Advent 4A

Waiting for Fred

December 22, 2013

I grew up in the same town and the same house with the same friends until I left for college.  Upon returning back home during summer break, my best friend since playpen days and I caught up from months apart while away at college after years together, picking up where we’d left off.  Her new boyfriend was coming to visit her, and I sat vigil with her.  We sat in her bedroom, looking out the window, waiting for his big brown car to drive down the street.  We must have sat there for hours, playing games to keep us entertained.   “He’ll be here within 15 cars”.  “Five white cars will pass us in the next 30 minutes.”  We waited.   And her excitement was so contagious, we were both giddy, waiting for Fred to arrive.    Finally he arrived.   And the arrival was worth the wait.  

Today, we are a few days short of the arrival we’ve been waiting for, counting down.  We’re waiting for God’s arrival.   And yet, it’s hard to  have that same sense of expectation and anticipation, of sitting vigil.  I think part of the reason for that, is that God is so much bigger and harder to fathom than Fred.   We can imagine a college sweetheart driving.   It’s harder to imagine God knocking on the door.  If only we could have a way to understand God’s arrival, to bring to a human scale to the immensity of God entering our life.   Some way to understand this thing that’s about to happen.  

Of course, that’s the whole point of the nativity - God arriving in a tiny human newborn.  Through that very human experience, we catch a glimpse of something on our scale. 

I think it’s interesting that during advent we spend all this time talking about and preparing for this very long-awaited arrival.  Arrivals are something, as humans, we understand.  But honestly, I’m pretty sure God doesn’t need an arrival.  God’s always present, dwelling in is, all around us, before and after us.   If that  is true, why do we celebrate the arrival of God in Jesus every year? If God’s already with us, God certainly doesn’t need to make an “arrival”.   

But we do.

We don’t understand, can’t comprehend God.  So we need God to reenter our lives, like other people enter our lives, year after year.  We need to anticipate his arrival like humans.   Like waiting for Fred.    We’ve all experienced arriving, or waiting for someone we love to arrive.  And that helps us know a little more about God.  Waiting for God to arrive is hard.  Anticipating a birth or the arrival of a loved one is more understandable.  Experiencing the sheer joy after the arrival we know. 

The season of Advent is laden with anticipation of an arrival, and uses a lot of arrival or greeting language. And that’s all for our benefit - to help us understand this immense thing.  Many of our hymns today talk about arrivals or greetings.   Savior of the nations come, by Martin Luther.   Come thou long expected Jesus, from Charles Wesley.  Joy of heaven to earth come down.  Visit us.  Enter every trembling heart.   Also from Charles Wesley.  

God’s arrival through this tiny infant, helps us better understand.  Christ is God.  But Christ is also fully human, arriving like all other infants, with parents who experienced pain, worry, joy and relief.   Those are things we’ve experienced.  And as Christ grew up, learning, teaching, serving loving?   Christ experienced the same emotions and the same worries, pain, joy and relief.  

God entering our lives through Christ is a great step towards understanding this big thing.  But sometimes, even that’s somehow too big, too hard to wrap my head around.  God in a baby?  God, who created the galaxies, and counted the hairs on my head? That God, in a baby? In my head, I understand.  In my soul?  Sometimes I need more help.   

Sometimes I don’t need to understand.  I relish the holy mystery, without feeling any need to understand or be able to rationally explain the hows and whys. I sense God in the immense and in the majesty.  Sometimes, however I need more help.  I need more human, relational experiences to let me glimpse God. I need to understand the story in exceedingly mundane and human terms.    I need these things to help make the imminent arrival of the God child more real.  

Luckily, today’s readings tell of these things.  Today’s readings talk about greetings and tidings.   We all know about greeting each other, and sharing news.  Those are very normal things we all do.  And because of that, they provide more nuggets to understand this mystery.   

The Gospel tells the beginning of the birth story of Jesus.  The section today focuses on Joseph’s part in the story.   Joseph is engaged to be married.   He finds out Mary is pregnant and not by him.  While her perceived infidelity would certainly have disgraced her, it also would have disgraced him.  That’s why he was going to dismiss her.  I can imagine that both of them were confused, and scared, and uncertain what had happened, or what was going to happen. 

And Joseph was a carpenter.    You know the carpenter’s motto, right?  Measure twice, cut once.  Joseph was likely a careful realist.  If I can’t fathom God coming into my life as a baby, can you imagine what Joseph was going through?  He surely needed help making this news real to hear something on a scale he could understand.    
So God brought tidings or news to Joseph in a dream, some of the news pretty fantastical and hard to imagine, and for the practical carpenter, some concrete.   Mary has conceived a child from the Holy Spirit. What would you do with that sort of dream?  Hmm.    But the angel threw in some very practical logistical information for him too.   You are to name him Jesus.  That part is pretty practical, because as the father, it would have been Joseph’s job to name the child, and most commonly with a name steeped in family history.  With that naming counsel, the angel gave Joseph some useful, comprehendible news, in an otherwise larger than life story. 

