Found

Christmas Luke 2:41-52 (I Sam 2:18-20,26)

The tradition was to go as a family to worship.  In those days gone by, it was a big event; loading up the family with all that was needed to make the trip to the sanctuary, hoping all would make it safe, some special candy to reward and to keep mouths busy, no arguments along the way, no misbehavior by anyone, no embarrassments, and all would have an idyllic family affair.  Reality is that there are always the possibilities of the unexpected; bad roads, bad weather, some irritability, wrong turn, something forgotten, or someone’s behavior that ruins the best laid plans.  Getting all to the worship place with open and generous spirits to give and receive what is there seems near impossible.

Pre-adolescents and teenagers rarely desire closeness with parents and family events.  They long for independence; for distance.  They don’t want to be found hanging around parents, or with parents hanging around them.  They want to be found in places and with people where life is ‘happenin’.  Perhaps this has been true throughout the ages of human existence.  Perhaps more so today, when community and family activity is diminishing, young people find no reason to be with their family in the context of worship, in a sanctuary, or paying attention to that ‘God’ stuff.  Perhaps it is not just the youth for whom this is reality.  Perhaps it is more prevalent with all people than we dare to day.  Who wants to be found sitting in old, religious spaces where there is so much unknown and too many questions?  Who wants to be known as overly spiritual?

So Mary and Joseph assumed that Jesus’ absence was normal.  He was probably with cousins and friends, hanging out with his peers.  When his absence lengthened and was no longer “normal”, like typical parents they became anxious, searching in typical places one looks for kids.  They did not expect to discovered him with adults, asking questions and giving his own perspective in the worship space.  Naturally, they were annoyed.  They had been inconvenienced.  A child absorbed in his own world had upset the family agenda.  One would be reasonable to imagine Mary and Joseph on an emotional roller coaster from anxious worry,  little panicky, to surprise, anger, and amazement.  Parental feelings are like that, mixed confusion in response to the children they cherish and who can be so irresponsible at the same time.

“Child!  Why have you treated us like this?”  Sounds like a typical parental question.  “Why were you searching for me?  Didn’t you know….”  A typical youth’s response.  ‘Parents don’t know anything.  You should have known.  Can’t you figure it out?’  But like typical parents, Mary and Joseph did not understand what their son was talking about.  A typical family scenario.  Kids assume their parents’ knowledge, and, they assume their parents’ ignorance.  Jesus was fully human, fully youthful, and learning and growing.  After rejoining his parents and heading home, scripture says Jesus “was obedient” to his parents.  He learned, parents need to know where you are, where to find you.

Jesus was a normal kid.  So was Samuel.  Centuries before there was a temple in Jerusalem, there was the town of Shiloh, where Eli the priest greeting people who came to worship the Lord and to bring their sacrifices and offerings.  Hannah, the mother of Samuel was much like Mary, both having sons who grew up in the Lord’s service.  Samuel, like Jesus was a young boy who was found in the worship place, asking questions, learning from the elders and teaching the elders even in youth.

Of Jesus the gospel writer says, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in divine and human favor.” (Luke 2:52)  Of Samuel it is written, “Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people.”  (I Sam 2:26)  Both young men grew up listening; listening to their teachers, listening to parents, listening for the voice of God that would speak to them in the night and in their hearts.  And yes, they were normal, typical kids.

We would like to make Samuel ‘special’, because he was a prophet, a mouth piece, of the Lord.  We would like to make Jesus ‘special’ because we call him God incarnate.  In designating them ‘special’ we also subtly exclude ourselves from their special callings.  We think both we and our children are normal, human, and not subject to the ‘special’ call of God, that we should be listening as Samuel and Jesus did.  Ah, but we are wrong.  We also are called by God, given life through the Source of Life, implanted with the very image of God within us, and for those who have been baptized, our very baptism is the naming and claiming that we are not our own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death to God.  We are special also.  Perhaps the only difference from our being drawn to listen to God is that we have excused ourselves from it.  Samuel and Jesus grew up being told they were special, and committed to God.  Too often we are not told, nor do we instill in our children that their lives are gifts from and to God, infused with the Holy One.  Attentiveness to God is a hobby for older people or ‘special’ people.  We fail to tune our hearts and ears to hear God speaking.

