“They were astonished at Jesus’ teaching, for he taught them as one having authority.”
I have looked at a lot of Parish Profiles over the years. These are documents carefully researched and crafted by search committees in order to let perspective clergy applicants know what gifts and skills are being sought. None are the same, as no two faith communities are the same, but almost all share in common a desire that the new rector be able to relate the bible to everyday life. The people in the pews understandably hunger to learn how ancient texts from a very foreign culture apply to today’s world. They do not want, but often tolerate, preachers and teachers who babble on in academic language sermons better suited for dusty commentaries. We live in a dynamic world which requires an equally dynamic interpretation of the Scriptures if we are to make sense of God’s desire for the human family.
This, I think, is what was happening in the synagogue at Capernaum when Jesus was teaching. The narrative gives us no hint as to the content of what he presented, but we can surmise it was in keeping with what we find in the Sermon on the Mount: the Beatitudes and various topics introduced with the phrase, “you have heard it said…, but I say to you.” In these teachings, Jesus addressed such current concerns as anger, lust, divorce, keeping promises, forgiveness as opposed to vengeance, praying for your enemy, the true purpose of devotional acts, and trusting God to provide for your needs. These were real, practical question to which Jesus did not simply parrot old interpretations. He added to each topic his own insight based on a critique of how current religious leaders failed to understand the deeper intent of the Scriptures.
When Jesus taught, it was not just novel nor was it innovative. It was authoritative. It was what the people in the pews longed to hear: the ancient word brought to life in today’s world giving guidance and understanding to those who listened.
It doesn’t always work this way, does it. It never has. I have been reading my way through the Old Testament Book of Job. It is a fascinating piece of literature that has several scholarly challenges; chief of which is the date it was written. Most place it somewhere around 200 years before the birth of Christ, give a generation or two. You may recall that Job was a good man who lost everything – family, health, and wealth. Three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, came to comfort him. Their speeches to Job and his replies are all cast in poetic language. The friends state that Job must have sinned in some way for such terrible things to have befallen him. Job insists throughout that he has not. What is fascinating in the account is how the three friends quote directly from the Psalms to make their attack. They confront Job with boilerplate theology – God prospers the way of the righteous and causes the wicked person to fall. They apply this theology, rooted in psalms written some 300-500 years earlier, without once questioning if it makes sense of the world in which they live. Job, on the other hand, brings one challenge after another to their conventional wisdom. This is just one of many instances where Scripture critiques Scripture.
There is within the very fabric of God’s written word an ongoing process of revelation, prophetic challenge, and new wisdom; what one theologian refers to as disclosure, disruption, and discernment. Take for example the early revelation that God commanded the Israelites to kill all their enemies. Prophets began to criticize this understanding and new thinking emerged on many fronts; including last week’s reading from Jonah where God embraces the people of Nineveh after they repent. The force and thrust of Scripture – of God’s will for this world – moves forward as the world moves forward. Applying Scripture in new ways to new situations is at the foundation of its authority.
Look at today’s New Testament reading. Taken at face value it is absolutely useless to us. When was the last time you were a guest at another’s home and were serve a steak while being told, “Before I grilled this, I offered it as a sacrifice to a pagan deity”? Probably… never. But within this particular, culturally obscure concern there is a treasure trove of godly principles that can and should be applied to our world which is very different from the one where Paul introduced them.
We in the Anglican Communion are inheritors of a faith always willing to engage the world as it moves forward with new innovations, insights, and ideas. We will never be the faith apologizing three hundred years after the fact for persecuting Galileo and his notion that the earth rotated around the sun. Earth-centric teaching was not authoritative in Galileo’s day. It was just old, out-dated, and stodgy. Still, it continued to be propagated by those who could not figure out how to revisit Scripture in order to hear God speak through it after the dawn of new understanding.
In just two weeks our diocese will launch a blogsite dealing with issues, questions, and concerns around the possibility of liturgies for blessing same-gender unions being approved for trial use after this summer’s General Convention. You will recall that the bishop asked me to chair the Task Force that is laying the groundwork for this electronic conversation. It is an emotional issue, to be sure. Some feel strongly it is time for the church to move forward, while others feel equally that blessing same-gender unions is wrong. Here is what is right about what we will do through the blogsite: We, the members of the Diocese of Southern Virginia, will take current questions and rethink Holy Scripture in light of the challenges they pose. Our project’s theme is simple: “One Diocese. Many Voices. Yours Matters.” Each week there will be a new, brief entry addressing a question being asked by many. At the end of each post there will be a question to which every reader will be invited to respond. This could be a rich, diverse, thought-provoking conversation engaged by many, many members of our diocese or it could be a total disaster. Only time will tell. What matters to me is not so much how this particular question gets resolved, but that people like you engage in the process, learn from the conversation, articulate your understanding, and – above all – reengage Scripture.