So the news the angel brought Joseph included the mysterious, as well as the ordinary.  The ordinary may have helped Joseph grasp, or at least accept the mysterious.  God helps us all by speaking to us in ways we need to hear.  We just need to be listening for God, in the still small voice, in the dream, in the tear, in the words of a friend.  God brings tidings to us all the time.  

Continuing with the very ordinary things from today’s readings, let’s look at greetings, at what people say to each other when they meet.  My daughter’s high school Spanish teacher insists that the class responds to her greetings every day.  Good morning class. Good morning.  Fr. Court offers a good morning welcome every week, and we respond.  We know about greetings.   It’s what we people do. 
The second reading today is made up entirely of Paul’s greeting to his letter to the Romans.  Every one of Paul’s letters begins with a similar greeting.  It’s longer than we’d expect, but that’s what people did.   He’d write a letter to a particular community and in the introduction, include information about them, why he was writing them, perhaps something about what was happening in his world.  After this paragraph-long preface, He’d conclude his greeting with his standard opener:  “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  We’ve heard this greeting many times.  And don’t let its familiarity fool you.  This greeting is packed with great messages, and caused quite a stir in Paul’s time.  

During that time, the world as Paul knew it, was pretty divided, between Jew and Gentile.  People identified in one community or camp,  or the other.   And ne’er the two shall meet.  During his life, Jesus came through smashing boundaries and barriers, and asked his followers to do the same, and with this greeting Paul was doing the same.  

Grace to you was a greeting that was familiar to the Greeks and other Gentiles of the time.    Peace, or shalom, was the traditional greeting of the Jews.   In this one simple compound phrase, Paul’s greeting continued Christ’s imperative to take down the walls that divide.  Paul could have, and many would have expected him to have proffered greetings something more like, Grace to you gentiles, and Peace to you Jews, supporting their cultural and societal distinctions and barriers. Perhaps being seen as more culturally appropriate to each.    

Rather, Paul jumbles both greetings together in one phrase, that he repeats, letter after letter after letter.   Grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  With a simple greeting, Paul is speaking very familiar words to each distinct community who heard him.  And he was doing it a way that, like Jesus sounded familiar, and yet not quite.  He acknowledged and used the culturally appropriate and expected greeting for Jews and Gentiles, while also creating greeting that unites despite the differences.  Grace and Peace, from God.  Let’s acknowledge and honor the differences, while celebrating the unity in one God.   

Paul used the simple act of a greeting to support Christ’s values of love, unity, and respecting all.  All that in a greeting!

Like Paul, it’s through the ordinary things we do, through greetings and tidings, we can share Christ’s love.  And like Mary and Joseph, it is with arrivals and waiting that we learn about and experience Christ.  It’s through these ordinary things that we do that we have the chance to unite, and honor, and see Christ in others.   Through these ordinary things, we see mystery, and we experience the holy.

In the readings today, we learn of the ordinary and the mystery.  With God’s arrival in Christ, in a human newborn, the ordinary and mystery are all wrapped up together in that swaddling cloth.   It is through that child, God came to earth to experience our ordinary lives and emotions.  

Through Christ, God experiences the ordinary, and through the ordinary, if we look for it, we experience God.      A blessed and ordinary Christmas to you. Amen

Proper 28 C

Proper 28C
November 17, 2013

Have you ever seen the life-stressors chart?  It’s a chart that lists all those life events that result in increased stress in our lives, and includes things that you’d expect, like being arrested, trouble with your boss, or foreclosure.  Stressful, right?   But also on that list are good things that you wouldn’t think would be on the list like vacation, retirement, marriage.  These things are on the list because change is stressful.  Change is hard, even if it’s good change.

In two weeks, we enter Advent.  A time of new beginnings.  The new church year, the birth of an infant God.  The reading from Isaiah talks about creating a new heaven and a new earth, and that the old things will be forgotten.  This reading spells out the vision of a new, reborn, transformed world, where no one will die too early, not infants or not seniors.  Where people will not labor in vain. Where the wolf and the lamb shall feed together.

We hear this story today about things made new as we near Advent, and the connection between new things and the child God is apparent.  Christ makes all things renewed and restored.   This is a good change, God entering our life again.

But like all change, new things, even new restored things, change is hard.  
In my experience, there are two distinct ways new things are hard.  First, new things come out of chaos, out of hard places.  Some of the most beautiful wildflowers came up after the desolation caused by the Mt. St. Helen’s eruption.   And ancient oak groves were best maintained by burning the fast growing forest plants and trees that crowd the mighty oaks out of their air, water and sun.   Earthquakes create new mountains and new landscapes.  And on a human level, community tragedy can birth new commitment, compassion and forgiveness. Chaos and destruction happen, and new things spring forth.

The Gospel talks about this.  Jesus is telling the disciples that before the end times, there will be great chaos.  Wars and insurrections, nation rising against nation.  Famines and plagues.  Betrayal from family members. Pretty horrible chaos.  

The Thessalonians were sure that that the end was near, that cataclysmic end, not unlike the image portrayed in modern tv and popular book series.   Their world was in chaos, and because of the chaos, they knew the end was near.  Jesus said the end would come only after chaos, right?

