The story of Jesus’ life unfolds with amazing swiftness. In just a little over two weeks we have covered almost all that we know of His first thirty years. You know as well as I the stories:
* Jesus is born in Bethlehem in a stable and visited by shepherds.
* Eight days later Mary and Joseph take their baby to Jerusalem to present Him in the Temple. There they are met by Anna and Simeon.
* Back at Bethlehem some time later the family is visited by magi from the east who present Jesus with gold (a gift befitting a king), incense (a gift befitting God), and myrrh (a burial ointment).
* Being warned in a dream of danger, Joseph takes his family to Egypt.
* Being told in a dream that it is safe to return, Joseph brings his family back to Israel and settles in Nazareth where he establishes himself as a carpenter.
* Before Jesus turns twelve, the family goes on a pilgrimage to the Temple where Jesus amazes the learned scholars with His knowledge and insight.
That is it. That is all we know about Jesus prior to this morning’s reading from the Gospel. Based on what we know about Jesus after His baptism, we can conclude that while growing up He learned how to read (but we have no evidence that He could write), He was known throughout His community and attended Synagogue, He developed a theology about God’s nature and person, He developed a life of prayer, and He developed a keen interest in how everyday occurrences point to deeper spiritual truths.
All of this that we know still is not much. And yet whatever happened during those years it was enough for God the Father to say of Jesus as He stood knee deep in the Jordan River, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
The English writer Evelyn Underhill, in her book The Light of Christ, helps us to understand the significance of this:
New life grows in secret. Nothing very startling happens. We see the child in the carpenter’s workshop. He does not go outside the frontiers from in which he appeared. It did quite well for him... The child Jesus grows as other children, the lad works as other lads. Total abandonment to the vast divine purpose working at its own pace in and through ordinary life and often, to us, in mysterious ways…
Think of the baby in the stable and the little boy in the streets of Nazareth. The very life was there which was to change the whole of history of the human race. There was not much to show for it. But there is entire continuity between the stable and the Easter garden and the thread that unites them is the will of God. The childlike simple prayer of Nazareth was the right preparation for the awful privilege of the cross.
And then Evelyn Underhill points to what this means for us:
We often feel we ought to get on quickly to a new stage like spiritual mayflies. Christ takes thirty years to grow and two and half to act... And when his growth reached the right stage, there is the revelation of God’s call and after it, stress, discipline, and choice. Those things came together as signs of maturity and they were not spectacular things. It is much the same with us in our life of prayer: the Spirit fills us as we grow, develop, and make room.
We get notions sometimes that we ought to spring up quickly like a seed on stony ground, we ought to show some startling sign of spiritual growth. But perhaps we are only asked to go on quietly, to be like a child, a nice stocky seedling, not shooting up in a hurry, but making root, being docile to the great slow rhythm of life. When you don’t see any startling marks of your own religious condition or your usefulness to God, [think of how Jesus grew and know that] the light of the Spirit…unfolds gently and steadily within us, till at last our final stature, all God designed for us, is attained.
On this day when we see the adult Jesus take His place on the stage of life we remember the slow, steady rhythm of faithful living that prepared Him. And thinking of this we offer our days to God; our days of monotonous routine and never-ending chores; our days of casual interactions and insignificant courtesies; our days of rote prayers and intermittent insights… through it all God has a way on working in us, with us, and through us.
When Jesus stepped into the Jordan River the only thing on His résumé of note was that He had dedicated himself to the task of faithful living. And this, apparently, was enough for God to be pleased with Him and it was enough to prepare Him for what God wanted Him to do. From this I take it that God is pleased with us when we too are dedicated to the simple task of faithful living and that we too are being prepared for all that God might call us to do.
Perhaps you look at the quietness of your life and realize that your time to act, to make your mark, is yet to come. If that is you, then be faithful in the ordinary things of today and you will be well-prepared when that moment arrives. Or perhaps you look at the quietness of your life and realize that your time to act is past. You have made your mark, you have done your part. If this is you then know that there is always a new opportunity on the horizon; some way that you can contribute to common good.
Or perhaps your life is anything but quiet because you have stepped out of the river and are now about the business of your life’s purpose; working hard, raising children, building a life. If this is where you are then do this: do not forget all that you learned when life was simple. Remember all those things that went into making you who you are today. Surely the baptized Jesus carried with Him much of what He experienced as a boy, and a teenager, and as a young adult. So if you are in the midst of making your mark, do not forget the value of friendships and time alone. Remember that chores need to be balanced with hobbies; assignments with adventures. Remember how your faith sprung up from a sense of mystery, wonder, and simple trust.
And may each one of us, when our feet are immersed in the waters of life hear the voice of God saying, “You are my child and with you I am well-pleased.”
Monday, January 10, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Melted Snow & God's Light
Did you enjoy all the snow last weekend? For me it brought back memories of growing up in Northeast Ohio. As a teenage boy there were not many opportunities to make money, but when it snowed, well, those frozen water flakes falling from the sky might as well have been dollar bills. Even today I don’t mind shoveling snow because it brings back memories of fun and profitable times with friends.
Let me articulate St. Paul’s snow policy for Sunday mornings, or any weekday meeting or event. If it is snowing and you don’t feel comfortable driving, stay home. If you are scheduled to do something for the service on a snowy day, do not fret… we will work around you. Snow Sundays are “Plan B” events. And, if no one shows up, as was the case last Sunday, well… I’ll just walk back home, crawl into my warm bed, and take a rare Sunday morning nap.
Christmas and snow go well together, don’t they! Beyond all the sentimentality we associate with a white Christmas, this year I realized there is a metaphorical connection between the two. Twelve inches of snow has a way of covering the world with a pristine veneer of white. It transforms every aspect of our environment. Did you notice how many people posted pictures of their house or deck or tree in their yard? We were spellbound by the sight of what had always been there, and still was there, but now was different because of what was on top of it.
Christmas has a similar affect. We still have the same family and the same friends and the same home and the same challenges, but there is something about the message of God’s love made know in the birth of a child that brings hope for peace on earth. It is a message that resonates because it lays over everything in our lives and makes it different…
…for a while. But just as snow melts away revealing all the dirt and grim that it covered, so too Christmas cheer has a way of waning and we find again that we are back in the difficulties and grind of life. It may seem like it should not be this way, but you may be surprised to learn of one organization who encourages this very pattern – the Church.
We who follow the liturgical year, observe the feasts and fasts of the church, and read from the lectionary are led quickly from the joy of the Incarnation to the challenge of life. On December 26 we remember St. Stephen, deacon and first martyr in the Church. On December 27 we remember St. John, the only Apostle not to be martyred, but rather lived out his life in exile on the Island of Patmos. On December 28 we remember the Holy Innocents, those children of the Bethlehem region slaughtered by Herod’s decree. On December 29 we remember Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in his own cathedral by Henry II's hentchmen. And today we read of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt for safety. God’s child is born into the world and immediately becomes a refugee on the run from political persecution and tyranny.
It is a dark and vivid reminder of what John says in the prologue of his gospel:
In Him was life, and the life was the light for all people… The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world knew Him not. He came to His own home, and His own people received Him not.
The Church reminds us what Scripture tells us; that Christmas is not some sappy, mushy, toothless message about “goodwill,” but God’s unflinching desire to engage the world’s darkness with divine, unceasing, holy light and love. And that engagement begins with each one of us individually. As the church year unfolds we will be led on a path which will help us better know the light of Christ; a light which will shine on the darkness of our own sin and shortcomings. We will be called time and again to repent and to amend our lives.
Last Wednesday’s poem on the Writer’s Almanac was titled A Short Testament by Anne Porter. It is a wonderful articulation of someone trying to move from the darkness into the light. Listen and see if it gives words to a prayer deep within your heart:
Whatever harm I may have done
in all my life in all your wide creation
if I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,
And then there are all the wounded
the poor the deaf the lonely and the old
whom I have roughly dismissed
as if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
and cannot make amends
I ask you
to comfort them to overflowing,
and where there are lives I may have withered round me,
or lives of strangers far or near
that I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
and if I cannot find them
or have no way to serve them,
remember them. I beg you to remember them
when winter is over
and all your unimaginable promises
burst into song on death’s bare branches.
The light of Christ exposes the darkness of the world and it reveals the darkness in our own lives. But to those who are open to it, the light of Christ also brings insight, healing, wisdom, and new life. John wrote about this when he said,
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… So to all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God.
Christmas begins a great journey in our spiritual lives. It begins when we allow the light to shine in the darkness. As we receive that light and are transformed by it, we become God’s children. As I said in my Christmas Eve sermon, even more that children we become heirs, and even more than heirs, God’s ambassadors; godly and goodly people whose every thought, our every word, and every deed are done in service to the One we represent.
And what does this mean for our parish? If you and I are God’s ambassadors, then St. Paul’s is not merely “our” church. It is God’s embassy in Suffolk. It is the place from which God’s light shines in the world. It is a place from which we call people to become God’s children. It is the place where we help them to live into the blessedness of being heirs. And it is the place where we train and equip people to be God’s ambassadors with us.
On this first Sunday of the new calendar year I look forward to the adventure on which we continue together; an adventure to live more fully, more completely, and more authentically as God’s light in this dark word; as God’ ambassadors in this land which does not yet know its Sovereign. But we know the Sovereign and are committed to knowing our Sovereign fully and to representing our Sovereign with fidelity.
