Ever-Widening Circles of Fellowship

 

Epiphany 1 / Year C

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

This is one of my favorite collects in the prayer book:

O God, who created all peoples in your image, we thank you for the wonderful diversity of races and cultures in this world.  Enrich our lives by ever-widening circles of fellowship, and show us your presence in those who differ most from us, until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children… (p. 840)

This prayer gives me language to articulate my core understanding of the nature of God, the relationship which exists within the Holy Trinity, and the fundamental reason for all reality:

1.       God, who is manifest in three co-equal parts, exists in relational harmony.  

2.       God calls forth all creation out of a desire to experience relationship beyond God’s own Self.

3.       Because this is the reason for our existence, our purpose in life is to seek ever-widening circles of fellowship with one another, with all creation, and with God.

Our gospel reading speaks of the relationship which exists within God’s very being.  Present is the Voice of God, the dove-like manifestation of God’s Spirit, and the Word of God made flesh – Jesus.  It is, perhaps, the most dramatic and most vivid revealing of God’s relational harmony in all Scripture.

In the reading from Isaiah, we hear the words God speaks to exiles in Babylon.  At the time, the only way God’s people can make sense of this situation is to understand it as God’s wrathful judgment for their wanton disobedience and sin.  Isaiah sees God’s nature in a very different way:

Thus says the Lord,
he who created you…

he who formed you…:

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine...

Because you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you,

…I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you;

I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’
and to the south, ‘Do not withhold’;

bring my sons from far away
and my daughters from the end of the earth -

everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”

We hear in this God’s longing to be in ever-widening circles of fellow by drawing us into God’s perfect relational harmony.

Here is some background on the second reading about the Samaritans and their ‘partial’ baptism: 

·             When the Assyrian empire captures the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 8^th century BC, they resettle the region.

·             Some of the Israelites in Samaria intermarry with these people, who everyone else considers to be gentiles and pagans.

·             Samaritans have different practices from orthodox Jews, among them accepting only the first five books of the Old Testament and worshipping at Shechem rather than Jerusalem.

·             For these and other reasons, Jews (and the early Church) consider them to be ethnically and religiously unclean, regard them with deep distain, and shun every and all contact with them.

Philip, an energetic, spirit-filled deacon in the early Church, finds God’s Spirit leads him to Samaria and so he begins to preach.  He matches words with healings and exorcisms.  Large numbers convert and wish to be baptized, but in a curious result, they receive Jesus through this sacramental act, but not the Holy Spirit.  Peter and John travel north to Samaria, investigate, and personally conduct another baptism which confers the Holy Spirit them.

Scholars have puzzled over this account.  Why isn’t one baptism sufficient, which we Episcopalians hold sacrosanct?  Well, the answer seems to be drawing Samaritans into the Jesus movement is such a radical, new development, it requires the early Church to be especially present to witness God’s aspiration to grow the faith in ever-widening circles of fellowship. 

Ever-widening circles of fellowship.  Is this not a perfect way to describe our life’s work and call?  Consider this: unless you are a twin like me, your first experience is as a solitary individual in a womb.  At some point before birth you begin to respond to your mother’s touch and voice – your initial circle of fellowship.  Typically, once born, your fellowship widens to include a father, perhaps a sibling or two, and maybe some grandparents. 

This small circle expands again, drawing in extended family and daycare providers.  Playmates come along.  You sense yourself a part of a wider community know as a church, then a school, and on it goes into adulthood and beyond.  You invest a lifetime developing ever-widening and increasingly diverse circles of fellowship because this is how God created you to be.  One way, then, to describe sin is as a rejection of this call by choosing to remain in a small, narrow existence with a homogenous group of people who are just like you.  To do the opposite – to reach out to an increasingly diverse group of people – is one way we express we are created in God’s image.

