Christmas Eve and sacred fools...

In a sea of madness, we have been called to offer a clear, loving, tender and grounded alternative born of compassion and grace. As "holy fools" - women, men and children who embrace the way of Christ - our presence is to bring a measure of shelter in the storm and a bit of light into this present darkness. And as I get it, this is to happen in the way St. Francis is reputed to have described: "Preach the gospel at all times... when necessary use words."

Yesterday in worship, in an unscripted moment, I stumbled into saying that the Blessed Virgin Mary was for me one of Christianity's first "holy fools." Now I don't know if that is theologically correct. Miryam, after all, was a Jew from birth to death. I can't say for certain whether or not she ever heard the wisdom of St. Paul on this subject or not. (NOTE: Miryam is supposed to have been taken to Syria a few years after the Lord's death where she died at age 64. So, it IS possible...) Ultimately, however, it doesn't matter: she was clearly living a pre-figurative sacred foolishness by being open to the Spirit. As Theotokos, as Christ-bearer, as the one who established in Jesus a love of the prophets and as a person of faith who bore witness to God's grace despite the obvious evidence: Mary resonates with what it means to be a holy fool. St. Paul put it like this in I Corinthians 1:


Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’

This sounds like Miryam, the blessed Virgin Mary, to me whose own song of praise to God sounds strikingly like the great apostle's in chapter 1 of Luke:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, 
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 
for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name. 
His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation. 
He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; 
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty. 
He has helped his servant Israel,
   in remembrance of his mercy, 
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.

I note this mostly because as this Advent ripens into Christmas I am more aware than ever of the need for more sacred fools. Life is increasingly out of balance. Fear is palpable. And despair and cynicism holds more clout that hope or joy. All the more reason for those who love God in the spirit of Jesus to start pushing the envelope as holy fools. When Mary allowed herself to be taken up in this spirit, Christ was born. And that is what the gospels promise to us, too: let God rule and guide us and we will give birth to Christ in new and unexpected ways in our flesh.

Tonight I spent almost three hours practicing Christmas Eve music with three jazz masters. We are preparing an improvisation reflection on what it means to live as sacred fools at this moment in time. We lament the slaughter of the innocents from Pakistan to Ferguson. We honor the presence of the holy in the least of these our sisters and brothers. And we are exploring how to offer our gifts to God so that creativity, community and compassion is experienced as an alternative to the status quo. This is a foolish endeavor - almost no one will notice - even fewer will participate. But this is, perhaps, why we are moving forward: in small and unexpected places and ways, sacred fools will be giving birth to Jesus all over the world. We won't be counting the bottom line. We won't be worrying about how many bodies are in worship. And we sure as hell won't be interested in anything but strengthenng the spirit of solidarity among those who know our common life must change.

The blessed Virgin Mary is said to have been perplexed not only at the miracle of Christ's birth, but in his presence in the world. Scripture says that she pondered all these things in her heart. That is what we shall do, too - we'll ponder all these things in our heart - so if you are able on Christmas Eve at 11 pm, please join us. Afterwards, we'll feast on French Canadian meat pie and wassail. More and more, the calling of living as a sacred fool has captured my heart. 

credits:
1) http://www.waleska.co.uk/virgin-mary/ 
2) http://www.actionrecon.com/back-to-l-a-for-some-art-with-el-mac-and-retna/
3) http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/struggle-to-put-faith-in-the-frame/2008/08/06/1217702138306.html
4) galleryhip.com

A child is born...

One of the beautiful things that I hold dear to my heart at this time of year is the tiny, vulnerable way God comes to us in the infant Jesus. The Christ Child is NOT powerful or commanding - he is small and insignificant in so many ways - and in this truth I find a place for hope. 

I, too, don't have much significance or power. For many years in ministry I fought against this: I wanted to be important and have influence over others. I wanted to change the course of events and make a difference in society. The sad thing, however, is that the harder I tried to make a difference, the less loving I was to myself or those I loved. It took a long time to learn that John the Baptist was right when he said, "I must decrease so that he might increase." Peterson's reworking of the Beatitudes make this clear:

You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

The second thing about the Lord coming as a child that brings me hope is this: because I am a child, I know that I am going to disappoint others - that is what happens during the growing up process - so it is vital that I keep reminding people in my church, my family and my world to learn to trust God more and depend on me less. This, too, was a challenge for a long time. I wanted to be needed and tried to make my presence essential. Most of the time these days, I know I am just the messenger even if in some settings others place unreal or burdensome expectations on their pastors. 