Let me articulate St. Paul’s snow policy for Sunday mornings, or any weekday meeting or event. If it is snowing and you don’t feel comfortable driving, stay home. If you are scheduled to do something for the service on a snowy day, do not fret… we will work around you. Snow Sundays are “Plan B” events. And, if no one shows up, as was the case last Sunday, well… I’ll just walk back home, crawl into my warm bed, and take a rare Sunday morning nap.
Christmas and snow go well together, don’t they! Beyond all the sentimentality we associate with a white Christmas, this year I realized there is a metaphorical connection between the two. Twelve inches of snow has a way of covering the world with a pristine veneer of white. It transforms every aspect of our environment. Did you notice how many people posted pictures of their house or deck or tree in their yard? We were spellbound by the sight of what had always been there, and still was there, but now was different because of what was on top of it.
Christmas has a similar affect. We still have the same family and the same friends and the same home and the same challenges, but there is something about the message of God’s love made know in the birth of a child that brings hope for peace on earth. It is a message that resonates because it lays over everything in our lives and makes it different…
…for a while. But just as snow melts away revealing all the dirt and grim that it covered, so too Christmas cheer has a way of waning and we find again that we are back in the difficulties and grind of life. It may seem like it should not be this way, but you may be surprised to learn of one organization who encourages this very pattern – the Church.
We who follow the liturgical year, observe the feasts and fasts of the church, and read from the lectionary are led quickly from the joy of the Incarnation to the challenge of life. On December 26 we remember St. Stephen, deacon and first martyr in the Church. On December 27 we remember St. John, the only Apostle not to be martyred, but rather lived out his life in exile on the Island of Patmos. On December 28 we remember the Holy Innocents, those children of the Bethlehem region slaughtered by Herod’s decree. On December 29 we remember Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered in his own cathedral by Henry II's hentchmen. And today we read of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt for safety. God’s child is born into the world and immediately becomes a refugee on the run from political persecution and tyranny.
It is a dark and vivid reminder of what John says in the prologue of his gospel:
In Him was life, and the life was the light for all people… The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world knew Him not. He came to His own home, and His own people received Him not.
The Church reminds us what Scripture tells us; that Christmas is not some sappy, mushy, toothless message about “goodwill,” but God’s unflinching desire to engage the world’s darkness with divine, unceasing, holy light and love. And that engagement begins with each one of us individually. As the church year unfolds we will be led on a path which will help us better know the light of Christ; a light which will shine on the darkness of our own sin and shortcomings. We will be called time and again to repent and to amend our lives.
Last Wednesday’s poem on the Writer’s Almanac was titled A Short Testament by Anne Porter. It is a wonderful articulation of someone trying to move from the darkness into the light. Listen and see if it gives words to a prayer deep within your heart:
Whatever harm I may have done
in all my life in all your wide creation
if I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,
And then there are all the wounded
the poor the deaf the lonely and the old
whom I have roughly dismissed
as if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
and cannot make amends
I ask you
to comfort them to overflowing,
and where there are lives I may have withered round me,
or lives of strangers far or near
that I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
and if I cannot find them
or have no way to serve them,
remember them. I beg you to remember them
when winter is over
and all your unimaginable promises
burst into song on death’s bare branches.
The light of Christ exposes the darkness of the world and it reveals the darkness in our own lives. But to those who are open to it, the light of Christ also brings insight, healing, wisdom, and new life. John wrote about this when he said,
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… So to all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God.
Christmas begins a great journey in our spiritual lives. It begins when we allow the light to shine in the darkness. As we receive that light and are transformed by it, we become God’s children. As I said in my Christmas Eve sermon, even more that children we become heirs, and even more than heirs, God’s ambassadors; godly and goodly people whose every thought, our every word, and every deed are done in service to the One we represent.
And what does this mean for our parish? If you and I are God’s ambassadors, then St. Paul’s is not merely “our” church. It is God’s embassy in Suffolk. It is the place from which God’s light shines in the world. It is a place from which we call people to become God’s children. It is the place where we help them to live into the blessedness of being heirs. And it is the place where we train and equip people to be God’s ambassadors with us.
On this first Sunday of the new calendar year I look forward to the adventure on which we continue together; an adventure to live more fully, more completely, and more authentically as God’s light in this dark word; as God’ ambassadors in this land which does not yet know its Sovereign. But we know the Sovereign and are committed to knowing our Sovereign fully and to representing our Sovereign with fidelity.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
"I Wish You were my Child" - Christmas Eve
Let me say at the outset how happy I am to be here tonight and to serve as the Rector of St. Paul’s Church. Last Sunday I became even more aware of how blessed I am when the Lay Reader accidently prayed for “Keith, our bishop.” That faux pas led several people to ask me if I have a desire to be a bishop some day. The answer, for reasons not interesting enough to go into, is no. But even more than bishop, I do not want to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams, who now serves in that capacity, has to find ways to hold together the Anglican Communion, which wants to fray and fragment over a multitude of issues. He has critics on every side. In fact, one wag has gone so far as to name her dog after him. She posts on facebook comments such as “I am having a hard time house training Rowan” and “Rowan was misbehaving, so I put him in his cage.” Well, much of that comes with the job and none of it appeals to me.
But here is the single most significant reason I would not want to be Archbishop: he is charged with presiding at royal weddings. Can you imagine the pressure? The Archbishop who married Charles and Diana reversed two of Charles’ many middle names and never lived down the mistake. Betting odds soon will be posted on the likelihood of Rowan Williams making a error during the April wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. I don’t want to hold a position in the church where an entire nation wagers on my performance.
Royal weddings are rare events these days, yet there is something in them that helps us better understand the language of our Christian heritage, much of which is rooted in royal imagery. When Kate marries Will her life will change dramatically. Until now she has been a commoner, but that will come to an end when she marries and is given a yet-to-be determined title; a title which will confer on her certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities.
The Judeo/Christian tradition has used many metaphors to describe God, one of which is King. St. Paul held that all who are in Christ are adopted into God’s family and made fellow heirs with Christ. So, for you ladies, if your heart swoons at the notion of being in Kate’s shoes, consider what it means to be adopted into God’s royal family. We are showered in God’s riches. We receive grace upon grace. Our past mistakes are washed away and we receive the comfort and assurance of God’s Holy Spirit. And, we are given an inheritance of eternal life. Paul’s writes that if we are a part of God’s royal family then we are God’s ambassadors; people who understand that our every act, our every deed, and our every word is no longer a personal statement, but reflective of our God and King and done in service to Him.
Do you see yourself in this way? Do you think of yourself as being a royal ambassador for Christ? I suppose there are three reasons why a person may not. First, you may never have thought about it. You may never have taken the time to work through who you are and who God is and what it all means. Second, you may have thought about it and decided that you would rather live life on your own terms. You don’t think of yourself as representing Christ, but rather as representing yourself, and that for you is good enough. Or third, you have thought about what God offers to you and have come to believe that for one reason or another you are not worthy to receive it. You think you are just not good enough as you are right now, or maybe have done something in your past that you believe turned God away from you.
Perhaps you see yourself in one of those three characterizations, or perhaps you would describe yourself in another way. Wherever you find yourself, I want to invite you to listen to this brief passage from Mary Ann Bird’s autobiography, The Whisper Test:
I grew up knowing that I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate; and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to them: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided feet, and garbled speech. When my schoolmates would ask, “What happened to your lip?” I would tell them I had fallen and cut it upon a piece of glass.
I believed that no one could really love me.
There was, however, a teacher in the second whom we adored. Mrs. Leonard was her name. She was short, dumpy, round, and a sparkling woman. Annually we would have a hearing test. Now, I was deaf in one ear; but when I took the test I discovered that if I did not press my hand tightly on my good ear, as I was supposed to, I could pass the test. Every year, the teacher, sitting solemnly at her desk, would whisper something and we would repeat it. That was the test. In past years they would say something like “The sky is blue” or “You have new shoes.” But not Mrs. Leonard. When she gave the test to me she whispered something which God must have put into her mouth; seven words which changed my life. Mrs. Leonard whispered, “I wish you were my little girl.”
On this night that we celebrate God’s gift of God’s very self to the world, if you cover one ear and listen carefully you will hear God whisper, “I wish you were my little girl/my little boy.” If you have never taken the time to consider who you are in relation to who God is, God whispers “I want to confer on you the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of being a member of my royal family.” If you have thought about it, but turned away, God whispers to you, “I want to deliver you from the tyranny of living for self alone, and help you discover a new life grounded in me, the Creator and Author of all that is.” And if you have come to believe yourself unlovely and unlovable, God whispers, “I love you so much just the way you are and I want you – especially you – to be my ambassador.”
We say that this night is a holy night, and we are right to do so. But this night can also be a wedding night or – to shift the metaphor slightly – the night when you become adopted into God’s royal family. Perhaps you are not quite ready for that. Maybe tonight should be more like an engagement. But at the very least let tonight be for you the beginning of a courtship where you come to explore God’s love for you and all the implications that it holds. On this night when we gaze on the Child of God born in a manger, we hear the ever-so-faint words, “I wish you were my child too.”
But here is the single most significant reason I would not want to be Archbishop: he is charged with presiding at royal weddings. Can you imagine the pressure? The Archbishop who married Charles and Diana reversed two of Charles’ many middle names and never lived down the mistake. Betting odds soon will be posted on the likelihood of Rowan Williams making a error during the April wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. I don’t want to hold a position in the church where an entire nation wagers on my performance.
