Epiphany 2 C

Today is the second Sunday after the Epiphany.  And as you know, an epiphany is a sudden revealing or sudden new insight.  During our season of Epiphany, we celebrate not one event but three.  The first was the arrival of the 3 magi to the place of Jesus birth.   The second event we celebrate in the season of Epiphany was Jesus’ baptism.  Today, our readings mark the third event, the miracle at the Wedding in Cana.  Our tradition celebrates these three events now because of what they still have to teach us, as epiphanies or newly revealed insights, that were hiding in plain view. 

In today’s Gospel reading,  Jesus is at this wedding. In those days, weddings could last a full week.  And towards the end of the feasting, his mother discovers the hosts are almost out of wine.  Psst.  Jesus.  Do something.   They’re out of wine.   Although the circumstances are different, the same thing has happened to all of us.  Pst.  Mom.  Stop what you’re doing.  I need you to. . .  Hey Honey, can you. . ..   We’re in the middle of doing something.  It may be important. Often it is not.  But whatever it is, we are doing it.  Now.  In this moment.  It’s what we’d planned to be doing.  Right now.

 

Along comes this interloper or interrupter, who asks us to stop whatever it is we’re doing.  We’re asked to turn our attention away from wherever we’d set it, and instead turn it towards what they want. Just like that.   And often our initial response is similar to Jesus.   Not now.  In a minute.   Can we schedule a meeting to do that later?

  

I love my family, and I always have struggled with feeling that love when I’m interrupted.  What I’m doing isn’t that important, but for some reason, it seems that my displeasure with being interrupted is way out of proportion to the actual severity of the situation.  I think interruptions are hard because they prove, again and again, that I really cannot manage time.  In fact, time is not mine to control, and neither are the actions of all the folks who interrupt me.  

I don’t frequently refer back to Greek or Hebrew, but in this instance I will.  Unlike English, the Greek language has a couple different words for time, and I think we’d be well served if we started a movement to introduce these two words, or at least the concepts in our world. 

Managing time, spending time, taking time. These all refer to cronos, or the kind of time that we measure with a clock.  It’s linear.  It’s finite.  It’s what’s measured by a punch clock, or an elaborate time management system.  It’s how we have learned to perceive our presence.  And I think it’s that perception of, or living in cronos, that makes interruptions soo unbearable.  I’ve allotted this much time for whatever.  My illusion of time management is shattered when you interrupt me.  

At the same time we’re worrying, and managing cronos kind of time, there is another time, or chiros.  We are so unaccustomed to chiros time that it seems foreign, unintelligible, impossible.  Chiros is more like God’s time, not measured in a linear way, not measured at all.  Chiros is the right time.  And we’ve all experienced that time too. Something happens at exactly precisely the right time.  Maybe it’s a song that’s played on the radio, a call from a friend, or a shift in our perspectives.  It’s not something that’s planned or scheduled or managed.  Sometimes we ascribe the “right time” to coincidence or serendipity.  Chiros time isn’t measured in units but in value.  

You may be asking yourself where is this-in depth study of the concept of time going and what does it have to do with today’s scriptures? 

We really do experience these two different kinds of time.  And yet our language and our society really only talks about and seems to value one – the chronos metered measured managed time.  I think today’s Gospel can teach us something about Chiros and how to recognize it, and something about the trappings of living exclusively in a chronos world. 

We see Jesus, fully human struggling with chromos, struggling with interruptions. He’s at a wedding.  He’s been interrupted. His mother is prompting him to do something now, and very public.  His initial response is along the lines of mine when I’m interrupted.  Not now.

But Jesus turns that interruption or timing miscue into something amazing, something miraculous.  And actually, he doesn’t turn it, as much as he allows it.  He steps into chiros, into God’s time- not something that can be managed.  He turns this interruption in chronos, into a divine moment, letting his time be God’s time.  He let God into his day planner, he let God interrupt his chromos plans, and stepped into God’s chiros time, and miracles happened as a result. 

I’m not suggesting that all interruptions are signs from God. Or that all interruptions are invitations into chiros.  

But I do think we as a society have gotten extremely lopsided in our chiros chronos balance.  We are growing increasingly confident and skilled at our time management skills, and consequently, I believe we’re increasingly unreceptive and unaware of the chiros moments all around us.  

I have a friend who’s an author and chaplain in Seattle who has an interesting way of describing and visualizing the work of the Holy Spirit.  He claims that many people talk about the Holy Spirit as something that is conveyed from above, it’s primary direction and presence are between me and God (vertical movement).  Instead, He argues that the Holy Spirit is perhaps more frequently present between us, so it’s a horizontal thing, not a vertical thing.    Not exclusively, but more often than we acknowledge. 