What I have learned to do is keep pointing to God: I cannot make things better, I cannot offer healing and I don't really know what to do most of the time. When I accept the expectations of others who want me to fix things, I both experience shame and disappointment because I inevitably let someone down. It happens over and over because now we see as through a glass darkly.When I am healthy and rested, however, I know that even this disappointment is just part of the rhythm of grace: I am not God, I am just the pastor who is a child of God. A wounded healer pointing towards God. To be sure, I keep trying to put away childish things, like St. Paul advised, but mostly I don't have the wisdom, stamina or discipline to do this consistently. Like a child, the best I can do is try to get out of the way knowing that it will take my whole life to make this happen in any consistent way. Psalm 131 gets it right:

O Lord, my eyes are not raised in haughty looks.

I do not occupy myself with great matters, 

  with things that are too high for me.

For I have quieted and stilled my soul, like a weaned child at her mother's breast, so is my soul quieted within me.

O Israel, trust in the Lord,

  from this time forth and evermore.

So as this fourth Sunday in Advent comes to a close, like Mary I am pondering all of these things in my heart. I trust that my spirit rejoices in God my savior. I believe in my heart that being a child is good enough even when it is incomplete. And I give thanks that the Lord comes to us all in the Christ child over and over again. For only such a tiny and fragile Savior gives me the hope that my vulnerable and incomplete parts are enough for this phase of the journey.

credits:

1) nawroski.wordpress.com

2) www.flickr.com

3)www.dailymail.co.uk

Grounded in love...

Every year about this time - sometimes earlier in Advent but rarely later - Di and I get away for a few days before the fullness and demands of Christmas at church. Our practice in the past has been that every 6-8 weeks we take a small mini-retreat just to reconnect. For a long time I felt like this was selfish, but in the trade they call this "self-care" and for the past 10 years I have come to swear by it.

Sadly, we have not been able to do much of this for the past six months given the demands of our upcoming sabbatical, my father's illness and death and the realities of church life at this time of year. So, when we realized that Di was not scheduled for work - and I had a modest end of the week schedule - we made arrangements for lodging and raced out of Dodge for a time of quiet contemplation, conversation and rest. It was heaven: we slept, talked, rested, listened to one another, walked, prowled bookstores, ate well and even took in the new "Hunger Games" movie.  For the first time in a long time, I feel rested and fully alive.  We were able to get Christmas gifts for those who are closest to our hearts while we were away. We were able to chill and be real with one another. And enjoy being alive in our respective skins after so much grief.

Tonight, when we returned to our sweet home, we decorated our Christmas

tree and listened to the quiet music of Carlos Nakai and Loreena McKennit. As we lit candles and remembered the stories surrounding each ornament, I felt blessed to be alive. I was overwhelmed with sadness, too as I owned how much I miss my father these days. But it felt good to be home. 

I am grounded now and ready to be present for worship tomorrow as well as through the Christmas festivities. The collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent is powerful to me tonight:

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; for he lives and reigns withyou, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

My heart feels like this ancient carol tonight... sad but alive and grounded in love and hope. May the blessings of Advent continue to grow for you as we move into the Feast of the Incarnation...

Becoming holy fools on Christmas Eve...

Yesterday was filled with mini-disasters like turning around in the kitchen with my upright bass over my shoulder and destroying some of our favorite tall glasses from Mexico.  Or my dear Lucie leaping to greet me in excitement while a friend arrived only to chip my front tooth. But it was also a beautiful day - one that reminded me of the deeper reasons for doing ministry - one that fed my soul.