Jesus and Samuel were found in the place of worship.  They were found where in their day, God resided.  Jesus thought it ‘normal’ to be in “his Father’s house”, already having learned and embraced a deep relationship to God.  Of course, he assumed Mary and Joseph would know where to find him, with God, in God’s presence.  Hannah would find her son, Samuel, who served the Lord night and day, growing up in God’s presence.  That’s where I want to be found, in the presence of God.  That’s where I want to find my children; conscious of always being in God’s presence and in living out the call of God upon them.  What might life be like to have such awareness that we are special, called by and to God; that we are always in God’s presence?  What might it be like if all were attentive enough to wonder, to ask questions, to be listening?

Jesus and Samuel grew up normal, typical, and special, just like us.  Scripture says they grew in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with both God and with people.  What a wonderful way to grow.  Might that be our own prayer, for ourselves, for our children, for the world, that we might continue to grow.  One can only guess that growing in wisdom takes listening, insight, patience and sensitivity, not just knowledge.  Growing ‘in favor’, in approval or in affection takes listening, obedience, and love for God and love for people.  Oh to so grow up so we may be found like them.

 Holy God,
you seek and you find,
always looking for us even though
we go our own way.
Thank you for knowing where we are.
Spirit of Wisdom come,
fill us with your breath,
with your listening,
with your life,
that we might be found in you.
Come, Spirit of Christ,
help us grow up and
be found fully in the Holy Presence
which is everywhere.
 

 

 

 

Pregnant

Advent IV  Luke 1:39-55

Pregnancy is a gift, a rare gift that few receive.

The biology of pregnancy does not diminish the reality of wonder and amazement of life that emerges from within small places, in deep darkness, regardless of our own efforts.   While many women will never be pregnant, and too many will experience a pregnancy against their hopes and wishes, yet a growing new life remains a miraculous event.

There is a moment an expectant woman waits for, the first movement of her child within. Women today anticipate hearing the sound of a first heartbeat or seeing movement through an ultrasound.  Even those sounds and sights cannot replace the wonder of the inner movement of a life that is both part of and yet separate from an expectant mother.  Some liken it to a butterfly, a wing brushing an inner wall.  Some call it a stirring within, or “quickening”.  To feel something growing inside, which is not a cyst or fibroid tumor to cut out, a cancerous growth, a hernia or misshaped organ, but a separate, new individual being within one’s own being is inexpressible.  It is a miracle.  It is a gift.

Elizabeth and Mary spent perhaps 3 months together, sharing pregnancy, sharing the stirrings within.  Elizabeth, an older relative who had been called, “barren”, or lifeless, was 6 months pregnant when Mary arrived, newly pregnant.  Elizabeth had “starting to show” the life growing within. When these pregnant women conferred about their first pregnancies, no doubt there was shared wonderings, fears, questions, encouragement, and much laughter.  Certainly there were tears, for no reason at all, as hormones were rearranged as much as bodies were working to create new space for what would be.  There was wise, older, Elizabeth sharing her ‘vast’ 6 months experiences with young Mary who was just beginning the journey toward birthing. Imagine the community of women who came alongside them, sharing stories and counsel, a sacrament of communal anticipation, giving voice to the “what ifs?” and settling into sharing the divine mystery of life. 

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s voice, her child within, perhaps startled by Elizabeth’s joy, leapt within her womb. Within the womb some unborn ones seem to turn summersaults or cartwheels, or begin an early career playing soccer with knees and elbows twisting and poking, dancing within.  Anticipation and joy surrounded and embodied Elizabeth and her baby.  “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” declared Elizabeth to Mary.  Filled with Spirit, hers was a blessing prayer on Mary but also upon herself, both blessed, happy, excited women with life growing within them.  “Blessed is she who believed what was spoken to her by the Lord.”  Spirit led, they did believe and embrace the word of the Lord spoken to them and within them.  Mary sang and Elizabeth, the other women, and we also can join in the chorus singing: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.”  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”

The mystery of birth and the mystery of incarnation, en-flesh-ment, becoming a real living, breathing life too often is removed from ourselves.  Pregnancy, bringing to birth is relegated to others.  Special women, Mary and Elizabeth, enflesh God’s promises of new life…Not me.  Women are impregnated, expected to open their beings to nurturing and welcoming life within…Not men.  The Spirit of God resides and fills and speaks in certain people of long ago…Not today. 