Did you see any of the memorial service for President Carter held at the National Cathedral?  Regarded as a person of deep and authentic faith, one of the things which struck me was the depth and bread of his relationships.  He began his life in his mother’s womb, as we all do, but over the course of 100 years his circle of fellowship grew to include people of high and low stature, from folks who attended his weekly bible studies to national leaders from all over the world, from people willing to pick up a tool and help him build a house to diplomates working with him to insure the integrity of a foreign election.  President Carter will be remembered for many things, but I will always think of him as a faithful Christian who embodied God’s deep desire for each of us to enrich our lives (and thus the world) through ever-widening circles of fellowship.   

The Holy Family in Egypt

 

Mathew 2:3-6, 15-19

Christmas 2 / Year C

We want to know about the childhood lives of great people.  We long to learn about the early experiences which forged who they became.  Mason Locke Weems didn’t quite understand this when he set out in 1800 to write a biography about George Washington, who had died a year earlier.  The book was wildly popular, but the reading public craved more insight into Washington’s childhood.  Since Weems had no real way to garner such information, he simply made up stories designed to demonstrate a link between Washington’s private virtue and his public greatness.  The most endearing and enduring of these myths involved a cherry tree, which first appeared in the book’s fifth edition, published six years after the initial release.  “I cannot tell a lie” satiated the American public’s hunger to know more about the childhood of their deeply revered leader.

This morning we ponder one of the tantalizingly few bits of information available to us from Jesus’ early life.  Only Matthew records the visit of the Magi and subsequent events it spawns – the dreams of angels issuing warnings and directions, Herod’s order to kill male infants and toddlers in and around Bethlehem, and the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt.  It is an immensely interesting account, but sparse on details and Luke, who is the other gospel writer providing us information about Jesus’ birth, either is unaware of this story or judges it not to be significant enough to include in his account.

Based on historical records which chronical the reigns of Herod, his directive to slaughter children, and the rule of Archelas (Herod’s son), scholars deduce Jesus is born in 5BC, his family flees to Egypt when he is younger than two, and they remain there until sometime before Jesus turns nine¹.  So Jesus spends a significant amount of his formative years as a refugee in Egypt. 

Why Egypt?  Scholars point out this province, along with Babylon and Persia, is a home to sizeable number of Jewish settlements.  Any of these regions is a viable option for Joseph and Mary, but Egypt is closest to Bethlehem and, as some scholars suggest, the couple may have relatives or friends in this area.  In Egypt, the Holy Family will be able to find people willing to provide food and shelter.

We don’t know which route they take to get there, but either it is on the coastal road, the most direct and most travelled way or they journey through the desert; a safer option if you fear Herod’s soldiers are looking for you, but more difficult to undertake with a toddler. 

The bible gives us no details of the family’s time here.  If we are going to do as Mason Locke Weems did, we would have Jesus chopping down a palm tree, rather than a cherry.  Which is kind of what we find in several non-biblical sources seeking to flesh out these years by drawing on a myriad of folktales.  The Coptic Church today stewards the different local traditions about the route the family takes around Cairo and the Nile River: 

s There is a site where it is said Jesus steps on rock and leaves on impression of his tiny foot, still visible even today. 

s Several locations lay claim to trees which provided shade for the family. 

s One village asserts when baby Jesus enters it the statues of idols tremble and fall to the ground. 

s Another village holds it is the place from which the family crosses the Nile in a boat.  Another states they live in their community for six months before moving on. 

s One time, the family encounters a peasant planting seeds.  He offers them a blessing before they continue on their way and the next day the planter discovers his seeds have grown into large, ripe watermelons.  Herod’s messengers soon learn of this and interrogate the peasant.  He describes the Holy Family but, to protect them, says they passed by months earlier.

s All told, 18 different locations are said to have a well which spring forth when the family visits them.

s Over the ensuring centuries, numerous churches and monasteries are founded at sites said to have been visited by the family.

s No other region lays claim to similar stories and traditions.