Royal weddings are rare events these days, yet there is something in them that helps us better understand the language of our Christian heritage, much of which is rooted in royal imagery. When Kate marries Will her life will change dramatically. Until now she has been a commoner, but that will come to an end when she marries and is given a yet-to-be determined title; a title which will confer on her certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities.
The Judeo/Christian tradition has used many metaphors to describe God, one of which is King. St. Paul held that all who are in Christ are adopted into God’s family and made fellow heirs with Christ. So, for you ladies, if your heart swoons at the notion of being in Kate’s shoes, consider what it means to be adopted into God’s royal family. We are showered in God’s riches. We receive grace upon grace. Our past mistakes are washed away and we receive the comfort and assurance of God’s Holy Spirit. And, we are given an inheritance of eternal life. Paul’s writes that if we are a part of God’s royal family then we are God’s ambassadors; people who understand that our every act, our every deed, and our every word is no longer a personal statement, but reflective of our God and King and done in service to Him.
Do you see yourself in this way? Do you think of yourself as being a royal ambassador for Christ? I suppose there are three reasons why a person may not. First, you may never have thought about it. You may never have taken the time to work through who you are and who God is and what it all means. Second, you may have thought about it and decided that you would rather live life on your own terms. You don’t think of yourself as representing Christ, but rather as representing yourself, and that for you is good enough. Or third, you have thought about what God offers to you and have come to believe that for one reason or another you are not worthy to receive it. You think you are just not good enough as you are right now, or maybe have done something in your past that you believe turned God away from you.
Perhaps you see yourself in one of those three characterizations, or perhaps you would describe yourself in another way. Wherever you find yourself, I want to invite you to listen to this brief passage from Mary Ann Bird’s autobiography, The Whisper Test:
I grew up knowing that I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate; and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to them: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided feet, and garbled speech. When my schoolmates would ask, “What happened to your lip?” I would tell them I had fallen and cut it upon a piece of glass.
I believed that no one could really love me.
There was, however, a teacher in the second whom we adored. Mrs. Leonard was her name. She was short, dumpy, round, and a sparkling woman. Annually we would have a hearing test. Now, I was deaf in one ear; but when I took the test I discovered that if I did not press my hand tightly on my good ear, as I was supposed to, I could pass the test. Every year, the teacher, sitting solemnly at her desk, would whisper something and we would repeat it. That was the test. In past years they would say something like “The sky is blue” or “You have new shoes.” But not Mrs. Leonard. When she gave the test to me she whispered something which God must have put into her mouth; seven words which changed my life. Mrs. Leonard whispered, “I wish you were my little girl.”
On this night that we celebrate God’s gift of God’s very self to the world, if you cover one ear and listen carefully you will hear God whisper, “I wish you were my little girl/my little boy.” If you have never taken the time to consider who you are in relation to who God is, God whispers “I want to confer on you the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of being a member of my royal family.” If you have thought about it, but turned away, God whispers to you, “I want to deliver you from the tyranny of living for self alone, and help you discover a new life grounded in me, the Creator and Author of all that is.” And if you have come to believe yourself unlovely and unlovable, God whispers, “I love you so much just the way you are and I want you – especially you – to be my ambassador.”
We say that this night is a holy night, and we are right to do so. But this night can also be a wedding night or – to shift the metaphor slightly – the night when you become adopted into God’s royal family. Perhaps you are not quite ready for that. Maybe tonight should be more like an engagement. But at the very least let tonight be for you the beginning of a courtship where you come to explore God’s love for you and all the implications that it holds. On this night when we gaze on the Child of God born in a manger, we hear the ever-so-faint words, “I wish you were my child too.”
Monday, December 20, 2010
Emmanuel: The Fourth Sunday of Advent
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
On this Fourth Sunday of Advent we focus on the final antiphon in the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; the antiphon from which the hymn derives its name. Emmanuel: God is with us. It is an image taken from the 7th chapter of Isaiah and the historical setting is very important to understanding its meaning.
It is approximately 740 BC, Jerusalem is under siege, and the king – Ahaz – is in a panic. The Assyrians are threatening to invade the region and in response several of the local tribal leaders have formed an alliance. But Ahaz wants no part of this coalition and so the alliance attacks Jerusalem in hopes of putting a new king in place who will support their efforts. The prophet Isaiah comes to Ahaz and tells him that God will deliver the besieged city. His message is a mixture of prophetic pronouncements and policy statements, sprinkled with symbolic promises or signs to back up what he says as being God’s word. Proper names play a very significant role in these symbolic promises.
In verse 3 of chapter 7, God directs Isaiah to take his son to meet King Ahaz. The boy’s name is Shear-Jashub, which means “a remnant will return.” The presence of the boy indicates the promise of God. Isaiah then says to Ahaz, “Ask for a sign from God to convince you that this is so” – a common thing for kings of that era to do, but Ahaz is too afraid. So Isaiah gives him a sign: “A young woman is with child and she will name her son Emmanuel. And before the boy is weaned from his mother’s milk, this military and political threat will have passed.” The message is clear: a year from now this will all be over and we will be fine. Why? We will be fine because Emmanuel: God is with us.
Over the next few centuries Isaiah’s words came to be associated with an emerging messianic hope; a deep yearning and desire among God’s people for one to be born in whom God would be powerfully present. At first it was a desire rooted in the restoration of David’s throne; a yearning for a kingdom marked by self-rule and justice. But very early on, Christians came to see that Isaiah’s words of prophetic hope had been fulfilled in Jesus; that He was the incarnation of God – Divinity manifested in flesh and blood… the literal embodiment of God with us.
And when we sing O come, O come, Emmanuel we are proclaiming our faith that God has been with us in the past, expressing our desire for God to be with us in the present, and giving voice to our deep yearning for God to come again and be with us in the fullness of Glory.
Maria Boulding was a Benedictine nun and noted author who died in 2009. I want to read a brief passage from her 1982 book The Coming of God because it beautifully and thoughtfully expresses how our hope for God’s presence makes us distinct from those who do not share in our faith:
If modern men and women are to be more than simply agnostic about the long-term prospects for our race, their most fundamental hope must be that it will not end in meaningless destruction. If we are going to blow ourselves out of existence as though we had never been, or make our planet uninhabitable without finding an alternative accommodation, there is little point in hoping for anything else…
The hope that we are traveling towards a destiny, rather than a mere collapse, is linked with the faith that our origins were already purposeful. If we think that our existence is a mere fluke, the result of some wildly improbable mix in some primordial soup that threw up the conditions required to sustain life, then our whole human story is a chance bubble; it has no purpose and can be pricked as meaninglessly as it was formed. But if there is a Creator who stands outside the whole cosmic evolutionary process, and yet works within it by a wisdom and love that are present in even the tiniest movement, then human life has a purpose. It begins from God and is on its way to a goal which, however unimaginable, will give meaning to the whole adventure.
At every Eucharist we say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Maria Boulding has helped me to understand the come again part in a whole new way. Knowing where we are going shapes what we do along the way. It gives us direction to act and confidence that our actions make a difference. We who yearn for Emmanuel to return at the end of time become open to Emmanuel being manifested in and through us today.
And that openness and willingness for God to be present in us is critical, as the writer Vishal Mangalwadi points out:
The tragedy of our times is that while many Christians have confidence in the power of the Lord to return and change the world, many of us do not have confidence in the power of the gospel to transform society now.
Many don’t, but some do. I have been reading a book called Living Mission: The Vision and Voices of New Friars. It is about an emerging movement among a small group of Protestant Evangelicals who are choosing to live and minister in the poorest slums in the world. One person describes a slum as an urban area “characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure.” If you saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire you have a sense of what these areas are like. The World Bank reports that one out of every six people on the planet lives in an urban slum – one billion people. Twenty years from now it will be one in four. The first friars embraced the notion of Emmanuel by setting aside home, wealth, and safety to live among people who did not know the Gospel and often times were hostile to it. The new friars are seeking to do much the same thing. What they offer is not so much a program or a handout… they offer themselves.
Craig and Nayhouy Greenfield are two of these new friars. They were living and ministering in a slum when she became pregnant with their second child. In that slum most mothers had succumbed to the notion that powdered milk was preferable to breast feeding. Nayhouy knew different since powdered milk required something not available in the slum… clean drinking water. Infant upon infant got sick and many died, still the local mothers held on to a bias against breast feeding. When Nayhouy’s baby was born it did not escape notice that the child – breastfed – grew up strong and healthy. The Greenfields write,
From that point on, the use of milk powder in our slum decreased. Through the simple, prophetic act of incarnational motherhood, we accomplished in our slum what poster campaigns, visiting educators and government campaigns had been unable to accomplish: transformation.
This is just one story of one couple in the new friars movement; a group of Christians who do not see themselves called to preach the Gospel to people in the slums, they see themselves called to live the Gospel in the slums. It reminds me of what the missionary Charles de Foucauld believed; he who sought to minister to Muslims some 100 years ago: “to witness to Christ does not require eloquent preaching or sanctimonious demands. It is requires you to shout the Gospel with your life.” It is an approach grounded in a theology of incarnation: if Jesus left heaven and relocated here to live with us, perhaps we best manifest Emmanuel by living with the people to whom we seek to minister.