We are full of excuses in which to keep the birth of God in us removed from us.  At arm’s length we can rehearse the story belonging to Mary and Elizabeth, a story outside our own experience.  If St. Paul is correct that in God “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) as within the womb of God, and if Jesus’ prayer that his followers would be united and one in God even as Jesus was united in God, then it follows that as God brings us to life within the being of God, so also the very life of God is to be enfleshed, impregnated, come alive and be born in us.  God invites us to be filled with the Spirit and to declare blessing and favor, to recognize God’s presence within each one.  As we embrace a God life within us, allow our bodies, minds, and spirits to be shaped, to expand to allow room for life to grow within us, then we with Mary sing, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for God has looked with favor  on this insignificant life and makes it important.’ 

Is it possible to consider your self pregnant with God?  Can we allow the stretching of our inner selves to accommodate making room in our lives for God’s life with us?  Like expectant mothers and fathers, could I refashion life’s focus and pay attention, shift my efforts and considerations toward new life that is born to me in Christ every day?  Welcoming God’s birthing within us, are we open and willing to step into the mystery of the unknown journey that will transpire and will transform our living?  Mary said,  “Let it be with me according to your word.”  With joy and wonder Elizabeth embraced God’s working within.  “Blessed are [they] who believe that there would be fulfillment of what was spoken.”  May we be so blessed.

 

Holy God who comes disguised in birth,
come with your Spirit and fill us to believing
that your word is real for us.
Enable us to believe that you are within us
bringing Life to us and through us.
Come, creep inside our hearts, our minds,
our lives and make your home in us,
so we may make our home in you.
Impregnate us with you.
May our souls declare your glory and goodness.
May our spirits rejoice in God our savior.  Amen

Joy

 Advent III

December 13, 2009

 Zephaniah 3:14-20;  Isaiah 12:2-6;  Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:7-18

“Joy to the World” says the familiar Christmas carol.  The thing is, the carol is based upon Psalm 98 and is not really intended to be about the birth of Jesus at all.  ‘Sing to Lord’, invites the psalmist, ‘for the Lord has done marvelous things.  Make a joyful noise all the earth; including instruments made by human hands as well as the jubilant music of creation.  All is done in joyful anticipation of the Lord who comes to judge, [yes judge] the earth…with righteousness and with equity’.  That is reason to rejoice: to have a judge and ruler who is a joy to receive and be with. The psalm invites us to rejoice in the approach of God, who comes in goodness, in which there is hope and shalom and all fear is cast out while justice is a certainty and a relief.

That is not the case of typical human perspective toward the mighty and powerful, toward those who would make judgement over us:

            “Here comes da judge.  Here comes da judge. You better look out ‘cuz here comes da judge.” 

Or, “You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout I’m telling you why… He sees you when you’re sleeping,  …when you’re awake.... If you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!” 

Or, “Be careful little hands…eyes, feet, ears, tongue…For the Father up above is looking down….so be careful”

Fearfulness is a primary human response, perhaps from our reptilian heritage, or perhaps fear is a reality of “falleness”.  The story of  “The Fall” in Genesis suggests that the first response in the fallen state was fear and shame (Genesis 3:10).  God became a fearsome reality.  Authority and authoritative hierarchy was a result of “The Fall” according to Genesis. And so humanity has become fearful of police, judges, principals, bosses, and many other authority figures as if they were there to “get us”, and we deserve it.   Although our human interpretations on scripture and God have instilled a sense of fear of God, (“the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”), scripture’s intent is to invite us to stand in awe of God’s goodness, God’s marvelous actions, that God is to be trusted and not to be feared.  How many times messengers of God, or the very voice of God declares, “Don’t be afraid!... I am with you.”

The scripture for today’s reading invites us to enter God’s joy and put away past fears, to share in the delight of God, in being the delight of God.  Both Hebrew and Christian scripture invite the joy and renewal found in God’s good presence of justice and restoration.