All of this suggests the Holy Family spends at least a few years in Egypt.  While there, most likely they seek anonymity, lay low, stay quiet, and rely on the help and support of others.  Surely young Jesus is aware of some, if not all, of this.  Such harrowing experiences during our early years tend to be sticky.  They remain with us for the rest of our lives and shape who we become, what we value, and how we act.   

In our current context, plenty has been said and written about what the refugee status of the Holy Family has to say to us in our day and time as countries all over the world wrestle with the impact immigration is having on their societies.  Let me say a few things about this.

First, borders in Jesus’ day are much more permeable for immigrants than in our time.  Individuals and peoples move about for a variety of reasons, personal safety being one.  Second, there is no indication the slaughter at Bethlehem triggers a mass exodus of people.  Those who do flee to Egypt are easily assimilated by extended family and/or Jewish communities.  In these two ways at least, the Holy Family’s solitary flight differs from the massive challenges we are encountering on our southern border.

Still, we learn from this story the value of every human being seeking asylum in one form of another.  You never know what a child given sanctuary can become.  In that our baptismal vows commit us to seeking and serving Christ in all people, we are called to discern our Lord’s presence in every refugee, especially children.  Each person deserves to be treated with the same dignity Joseph, Mary, and Jesus find in Egypt.  No one is to be reduced to being a part of a demonized herd.

While our challenges around this issue are complicated and immense, the flight of the Holy Family and the values we cherish call us to a faithful and godly response.  We live into this through our prayers, our attitudes, our conversations with others, our voice at the ballot box, our support of resettlement efforts throughout the Episcopal Church and the Anglican world, and, sometimes, through personal engagement and compassion.  Never forget, the very faith we celebrate here today has its roots in a person who began life as a refugee.

¹ Here is something of a timeline around Jesus’ early childhood based on some historical information, some speculation, and a healthy dose of folk lore:

·      Luke tells us Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem because a required census has been instituted at a time when Quirinius is governor of Syria.  Since his rule lasted only from 6BC to 4BC, scholars place the birth of Jesus during this time. 

·      Matthew reports when the Magi travel to Bethlehem they find the “child” and his mother in a “house”.  Apparently, some time has passed since the birth.  How much?  Well, based on Herod’s decree to slaughter all boy two years and younger, we can place Jesus the child within this age range.

·      Historical records seem to indicate Herod dies in 4BC and his son, Archelaus becomes governor.  He, in turn, is deposed by the Roman emperor in 6AD. 

·      All of this suggests Jesus may have been born in 5BC.  A year or so later, Herod issues his murderous order, forcing the Holy Family to flee to Egypt.  An undetermined amount of time passes before they return to Israel, but because the family decides not to resettle in Bethlehem while Archelaus rules over the region, it is before 6AD.   

Based on all of this, we expect Jesus lives in Egypt from the age of 2 (at the youngest) to the age of 9 (at the oldest), but all of this should be taken with a grain of salt (as if you read it on Wikipedia) because not all sources agree on all of the dates cited. 

Love, the Lord

 

"People, Look East": verse #5

The Eve of the Nativity / Year C

We have had a wonderful Advent season here at St. Paul’s.  It began with a contemplative service of Advent Lessons & Carols on the afternoon of December 1.  The following weekend we opened our church to be a part of the Historic Home Tour, which allowed hundreds of visitors to experience the beauty of our church and to learn a little bit of our story.  The third weekend in Advent found a few of us at Chanco on the James participating in a wonderful retreat on meditation practices led by our bishop, Susan Haynes.  This past Saturday we welcomed the Virginia Handbell Consort for its incredible annual Christmas program.  While the schedule has been full, it has been fulfilling in every sense of the word.

I will always remember Advent 2024 for our focus on the hymn People, Look East.  I love its melody, am captivated by its images, and am inspired by its message of hope.  After Love, the guest, the bird, the rose, and the star, tonight we are invited to contemplate Love, the Lord.

Angels, announce with shouts of mirth

  Christ who brings new life to earth.