For a few hours in the afternoon I met with our music director to talk about the music and liturgy for Christmas Eve. Given the horrifying acts of violence against children - and every peace loving person - that took place this week at the hands of the Taliban in Pakistan - as well as the recent report on CIA torture and the escalating public protests for racial equality and justice that are spreading like wildfire, we sensed this reality had to be a part of our worship. Without a prophetic and healing word of truth and hope, Christmas Eve this year could be a pretty albeit sentimental show of tradition. Not what this hour cries out for, yes?

We had already planned to try two things:  our 5 pm gathering will be very traditional - all the carols you could dream of along with candle light communion - a real place of safety, warmth, comfort and joy. I get that - and need that every year, too. Our 11 pm worship, however, will be a more evocative and contemplative extended jazz meditation on the coming of Christ into this moment in history. Not quite Coltrane's "Alabama" or "Fables of Faubus" by Mingus, mind you, but no less poignant or passionate given our shared commitment to justice and jazz in the context of worship. So we wrestled with how the ancient story of King Herod's violence always lurks just below the words of Christ's birth. We rewrote part of the liturgy so that the Christ candle lighting ceremony is now a directed meditation on the Lord's alternative to the violence of the world. And we played with some music that will help our folk make the connection between the coming of the Prince of Peace as a vulnerable child and what that means for those who seek to live into his grace.

THIS is why I have stayed in ministry. THIS is why I still hold out hope for the church. I have come to treat budget meetings with prayer. I know that there are important things disclosed in coffee hours, too. And I still believe in the value of small acts of kindness whether that's a phone call, a card or a visit to someone in the hospital. But budgets and coffee hours don't sustain me - and they were not why I followed the call into ministry. And at this point in my ministry, I'm not all that committed to any of the incidentals anymore. No, given the fear and violence, I sense that I have to live more fully as a "holy fool" who invites others to do likewise.

For the past few days, Fr. Richard Rohr has been articulating what I have been discerning for my own time in the closing years of my public ministry. Here's the way he puts it and I share it with you in the hope that if you, too are feeling like things are spinning out of control in the world or your life, you might join us Christmas Eve this year @ 11 pm. We feel that, too and want to point towards another way. A more gentle way. A way of peace and hope that takes the grief of this moment seriously.  I believe that when we become allies of God through the foolishness of Christ, we start to bring balance and hope back into a bleak midwinter.  A few of our local jazz masters will join us as guests, too so please come on out.

Some years ago I visited an old Franciscan who lived in Gallup, New

Mexico. He spent most of his life working with the native people, and he loved them deeply. When I knew him, he was probably in his late eighties. He was bent over and he would walk the streets of downtown Gallup in his Franciscan robe and sandals, carrying a cane. He would lift his bent head and greet everybody with the greeting of St. Francis: “Good morning, good people!” Our job is to remind people of their inherent goodness, and this is what this dear man did.

On his cane he had strung a string of battery-powered, blinking Christmas lights. Now to anyone who is a tourist in town, they must think him quite the old fool—bent over, in a brown robe and sandals, with blinking Christmas lights on his cane! And it was not even Christmas time.

One day I asked him, “Father, why do you put those blinking Christmas lights on your cane?”

He cocked his head toward me, looked up grinning, and said, “Richard, it makes for good conversation. See, you are talking to me now. Everybody asks about them, and I am able to talk to everybody because of my Christmas lights.”

Now, was he a fool in most peoples’ eyes? Was he a naïve innocent? Yes, I guess he was. The “holy fool” is the final stage of the full human journey. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said, “It is those who become like little children who will enter the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 18:3). Jesus, in his frequent allusion to children, was in his own way describing this final stage of life. We return to that early childhood, as it were, running naked and exposed into the great room of life and death. “I am who I am who I am” now. God has accepted me in my most naked being, and I can now give it all back to God exactly as it is with conscious loving trust that it will be received. What else would God want?

St. Francis illustrates this stage in many memorable ways. When he hears one day that the people of Assisi are calling him a saint, he invites Brother Juniper to join him in a walk through his old home town. Brother Juniper was the first simpleton (that is a compliment!), the holy fool of the original friars. Francis knew he could always trust him to understand what he was saying. Francis once said, “I wish I had a whole forest of such Junipers!”