Well, if living in a slum represents the far end of one spectrum of how we might choose to make Emmanuel present in and through us, there is a YouTube video that represents the other end. Perhaps you are one of nearly 23 million people who have already viewed it. It is a scene which unfolded a month ago in a food court at a typical suburban mall. Shoppers of all walks and descriptions of life are sitting around chatting and eating. Suddenly and without warning, a young woman talking on a cell phone rises from her chair and begins to sing the opening stanza of the Alleluia Chorus. Mall patrons begin to stare at her. Then a man in his thirties dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt stands and sings the second stanza… Alleluia! Alleluia! Two people walking on the perimeter of the food court stop, partner with a member of the mall’s custodial staff, and sing in unison, “for the Lord God and King reigneth.” Now dozens of people rise to their feet in join in song. It is a planned phenomena know as a flashmob and before the Alleluia Chorus is finished dozens and dozens of choristers have joined in while unsuspecting shoppers look on.
What impresses me about the video is the location. Here, in the most secular of settings our society has to offer, God becomes present as glory and praise are offered. As I watched the video I thought about how we tend to cage God inside the stonewalls of our magnificent churches. We neither expect nor desire to encounter Emmanuel in those places where we are about the mechanics of life: stores, offices, schools, sporting events, the living room, the kitchen. When we want God we will go to the place where we have consigned God to be found. Everywhere else… well, in all those other places we have other things on our mind. The video challenged me to imagine a world were God could be with us in every aspect of our daily life and work; to take seriously what we pray: “Almighty God, in you we live and move and have our being.”
Well, somewhere on the spectrum between relocating into an urban slum and rising up in a food court to sing the Alleluia Chorus you and I have the opportunity to be incarnational… to invite God to be with us and to be know through us. You and I can shout out the Gospel with our lives and become part of God’s great purpose of drawing all things into Holiness and Majesty.
We have spent these last four weeks focusing on our deep desire and yearning, on our discontent that God’s will is not done on earth as it is in heaven. God hears our cry and promises that a new world is on the way. As an assurance that this is so, God gives us a sign, an ancient sign from long ago. A young woman is about to give birth to a son and his name will be Emmanuel.
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
On this Fourth Sunday of Advent we focus on the final antiphon in the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; the antiphon from which the hymn derives its name. Emmanuel: God is with us. It is an image taken from the 7th chapter of Isaiah and the historical setting is very important to understanding its meaning.
It is approximately 740 BC, Jerusalem is under siege, and the king – Ahaz – is in a panic. The Assyrians are threatening to invade the region and in response several of the local tribal leaders have formed an alliance. But Ahaz wants no part of this coalition and so the alliance attacks Jerusalem in hopes of putting a new king in place who will support their efforts. The prophet Isaiah comes to Ahaz and tells him that God will deliver the besieged city. His message is a mixture of prophetic pronouncements and policy statements, sprinkled with symbolic promises or signs to back up what he says as being God’s word. Proper names play a very significant role in these symbolic promises.
In verse 3 of chapter 7, God directs Isaiah to take his son to meet King Ahaz. The boy’s name is Shear-Jashub, which means “a remnant will return.” The presence of the boy indicates the promise of God. Isaiah then says to Ahaz, “Ask for a sign from God to convince you that this is so” – a common thing for kings of that era to do, but Ahaz is too afraid. So Isaiah gives him a sign: “A young woman is with child and she will name her son Emmanuel. And before the boy is weaned from his mother’s milk, this military and political threat will have passed.” The message is clear: a year from now this will all be over and we will be fine. Why? We will be fine because Emmanuel: God is with us.
Over the next few centuries Isaiah’s words came to be associated with an emerging messianic hope; a deep yearning and desire among God’s people for one to be born in whom God would be powerfully present. At first it was a desire rooted in the restoration of David’s throne; a yearning for a kingdom marked by self-rule and justice. But very early on, Christians came to see that Isaiah’s words of prophetic hope had been fulfilled in Jesus; that He was the incarnation of God – Divinity manifested in flesh and blood… the literal embodiment of God with us.
And when we sing O come, O come, Emmanuel we are proclaiming our faith that God has been with us in the past, expressing our desire for God to be with us in the present, and giving voice to our deep yearning for God to come again and be with us in the fullness of Glory.
Maria Boulding was a Benedictine nun and noted author who died in 2009. I want to read a brief passage from her 1982 book The Coming of God because it beautifully and thoughtfully expresses how our hope for God’s presence makes us distinct from those who do not share in our faith:
If modern men and women are to be more than simply agnostic about the long-term prospects for our race, their most fundamental hope must be that it will not end in meaningless destruction. If we are going to blow ourselves out of existence as though we had never been, or make our planet uninhabitable without finding an alternative accommodation, there is little point in hoping for anything else…
The hope that we are traveling towards a destiny, rather than a mere collapse, is linked with the faith that our origins were already purposeful. If we think that our existence is a mere fluke, the result of some wildly improbable mix in some primordial soup that threw up the conditions required to sustain life, then our whole human story is a chance bubble; it has no purpose and can be pricked as meaninglessly as it was formed. But if there is a Creator who stands outside the whole cosmic evolutionary process, and yet works within it by a wisdom and love that are present in even the tiniest movement, then human life has a purpose. It begins from God and is on its way to a goal which, however unimaginable, will give meaning to the whole adventure.
At every Eucharist we say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Maria Boulding has helped me to understand the come again part in a whole new way. Knowing where we are going shapes what we do along the way. It gives us direction to act and confidence that our actions make a difference. We who yearn for Emmanuel to return at the end of time become open to Emmanuel being manifested in and through us today.
And that openness and willingness for God to be present in us is critical, as the writer Vishal Mangalwadi points out:
The tragedy of our times is that while many Christians have confidence in the power of the Lord to return and change the world, many of us do not have confidence in the power of the gospel to transform society now.
Many don’t, but some do. I have been reading a book called Living Mission: The Vision and Voices of New Friars. It is about an emerging movement among a small group of Protestant Evangelicals who are choosing to live and minister in the poorest slums in the world. One person describes a slum as an urban area “characterized by overcrowding, poor or informal housing, inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, and insecurity of tenure.” If you saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire you have a sense of what these areas are like. The World Bank reports that one out of every six people on the planet lives in an urban slum – one billion people. Twenty years from now it will be one in four. The first friars embraced the notion of Emmanuel by setting aside home, wealth, and safety to live among people who did not know the Gospel and often times were hostile to it. The new friars are seeking to do much the same thing. What they offer is not so much a program or a handout… they offer themselves.
Craig and Nayhouy Greenfield are two of these new friars. They were living and ministering in a slum when she became pregnant with their second child. In that slum most mothers had succumbed to the notion that powdered milk was preferable to breast feeding. Nayhouy knew different since powdered milk required something not available in the slum… clean drinking water. Infant upon infant got sick and many died, still the local mothers held on to a bias against breast feeding. When Nayhouy’s baby was born it did not escape notice that the child – breastfed – grew up strong and healthy. The Greenfields write,
From that point on, the use of milk powder in our slum decreased. Through the simple, prophetic act of incarnational motherhood, we accomplished in our slum what poster campaigns, visiting educators and government campaigns had been unable to accomplish: transformation.
This is just one story of one couple in the new friars movement; a group of Christians who do not see themselves called to preach the Gospel to people in the slums, they see themselves called to live the Gospel in the slums. It reminds me of what the missionary Charles de Foucauld believed; he who sought to minister to Muslims some 100 years ago: “to witness to Christ does not require eloquent preaching or sanctimonious demands. It is requires you to shout the Gospel with your life.” It is an approach grounded in a theology of incarnation: if Jesus left heaven and relocated here to live with us, perhaps we best manifest Emmanuel by living with the people to whom we seek to minister.
Well, if living in a slum represents the far end of one spectrum of how we might choose to make Emmanuel present in and through us, there is a YouTube video that represents the other end. Perhaps you are one of nearly 23 million people who have already viewed it. It is a scene which unfolded a month ago in a food court at a typical suburban mall. Shoppers of all walks and descriptions of life are sitting around chatting and eating. Suddenly and without warning, a young woman talking on a cell phone rises from her chair and begins to sing the opening stanza of the Alleluia Chorus. Mall patrons begin to stare at her. Then a man in his thirties dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt stands and sings the second stanza… Alleluia! Alleluia! Two people walking on the perimeter of the food court stop, partner with a member of the mall’s custodial staff, and sing in unison, “for the Lord God and King reigneth.” Now dozens of people rise to their feet in join in song. It is a planned phenomena know as a flashmob and before the Alleluia Chorus is finished dozens and dozens of choristers have joined in while unsuspecting shoppers look on.
What impresses me about the video is the location. Here, in the most secular of settings our society has to offer, God becomes present as glory and praise are offered. As I watched the video I thought about how we tend to cage God inside the stonewalls of our magnificent churches. We neither expect nor desire to encounter Emmanuel in those places where we are about the mechanics of life: stores, offices, schools, sporting events, the living room, the kitchen. When we want God we will go to the place where we have consigned God to be found. Everywhere else… well, in all those other places we have other things on our mind. The video challenged me to imagine a world were God could be with us in every aspect of our daily life and work; to take seriously what we pray: “Almighty God, in you we live and move and have our being.”
Well, somewhere on the spectrum between relocating into an urban slum and rising up in a food court to sing the Alleluia Chorus you and I have the opportunity to be incarnational… to invite God to be with us and to be know through us. You and I can shout out the Gospel with our lives and become part of God’s great purpose of drawing all things into Holiness and Majesty.
