Overwhelmed and relieved...

NOTE:  Every Thursday I send a note to my congregation via email.  Mostly it is an update about programming, but sometimes contains a theological reflection.  Here's what came out this morning...

At about this time in Advent I start to feel overwhelmed - and relieved. Like Carlton said to me in a recent email: "I thinking I'm burning my Advent candle at both ends!" (Brilliant!)

It is a curious paradox, to be sure, but both truths seem to take up residence within me for about two weeks. For example, I am overwhelmed at what still must be done before entering the liturgies of Christmas Eve: rehearsals, writing, practice, choreography, recruitment and all the rest take their toll. It doesn't matter that all the essentials have been in place for weeks, right? Working through the details of this season always take on a heightened significance because we each bring so many expectations to worship. We want this Christmas to be different. We want more intimacy and renewal when we enter the church. We are exhausted by the commercialism and want to feel the deep and healing love of God.

It doesn't matter that worship isn't about OUR wants, needs or expectations - worship is always about God - because this season evokes in us a special longing. Phillip Brooks got it right when he wrote in his famous carol: the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

What's more, in addition to the details of worship and our inner emptiness, through a strange and perplexing twist of fate, these later weeks of Advent are almost always filled with fretting and fussing about stewardship campaigns and budgets. Talk about a clash of values! (Who came up with such a twisted calendar and schedule, any way?!?) At a time when our public emphasis in worship is on watching and waiting - nourishing a quiet darkness within - our private/institutional perspective is all about wringing our hands over finances and cobbling together extra meetings in an already too busy schedule. So, overwhelmed is often they way I feel about this time of year.

Simultaneously, however, I am also relieved - and NOT that all of this fuss will soon be over - I don't think I've ever felt that way about Advent/Christmas. (Stewardship campaigns? You bet - but not Advent/Christmas.) And here's why: the lessons of the liturgy keep challenging me to let go at an ever deeper level and trust that God is God. If the second half of Advent into Christmas Eve speaks of anything, it is the fact that God's grace comes to us whether we're prepared or not. It comes to us whether we deserve it or not. And it comes to us regardless of sin or virtue, health or sickness, wisdom or ignorance. Into the darkest places of our hearts and souls comes a love that tells us we are... favored. Cherished. Beloved of God.

Like Mary whom the angel Gabriel celebrates with the words: Hail Mary, full of grace... God comes to us with grace.Eugene Peterson has written: "The reason that we who pray need a theologian at our side is that most of the difficulties of prayer are of our own making, the making of well-meaning friends or the devil who always seems to be looking after our best interests." His insights about this apply to this season, too. He continues:

So often we get more interested in ourselves that in God. We get absorbed in what is or is not happening in us. We get bewildered by the huge discrepancies between our feelings and our intentions; we get unsettled by moralistic accusations that call into question our worthiness to even engage in prayer; we get attracted to advertisements of secrets that will give us access to a privileged, spiritual elite. But prayer (like Advent and Christmas) has primarily to do with God, not us. It includes us, certainly - everything about us down to the last detail - but God is primary... and we get ourselves into trouble when we let ourselves become more interested in ourselves than in God.

This week I have been listening and praying and singing the song of Mary found in Luke 1. It is brilliant. Healing. Filled with hope and challenge - and saturated with a sense that God's grace is bigger than all of our sin and obsessions and worries and fears. I remain, of course, overwhelmed but also relieved for the experience of Mary is what God promises to us all.