Amidst the chaos, many of the faithful did,  what people often do in times like that.   They stopped in their tracks.  They stopped participating in the society and contributing to the work of the community.   Instead, they sat waiting, waiting and suffering, waiting for that moment when Christ returns.  Paul is asking the community to continue in community, contributing and participating.  Don’t be idle.  Don’t freeze like a deer in the headlights. Don’t sit and wait.  

This counsel is hard.  It’s hard to continue to forge ahead when the world is so chaotic and uncertain.  It is much easier to stop, and wait and see what will happen.  Or wait for the chaos to end.  Or to stick your head in the sand. If I don’t see trouble, trouble can’t see me.  

A problem with this perspective is that the end, as it’s talked about in these readings and in most of the readings between All Saints and Advent isn’t referring to a finish line, or a destination or a big cataclysmic melt down.  It isn’t as Webster’s first definition reads, “the point at which something no longer continues to happen or exist”.  Rather, the original language translation is closer to the third meaning in Websters, “an outcome worked towards”.  It’s more like the fulfillment or culmination.   More like we us the word “ends” as in “the ends justifies the means.”  In that context, ends is more like the a resolution.

We know that on this earth, we are Christ’s hands and feet and heart and actions. That creates problems with the Thessalonians’ idea of just waiting it out.   If the Thessalonians were just sitting around, who was loving, teaching, feeding, caring, sharing? Who was going to help bring about “thy kingdom come, on earth?” Paul urges the Thessalonians to forge ahead, even amidst chaos and their misguided idea that because there was chaos and turmoil, the world was going to just stop.
This is definitely not an easy proposition, to take a step when you don’t know what’s ahead at best, or when you know exactly what horrible things are ahead at worst.  And yet, that’s what Paul is urging them to do.  He concludes with the cheer,  ‘Do not be weary in doing what is right’.   Regardless of the turmoil, keep doing what’s right.

New and glorious things spring from chaos, and turmoil.  And we need to keep doing what is right in its midst.

The second hard thing about new things is highlighted in the Gospel reading.  New things often come at the cost of something old.  Jesus is telling the people that they will gain their soul.  And, it will come at the price of the destruction of the Temple, the temple that was the center of the Jews’ faith.  To tell them they were going to gain anything at the cost of their Temple would have been very stressful, and likely an unwelcome offer.

When we receive any new thing, even a glorious wonderful new thing, something  ends or ceases or is destroyed.  If you get a beautiful new gift, you’ve given up some storage space, a free shelf, or gotten rid of something you already had to make room.   If you have a new baby, you give up full restful nights of sleep.

Always something ceases, the space, the condition, your attitude.  You are not the same after having received or experienced something new, and  the world as it was, will never be again. True, the Temple, adorned with jewels, will come down.  But after that, something new will be born.

So here we sit.   At the end of the calendar year, on the edge of something new.  We’re on the verge of Christ making all things new, all over again.  And as I have experienced new things and change and as the Epistle and Gospel tell us today, new things come from chaos and result in something ceasing.  
I think that the change we’re staring down, the birth of Christ will be surrounded by those same challenges -  chaos before and the necessary destruction of something to make room for the change.

Advent is designed to be a time in the church year when we prepare for this new thing, the reentry of Christ into our world and our lives.  And given today’s readings, I think there are a couple of things that our Advent should do.

First, I think Advent is a time when I need to continue to do what is right, and not weary, amidst the chaos.   What IS the right action for me?  What should I do, or practice during Advent that would put me in a better place to fully experience the new thing that comes at Christmas?

Second, Advent gives me time to destroy my proverbial Temple.  What is it in my life that needs to go away or be taken down, in order to make room for God incarnate?  Has Christmas become too commercial, and I need to shed some long-held belief or practice that’s interfering with Christ’s arrival?

Advent is the time to make those changes because it’s our time to prepare.  To figure out what IS right, and continue doing right, And to dismantle or destroy the Temple that leaves no room for Christ.   The problem, as I see it, is that Advent is only 4 weeks long.  That’s not a lot of time to think through all of this chaos and destruction and imminent new things.  To set your course, and end up at Christmas prepared.   Instead of cramming that all into Advent, I’d propose that this is an excellent time to think about Christ coming into our lives again, and each of us laying out our individual Advent preparations.  We’ve got two weeks. And then we should be on the Advent Journey.

For me, the BEST part about a vacation is the planning.  I love thinking through the destination, the side trips, the transportation, and the accommodations.  That generally takes way longer, often months, than the final vacation, weeks.  
For the next two weeks, we have time to plan our trip.  We know where we’ll end up, at Christ’s entrance into this world all over again.  But what route should I take?  Is it important that I address the chaos, figuring out how to be unwearied, or to continue to do what’s right?  Maybe instead, I need to make plans to demolish the proverbial temple that’s in the way.

We have four short weeks in Advent to prepare for Christmas.   We can’t make the preparations or reserve our flights, until we plan our journey. Try to find a few quiet moments to plan your trip now.  As you know, it will be Christmas in no time.