Zephaniah, a prophet in a time of needed reform, who was able to see that religious reform happen through the kingship of young Josiah, spoke of “the day of the Lord” which could be received as frightening news as many heard it, OR, as an invitation to begin again, turning and returning to a God of grace.  Zephaniah’s words that sound judgmental are not without hope for transformation.  His words are about “religious renewal-not otherworldly renewal, but one where this world will come to reflect God’s vision of a world without violence, injustice, and oppression, a world where even God may sing in response to human singing, (Zeph 3:17)” Kent Harold Richard (HarperCollins Study Bible on Zephaniah).

“Rejoice and exult with all your heart… you shall fear disaster no more…Do not fear…The LORD, your God, is in your midst…he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love…” 

Joy to the world! The Lord comes to make all things new!

Isaiah, the prophet who may have been a mentor to Zephaniah, writes encouragement and invitation to listeners who are in the midst of despair and  difficult times of loss and shame; of anxiety for past failures and future consequences.  He says,

            “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid…for the LORD God             has become my salvation…  With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…  Shout aloud and sing for joy…for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

Joy to the world! The Lord comes to make all things new!

 

From a prison cell, the Apostle Paul writes a joy-filled letter to his brothers and sisters at the church in Philippi.  Without any notion of how eminent his own death may have been, he writes encouragement to live in joy rather than in fear.  The peace of God will guard both hearts and minds in Christ when we trust God with our concerns and our grateful hearts, and joy will be ours even if imprisoned or uncertain about the days ahead. 

            “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. …the Lord is near.  Do not             worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”   

Joy to the world! The Lord comes to make all things new!

For Zephaniah, Isaiah, and Paul, words of encouragement, hope, and joy-filled delight is present for those who trust in God’s nearness.  And then there is John, the Baptizer.  Past renderings has made him out to be a kind of wild, scary man, ranting away like a street corner dooms day preacher.  Tradition suggests that John was perhaps very young (his old parents may have died when he was still young) when he entered into the Essene Community.  This was perhaps an early form of the monastic tradition wherein members separate themselves from much of the “stuff” of the world in order to pay attention to God; to be a mirror in order for the world to pay attention to itself. 

John’s words in the reading for today do not sound joy-filled.  Judgment and condemnation seem to scream from the Baptizer.  So what was the lure that drew so many people to come, to hear and see and be baptized by him.  Were they all motivated by fear?  Did John teach us to fear God who is out to get us?  It seems that there was something attractive, something hopeful, and not so fearful about John that so many came to him in an out of the way place.  “As the people were filled with expectation” says the gospel writer (15).  “…He proclaimed the good news to the people” (v.18).  What gave people hope, expectation?  What was the “good news” that they heard?  Perhaps it was that there was an invitation to begin again, to turn and return again to God who loved them.  Perhaps it was that no one was excluded from this returning to God.  It was possible not only for the religious do-gooders, but also for those who thought they had no chance to ever be found within God’s good grace.  ‘Share your clothing.  Share your food. Don’t hoard.  Be honest in your job.  Put intimidation and violence away.   Be content with who and what you are’.  Rich and poor, despised tax collectors, even Roman soldiers had a chance to begin again, and they did not have to switch jobs or be stuck in the past or feel guilty about who and what they were.

While we may read John’s words, “You brood of vipers”  harshly, his overall words were an invitation toward transformation; to begin again, to move from being stuck in hopelessness to taking steps in faith, to open new spaces toward becoming what God had intended.  John invited repentance, turning again toward God who was always turning toward them, and us.   This is good news.  I imagine joy was the response of the soldiers and tax collectors when they heard that they were not men condemned by God.  Joy.  The Lord makes all things possible.  Yes this is the Lord who comes to judge not in fearful ways, but with justice; with righteousness and equity.  This Holy One comes and joy is ours. We need not fear.  We simply are invited to return to the One who comes near.

 

Joy to the World, the Lord is come.  …Let heaven and nature sing!

“God of life, bless our days
 Keep us alive and in love. Keep us listening.
 Keep us growing, Mother-God. Keep drawing us closer to you.
 