Francis told Brother Juniper, “Let’s take off these robes, get down to our underwear, and just walk back and forth through Assisi. Then all these people who are thinking we are saints will know who we really are!” Now that’s a saint: someone who doesn’t need to be considered a saint, who can walk foolishly in his underwear the full length of Assisi.  

A few years later, when people were again calling Francis a saint, he said, “Juniper, we’ve got to do it again.” This time they carried a plank into the piazza. They put it over some kind of a stone or maybe the fountain, and there they seesawed all day. They had no need to promote or protect any reputation or pious self-image.

That’s a rather constant spiritual tradition in the Eastern Church and in the Desert Fathers and Mothers, but it pretty much got lost after the 13th century Franciscans. We became more and more serious about this intense salvation thing, or you might say we took ourselves far too seriously. Moralism replaced mysticism. And this only increased after the in-house fighting of the 16th century reformations. We all needed to prove we were right. Have you noticed that people who need to prove they are right cannot laugh or smile?

When you are a “holy fool” you’ve stopped trying to look like something more than you really are. That’s when you know, as you eventually have to know, that we are all naked underneath our clothes, and we don’t need to pretend to be better than we are. I am who I am, who I am, who I am; and that creation, for some unbelievable reason, is who God loves, precisely in its uniqueness. My true identity and my deepest freedom comes from God’s infinite love for me, not from what people think of me or say about me. Both the people who praise me and those who hate me are usually doing it for the wrong reasons.

My soul rejoices in God my Savior...

NOTE:  My worship notes for the fourth Sunday of Advent: December 21, 2014. I am grateful to the scholars at Working Preacher - particularly Mark Allan Powell and Karoline Lewis for their wisdom and insights.

For the past eight years at Advent, I have been inviting and encouraging you to reclaim the beauty and wisdom of the Blessed Virgin Mary for your lives.  Now I don’t any illusions that I have been wildly successful in this, mind you; in our historic tradition, Reformed Christians have studiously avoided Mary in both our prayers and our practices. Still I have felt called by grace to bring her back into consideration year after year. Because, you see, Mary evokes balance, beauty and truth in a world a world that is wildly out of balance. 

She embodies a feminine spirituality in an aggressively masculine world. In Luke’s gospel she poetically proclaims the mysterious presence of the Lord in canticles of praise rather than lengthy or abstract theological doctrines singing:  My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

She is invitational when others are demanding; mystical while others are didactic. She knows how to wait and ponder rather than rush to judgment. And she celebrates a sacred silence within the harried noise of culture born of her devotion to contemplation.

Last week I saw a picture of Mary posted on Facebook next to a poem by the late Celtic artist John O’Donohue. It seems a friend was inviting others into the wisdom of Mary as this season roared past in all its frantic glory:  “To all that is chaotic in you,” it began, “let there come silence.”

Let there be a calming of the clamoring.
a stilling of the voices that have laid their claim on you
that have made their home in you
that go with you even to the holy places
but will not let you rest
will not let you hear your life with wholeness
or feel the grace that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you cease.
Let what divides you cease.
Let there come an end to what diminishes and demeans
and let depart all that keeps you in its cage.

Let there be an opening into the quiet that lies beneath the chaos
where you find the peace you did not think possible
and see what shimmers within the storm.

Such are the unique blessings Mary offers us – shelter in the storm so that we might live into the peace placed within us by the Lord since before our birth – and I don’t think there is a person alive who doesn’t yearn for such stillness.

·   What we resist, however, what we neglect, forget, discard and sometimes disparage are the simple but essential spiritual practices that nourish such peace.  I know I go brain dead rather than practice them when I’m anxious. I’ve seen some of you forsake them, too when you’re afraid. And our culture as a whole is so stubbornly ignorant of the spiritual practices that make for peace and balance that over and over again we pound our chests like mad apes insisting that we know better than the Lord.

·   I was incredulous – yet again – last week when former Vice President Dick Cheney showed up in the papers and TV news shows celebrating and excusing the use of water-boarding and other forms of torture. Lord, have mercy on us all. Such pseudo-macho arrogance not only disgraces our nation’s credibility throughout the world, but does nothing to make our world safer.