Set every peak and valley humming

  with the word, the Lord is coming.

People, look east and sing today:

  Love, the Lord, is on the way.

Perhaps nothing is more remarkable than how our Lord comes to us as a child.  In fact, in my humble opinion, Love, the child is on the way is a perfect way to wrap up our Advent focus.

I remember so vividly the births of each of my daughters.  The very instant I held my first daughter for the very first time is was as if a lightning bolt from out of the blue struck me.  Without warning something I never anticipated happened.  A depth of love, of compassion, and of joy which I had never experienced before was born in me.  It remains one of the most miraculous moments of my entire life and the feelings it stirred endure to this day.  When my second daughter was born I experienced how this feeling could be broadened to another human being.  Love, the child, has a way of awakening something deep in our souls.  It lights a flame not present before… a flame which will never burn out.

I am not yet a grandparent, but I have learned from those of you who are, once you have a grandchild you become absolutely incapable of not showing pictures of the new arrival to everyone you know… especially your humble parish priest.  You who have foisted photo after photo upon me know how I have developed a sarcastic way of saying, “That is the most be-ute-if-ole baby EEEVVVEEERRR.”  And let me get this out of the way now, so I don’t have to say it to each of you individually after the service: “Your grandchild was definitely THE star of the nativity pageant!”

Actually, I am very happy for those of you who are grandparents and great grandparents.  You have come to experience one of the great blessings in life.  I note with awe how, especially with the birth of the first grandchild, you grandparents soon are given brand new names.  It happens when your grandchild begins to call you ‘Pop Pop’ or ‘Nana’ or ‘Grampsy’ or ‘Grammy.’  Up until you’re your grandchild’s birth no one ever called you by this name before.  But your grandchild has the power to claim you and to rename you – to give you a new identity – one which will last for the rest of your life. 

Tonight we celebrate because centuries ago Love, the Lord came to us first as a child and this child has the power to do what our grandchildren do.  This gift of Love awakes something deep within us.  Through the birth of Love, the Lord, we are reborn.  Something new, something almost unspeakable comes to life in us.  And this Love has the power to claim us, even to give us a new name.  However we were known before, however we thought of ourselves in the past, once Love, the Lord claims us we take on a new name, a new identity: ‘beloved.’

Tonight, as a we celebrate Love, the Lord coming into the world, we give thanks for what it births within us and for how it lays a claim on our hearts.  Tonight we no longer look East to find this Love, we look within and we look around… around at the faces of those who gather with us here tonight; whose bright eyes and warm smiles are radiant with the Love of the Lord.  Tonight, we joyfully sing, Love, the Lord, has come today.

Love, the Star

 

People, Look East: verse 4

Advent 4 / Year C

Since the dawn of time we humans have been looking up at the stars in the night sky with a sense of wonder, majesty, and awe.  Various early cultures all over the globe, from the Phoenicians to the Chinese to the Inca and more, observed the stars with such intensity they began to discern circular patterns and fixed constants.  Each civilization created star maps of varying accuracy, some able to predict eclipses, comets, and various other celestial events.  Ancient and mysterious structures, from the pyramids in Egypt to Stonehenge in England to Mayan temples, were sited to align with solar events like the solstice. 

For millennia, the movement of stars (which actually don’t move at all) served to guide daily life as well as religious beliefs.  From the night sky people determined the most optimal time to plant and to harvest.  In the multiple constellations human beings deduced mythological figures and celestial gods whose reach affected affairs here on earth.  Given star maps represented a synthesis of science, agriculture, and spirituality, each culture imbued these works with the highest level of artistic expression available to its age and setting.

The Romans were among the first to produce cartography which, using stars, allowed navigators to determine their location and thus were able to chart a course with impressive precision.  This understanding opened new sea routes, expanded trade, and facilitated military expeditions.  In our hemisphere, latitude was easily determined by the position of the North Star.  Longitude was a more vexing challenge not completely resolved until John Harrison developed a chronometer 1761, which told time at sea, vastly simplifying complex calculations. 

