternal, and Sun of Righteousness: Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death."

I kinda like to render the Latin "Oriens" as "Eastern Dawn." You recognize it as the word from which we get "Oriental" as well as "oriented." Someone who is oriented literally knows which way to face, and the way to face is East. East, to drink in the rising sun; east, to greet the new light. East, to greet the One who is the true Dawn and the true Light.

No one who lives in the Northwest despises light. We'll take all we can get, thank you! But I have come to appreciate the region's gloom--helps remind me of my own need for that true Light and to long for it. And the Light comes as a gift.

Today also the feast of a favorite Saint--Thomas, who got a bad rap as "doubting Thomas", some sort of object lesson in thinking the right things. Thomas teaches us of the hunger and longing of authentic faith--he wishes to touch, he wishes to meet. An early Church Father said, "The disbelief of Thomas has done more for our faith than the faith of the other disciples." May Thomas' asking of the hard questions and longing for an authentic encounter with the Word made flesh be our own longing.

And may that Word light your way, on the longest night of the year, in whatever long night in which we find ourselves awaiting the dawn.

O Key of David

"O Key of David, and Scepter of the house of Israel, you open and no one can shut, you shut and no one can open: Come and bring the captives out of the prison house, those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death."

Today's "'O' Antiphon" (try Googling that) speaks with confidence of release from whatever binds us.

Any living thing instinctively hates being imprisoned. The worse thing that can be done for a living thing is to accustom it to prison walls. With time we do adapt to wall and bars--many convicts are "recidivous", returning again and again to jail. We shake our heads at this, but perhaps we all tend to be "recidivous", co-operating with the forces and voices that would imprison us in a life, any life, that is not fully who and what we are called to be.

What we are called to be, to paraphrase one early church pastor, is fully alive. And that is the glory of God.

Awake, watch, says Advent. Awake especially to whatever binds us, whatever walls have grown around us. We are not the summation of our fears, our dreads, we are not what a consumer culture or an atmosphere of rage and fear and resentment tell us we are. We are freed by the One who is Free, who cries out within us, within our most true selves, and who cries in word and Sacrament to hear, to awake, to stand, to walk, and finally to run. See the Key who comes to the darkest place in which we have been shackled or, perhaps, where we have placed ourselves.

Frost and cold, glorify the Lord

Today is Our Lady of Guadalupe for our Hispanic brothers and sisters. As I chose to postpone today's Brigid's Breakfast, I drove to the church to post signs and change the voicemail message. On the way I saw the fleet of cars parked all around Ascension RC Church, where the customary dawn Mass and Mananitas for OL of G was celebrated. I am glad she looked after her children and her Misa, at least today and here.

The Canticle "suggested" for Morning Prayer in the BCP is the so-called "Song of the Three Young Men" (BCP 88) One man I respect called this the "song of the actual", as all creation is named and called upon to join in the general chorus, "glorify the Lord." Seems particularly apt today, as Advent waiting and openness, expectancy and quiet is forced upon us when the news channels hum excitedly with a "weather event" and unnecessary travel and restlessness ceases. Church-folk are part of the general agitation--there are things to do always, usually good things, but lots of things nonetheless. It can be a good thing to be compelled, as far as our professions permit, to pause and hear even briefly the song of creation in ourselves and in the world around us.

So we pause, breathe a prayer for those who must travel as well as for those who are without shelter, and welcome just a moment of quiet into our souls. Quiet, in which, without any effort or agitation on our part, the silent Word comes to birth in darkness and in secret, be we man or woman, old or young. Quiet, in which we need do nothing, move nothing, achieve nothing, save make room for the silent One who was born and who is constantly re-born in receptive hearts and in the forgotten places of our world.

Creation can be trusted to keep watch and to sing praise--"glorify the Lord." Pause and we too can hear.

If we continue to be icy, re-check this 'blog for updates. Stay safe.

What's really going on?

Proper 28 B 2009
(1 Samuel 1: 4-20; Ps 16; Heb 10: 11-14, 19-25; Mark 13: 1-8)


Once there was a wise teacher of meditation and prayer in the East. It is said that he used to amuse his community of followers from time to time by searching about the monastery, anxiously peering into rooms, under furniture, and into corners. When asked what he was doing, he would say that he was looking for his own body. The students always seemed to think this was hilarious, and, so the story says, “never understood what the teacher was getting at.”

I thought of that story this week as I examined the readings and kept in mind today’s Collect. “All Holy Scripture is written for our learning”, so take a big bite, chew it up, and swallow it down. Well, today we’re given a helping of liver and onions to take in. The Gospel text gives us images that lie deep within the nightmares of the human soul. Wars, earthquakes, famines, and the great Temple itself torn apart like the great buildings of the East Coast were torn apart eight years ago: apocalypse. It’s a deep dread common to us all. That fear—that one day the dreadful violent end will come—gives rise to literature and to entertainment—look at all the disaster movies past and present. Apocalypse always seeks a contemporary plausible face—anyone here remember Y2K? Anyone here plan to see the movie “2012”, supposedly about the disaster predicted by an ancient Mayan calendar? An actual Mayan recently said that he wished people would stop asking him when the world will end—as far as he’s concerned his people ended their calendar at the western year 2012 because they ran out of room on the stone where they were carving the dates! But still, the images and the fear—fed by our own dread and sense of helplessness, fed by the fact that in this world bad things, violent things, seemingly senseless things can and do happen. Above all, we fear that the world and our lives may be ruled by nothing more than random chance, or even a cruel and faceless will.