·   Thank God for the moral clarity of Senator John McCain – something I never thought I would say out loud during worship – as he spoke from out of the wisdom of his own experience. You may recall that Senator McCain spent five years as a POW in the hellhole we know as the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. “The abuse of prisoners,” he told us soberly, “not only produces more bad intelligence, but it is a betrayal of our national values.”

·   Senator McCain understands the complexity of the real world. Even when I disagree with his positions, I know him to be a person of honor and high standards – one who respects and practices our code of engagement as a sacred trust. He concluded his public remarks after the presentation of the CIA torture report last week stating:  “This isn’t about our enemies. It is about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It is about how we represent ourselves to the world.”

People of God, the witness and spirituality of the Blessed Virgin Mary offers us a clear alternative to the ugly bravado that drives so many politicians, business leaders and religious zealots. She points us towards four spiritual practices that bring discernment and inner peace to our souls and balance to our public lives. And Mary grounds us in the grace of God that is always greater than our sins, anxieties or fears.

 

So why are we Protestants so averse to embracing Mary?  It is a mystery to me – an ambiguity that has not helped us personally, politically or prophetically. Do you know that in St. Luke’s telling it is Mary who is the most faithful and Christ-like disciple in the gospel? Professor of New Testament at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, OH – Mark Allan Powell – notes that in today’s text, when Mary speaks to the angel Gabriel, her words parallel those of Jesus in the garden: Mary says at the beginning of the story: Let it be with me according to your word (Luke 1: 38) And what does Jesus say towards the ending as he prays to God in the garden before enduring the Cross?  Not my will but Thy will be done, right? (Luke 22:42)  Professor Powell puts it like this: In both cases, the ideal response to the challenges of live is a combination of humble trust and obedient service.

So how do we get to the place where we, too can practice humble trust and obedient service to the Lord?  Some of you may recall that when I first came to Pittsfield I regularly told you a story of a colleague from Ohio who said that most of his congregation adored Mother Theresa: they revered and honored her but they had no idea how to become LIKE her. They thought it was magic – or that she had been born with mystical powers – when, in truth, Mother Theresa became Mother Theresa through practice. 

·   Like Mary, she cultivated four essential practices that regularly opened her heart to God’s grace. And over time – and I mean God’s time not our own – the rough edges of her personality were worn down and her relentless and deep anxieties found a measure of rest. Faith.

·   Like we sang in this morning’s psalm:  I sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens. You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to my servant David: I will establish your descendants forever, and build your throne for all generations.” And so I shall always sing that you are my Lord, my Rock and my Salvation.

Let me summarize for you the four spiritual practices of Mary that nourished God’s

peace within her soul.  They are NOT magic. They are not reserved for only the spiritually advanced or privileged. And they are not too hard for anyone in this Sanctuary. Yes, they are ordinary, real, often demanding and sometimes boring. But they are the proven and tested way to make the wisdom of Mary our own. I like how another seminary professor, Karoline Lewis of St. Paul, MN, put it:

·   First Mary reminds us that God comes to us not the other way around. Our story is clear that Mary was favored, honored, embraced and regarded by the Lord not because she was doing anything special. She was not seeking the Lord on a spiritual retreat when the angel came to her. She was not fasting or on a vision quest. She hadn’t proven herself to be a spiritual giant. She was simply getting ready for bed. But Mary had eyes to see: she had a heart willing to recognize and honor God’s sacred presence when it arrived in the middle of her ordinary life – and she didn’t look the other way.  She didn’t avoid it, she didn’t neglect it and she did not confuse her own anxieties for special revelation. Rather, Mary noticed that God came to her because God loves us and chooses us whether we grasp this or not.

·   Second, Mary lets herself be perplexed.  She doesn’t need to understand everything right away. She isn’t so arrogant as to think she has the ability to comprehend every truth and experience all at once. She is willing to trust God and take time with her uncertainties. “Why me, Lord and why right here?” are the right questions for us to ask, too. Most of us don’t believe that God comes to us in the sacrament of an ordinary moment.  We think God has to be more concerned with big things and enormous problems rather than the mess of our own small world. So time and again, we miss the presence of the Lord in the ordinary.  Not Mary. She has eyes willing to see and a heart willing to welcome the Spirit within the ordinary because Mary is willing to wait upon the Lord even in perplexity.