Perhaps you are aware the Naval Academy required celestial navigation (one of its most demanding courses) to be taught until 1998 when it was removed from the required curriculum.  Citing concerns about the potential for the GPS system to go down or be hacked, it was reinstated in 2015.  Beyond midshipmen, it is worth noting several species of animals, birds, and fish, mysteriously utilize the stars to direct migrational behavior. 

Today’s verse from People, Look East, which we sang moments ago, focuses our attention on a star:

Stars, keep the watch.

  When night is dim

  one more light the bowl shall brim,

Shining beyond the frosty weather,

  bright as sun and moon together.

People, look east and sing today:

  Love, the star, is on the way. 

The hymn uses a star as a metaphor for God’s love which, like a fixed star, will point the way for us to travel through life.  Love, the star is an unchanging value and virtue from which we can orient and navigate no matter what conditions and challenges we face.  Are you familiar with carol Star of Hope?  Set to a deeply soulful tune, these are its lyrics:

Star of hope, star of love

   shine down from afar.

You’re the one guiding light

   no matter where we are.

Through the valley of tears

   through the long, dreary years

   you’re the star up there, star of hope.

From heaven above

   let each beam guide our dream

   leading to hope and love.

A deep and abiding sense of hope is not just an option for the tool belt we use to draw on through life.  It is absolutely essential for our very well-being.  Social theorists tell us how we think directly influences how we feel, and how we feel directly influences how our body reacts, and how our body reacts directly influences how we behave, and how we behave comes to define who we are and how we experience life.  So, what we think is the bedrock on which everything else is built. 

If your core belief is set upon hope you will engage the world in a way very different than, say, someone whose center is dominated by fear, or by cynicism, or by a paradigm of reward and punishment.  To draw on the language of today’s hymn, we all need to choose a star to use as the object on which we orient our lives.  People, Look East proclaims a new star is on the way and it will shine brighter than every other object vying for our attention.

One final thought, most of us come to the star of Love through the witness of another person who lives it out for us to see.  We call this person a role model.  When we are young we may adopt the look and language of an athlete or a celebrity, but the people closest to us have the most enduring influence on us.  It may be a member of our family or a teacher or a coach, whoever the role model may be, this person shapes us in the moment and becomes a lasting influence on us throughout our lives.  Our role models do more than teach through their words and deeds, we sense they care about us because they listen to us and are genuinely empathetic.  And while they may correct us, we know they respect us.  We observe everything about them in the same way we observe the location and movement of an orienting star.  Their Christ-like life shapes and guides us. 

God-willing, somehow, someway, in time, as we get older we will be a guiding star for someone else.  So people, look east because love, the star is on the way.

Love, the Rose

 

People, Look East: verse 2

Advent 3 / Year C

We continue this morning to reflect on the lyrics of our Advent hymn, People, Look East.  I have yet to give you any background on its author, Eleanor Farjeon.  Born in England in 1881, she is the only girl in a family with three brothers.  Given to ill health and poor eyesight, she is educated at home and spends considerable time surrounded by books and reading.  Much of her play constitutes imaginative games and storytelling with her brothers.  Nellie, as she is known, grows up to be a prominent writer of children’s literature, but is in no means limited just to this genre. 

Her most widely published work is the hymn Morning has Broken, penned in 1931.  She publishes People, Look East three years earlier, in 1928.  Her imagination shines brightly in each.  In Morning has Broken she links a gloriously sublime sunrise in the English countryside with her imagined dawning of the first day ever in the Garden of Eden.  In our Advent hymn she sees in common objects and occurrences metaphors for a life rooted in the hope the God of love is breaking into our world in fresh, new ways.

Today, Nellie invites us to muse on Love, the Rose:

Furrows, be glad.