Apocalypse can be earth-wide and cataclysmic. Usually, however, apocalypse is more personal, a private tragedy. Neither I nor anyone else has the right to make simple clichés or statements about the suffering of another, so trivializing pain that can only be experienced in order to be understood. An example of such pain is the story of Hannah in the Old Testament today. Infertility is a bitter and personal pain. So is living with serious illness or chronic pain, or loss of a loved one, or addiction.

But private or public disaster is not the meaning of the word “apocalypse.” The word actually means “uncovering”, letting us see what’s truly present, what’s truly at work in the world and in our lives.

What’s truly at work is God is in charge, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. What’s truly present is a cloud of witness and a God who loves us beyond measure. What is truly at work is the Spirit changing and renewing us even when we do not see or feel that change.

So what are we to do? How are we to live?

Remember that Eastern spiritual master, and open our eyes to see what is most deeply true about us and about our world. Don’t run madly to look for answers in blind alleys. God is with us, within us, around us. In times of challenge and fear and risk, keep standing on what is firm and unchanging. Know that Jesus has passed before us, and in ways we cannot begin to understand he has walked all our paths before us. Walk with confidence, and walk in the ways that Jesus has taught. Let’s help each other to walk this path, let’s walk with each other through good times and bad alike. And let’s keep gathering together, let’s keep showing up to pray and to be Christ’s body together. We go through our challenges together.

For we are never alone, our lives are never meaningless, and we are never forgotten. Desmond Tutu said it more clearly than do I. “I have some good news,” said Desmond. “I’ve read the book to the end, and guess what? We win.” In spite of all that happens, we are seen, we are known, and we are loved. And like the infant prophet to be born to Hannah, new hope is coming to birth in us in ways we cannot fully understand.

How did it end?

Proper 27 B 2009
(Ruth 3: 1-5, 4…; Ps 127; Heb 9: 24-28;Mark 12: 38-44)


Some things work out perfectly. The Fall pledge mailing went out Friday, and look what we have here today—that lovely story about the poor woman and her gift of two copper coins!

Like many Gospel stories, we may think we know what this story is all about. That is always dangerous, because there is always something new for us in the Gospel. The lady who gave the small coins is often used as a morality play, an object lesson for generous giving. That’s fine. But there’s something I’ve always resented about this story. What I resent is this—we don’t hear what happened next.

Those folks who poured in big donations, those wealthy philanthropists—hey, big donations are always fun, that’s how new buildings and new projects are funded. But the Gospel is not primarily about fund-raising—the Gospel is about change and transformation. The wealthy folks went home, and I suspect nothing changed. They had an image of themselves as generous people, and that was confirmed. They had been proved in public as generous people. Their lifestyles were unchanged. Their self-images as devout and giving people were…unchanged. If what they wanted was to stay unchanged, then they got a good deal that day.

I have always wanted to know what happened to that poor widow when she got home. It is easy to romanticize this story and her sacrificial giving, and not ask what happened the same night, the next day. How did she live? Did she eat?

Generosity and sacrifice does not always have an immediate payback, the kind we want and expect. But maybe—maybe the woman’s poverty moved someone else, maybe a neighbor, to generosity in turn. Maybe her hunger was an invitation for someone to reach out to her. Random acts of giving have ripple effects, paybacks that we cannot anticipate.

And the woman, and those near her, had the chance to change, to be transformed. The devout members of the people of Israel sometimes called themselves the “anawim”, the poor of God. Sometimes spiritual poverty is just a cliché, a symbol without power. No one could say that the widow’s poverty was just a symbol, that it was without startling power.

The Gospel is a school of practice and of change. Mark Scandrette, teacher in the Emerging church movement, calls a authentic church setting a “Jesus dojo”, borrowing the word for a martial arts practice hall. The dojo only does you good if you show up, if you practice, and if you seek to grow and improve. In a talk entitled “The Five Myths Of Community,” Mark says that one of the myths is that of the “healthy skeptic.” “I used to be this guy,” says Mark. “I didn’t think the local church was ever doing the right thing really, so instead of giving money to my church I gave it for starving children in Africa. And I was always sidling up to the leadership and say, ‘You know, I’m reading this really cool book and I think you should read it too. And I think you should do…’ I was always on the fringe.” He stops, chuckles, and says, “I wasn’t right. I was messed up.”

The Jesus Way, says Mark, the Jesus dojo, is not about endless complaining, but it is a collective. Pitch in, and you will live the life. It is grace-filled and forgiving. Don’t moan about your past journey or the community’s past—instead give thanks. “Make a serious commitment to your present tribe” says Mark. And it’s not cool to suggest that the tribe do something that you yourself are not willing to do. Be direct, be involved, be here now.

Give in a different way. As we do this canvass, how can our giving change us? How can we see what we do with our money to be part of our following the Jesus Way? How can this customary process of talking about goals and money be different, be something that changes us all? And what will we be like the day after, once we’ve gone home?