·   Third, Mary ponders these perplexing things in her heart.  She doesn’t automatically accept what the angel tells her – she has questions – because questions are part of what faith is all about. And listen to this: when she faces her doubts and questions she doesn’t throw in the towel and call it quits when clarity evades her or troubles persist. Many people think that faith has to do with certainty. But Mary’s faith ponders her questions in her heart. She looks to God even when she doesn’t understand. She obeys and follows even when the evidence is not clear. And she gives God her whole life in pursuit of the peace that passes under-standing.  I think that is why the ponderings of Mary are a word of grace for you and me:  we have at least as many questions as she did, right? We rarely understand what God is asking of us in any given moment. And we aren’t always certain that the way of business or power isn’t really better than the foolishness of the Lord.  Mary’s way doesn’t discount the truth that others possess; she just puts them into balance. She tones down their bravado and certainty telling us that if we want God’s peace, ponder your questions in your heart for a season rather than rushing for simple-minded answers.

·   And fourth, Mary speaks to us of commitment.  In her commitment she becomes an ally of the Old Testament prophets who follow God through the wilderness of the exodus, into the anguish of the exile, beyond the refreshment of the Jordan River in pursuit of the unknown Promised Land.   She trusts the love of God more than the obvious evidence of any given moment; she is open to the sacrament of each ordinary moment even while trusting that there is more love and truth and light to be revealed. In this, she offers a counter-cultural alternative to our bottom line gurus who tell us to take what we can grab now without ever considering the promises of God’s future.

To my way of thinking, Mary offers us a way of living that is faithful to the Spirit of Jesus. Some have called it a spirituality of Advent that can be lived throughout our whole lives. The four practices of Mary tell us that:

·        Every moment is sacred and filled with God’s favor

·        Every day holds questions that perplex us that we must explore

·        Every life is a holy mixture of confusion, clarity, awe, suffering and wonder

·        And person who seeks God’s peace must make a commitment to follow by faith

This can be a template for growing into a life filled with God’s presence. Professor Lewis writes: Mary shows us how to become fully human by the grace of God. As I look out at the world we inhabit this week – a world saturated with despair as well as joy, a realm of violence alongside heartfelt prayers for peace – the arrival of Chanukah and a push for Palestinian statehood, the cruel deceit of those who excuse the CIA of torture as well as those of moral clarity and courage who follow a higher calling, the hundreds of thousands of young people across our land crying out, “I can’t breathe” in a quest for true racial equality and the thousands of conscientious police officers aching to serve and protect their communities amidst gang violence, drug money corruption and almost overwhelming odds, the agony of the children and their families murdered by the Taliban as they went to school and the tender embrace of my grandson, Louie, as we put up his first Christmas tree…

…when I look at all this perplexity, I know that Mary is right to ponder it all in her heart.  We can’t yet know what all of this means – it seems too vast and too complex– so we must ponder these things in our heart if we are to give birth to what is of the Lord in these days.

·   I am of the opinion that we’ve been addicted to the way of macho, bottom line aggression for so long we can’t even imagine the peace that passes understanding. We’ve become so accustomed to terror that we’re numb and senseless. Our hearts break when a crazed gunner goes berserk in Newtown – or Pakistan – but we don’t know what to do to stop the madness.

·   Mary tells us that there is another way – a feminine way that needs to be reunited with the masculine habits of the past few hundred years – a way of quietly embracing everything that is real like a mother – the pain and the joy, the dark and the light, the horror and the blessings, the conscious and the unconscious – for then what we have separated can be made whole again by God.

When she does this – when she opens herself so that her body embraces the Spirit of the Lord – she gives birth to a love that unites the wolf and the lamb, the Arab and the Jew, the East and the West, the Black and the White, the Gay and the Straight.  Mary offers us a quiet, simple alternative to the fragmentariness that saturates us with fear, death and despair.