  Though earth is bare,

  one more seed is planted there:

Give up your strength the seed to nourish,

  that in course the flower may flourish.

People, look east and sing today:

  Love, the rose, is on the way.

I have a vivid memory from our first pilgrimage in Spain walking a portion of the Camino.  It was mid-October and we were on a dirt path making a gradual climb while circling around a football field size pasture.  Looking down, I saw a farmer who was planting something, but I could not tell what it was.  What I remember about the field was its furrows.  There was easily a four-foot difference from the bottom of the trench where the earth had been cut open to top of the brow it made.  Now, I am no expert at farming, but most of the furrows I have seen have only been about a foot tall or so.  This was something completely different and to this day I wish I had made my way down to ask farmer what he was planting and why the furrows needed to be constructed so.

In previous verses of the hymn, we have been cast as a host and a bird.  Today we are a furrow; cleaved soil ready to receive a gift… a heavenly seed that will grow and flourish because we nurture it in our lives.  And what is this seed?  Love, the rose.

Roses grow best in a specific kind of soil: 1/3 clay, 1/3 coarse sand, and 1/3 decomposed organic material.  This combination provides the right mixture for stability, drainage, and nutrients.  If we are the soil in which God plants the seed of love, we might want to ponder what goes into making us most hospitable for it to grow.  I suggest it is a mixture of tending to our spiritual life, our emotional life, our psychological life, our physical life, and our relational life.  The right balance of these things will make us a fertile place for God’s love to thrive.

Spiritual, emotional, psychological, physical, and relational… what are you doing to tend to each?  Is there an aspect where you are over-focused?  Might there be a place where your attention is lacking?  Bishop Susan led a wonderful retreat on Friday evening and Saturday introducing us to various spiritual disciplines: Lectio Divina (a way of reading and meditating on Scripture), centering prayer, prayer beads, and walking a labyrinth.  She not only taught us about each but provided us with the opportunity to practice them. 

Bishop Susan began our time together by sharing a quote from Thomas Merton:

In a world of noise, confusion and conflict, it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace.  In such places, love can blossom.

Again, what do you need to do to make the soil of your life a place where God’s love can bloom and abound?

One more thought about furrowing.  I’m sure if the packed earth had the opportunity to weigh in it would opt to be left alone, not to be subjected to the excruciating process of being cleaved open.  Much better to remain a plot of dirt best suited for weeds and scrubs to grow than to go through the painful process of furrowing.  While we all wish our life was (as they say) a rose garden, there is something about the experience of being turned over which makes us better suited for God’s love to break through. 

I suspect Nellie wanted us to play with the idea roses are beautiful in appearance and scent and how they come in a variety of colors, each one taking on a specific meaning: red representing love, yellow friendship, white peace, and peach sympathy to name a few.  Perhaps Farjeon meant to remind us God’s love manifests itself in and through each of us in a distinctive way.  God’s love blooms in us in a way it can bloom in no one else.  Because you are uniquely made, you manifest Love, the rose, a way unique to you. 

Tend to your soil that is you and let God’s love thrive in all you say and do.

Love, the Bird

 

People, Look East - verse #3

Advent 2 / Year C

We continue our Advent reflections by looking at the verse we sang at this morning’s wreath lighting from the hymn People, Look East:

Birds, though you long have ceased to build,

  guard the nest that must be filled.

Even the hour when wings are frozen

  God for fledging time has chosen.

People, look east and sing today:

  Love, the bird, is on the way.

Its message is addressed to birds, but meant for us and there is a lot here to unpack if we are to get close to understanding its meaning and the hope it proclaims. 

Did you know there are over 10,000 specious of birds?  And did you realize 96 million Americans observed, fed, and/or photographed a bird the past year alone?  One of this Christmas’s hottest gifts is a birdfeeder with a doorbell camera mounted inside.  An app on your phone alerts you whenever a bird (or squirrel) appears to eat.  Because many birds are regulars, some folks even have taken to giving them names.  Jesus saw birds as being instructive and he told several parables which featured them… “Consider the birds of the air…”, he said.  So, birds are both a popular and biblical subject to ponder.