And I find it interesting that in the Epistle reading today, we hear about all these gifts, services and activities that come from God.  And they’re all given “for the common good”.  For the good of the community, not for the good of the individual.  And common good indicates other people are involved.   Prophecy, healing, utterance of knowledge and wisdom, interpretation.  These are all things we are gifted, and are only useful when we’re with others.

I think it’s possible that interruptions are an invitation to engage with another person, to have an opportunity to use gifts for the common good, and to experience the holy spirit.  I think all of that can happen when we’re willing to step out of chronos and into chiros, and I think interruptions are an invitation to do that.  

Do not misunderstand me.  As an introvert, I truly value alone time or down time.  And I always need to  find or make time to spend time alone, intentionally, with God.  But even Jesus got interrupted when he was trying to spend time in prayer. He’d head off to pray, but when he was interrupted by the masses, he stopped what he was doing, joined them and fed the 5000.

  

Given our culture’s obsession with time management, I think we’re called to be increasingly aware of the Chiros we’re always in.  When we get too wrapped up in our scheduled chronos time, we lose sight of the divine moments, the divine right times all around us.  

When my son was in elementary school, when we’d get the school calendar schedule, it seemed that he had days off at the most inopportune times.  And it was always a struggle to find child care, since both John and I worked full time.  Not now, I’m busy.  But towards the end of that era, I realized those days were actually gifts and amazingly divine. I’d look forward to getting the calendar and I’d take the same days off he had.  Yes, I had loads of work to do, but this was one of the times I realized, I couldn’t actually manage my own chronos, and I certainly couldn’t manage his.  Instead,  I could live in the divine time given me.

 

By offering this example, I’m not suggesting that I’ve solved or mastered my obsession with chronos.    I’m still far more apt to say, Not now, I’m busy than I intend.  But it’s something I try to be aware of. 

We celebrate this divine chiros moment of Christ’s during the now not because it’s a miracle.    We don’t celebrate it because Jesus is kind to the party hosts.  Not because he listens to his mother’s urgings to fix this social faux pas.  We celebrate the water into wine event because it is Jesus first recorded public miracle.  It was his public unveiling.  It created an epiphany for the others, as they caught a glimpse of the miracle man in their midst.  Jesus did however have the benefit of an interruption to help him switch gears to see the chiros moment right there. 

We all get busy doing our own thing.  We’ve got our plans.    So did Jesus. 
We all get interrupted.  We have those people who push us to do things in an order or at a time that’s not what we’d planned.  So did Jesus.

And we all are invited to see those moments – all our moments, as chiros, as moments of God’s.  So was Jesus.  

And like Jesus, we have the opportunity to be the epiphany for others around us, to be the unsuspecting miracle.  We just have to let God, and the people God uses to interrupt and interact with us, into our chronos, and try to see and live in God’s time. 

Advent 3C - December 16, 2012 - Gaudete Sunday

Today, we light a rose colored candle.  In the middle of our advent wreath resplendent in purple, we have a single rose candle.  Its roots date back to ancient customs of the Church taking a break from the penitential Lenten season with a joyful Sunday break, when the Pope would give a pink rose to a citizen halfway through Lent.     Advent, fashioned after the season of Lent, also has a break in the royal and penitential purple color, and  apocalyptic prophetic and dire readings.  Today is that break.  Today is known as Gaudete Sunday.  Gaudete is the Latin word for Rejoice, a word that is sprinkled all over our readings today.

 

This has been a hard week.  By hard week, I mean contentious, tiring, startling, horrific.  Friday’s massacre in Connecticut leave many with horrible doubt, fear and sorrow.   Newtown, is a small town of about 27,000, about the same size as Grant’s Pass.  Newtown is listed in the top 100 safest cities in the US, and yet Friday, dozens of people were senselessly killed.  In our own beautiful corner of the country, in our own backyard, this past week we experienced a shooting at a mall in Portland.  Add to that personal drama that seems to escalate during December, and this has been a hard week.  

So what about these events?  Where do they fit, given what we hear on Sunday? 

I can’t make sense of, or explain why evil and suffering persist.  I will offer a few practical suggestions about grief and suffering. 

 You know that moment when you’re trying to console a friend who’s been through something horrible, and through their tears, they suggest you don’t know what it’s like, because you’ve never been through what they’ve been through?  That is so true.   We hurt because they hurt, but we don’t really know their pain, personally know it.

Unless you have a shared experience, you can feel bad for someone, or sympathize, but it’s difficult to really feel the same things, to feel bad with someone or to empathize. 