We have spent these last four weeks focusing on our deep desire and yearning, on our discontent that God’s will is not done on earth as it is in heaven. God hears our cry and promises that a new world is on the way. As an assurance that this is so, God gives us a sign, an ancient sign from long ago. A young woman is about to give birth to a son and his name will be Emmanuel.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Dayspring from on High / Desire of Nations
O come, thou Dayspring from on high,
and cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
I am using the four Sunday sermons in the season of Advent to explore the Old Testament images in the hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. This hymn gives voice to our deepest yearning for the fulfillment of God’s promises; for a world where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. This morning we focus on the images of Dayspring from on High and Desire of nations.
Dayspring. Have you ever longed for the advent of morning? The image of the dayspring always takes me back to my scouting days tent camping on a very, very, very cold weekend. Whatever temperature my sleeping bag was rated, it was significantly colder than that. I was freezing all night long. In my sleep I dreamt that it was morning and that one of the adults had started the campfire. I dreamt that I emerged from my tent and began to warm myself by the fire. But it was just a dream. I woke up in total darkness, deeply cold. When I fell back asleep the dream repeated itself… morning, fire, warm, but just a dream. This went on and on throughout the night, at least ten times before the real dawn broke and a warming fire was lit.
Longing for dawn. I think about those of you who have been awake all night in a hospital room, either as the patient or as the care-giver, waiting for the hope, the promise, or the relief of the new day. Maybe you have served on nightwatch or worked the nightshift, where the first light of day signals the end of vigilance or labor. I remember being without power after Hurricane Isabel tore through Virginia. I was surprised how quickly life reoriented around the sun’s rising and falling. Dawn brought with it the opportunity to pick up tasks unfinished at the onset darkness the previous day.
The image of the dayspring metaphorically draws on these kinds of experiences and attaches them to something much deeper. “Cheer us by thy drawing nigh.” “Disperse the gloomy clouds of night.” Gloom, whatever form it takes, has a heaviness to it that weighs us down. If you have ever struggled with depression you know this weight and how hard it is to bear. We all sense the weighty burden of our present gloomy economy. Each day’s business news feels dark, heavy, foreboding and we long for the dawn of a new day when the economy feels more promising, more hopeful, more cheerful.
Every job comes with its own unique set of challenges, but some career fields are especially weighty. I admire people who work in our legal system: police officers, investigators, lawyers, judges, prison officials, parole officers – people whose daily life and work exposes them to the worst of the world’s sin. I also admire people whose jobs place them squarely in the midst of the world’s brokenness: councilors, social service workers, and (more and more) teachers and school administrators – people on the front lines of compassion ministering to those whose lives have been ripped apart. And I admire people who work in the medical profession: doctors, nurses, therapists, people who work in care facilities, hospice workers – the folks who daily deal with the effects of disease and death. These are vocations set in life’s darkness and gloom and they carry a burden that can and does get the better of many who serve in these fields.
In ancient monastic worship, each verse of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel was assigned to be sung on a specific day leading up to Christmas. “O come, thou Dayspring from on high” was intentionally designated to be sung on December 21 because it is the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. And just as we yearn on that day for the return of the light and the lengthening of days, so too we speak and sing and pray of our desire for the dawn of a new day when sin and brokenness and death are put to flight. We wait for a messianic era when the Sun of Righteousness will shine on all the world.
We hold that this new dawn is not just for us raised in the Christian tradition, but is for all creation and for all God’s creatures. We affirm that God is not merely our desire, but the Desire of nations, of all peoples. The theology behind this belief is quite straight-forward: since God created every human being in God’s image, every human being is infused with a desire to know his/her Creator.
It should not surprise us that people in every culture of every age and era have manifested a religious and spiritual dimension. Some dismiss this as the human response to mysteries beyond contemporary understanding: i.e., if you don’t understand the physics of lightening then you worship it as a god. Without question some aspects of religion have been and still are rooted in superstition. But there is something more than this welling up in every human soul. Each of us has a sense that something from beyond us calls out to us; that something which designs us sustains us and seeks to know us; that we are invited into some form of relationship with a Holy Presence who is far removed from us, yet intimately known within us.
You might think that this common trait of spiritual searching would unite the human race and create bonds of affection that reach across race, culture, and social order, but we all recognize this is not at all the case. It is cliché to say that more wars have been fought in the name of God than any other cause, but I see that as being a vast simplification of the manifold factors which direct human action and interaction. Still, too often religion has the effect of driving us apart rather than pulling us together.
Think of the images in O Come, O Come Emmanuel we have explored over the last three Sundays:
Wisdom from on high from which we receive guidance from the Creator of all things,
Lord of Might who leads from a position of moral authority,
Branch of Jesse who provides an enduring hope rooted in the past,
Key of David who opens a way for us to know God,
Dayspring from on high who initiates a new day free of sin, brokenness, and death,
And Desire of nations who binds all hearts as one and makes divisions cease.
Of these six, the Desire of nations is something we members of the human family could achieve on our own simply by acknowledging the value and benefit of peace. But of the six it also feels like the one farthest away.
There are two slightly different wordings for this verse. The one we sing goes…
O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.
The other version reads…
O come desire of nations, bind,
all peoples in one heart and mind;
bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease;
fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.
We yearn for a world where weighty darkness and gloom are put to flight by the dawn of a new day and we yearn for a world filled with heaven’s peace. And as with the images we have already explored we find that our Advent yearning can and does lead to partial fulfillment in us even as we await the complete fulfillment of God’s promise.
The bedside nurse who ministers with compassion to a person dying, the teacher whose encouragement and support lift the sinking spirits of a troubled student, the police officer who overcomes the inner struggle to be jaded and finds a way to respond to each person with dignity and respect, the social worker who sees the client as being a person not just a case file… each rides on the first rays of the dawn of a new day. Every time we work through an argument to find a place of common ground, every time we rejoice in the achievements or shoulder the burdens of another, every time we do the hard work of reconciling a broken relationship, every time we refuse to respond to insult by inflicting injury, every time we celebrate cultural differences and discern our shared humanity in our distinctiveness… every time this happens heaven’s peace is manifested in our world.
God’s promise is that we do not have to manufacture these responses on our own. Whatever dayspring emanates from our lives comes from on high. Whatever peace we are able to offer or to find is of God’s doing. In Advent we yearn for light and peace in all its fullness and promise and what we find is that God is present in us as light and peace; light and peace which we can manifest to the world.
and cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
I am using the four Sunday sermons in the season of Advent to explore the Old Testament images in the hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. This hymn gives voice to our deepest yearning for the fulfillment of God’s promises; for a world where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. This morning we focus on the images of Dayspring from on High and Desire of nations.
Dayspring. Have you ever longed for the advent of morning? The image of the dayspring always takes me back to my scouting days tent camping on a very, very, very cold weekend. Whatever temperature my sleeping bag was rated, it was significantly colder than that. I was freezing all night long. In my sleep I dreamt that it was morning and that one of the adults had started the campfire. I dreamt that I emerged from my tent and began to warm myself by the fire. But it was just a dream. I woke up in total darkness, deeply cold. When I fell back asleep the dream repeated itself… morning, fire, warm, but just a dream. This went on and on throughout the night, at least ten times before the real dawn broke and a warming fire was lit.
Longing for dawn. I think about those of you who have been awake all night in a hospital room, either as the patient or as the care-giver, waiting for the hope, the promise, or the relief of the new day. Maybe you have served on nightwatch or worked the nightshift, where the first light of day signals the end of vigilance or labor. I remember being without power after Hurricane Isabel tore through Virginia. I was surprised how quickly life reoriented around the sun’s rising and falling. Dawn brought with it the opportunity to pick up tasks unfinished at the onset darkness the previous day.
The image of the dayspring metaphorically draws on these kinds of experiences and attaches them to something much deeper. “Cheer us by thy drawing nigh.” “Disperse the gloomy clouds of night.” Gloom, whatever form it takes, has a heaviness to it that weighs us down. If you have ever struggled with depression you know this weight and how hard it is to bear. We all sense the weighty burden of our present gloomy economy. Each day’s business news feels dark, heavy, foreboding and we long for the dawn of a new day when the economy feels more promising, more hopeful, more cheerful.
Every job comes with its own unique set of challenges, but some career fields are especially weighty. I admire people who work in our legal system: police officers, investigators, lawyers, judges, prison officials, parole officers – people whose daily life and work exposes them to the worst of the world’s sin. I also admire people whose jobs place them squarely in the midst of the world’s brokenness: councilors, social service workers, and (more and more) teachers and school administrators – people on the front lines of compassion ministering to those whose lives have been ripped apart. And I admire people who work in the medical profession: doctors, nurses, therapists, people who work in care facilities, hospice workers – the folks who daily deal with the effects of disease and death. These are vocations set in life’s darkness and gloom and they carry a burden that can and does get the better of many who serve in these fields.
In ancient monastic worship, each verse of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel was assigned to be sung on a specific day leading up to Christmas. “O come, thou Dayspring from on high” was intentionally designated to be sung on December 21 because it is the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. And just as we yearn on that day for the return of the light and the lengthening of days, so too we speak and sing and pray of our desire for the dawn of a new day when sin and brokenness and death are put to flight. We wait for a messianic era when the Sun of Righteousness will shine on all the world.
We hold that this new dawn is not just for us raised in the Christian tradition, but is for all creation and for all God’s creatures. We affirm that God is not merely our desire, but the Desire of nations, of all peoples. The theology behind this belief is quite straight-forward: since God created every human being in God’s image, every human being is infused with a desire to know his/her Creator.