Birds, though you long have ceased to build,

  guard the nest that must be filled.

There are four basic tasks for birds to complete when building a nest.  The first is site selection and it is for birds all about what realtors say it should be for us: “Location!  Location!  Location!  While bird species choose different locations and styles for their nests, each is located and designed to create shelter from the elements and maximum protection from predators. 

The second phase involves the gathering of building materials.  Birds utilize twigs, grass, mud and other items chosen for specific attributes.  The closer at hand these basic resources, the easier and safer it is for a bird to collect them.

Next comes construction and this is where the real craftsmanship begins.  Birds weave, pack, smooth, and shape what they have assembled to form a strong, impressive structure.  Again, sizes, shapes, and locations vary, but each nest is a testament to ingenuity and skill.

The final stage involves “feathering the nest” with such materials as feathers, moss, and animal fir to make the interior warm and comfortable.  It helps the structure to be a suitable place to lay eggs, incubate them, and raise as hatchlings.    

Even the hour when wings are frozen

  God for fledging time has chosen.

Eventually birds must shift their attention from construction to reproduction.  The hymn has this process unfolding during the winter season, which is when a few birds such as the great-horned owl and bald eagles lay eggs.  However, most begin a family during the warmer months and seasons.  I take the line “the hour when wings are frozen” to be an allusion to the time of year the Christ child is born… in the bleak midwinter.

Not only is the verse set in winter, it comes after eggs have hatched, but fledglings are not yet able to leave the nest.  Their every need, from food to warmth to security, must be provided by their mother and/or father.  Their very survival depends on it.  To be sure, it is an awesome and weighty responsibility for the parents.  All the work which goes into building the nest is for not if the brood does not reach a point where its members can take flight.

What does all of this say to us?  Like the birds, we too are driven to create, to secure, to produce something of use, all the while giving birth to a new generation and caring for it intensely.  This work gives our lives meaning.  In many ways it defines who we are.  It can be incredibly satisfying while at the same time feel overwhelming.  It will push us to and beyond our limits.  It will force us to acknowledge our own limitations.  And it will reveal to us something more than what we add to this thing called life is at work in and through us.

People, look east and sing today:

  Love, the bird, is on the way.

What is at work in all we do is a love from beyond.  We do not have to look to the literal east to see it, but we do have to look.  Our awareness of the Holy most often is fleeting and defies words.  And yet we sense God’s love enveloping us and transforming our nest building and child rearing into something more than we can do on our own. 

Love, the bird reminds us how God’s love and life became incarnate as one of us.  We live as people of hope trusting this Love will be manifest in us through all we say and do; that our life’s work is more than an instinctual response to ancient patterns now manifested only through some chemical process directed by genetic material.  Our faith holds all we do is mysteriously and gloriously connected to the Creator of heaven and earth.  The season of Advent reminds us of the necessity to look ‘East’ – to God –while we are engaged in all the work we are given to do. 

Along with hope, it calls us to humility because, as a young sceptic might put it, “You are not all that.”  Yes, we work hard.  Yes, we seek to put forward our best effort.  But even with all of this… all we can do… we sense it is not enough.  Something more must be added; what Jesus referred to as adding yeast to the flour of our lives.  In this stanza of People, look East, we name yeast as “Love, the bird.”  It reminds us God’s power and presence is at work in our world and infuses something marvelous into everything we do.   

Love, the Guest

 

People, Look East - vs. #1

Advent 1 / Year C

I have decided this Advent to do something I have never done before.  The focus of my next few sermons won’t be on the lectionary readings, but rather the five verses of the hymn People, Look East, on which our Advent wreath lighting liturgy is based.  This hymn features evocative images and a catchy tune (once you become familiar with it). 