Help our words, Father-God, not get in the way of your Spirit.
 Help the words we use not become too many or too confusing.
 Our faith, Holy One, is in you and not in any words or in any teaching.
 We just want these words to open us up to you and to your Spirit among us.
 
Help us not to be afraid of Jesus,
 the companion you have given us for our journey toward you.
 As St. Bernard prayed, "Jesus, our Lord, you are honey in our mouth.
 You are music in our ear. You are a leap of joy in our heart."
 Amen.      from  Richard Rohr, Radical Grace

On Seeing Salvation

Advent II  (Mal. 3:1-4, Luke 1:68-79; 3:1-6)

December 6,2009

 “Blessed be the Lord God…
 …to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Why is “The Song of Zechariah” so significant within the Catholic tradition that it is said or sung daily in the divine office of prayer?  Is it in the content of the song?  Is it the story of Zechariah or Elizabeth that is valuable?  Is it the child, John, who became the Baptizer?  Is it all about Jesus?  Is it about God?  Singing or saying this song daily must have some internal and external impact for the pray-er.  What is the intent?

Zechariah’s song comes on the eighth day of life for his son, John, the naming day, the day of circumcision.  Zechariah had been mute for 9 months after the angel appeared to him telling him he and Elizabeth would have a son in their old age.  People thought perhaps he had a vision.  Today we may have thought he was alone in his priestly work and had a stroke, leaving him unable to speak.  Something happened in the place of worship, in that solitude with his attention toward God, and Zechariah’s life was changed, even in his old age.  After waiting, for 9 months, God at work in Zechariah’s inner being, brought him to a new voice to sing the Lord’s song.  “Filled with the Holy Spirit [he] spoke this prophecy” says the Gospel writer.  He opened his mouth and spoke the word of the Lord, not a distant future prediction, but the Word of the Lord for the hearers at hand.

This Word of the Lord came to people who were living in times of political and religious oppression.  The occupation of the Roman Empire imposed taxation and a military presence that did not offer signs of comfort or joy.

Tax collectors, soldiers, scoundrels, manipulators, thieves, and zealots, were trying to get by in the midst of uncertain security.  At the same time, the religious authorities were grasping for their own piece of the power pie both politically and over their own people’s minds and hearts.  Pietistic legalism made it nearly impossible for any faith filled, God-devoted person to believe or feel worthy of God’s favor.  All were looking for some salvation; a political, social, and/or religious salvation.

Listen to these words from Zechariah’s song again:

“…the Lord God…has looked favorably on his people
         and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty savior…
…we would be saved…
…being rescued from … our enemies, might
         serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness…
And you my child, will…give knowledge of salvation…”

People in sorrow, people in darkness, people under political oppression, people living in fear, people in worry were looking for peace, or shalom, in God’s salvation.  My hunch is that salvation looked different to each one depending on their need and longing.  The savior longed for may be one of military, political, social, or religious demeanor depending on one’s hope.  King David of old was the ideal model for the Jewish people, integrating all aspects of a savior.  The writer, Luke, a Gentile, would have a savior who reached beyond all boundaries.

“Salvation” carried all kinds of notions and beliefs. We tend to define salvation according to our own traditions and religious experience and beliefs.  Many times salvation is the notion of escape from or “saving” from death, difficulty, or hardship. In an attempt to get back to the biblical notion of “salvation” I would venture to say it was NOT about escaping bad times, nor about getting to Heaven and eternity. In both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures “salvation” meant wholeness, wellness, completeness, fullness, or healing.  It was about shalom, that all is well; all manner of things are well, as Julian of Norwich said, even in the midst of hardship.  Salvation was really about all things, everything and everyone, being ‘right’, as God intended them to be, within the universe.  The hope for a mighty savior was a longing for one who would be able to help all people be restored, rescued, redeemed from the internal and external forces that keep us from wholeness; to live without fear, well in body, mind, and spirit, complete in what is the sacred spaces of life and living together, and with God.  Salvation is here and now.  John and Jesus show us how to live shalom, peace - salvation; God’s intention for us today.