It should not surprise us that people in every culture of every age and era have manifested a religious and spiritual dimension. Some dismiss this as the human response to mysteries beyond contemporary understanding: i.e., if you don’t understand the physics of lightening then you worship it as a god. Without question some aspects of religion have been and still are rooted in superstition. But there is something more than this welling up in every human soul. Each of us has a sense that something from beyond us calls out to us; that something which designs us sustains us and seeks to know us; that we are invited into some form of relationship with a Holy Presence who is far removed from us, yet intimately known within us.
You might think that this common trait of spiritual searching would unite the human race and create bonds of affection that reach across race, culture, and social order, but we all recognize this is not at all the case. It is cliché to say that more wars have been fought in the name of God than any other cause, but I see that as being a vast simplification of the manifold factors which direct human action and interaction. Still, too often religion has the effect of driving us apart rather than pulling us together.
Think of the images in O Come, O Come Emmanuel we have explored over the last three Sundays:
Wisdom from on high from which we receive guidance from the Creator of all things,
Lord of Might who leads from a position of moral authority,
Branch of Jesse who provides an enduring hope rooted in the past,
Key of David who opens a way for us to know God,
Dayspring from on high who initiates a new day free of sin, brokenness, and death,
And Desire of nations who binds all hearts as one and makes divisions cease.
Of these six, the Desire of nations is something we members of the human family could achieve on our own simply by acknowledging the value and benefit of peace. But of the six it also feels like the one farthest away.
There are two slightly different wordings for this verse. The one we sing goes…
O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.
The other version reads…
O come desire of nations, bind,
all peoples in one heart and mind;
bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease;
fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.
We yearn for a world where weighty darkness and gloom are put to flight by the dawn of a new day and we yearn for a world filled with heaven’s peace. And as with the images we have already explored we find that our Advent yearning can and does lead to partial fulfillment in us even as we await the complete fulfillment of God’s promise.
The bedside nurse who ministers with compassion to a person dying, the teacher whose encouragement and support lift the sinking spirits of a troubled student, the police officer who overcomes the inner struggle to be jaded and finds a way to respond to each person with dignity and respect, the social worker who sees the client as being a person not just a case file… each rides on the first rays of the dawn of a new day. Every time we work through an argument to find a place of common ground, every time we rejoice in the achievements or shoulder the burdens of another, every time we do the hard work of reconciling a broken relationship, every time we refuse to respond to insult by inflicting injury, every time we celebrate cultural differences and discern our shared humanity in our distinctiveness… every time this happens heaven’s peace is manifested in our world.
God’s promise is that we do not have to manufacture these responses on our own. Whatever dayspring emanates from our lives comes from on high. Whatever peace we are able to offer or to find is of God’s doing. In Advent we yearn for light and peace in all its fullness and promise and what we find is that God is present in us as light and peace; light and peace which we can manifest to the world.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Branch of Jesse / Key of David
O come, thou Branch of Jesse’s tree,
free them from Satan’s tyranny;
That trust thy mighty power to save,
and give them victory over the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
I said last Sunday that we Christians should be the most discontented members of the human family. We hold on to a hope for a better world – a hope based in God’s promises. We yearn for a world free from want, suffering, hatred, sickness, and death. The four-week season of Advent gives voice to our discontentedness and yearning, which is expressed most clearly in the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Its seven verses, rooted on Old Testament images and dating back at least to the 8th century, are a significant feature of our liturgy at the lighting of the Advent wreath. This morning we open our hearts and minds to longings for the Branch of Jesse and for the Key of David.
Jesse, as you may know, was David’s father. In 1 Samuel 16 we learn that he had eight sons, David being the youngest. God sends the prophet Samuel to Jesse’s house in the town of Bethlehem to anoint one of the sons as the new king. Samuel supposes this will be the eldest, a man who is tall and strong. But God has other ideas and uses different standards of measure and says to Samuel, “Take no account of how a person looks, for I do not see as you see. You judge by appearances, but I judge what is in the heart.” And based on this criteria God chooses David to be king.
The image of the Branch of Jesse is drawn from the 11th chapter of the book of Isaiah. Written at a time about 250 years after David’s reign, the kingdom has been divided between the north and south and the entire northern kingdom of Israel has been laid to waste by the Assyrians. Even the forests have been cut down. In our time it is not uncommon to see large tracts of land logged for commercial purposes or development. Initially it is not a pretty sight. Imagine an entire region devastated in such a fashion. Isaiah’s image proclaims a message a hope: just as new shoots grow out of stumps, so too will a new ruler rise up from the root or stump of Jesse.
This image of longing looks back fondly to a golden era and hopes for something from it that will endure and restore what has been lost or forgotten in the present time. It is rooted in a feeling that something has gone amiss; that somewhere along the way we have taken a wrong turn; that we need to get back to our first principles, back to our roots. When talk radio hosts speak about the intentions of the founding fathers, they are taping into a similar yearning, but we Christians long for something much deeper just politics.
The pace of change in today’s world has made looking back very difficult. From the dawn of human history up until the Industrial Revolution, change and innovation were not the norm. If you wanted to know how to farm or to hunt or to cobble a shoe, you learned the tricks of the trade from your elders. Wisdom and knowhow were passed down from one generation to another. Every now and then someone might figure out a better way to, say, create an arrowhead and this knowledge then was assimilated slowly into the culture. Morality and religion were transmitted in the same fashion; with younger generations learning from their elders.
Well, we live in a very different world where the dizzying rate of change renders yesterday’s knowhow obsolete. There is an old Jackson Browne song from his younger years where, in trying to sort out his relationship with his father, he says, “make room for my 45’s along beside you 78’s.” Well, back in the 70’s, at least both generations had records in common, even if they revolved on a turntable at different speeds. Neither of my daughters has ever owned a record. The big technological breakthrough of my youth involved converting my albums to cassette tapes. What do you think they would say if I offered to show them how to do this?
And this is just one small example of how more and more less and less of what an older generation knows is of use to the newest generation. The pace of change is so rapid that those of us who don’t keep up (or can’t keep up or won’t keep up) are left behind. This reality around technology has a way seeping into morality and spirituality. Young people, whose lifestyles are geared toward new technology rather than handed-down methods, are forsaking old religious and moral expressions in order to make up their own formulas on the fly.
Still, there is a yearning for something that endures; for something that is rooted in the practices of the ancient past. In the devastation of our present day, with its here today and gone tomorrow approach to just about every aspect of life, there is a longing for shoot to rise out of a stump; a shoot that will remind us of what it means to be human, that will help us to know how to treat one another, that will help us to connect with the Ultimate Source of all reality. Even with all that is right in our society – and there is much for which to be thankful – we look back and know that something is being lost, that there is something we must not leave behind. We yearn to know what it is and how to keep it with us.
If the Branch of Jesse is an image that looks backward, the Key of David is one that looks forward. It is an image derived from Isaiah 22, where the prophet pronounces judgment on a public official named Shebna. It seems that this fellow was some type of steward or comptroller in the king’s palace who kept the keys to the doors of the royal home and Temple. It was his job to ensure that the doors were open when they were supposed to be open and closed when they were supposed to be closed. It was an important position to be sure, but it seems that Shebna’s actions exceeded his station. He rode around town in a fine chariot (read here a luxury car well-beyond anything he could afford) and through use of diverted public funds was building an extravagant mausoleum for himself in a place reserved for royalty (and some people say the bible doesn’t speak to contemporary issues!). Well, this didn’t sit too well with Isaiah who pronounced prophetic judgment on the self-serving, over-reaching, embezzling civil servant. The keys, along with other symbols of that office, such as a robe and a sash, would be taken from him and given to a person worthy of the position.
The person who held the Key of David literally had control over who got into God’s house and who did not, over who got to meet with God’s chosen leadership and who did not. In the Book of Revelation, John picks up on the image and says that Jesus now holds the Key of David and adds,
“When He opens, none may shut,
when He shuts, none may open.” (Rev. 3:7)
As the hymn suggests when it says,
“O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home,”
this image has been linked with access to heaven; the idea being that Jesus will allow some to enter while excluding others. If the Branch of Jesse looks backward for something that will endure, the Key of David looks forward seeking assurance; a powerful yearning indeed.
I wonder how deep this yearning is in us. I don’t remember the last time I heard an Episcopalian say, “I can’t wait to get to heaven.” Our great pursuit is to know God in the here and now. We long and yearn for a vital, dynamic connection with the Holy One, but struggle to find it. This is by no means a new challenge. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 12th century, wrote this:
Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek You, where to and how to find You… You are my Lord, and I have never seen you. You have made me and remade me, and You have given me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know You. I was made in order to see You, and I have not yet done that for which I was made.
A thousand years later Anselm’s experience resonates with ours and his yearning to see God gives expression to a longing deep with us.
In John’s Gospel, the Apostle Phillip recognizes that Jesus somehow has connected with God in way that he and Anselm and you and I have not. So he says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father.” Jesus answers him, “Phillip, have I been with you all this time and you do not know Me? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father” (14:8-9). This suggests that Jesus does not so much hold the keys to the door of an eternal place where we might want to be someday, but that He Himself is the key who allows us to know and see God through Himself. We, who yearn for a meaningful connection with the Divine Majesty beyond our knowing, find the key to this relationship in the life and words of Jesus Christ.