As gut wrenching as grief is, as  Christians, we are not alone.  Our whole faith is symbolized by the cross, an instrument of senseless, humiliating, tortuous death.  With Christ’s death, God has been through the same human suffering.  God didn’t avoid that part of this life.  But rather, through Christ, shares it with us.  Be horrified.  Be sad.  And know that through Christ’s suffering, God knows that human raw grief.  We who sit with grief are not alone. 

But sitting with grief is not the same as steeping yourself in it.  Our bodies respond to stress with an involuntary natural physiological reaction.   The more repeated exposure to those stressors, the more practiced our body becomes at that fight or flight response.  Eventually, our bodies are so trained to that physiological unconscious response due to that repeated stress, that we become hypersensitive. Smaller and smaller things can us off.  Pretty soon,  we are  constantly in that state.  It happens to combat veterans, and it can happen to us, if we voluntarily bombard ourselves with stressful images and stories.  Try not to steep yourself in those stressful images.  It truly is not good for body, and cannot be good for your soul.  

I believe today’s readings and focus on rejoicing do tell us something about grief, evil and stress.  The readings today are full of beautiful rich images of joy and rejoicing.  And they provide a road map of how to experience that joy.  As humans, if we go the other way, the way not spelled out today, that’s when fear, anger, and evil can occupy the space otherwise reserved by God for the joy and love and happiness. 

The readings tell us to

Rejoice in the Lord, again I say rejoice.

Ring out your joy.

Rejoice and exult with all your heart. 

These joy-full sentiments are the destination, and the readings give us the road map on how to get there. 

First, we need to trust in the Lord.   As the psalmist says, I will trust in the Lord and not be afraid.  We need to trust.  Whether it’s a situation in the nation, our state, your work or your head, imagine for a moment that God really does have it in control.  That God will be with you through it.  That it’s not your problem to control or connive or direct or save.    You don’t get to take yourself out of this scene, but rather realize that you’re not the director of the show.  So for a moment right now, trust in the Lord.  Trust that God is in charge.  God, not you, will script this. Christ, not you, is the savior.   Trust that you’ll get through, however things turn out, but trust that God is with you.    

When we can trust in the Lord, then we can truly experience the peace of God, or “the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, another great snipit from today’s readings.  We can experience a deep seated, incomprehensible and illogical peace with the world.  Not because you’re happy.  But because from that place of trust, you are at peace.  I have experienced that peace once in my life, and I know it was a peace from God, and it came after I stopped pretending to be in charge. 

From that place of peace that passes human understanding, we can get to the place where we fear disaster no more and where we stop worrying, more wisdom from today’s readings.  Being in a state of worrying is opposite to being at peace, so when you’re truly at peace, you don’t worry.  Because if you are worrying, you’re not at peace.   Getting to the “don’t worry about anything” isn’t so much another  mile marker on this journey, but it’s more like a landmark when you’ve arrived at the “peace which passes all understanding”. 

Only after we trust and experience that peace, then can we rejoice in the Lord.  Please do not misunderstand.  This is not happiness, like the old Bobby McFerrin song, “Don’t worry, be happy”.   This isn’t a feeling you put on, or something else to do, to achieve or attain.  Rather, the joy comes from a deep letting go, starting with that trust in the lord.  And while experiencing the joy, then you can let your gentleness be known to everyone, another great phrase from today’s readings.  I’ve known people like that. People who have deep seated joy, and are serenely gentle.   

Just like our bodies learn to respond to too much stress, we can practice getting to Rejoicing.  Maybe only little day trips to begin with.  Trust in the lord.  Experience the peace.  Rejoice.  Pretty soon, the trusting can get easier and it’s easier to get to Rejoicing.  If we’re lucky, we’re able string together more and more, and longer and longer episodes of trust,  peace and rejoice, spending less and less time in that other dark place. 

That’s other dark place is where people are when evil surfaces through them. 

Where we strive for trusting in the lord, some trust in themselves or their paycheck, or their drugs, or even family members.  They place their trust in any number of things that in the end may not prove trustworthy.   When their misplaced trust is broken, it’s crushing. 

Where we obtain peace stemming from that trust, others experience worry and anxiety.  

If we follow the trust and peace route, we arrive at rejoicing.  When we follow doubt and worry, we arrive at despair, and anger. 

It’s when people don’t trust in an all-loving, absolutely trustworthy God, when they don’t experience the liberating peace and don’t find joy in the Lord, that’s when there are holes in the soul where darkness enters. 

It has happened this week in big, awful events.   It happens all the time in littler ways in my life. 

Next week, we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate God’s entrance into our lives again in human form.  Today, on Gaudete Sunday, that falls after a really hard week, grieve. Realize you’re not alone in your grief.  More importantly, trust in God, experience the peace, the peace that passes all understanding.  And rejoice in the Lord.  Again I say rejoice. 

Amen