Zechariah sang,  “You my child will be called the prophet of the Most High: for you will… prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation …by the forgiveness of their sins.”  (Lk 1:76-77)  So what does salvation look like?

According to the Gospel writer Luke, when John grew up and began to be the messenger, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, in John’s mouth we hear the prophet Isaiah’s words that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Lk 3:6)  What are we to see?  Was “all flesh”, everyone during Isaiah’s time?  or people in John’s time?  Does “all flesh” mean human flesh, or all things living?  What would “salvation” mean to non-human living beings?  What would this salvation of wholeness and fullness and completion, and shalom look like in John’s day, and in our own day and within each one of our lives?  What would it look like for earth? For the universe?

I wonder if that salvation, God’s intent for our lives, might look like life made free, from all that would unsettle our lives from residing in God’s presence; freedom from the power of fear be they external and internal sources; freedom from societal pressures that impose fear-filled responses; freedom to live confidently in the promises of God’s goodness, forgiveness, and grace both received and given; freedom from condemnation and judgmentalism; freedom for all creation to be as it was intended; freedom to guided in the way of peace.  If the way of the savior Lord is to be made “straight”, if the valleys in life are transformed into being not such unbearably low places, if the insurmountable mountainous obstacles are changed into manageable possibilities, if wild, obscured, and crooked pathways are altered so that clarity and vision enable confident steps, if the tough, rough places within our hearts and minds as well as along life’s journey could be smoothed over with God’s presence, would that not make for saving grace, wholeness in the midst of life?  Would not our steps be guided in ways of peace?  What would that look like in daily life?

Both within the past and present life is a process of “salvation”.  Salvation is a “God-working” to bring us to fullness, to completion, to be all that we were intended to be.  Salvation is even now part of the on-going creative processes of God inviting all things into their fullness, into shalom, the way of peace. 

So, what of this Song of Zechariah read, sung, and prayed daily?  How does it get into one’s being over time? …in each day?  I wonder, if Jesus-followers are to become like Jesus, wouldn’t they also be called to become like John?  Are we not called to be voices, prophets of the Most High, preparers of the Lord’s way as well?  Yes, you, my child, you too are to prepare the way for God to be within and around us.  By the tender mercy of God, may the awesome dawning of daylight from on High break upon you, giving you Light, so that you and those who may sit in dark places, valley or mountainous, crooked or rough places, even in death’s shadowy place, might be guided into the way of peace; shalom, fullness, completion – God’s salvation.  May all flesh, all things living, see it, God’s salvation, together.

 

“And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”  (Philippians 1:9-11)

On Being Awake

Advent 1

Nov. 29, 2009

Luke 21:34-36

Advent means to be aware!
    

Advent means to be alive!
         

Advent means to be attentive!
             

Advent means to be alert!   
                 

Advent means to be awake!  (Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas)

 

I will always remember the first Sunday of Advent; it’s change of liturgical seasons, it’s purple color of waiting, preparing, anticipation, close on the heels of giving thanks, wondering about what is to come, or who is to come among us.

 

Ten years ago, on the first Sunday of Advent my dad died.  As a preacher himself, he loved Advent and Christmas.  He loved the color purple.  As a family we celebrated our last Thanksgiving together, he had settled his finances 2 days before, the house was paid off, he attended half of his favorite rivalry basketball game between Hope and Calvin Colleges, went to his small room at “The Warm Friend”, after fighting illness of both body and spirit at 78 years of age, he died of heart failure the next morning, his family still near at hand.  We grieved and were grateful.

 

A few years later, on the weekend of Thanksgiving and Advent 1 our community read the incredible news that a local teenager, angry with his family, shot and killed them all; grandparents, parents, brother and his brother’s girlfriend.  How can such a thing happen within a family?

 

A few years ago, our neighbor delivered a baby girl in this season, months premature, weighing only 12 ounces.  Parents at her side, round the clock, Advent was spent waiting and watching to see if she would live.  Her living and dying occurred within a few weeks and her parents’ waiting ended with empty arms.

 

I just received word from my clergy friend that she found her 17 year old daughter, lifeless in her bedroom, having taken her own life, this Saturday between Thanksgiving and Advent 1.