On so many levels I am heart-sick these days – AND – my spirit rejoices in God my savior just like the Blessed Virgin Mother:

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women 

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Rambling thoughts on the Third Sunday of Advent...

SOME REFLECTIONS FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT:  On the 50th

anniversary of St. John Coltrane's masterwork - "A Love Supreme" - we spent time playing jazz and doing jazz in worship.

The wisdom, spirituality, aesthetics and ethics of the Third Sunday of Advent point us outward:  in the most direct way possible they ask us to become like John the Baptist. But be careful because the Wild Man we’re asked to emulate as Advent ripens is NOT the harsh, demanding, caustic social critic found in Matthew, Mark or Luke. Rather the Advent John the Baptist always points away from himself to the Lord Jesus – the Lamb of God – for in the gospel according to St. John, the Baptist is a witness to the light. He knows that he himself is not the light, the truth or the way – that calling has been given to Christ – and John is clear to note that he is NOT the Christ.

No, John is a witness – literally a martyr from the Greek word martyreo – one who was sent by God to point us towards the Christ. And everything John the Baptist does in this gospel points us away from him so that our hearts and minds might focus upon Jesus. John knows that he is NOT the Messiah, NOT Elijah, NOT the prophet or the Lamb of God.

He is simply one crying in the wilderness – a witness – who invites us into a way of living that is uniquely humble, compassionate and public.  That’s why the feel of our worship is different today. We need all our senses – and our rational minds – to be touched by this message. Because all too often human beings live and act like WE are the crown of creation. WE are the center of the universe. WE are the heart of it all rather than Christ Jesus.  And so in the midst of everything that is self-centered in our culture, the Advent John the Baptist points away from himself saying, “I must decrease so that he may increase.”

That’s a beautiful pronouncement – I must decrease so that Christ may increase – but it is so counter-cultural.  It is truly challenging, don’t you think? I must get out of the way – I must call into question all my opinions – I must let Christ evaluate my priorities – I must let the presence of Jesus guide my politics – I must shut my own mouth more so that with less of my noise there is more room to listen to the cries of those in the wilderness – I must decrease so that Christ may increase in my church, my heart, my family and my community?

And just so that there is NO ambiguity about this means, John gives us a graphic illustration of what we are to practice IF we too yearn to be witnesses.  “Who are you?” asked all the important people in John the Baptist’s world, to which he replied clearly:  I am the one who is unworthy to untie the thong of his sandal. And the way I get this, John is telling us that there are three practices for us to embody if we want to learn to live as witnesses to the light.

First is humility:  as a witness John tells us he knows that his role is to be a servant – that’s why he would be kneeling down to unfasten the thong on his master’s sandal in the first place – he’s not in charge. He’s not in control. He is on his knees.  Servanthood, you see, is how we voluntarily learn to kneel. Kneeling is practice for what we’re going to have to face at some point in our lives. You see, whether we’re ready or not, there will come a time life itself will knock us down to our knees.

It might happen through illness – or addiction – it often takes place in love when our hearts are broken – and sometimes it is death and grief that hit us like a sucker punch knocking us down and driving us to our knees. Make no mistake, we’re going to get whacked – we’re going to come up against our limits – we’re going to be void of any and all control at some point in our life. So why not get ready for it? Why not practice getting on our knees so that even in hard times we can point to the light of the Lord as witnesses?

That’s exactly what servanthood is all about:  voluntary humility. Life is filled with reminders that we do not have unlimited freedom so why not learn to live in harmony with this truth rather than fight it? John the Baptist asks us to practice kneeling in servanthood – to stop running away from all the things that are hard or demanding in our lives – so that we might finally see what God wants us to give.  An old story puts it like this:

One day a spiritual teacher said, “It is much easier to travel than to stop.” Her disciple asked, “Why is that true?” To which the teacher said, “Because as long as you travel to a goal you can hold on to a dream. When you stop, you must face reality.” After a pause, the disciple asked, “But how shall we ever change if we have no goals or dreams?” And again the teacher said, “Change that is real is change that is unwilled: face reality and unwilled change will happen.