We yearn for something from the past which endures and for something in the present to connect us with God. I am encouraged that people are finding satisfaction for these longings in the life of the Episcopal Church. Young people across the country are entering faith communities like ours where ancient practices are celebrated: practices such as daily prayer, weekly gathering for worship and sacrament, the formation of a rich community life, and hospitality to the surrounding community. In an ever-changing world, these settings are helping people learn how to be joyful, how to be caring, how to be prayerful, how to be attentive, how to mourn, how to recover, how to receive mercy, how to forgive, how to rejoice… how to be all that God intends us to be. They are places where people discontented with the emptiness of life find both a branch from the past and a key in the present.
free them from Satan’s tyranny;
That trust thy mighty power to save,
and give them victory over the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
I said last Sunday that we Christians should be the most discontented members of the human family. We hold on to a hope for a better world – a hope based in God’s promises. We yearn for a world free from want, suffering, hatred, sickness, and death. The four-week season of Advent gives voice to our discontentedness and yearning, which is expressed most clearly in the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Its seven verses, rooted on Old Testament images and dating back at least to the 8th century, are a significant feature of our liturgy at the lighting of the Advent wreath. This morning we open our hearts and minds to longings for the Branch of Jesse and for the Key of David.
Jesse, as you may know, was David’s father. In 1 Samuel 16 we learn that he had eight sons, David being the youngest. God sends the prophet Samuel to Jesse’s house in the town of Bethlehem to anoint one of the sons as the new king. Samuel supposes this will be the eldest, a man who is tall and strong. But God has other ideas and uses different standards of measure and says to Samuel, “Take no account of how a person looks, for I do not see as you see. You judge by appearances, but I judge what is in the heart.” And based on this criteria God chooses David to be king.
The image of the Branch of Jesse is drawn from the 11th chapter of the book of Isaiah. Written at a time about 250 years after David’s reign, the kingdom has been divided between the north and south and the entire northern kingdom of Israel has been laid to waste by the Assyrians. Even the forests have been cut down. In our time it is not uncommon to see large tracts of land logged for commercial purposes or development. Initially it is not a pretty sight. Imagine an entire region devastated in such a fashion. Isaiah’s image proclaims a message a hope: just as new shoots grow out of stumps, so too will a new ruler rise up from the root or stump of Jesse.
This image of longing looks back fondly to a golden era and hopes for something from it that will endure and restore what has been lost or forgotten in the present time. It is rooted in a feeling that something has gone amiss; that somewhere along the way we have taken a wrong turn; that we need to get back to our first principles, back to our roots. When talk radio hosts speak about the intentions of the founding fathers, they are taping into a similar yearning, but we Christians long for something much deeper just politics.
The pace of change in today’s world has made looking back very difficult. From the dawn of human history up until the Industrial Revolution, change and innovation were not the norm. If you wanted to know how to farm or to hunt or to cobble a shoe, you learned the tricks of the trade from your elders. Wisdom and knowhow were passed down from one generation to another. Every now and then someone might figure out a better way to, say, create an arrowhead and this knowledge then was assimilated slowly into the culture. Morality and religion were transmitted in the same fashion; with younger generations learning from their elders.
Well, we live in a very different world where the dizzying rate of change renders yesterday’s knowhow obsolete. There is an old Jackson Browne song from his younger years where, in trying to sort out his relationship with his father, he says, “make room for my 45’s along beside you 78’s.” Well, back in the 70’s, at least both generations had records in common, even if they revolved on a turntable at different speeds. Neither of my daughters has ever owned a record. The big technological breakthrough of my youth involved converting my albums to cassette tapes. What do you think they would say if I offered to show them how to do this?
And this is just one small example of how more and more less and less of what an older generation knows is of use to the newest generation. The pace of change is so rapid that those of us who don’t keep up (or can’t keep up or won’t keep up) are left behind. This reality around technology has a way seeping into morality and spirituality. Young people, whose lifestyles are geared toward new technology rather than handed-down methods, are forsaking old religious and moral expressions in order to make up their own formulas on the fly.
Still, there is a yearning for something that endures; for something that is rooted in the practices of the ancient past. In the devastation of our present day, with its here today and gone tomorrow approach to just about every aspect of life, there is a longing for shoot to rise out of a stump; a shoot that will remind us of what it means to be human, that will help us to know how to treat one another, that will help us to connect with the Ultimate Source of all reality. Even with all that is right in our society – and there is much for which to be thankful – we look back and know that something is being lost, that there is something we must not leave behind. We yearn to know what it is and how to keep it with us.
If the Branch of Jesse is an image that looks backward, the Key of David is one that looks forward. It is an image derived from Isaiah 22, where the prophet pronounces judgment on a public official named Shebna. It seems that this fellow was some type of steward or comptroller in the king’s palace who kept the keys to the doors of the royal home and Temple. It was his job to ensure that the doors were open when they were supposed to be open and closed when they were supposed to be closed. It was an important position to be sure, but it seems that Shebna’s actions exceeded his station. He rode around town in a fine chariot (read here a luxury car well-beyond anything he could afford) and through use of diverted public funds was building an extravagant mausoleum for himself in a place reserved for royalty (and some people say the bible doesn’t speak to contemporary issues!). Well, this didn’t sit too well with Isaiah who pronounced prophetic judgment on the self-serving, over-reaching, embezzling civil servant. The keys, along with other symbols of that office, such as a robe and a sash, would be taken from him and given to a person worthy of the position.
The person who held the Key of David literally had control over who got into God’s house and who did not, over who got to meet with God’s chosen leadership and who did not. In the Book of Revelation, John picks up on the image and says that Jesus now holds the Key of David and adds,
“When He opens, none may shut,
when He shuts, none may open.” (Rev. 3:7)
As the hymn suggests when it says,
“O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home,”
this image has been linked with access to heaven; the idea being that Jesus will allow some to enter while excluding others. If the Branch of Jesse looks backward for something that will endure, the Key of David looks forward seeking assurance; a powerful yearning indeed.
I wonder how deep this yearning is in us. I don’t remember the last time I heard an Episcopalian say, “I can’t wait to get to heaven.” Our great pursuit is to know God in the here and now. We long and yearn for a vital, dynamic connection with the Holy One, but struggle to find it. This is by no means a new challenge. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 12th century, wrote this:
Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek You, where to and how to find You… You are my Lord, and I have never seen you. You have made me and remade me, and You have given me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know You. I was made in order to see You, and I have not yet done that for which I was made.
A thousand years later Anselm’s experience resonates with ours and his yearning to see God gives expression to a longing deep with us.
In John’s Gospel, the Apostle Phillip recognizes that Jesus somehow has connected with God in way that he and Anselm and you and I have not. So he says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father.” Jesus answers him, “Phillip, have I been with you all this time and you do not know Me? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father” (14:8-9). This suggests that Jesus does not so much hold the keys to the door of an eternal place where we might want to be someday, but that He Himself is the key who allows us to know and see God through Himself. We, who yearn for a meaningful connection with the Divine Majesty beyond our knowing, find the key to this relationship in the life and words of Jesus Christ.
We yearn for something from the past which endures and for something in the present to connect us with God. I am encouraged that people are finding satisfaction for these longings in the life of the Episcopal Church. Young people across the country are entering faith communities like ours where ancient practices are celebrated: practices such as daily prayer, weekly gathering for worship and sacrament, the formation of a rich community life, and hospitality to the surrounding community. In an ever-changing world, these settings are helping people learn how to be joyful, how to be caring, how to be prayerful, how to be attentive, how to mourn, how to recover, how to receive mercy, how to forgive, how to rejoice… how to be all that God intends us to be. They are places where people discontented with the emptiness of life find both a branch from the past and a key in the present.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Wisdom from on High / Lord of Might
O come, thou Wisdom from on high,
who orderest all things mightily;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, O come, thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height
in ancient times once gave the law
in cloud and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
We Christians, it seems to me, should be the most discontented members of the human family. No matter what our situation or station in life, regardless of our material wealth or the state of our health, we should never be satisfied. You see we Christians believe in the promise of our Lord that His kingdom will come and His will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Any pang of hunger, any act of hatred, any tear shed, any relationship marred by discord, any disease or death is a sign that the time we hope for is not yet here, that God’s promise has not yet been fulfilled. Unlike eastern religions, which direct adherents to disconnect from the ills of the world, our faith teaches us to wait patiently with all of creation for the coming of the Savior who will make all that is wrong in this life right.
The brief season of Advent is a specific time when we Christians embrace our discontentedness and deep yearning for a better world. Over the next four Sundays I want to offer reflections exploring what might just be best articulation of this hope that we have – the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. While its origin is unknown, we do know that its seven yearnings, rooted on Old Testament images, date back at least to the 8th century. And as you have already experienced this morning, our liturgy at the lighting of the Advent wreath revolves around this hymn and the scriptural passages from which it emerges. So this morning, we focus our thoughts on the longings for Wisdom from on high and for the Lord of might.
Both are spawned from interesting biblical texts and motifs. Wisdom from on high is associated with God’s creative activity. Through wisdom, as the hymn rightly points out, all things were made and brought into order. And the more we learn about creation, the more impressive this ordering appears to be.
The smallest things in existence are the strings that make up of the fabric of all reality - the so-called string theory. These strings are only 1 billionth of a measure called a yactometer. How small is that? Well, it is about 1 billionth the size of an atom. Starting with the mass of a typical human being and increasing or decreasing that by a factor of 10, we are closer in size to the theoretical limits of the universe than we are to one of these strings. As immense as the universe is, the tiny, tiny world is even more vast than that. Still, we Christians proclaim that God’s Wisdom has brought it all together and holds it in place. To this Wisdom we fix our yearning:
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
We are not craving book knowledge here. We long for a wisdom that Walt Whitman said is “of the soul.” It comes to us as gift from above – sometimes through prayer, sometimes through the witness of another. The writer and poet Philip Appleman penned one of the quirkiest, yet insightful prayers you may ever hear:
O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,
gimmie a break before I die:
grant me wisdom, will, & wit,
purity, probity, pluck, & grit.
Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,
gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,
and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice –
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good –
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.
For us believers groping in the dark for how to think, the place to start is with God’s wise ordering of all that is. What, we should ask, is our place in that order? How does the God who created the world of the yactometer conceive our role in this life?
This question leads us to today’s second yearning, the desire for the Lord of might. It is a longing which conjures up a variety of images: perhaps the parting of the Red Sea, the defeat of Jericho, or the fire which consumed the prophets of Baal who contested with Elijah. We tend to connect this desire with God’s overwhelming, irresistible force. It says something very important that the text associated with the desire for the Lord of might is the giving of the Ten Commandments on ‘Sinai’s height.’ It tells us that this yearning is rooted not in power, but in moral authority.
We yearn for a voice, for a witness, for a prophet, for a Savior who will tell us, or show us, how to live in our complex world with its variety of beliefs and competing interests. It is a yearning not for military superiority and not for the purposes of a particular political party, but for the advent of a moral figure – a present day Martin Luther King or Gandhi – who will transform the world through the power of his or her vision of a better way to live.
The Christian Church struggles both for wisdom and for the power associated with moral authority. Two weeks ago I had dinner with my old college roommate who is now a Presbyterian minister. During our conversation he expressed frustration with the thousands and thousands of pronouncements that come out of his national church office and meetings. “We spend all this time working out these things, but why,” he said? “No one is listening to us.” Now I am sure that some of what the Presbyterians call for is a bit silly or trivial or misguided, just as are some of the things that come out of our Episcopal General Conventions. But for the most part, most of what our churches are saying is rooted in God’s wisdom. The problem is no one is listening and we don’t appear to have the moral might to draw attention to us.
As the early Christian Church lived out God’s wisdom through moral authority the world began to take notice. This notice led both to the growth of the church and to its persecution. I have been reading the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the first generation of Christian leadership to emerge after Peter, Paul, and the other initial followers of Jesus. Ignatius served as bishop of Antioch. All we know of him comes from seven brief letters he wrote to churches while he was being transported to Rome for execution. His words reveal him to be a person of both wisdom and moral might. Listen to some of what he has to say to the church in Ephesus:
Pray continually for the rest of mankind…, that they may find God, for there is in them hope for repentance. Therefore allow them to be instructed by you, at least by your deeds. [What does this suggest about the might of moral authority?] In response to their anger, be gentle; in response to their boasts, be humble; in response to their slander, offer prayers; in response to their errors, be “steadfast in the faith”; in response to their cruelty, be gentle; do not be eager to retaliate against them. Let us show ourselves their brothers by our forbearance, and let us be eager to be imitators of the Lord [What does this say about Wisdom from on high?]…
These are the last times. Therefore let us… love the grace which is present…, let us be found in Christ Jesus, which leads to true life. Let nothing appeal to you apart from Him, in whom I carry around these chains (my spiritual pearls!); by which I hope, through your prayers, to rise again.
I love in Ignatius’ words the idea that what we yearn for in Advent can, to some degree, be manifested in us. The kingdom we pray for begins in us, with us, and through us. There is in us already a portion of the Wisdom we hope one day will order all things and to the degree we live Christ-like lives we manifest a glimpse of the Moral Might we hope one day will be the authority to which the entire human family yields. Rejoice, Rejoice, all ye who yearn. Emmanuel will come to thee. Still, remarkably, both the Wisdom and the Might we yearn for exists within us in some measure even now.
who orderest all things mightily;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, O come, thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height
in ancient times once gave the law
in cloud and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
We Christians, it seems to me, should be the most discontented members of the human family. No matter what our situation or station in life, regardless of our material wealth or the state of our health, we should never be satisfied. You see we Christians believe in the promise of our Lord that His kingdom will come and His will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Any pang of hunger, any act of hatred, any tear shed, any relationship marred by discord, any disease or death is a sign that the time we hope for is not yet here, that God’s promise has not yet been fulfilled. Unlike eastern religions, which direct adherents to disconnect from the ills of the world, our faith teaches us to wait patiently with all of creation for the coming of the Savior who will make all that is wrong in this life right.
The brief season of Advent is a specific time when we Christians embrace our discontentedness and deep yearning for a better world. Over the next four Sundays I want to offer reflections exploring what might just be best articulation of this hope that we have – the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. While its origin is unknown, we do know that its seven yearnings, rooted on Old Testament images, date back at least to the 8th century. And as you have already experienced this morning, our liturgy at the lighting of the Advent wreath revolves around this hymn and the scriptural passages from which it emerges. So this morning, we focus our thoughts on the longings for Wisdom from on high and for the Lord of might.
Both are spawned from interesting biblical texts and motifs. Wisdom from on high is associated with God’s creative activity. Through wisdom, as the hymn rightly points out, all things were made and brought into order. And the more we learn about creation, the more impressive this ordering appears to be.
The smallest things in existence are the strings that make up of the fabric of all reality - the so-called string theory. These strings are only 1 billionth of a measure called a yactometer. How small is that? Well, it is about 1 billionth the size of an atom. Starting with the mass of a typical human being and increasing or decreasing that by a factor of 10, we are closer in size to the theoretical limits of the universe than we are to one of these strings. As immense as the universe is, the tiny, tiny world is even more vast than that. Still, we Christians proclaim that God’s Wisdom has brought it all together and holds it in place. To this Wisdom we fix our yearning:
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
We are not craving book knowledge here. We long for a wisdom that Walt Whitman said is “of the soul.” It comes to us as gift from above – sometimes through prayer, sometimes through the witness of another. The writer and poet Philip Appleman penned one of the quirkiest, yet insightful prayers you may ever hear:
O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,
gimmie a break before I die:
grant me wisdom, will, & wit,
purity, probity, pluck, & grit.
Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,
gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,
and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice –
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good –
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.
For us believers groping in the dark for how to think, the place to start is with God’s wise ordering of all that is. What, we should ask, is our place in that order? How does the God who created the world of the yactometer conceive our role in this life?
This question leads us to today’s second yearning, the desire for the Lord of might. It is a longing which conjures up a variety of images: perhaps the parting of the Red Sea, the defeat of Jericho, or the fire which consumed the prophets of Baal who contested with Elijah. We tend to connect this desire with God’s overwhelming, irresistible force. It says something very important that the text associated with the desire for the Lord of might is the giving of the Ten Commandments on ‘Sinai’s height.’ It tells us that this yearning is rooted not in power, but in moral authority.
We yearn for a voice, for a witness, for a prophet, for a Savior who will tell us, or show us, how to live in our complex world with its variety of beliefs and competing interests. It is a yearning not for military superiority and not for the purposes of a particular political party, but for the advent of a moral figure – a present day Martin Luther King or Gandhi – who will transform the world through the power of his or her vision of a better way to live.
The Christian Church struggles both for wisdom and for the power associated with moral authority. Two weeks ago I had dinner with my old college roommate who is now a Presbyterian minister. During our conversation he expressed frustration with the thousands and thousands of pronouncements that come out of his national church office and meetings. “We spend all this time working out these things, but why,” he said? “No one is listening to us.” Now I am sure that some of what the Presbyterians call for is a bit silly or trivial or misguided, just as are some of the things that come out of our Episcopal General Conventions. But for the most part, most of what our churches are saying is rooted in God’s wisdom. The problem is no one is listening and we don’t appear to have the moral might to draw attention to us.
As the early Christian Church lived out God’s wisdom through moral authority the world began to take notice. This notice led both to the growth of the church and to its persecution. I have been reading the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the first generation of Christian leadership to emerge after Peter, Paul, and the other initial followers of Jesus. Ignatius served as bishop of Antioch. All we know of him comes from seven brief letters he wrote to churches while he was being transported to Rome for execution. His words reveal him to be a person of both wisdom and moral might. Listen to some of what he has to say to the church in Ephesus:
Pray continually for the rest of mankind…, that they may find God, for there is in them hope for repentance. Therefore allow them to be instructed by you, at least by your deeds. [What does this suggest about the might of moral authority?] In response to their anger, be gentle; in response to their boasts, be humble; in response to their slander, offer prayers; in response to their errors, be “steadfast in the faith”; in response to their cruelty, be gentle; do not be eager to retaliate against them. Let us show ourselves their brothers by our forbearance, and let us be eager to be imitators of the Lord [What does this say about Wisdom from on high?]…
These are the last times. Therefore let us… love the grace which is present…, let us be found in Christ Jesus, which leads to true life. Let nothing appeal to you apart from Him, in whom I carry around these chains (my spiritual pearls!); by which I hope, through your prayers, to rise again.
I love in Ignatius’ words the idea that what we yearn for in Advent can, to some degree, be manifested in us. The kingdom we pray for begins in us, with us, and through us. There is in us already a portion of the Wisdom we hope one day will order all things and to the degree we live Christ-like lives we manifest a glimpse of the Moral Might we hope one day will be the authority to which the entire human family yields. Rejoice, Rejoice, all ye who yearn. Emmanuel will come to thee. Still, remarkably, both the Wisdom and the Might we yearn for exists within us in some measure even now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