Each year’s Advent readings follow a particular thematic pattern:

Advent 1:  The final judgement.

Advent 2 & 3:  The appearance of John the Baptist and his message.

Advent 4: The angel Gabriel’s announcement and Mary’s response.

After all the years of musing on these readings, I am ready to take on something new and fresh.  Que the music for People, Look East!

Let’s begin with this: why look East?  The idea of East holds special metaphorical significance for most cultures around the world primarily because it is the direction from which the sun rises.  If you have ever driven overnight, you have experienced the anticipation and felt the longing for the first hint of dawn in the eastern sky.  Many religious traditions, including Christianity, experience sunset as being a kind of dying.  Sunrise is associated with resurrection, new life, birth, and optimism for the day to come.  These are a couple of reasons to look toward a metaphorical East. 

Another reason to cast our gaze to the East is because it holds deep meaning in the bible.  The Garden of Eden is built in the eastern part of the land of Eden.  When Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise God sends them west.  After Cain murders his brother, he is banished even further west.  Those exiled in Babylon return to Jerusalem from the east.  To look to the East is to yearn to return to a place of original bliss, to seek the restoration of life as God intends it to be.

In Matthew 24:27 Jesus says, “Just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”  It is something of an odd statement because lightning travels up and down and the weather in Israel generally moves from west to east.  Perhaps Jesus is saying when you see something completely unexpected, get ready to receive me.

And being prepared to receive Jesus is a good way to approach the first verse of the hymn:

People, look East.

  The time is near of the crowning of the year.

Make your house fair as you are able,

  trim the hearth and set the table.

People, look east and sing today:

  Love, the guest, is on the way.

If you hosted family and friends for Thanksgiving you know all about making your house fair, trimming the hearth, and setting the table.  Hopefully these tasks built a sense of anticipation and excitement for the arrival of those you invited and did not generate a sense of dread, regret, or being overwhelmed.     

As the hymn describes, we are now near the time of the crowing of the year – the birth of Christ.  This event compels us to be ready because love is about to break into our lives in a fresh and refreshing new way.  This is not to say love is only a visitor who appears for a few days and then is gone.  Rather, it draws on the reality guests have a way of bringing something new into our daily orbit.  And it is not to say Love the guest only comes at Christmas.  God’s love visits us over and over during the course of the year and throughout the arc of our life’s journey. 

In biblical times a guest brings news from beyond the local community, offers new insights and perspectives, and opens our hearts receive something from beyond ourselves.  Just as Abraham learns when he welcomes three visitors into his home and showers them with hospitality, our guests have a way of being God’s agents.  We experience the Holy One at work in and through them.

The gospels portray Jesus as being the host of a meal only once or twice: when he stands on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and cooks breakfast for the disciples to eat after they spend the night fishing and, most notably at the meal he shares with his followers on the night before he is arrested; what we refer to as the Last Supper.  Every other time Jesus is a guest at a meal rather than the host.  In addition, there is no biblical record of Jesus receiving anyone into his own home.

Here is the remarkable thing about Jesus, the guest.  Every time he has a meal in a person’s home or enters it for one reason or another, either something happens which elicits one of Jesus’ significant teachings, or something unfolds which dramatically changes the course of the host’s life.  Think of when Jesus attends the wedding at Cana, goes to the home of Mary and Martha, and has lunch with Zaccheaus.  He sits at table in the home of a Pharisee as well as a Roman soldier.  And several of his most significant healings take place in the home of an afflicted person.

“Jesus, the guest, is on the way.”  This image casts us as hosts.  Whenever we welcome a person into our home, our life, or our church – especially if the person is a stranger – we may just be welcoming Jesus into our midst.  And when we do this, we know something wonderful, something amazing, something transformative is about to happen.  This is also a time for us to invite Love, the guest, to enter into our own hearts and lives; to remember the same Jesus who sat at table and changed lives desires to enter into your soul and reign in your life.

People, look East, Christ, the guest is on the way.