First there is voluntary humility in servanthood. Second there is compassion

– sharing your heart with those in need – and doing it with joy rather than wooden obligation. John the Baptist willingly shared his life as a servant and witness to Christ because he felt the Lord’s pain.  That’s part of what compassion means: co-suffering –from the Latin compati – to embrace with feeling another’s pain. But one of the deeper truths about compassion over and opposed to sympathy or pity is that compassion doesn’t quit with sharing the wound – it also strives to heal it.

You see, compassion not only takes on the physical grief of another’s suffering – we feel in our flesh what another experiences so they don’t have to endure this alone – we also commit ourselves to healing or relieving the agony of their wound. Sometimes that looks like taking off the Master’s sandal after a journey – this is the compassion of hospitality that the Baptist is showing us – bringing a measure of comfort to one who is worn and weary.

But sometimes compassion pushes us to confront the principalities and powers that grind people into the ground and cause them pain. When John the Baptist speaks of himself as one crying in the wilderness, he is allying himself with the poet prophet of Israel, Isaiah, who gave shape and form to Christ’s own ministry. Remember that when Jesus initiated his public ministry, he went to his home synagogue, read from the writings assigned for that day (Isaiah 61) and told his community that he had been anointed by the Spirit of the Lord to:

To bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor  and the day of God’s judgment; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion and give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

Now this is important because it grounds compassion in history – in real life – in the true suffering of our spiritual ancestors. This portion of Isaiah’s poem probably comes from about 540 BCE.  The Jews were no longer in bondage to Babylon where they wept remembering Zion. They had been set free to go home and rebuild Jerusalem. And like Psalm 126 tells us, when this happened: When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’  The Lord has done great things for us and we rejoiced.

But things didn’t work out too well when those in Babylon returned to Jerusalem. They had a hard time renewing their old community. Many held on to dreams and hopes from the past that no longer made any sense in a changed world. Others had unrealistic expectations that could never be realized in reality. And scholars tell us that as much as they wanted to live in harmony, there were profound economic disparities in Jerusalem and ugly religious and political factions in the city that refused to find common ground. 

You think John Boehner and Barack Obama have differences? You think our contemporary gridlock is ugly? In the days when Israel returned to Jerusalem and tried to renew their former glory, THAT was real mess: the city lay in rubble – religious fear and discrimination was rampant – and bone-crushing poverty broke the spirit of hope among God’s people.

So, God promised a NEW type of renewal – a truly different restoration project – one that was built on COMPASSION and the sacrifice of SERVANTHOOD:  You shall build up the ancient ruins… raise up the former devastations; you shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

But this wasn’t going to take place through nostalgia or aching for the good old days: Transforming the "former devastations" would require more than a memory of the past and a promise to build. It required that the people of Jerusalem adopt, like God, a love of justice and a hatred of "robbery and wrongdoing." God brings comfort to the mourners – and healing to the wounded – not to preserve the status quo, especially a status quo of frustration, fear and division. NO, God’s grace and hope is given to a hurting people so that the comforted mourners rise up and repair the former devastations – the devastations of former generations.

When God’s mourners are embraced by God’s compassion, God’s people respond as servants who share God’s love in public. You see, justice is what grace looks like in public. Grace happens in our hearts. Justice is what happens in our streets, in our politics, in our institutions and communities. So when God comforts those who have been in mourning, God expects us to respond, to rise up and repair the former devastations.

And we know this because God’s servant John the Baptist pointed to the Messiah – Jesus the anointed – and what did Jesus tell us when he went public with his ministry? He told us exactly what Isaiah prophesied when he went public in his ministry:  when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon you with grace, when you have been comforted and fitted with the garments of salvation and the robes of righteousness – and let’s be clear that salvation isn’t only about heaven but being made healthy and holy in our physical bodies right now and righteousness has nothing to do with self-righteousness but rather means compassion in action – when this happens… we will willingly start to decrease so that the love and justice of God might increase.

Humility as servants – compassion born of grace – and going public with justice in our own time – NOW – is what the Baptist points to today.  So let’s get out of the way for a moment and reflect on this in silence and song. And if you sense an action you want to strengthen, them come on up and light a candle, too.

(various pictures from the last few days; credits:  Dianne De Mott/Jesse Piscatello)