 

I will always remember this first Sunday of Advent, its scripture passages that beckon us to watch and wait, to be awake and alert.  The Gospel lesson for this Sunday is always one that makes me squirm with its devastation, destruction, tumult in the heavens and on earth, its end-times drama, the scary scenes of imagination it conjures.  Who picked such a theme to start off this season of hope?  And who suggested that these passages offer the theme of Hope for which we light the first candle of Advent?  Why begin the season every year, the New Year for the Church Year, with loss and grief, both personal and corporate?  Besides our own personal losses and grief for loved ones we read of more troops sent off to war, more turbulence within and between nations and religions, more people hungry and in need of help from someone, from somewhere, homelessness rising.  Where is the Hope in this first Sunday of Advent?  Just what is it we are to awake to see and know?  What is it that we are supposed to be aware of?

 

“Be on guard so your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.  For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.  Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”  (Luke 21:34-36 NRSV)

 

These words of Jesus are offered in the gospels shortly before his own arrest and death, some years before the destruction of Jerusalem (again), the years throughout his life and death which were years of an oppressive empire, of religious zealot and terrorist groups, of manipulative and exploitive political power, of desperation, religious and racial prejudices, homelessness, of sons and daughters not living past a day or but a few years, and even the leaders of God declaring who was acceptable and who was not, who was in favor and who was condemned.

 

The writers who include these words within the Gospel, the “Good News”, write them to followers who continued to live in difficult times of persecution and uncertainty, when hope was perhaps all one had to cling to.  Out of the mouth of Jesus, the One to whom all looked for the words of hope and life, comes the reality that hardship “will come”.  It will come to “all who live”, he says.  Suffering and loss, grief and death, it will all happen.  In these discouraging words (dis - taking away, cour – heart) is the encouragement (en-hearten), to “be on guard so your hearts” are able to endure.  Seems like work of the heart to me.

“Be on guard so your hearts are not weighed down”.  Does this mean bodies will be weighed down?  Minds will be weighed down?  Why concern for the heart?  Was that the place of the spirit? Or The Spirit?  When our minds can’t seem to understand and there is no sense in what is happening, when our bodies are worn out from crying and sleeplessness and pain, might hearts still be strong and courageous?  Love and hope might still survive?  Yes, I believe that is the heart work, the encouragement from Jesus.

 

Viktor Frankl in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, out of his own holocaust experience reminds us that everything can be stripped away from our sense of being, except how our heart’s response and the choice to love and hope in spite of circumstances.  Its heart work when bodies and minds can’t make heads or tails of life and death.

 

For many in the Western World this season of Advent and Christmas is full of hope-filled children anticipating “the stuff” they want from Santa.  And the season is filled with frantic parents trying to fulfill their children’s hopes and keep sane at the same time.  And there are those experiencing loss of income and so the season may have new worries that weigh them down, or may have anxiety for so many who are walking or running around numb, unaware, unawake, senseless to what is raging all around and within slipping into an oblivious sleep-walking world.  But what of those parents with empty arms and broken hearts, whose sons and daughters are no more, those neighbors who are homeless or refugees, whose home and work are no more?

 

The HOPE of Advent 1, in the middle of what seems so wrong, is that we are invited “to be aware!...
to be alive! …
to be attentive! …
 to be alert! … to be awake!” (Rohr) to those things that weigh us down, that fragment (dissipate) our lives, that create addictive passions that drag us away from what is truly important, those worries that ensnare us with obsessions, those unexpected disasters and realities that would make us lose heart, or may trap our hearts in despair.  The Hope is that in being alert to all that is within us and around us, to be truly awake, to be in prayer - that ever present residing in God, enables us to have the strength, enough maybe to escape the despair if not the hardships, but certainly to stand up and not crumble, to withstand, and stand beside and before, the One who is with us always.  And maybe, it is an invitation to stand beside and hold up one another, or those presently weighed down by so much pain, and be their hope when they have no strength for it themselves; to be awake in one another’s behalf, to see hope when tears blur their eyes, to help one another keep from crumbling.

 

I will always remember Advent 1. The Word of the Lord invites us into Hope, into the courage of living awake.

 

Come, Lord Jesus, help us to awaken to God with us.