In the Catechism of the prayer book we find the question, “Why do we call the bible the word of God?” Its answer, “We call the bible the word of God because God inspired its human authors and because God still speaks through it today.” It takes courage to listen for God’s authoritative voice. When Jesus taught in his hometown’s synagogue the people were not amazed at his authority, they were infuriated; so much in fact that they wanted to put him to death by throwing him off a cliff. They preferred the old story told the old way about an old world that no body lived in any more. They wanted boilerplate theology to which they could all nod their heads or nod off and then go home. But Jesus would have none of that. He wanted to talk about here and now and what matters and what puzzles and what it all means. So when he taught, it was relevant and it was authoritative. What he said was risky, it was life-giving, and it changed the world. It is what most of us long to hear.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
When Opportunity Knocks... Drop Your Nets!
Jesus saw Simon and his brother Andrew… and he said to them, “Follow me.” As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John… Immediately he called them; and they left their father in the boat and followed him.
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
You have come to St. Paul’s this morning on what truly is a historic day. A day unlike any other in the history of Christendom. A day not likely to happen again. A day not soon to be forgotten. A day, perhaps, one day to be enshrined as a holy day for generations yet unborn to celebrate. You see, on this day, no other than Grier Ferguson personifies the Gospel reading. Now, in and of itself, this may not be untypical. Surely there have been numerous other Sunday’s when Grier was a sermon illustration for, say, one or more of the seven deadly sins – wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, gluttony. And surely there are sermons to come where the preacher’s finger will point at him so as to demonstrate to the congregation what sin and sinfulness is all about. But what makes this day so unique is that Grier is lifted up as an exemplar of the life Jesus Christ calls us to and Grier as an exemplar of the Christian life is something that has never (and I mean ever) happened before, and most likely will never happen again. But today, ahhhh, is a day unlike any other day.
So, two weeks ago Grier comes to me and says, “Hey, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to miss the congregation’s Annual Meeting.” He explains that he has an opportunity to go with his son for a long weekend trip to San Francisco. “I’ve never been to there,” he tells me and so I send him off with my blessing. And what does Grier do in the city by the bay? He rides the cable cars. He goes to “check out the scene at Haight-Ashbury.” He and his son take in a professional basketball game. And then, on Sunday, they go to Candlestick Park to watch a playoff game between the 49ers and the New Orleans Saints, which, as it turns out, was one of the most exciting games in NFL history. “Well,” Grier said, “We got our money’s worth!”
Here is what I like about what Grier did: when presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, he took it! That may not seem like a big deal, but it is. The Greek god of Opportunity was said to be covered in hair from head to toe in the front and completely bald in the back. So, as Opportunity approached, you were not quite sure what you were dealing with. And, once he passed, there was nothing you to grab in order to get him back. It is old folk wisdom, but still true. As far back in 43BC, one Pubilus Syrus observed that opportunity is seldom presented and easily lost. Not much has changed in 2000 years.
I carry with me a memory of a rather insignificant event from years ago when I was a relatively new uncle. I took my four-year-old niece and three three-year-old nephews to a park with a large, open field. I brought with me a red rubber kickball and got the five of us to stand in a circle about twenty feet from one another. I then encouraged us to kick the ball back and forth. My niece had the first chance, but refused to kick. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think we should do this because the ball might go in the street.” I pointed out the street was a long, long, long way away; so far in fact that it would take at least five kicks for the ball even to get close. “Well,” she said, “it might go in those trees over there” – a good four kicks away. And with those two protests, play came to a halt before it ever got started.
There is any number of things that might keep any one of us from taking advantage of an opportunity. We might not recognize it for what it is. We might let duty or responsibility to other things supercede it. We might think it too costly, too extravagant, or ourselves too unworthy. We simply might be afraid to say yes.
In terms of its narrative description, Mark’s is the leanest of the four gospels. Some of you might still remember how his gospel spawned the “Teen-Speak” Easter Story. In Mark’s telling, things happen quickly without much explanation or description of deeper issues and concerns.
Case in point: today’s reading. All it says is that Jesus approached two different sets of brothers and invited them to follow him. Without apparent hesitation, each put down his nets and left everything. There is no description of how they knew Jesus or how Jesus knew them. There is no information as to why Jesus chose them over others. And there is no detail about how their families reacted to their decisions. Mark’s focus is on the opportunity Jesus presented and how Simon, Andrew, James, and John grabbed it. Given the chance, they kicked the ball as hard as they could. Given the chance, they went to San Francisco for an once-in-a-lifetime weekend with their son.
It strikes me that there are different kinds of opportunities. Some are life-changing – like the one presented to the disciples. Some are memorable – like what Grier did. Some call us to let our hair down and have some fun – like kicking the ball with reckless abandon. True, there are things we label as opportunity that are nothing more than distraction. Forgetting those and focusing on ones that are real, I believe there is something spiritual embedded deep within each opportunity. If it is a the call to discipleship, the spiritual nature is more obvious than when an uncle rolls out a ball, but still each opportunity has a spiritual element. Each offers a way to nourish our soul through change, challenge, exhilaration, and (remember this from last week’s sermon?) taking us to a place we would not get to on our own.
When Grier told me about his trip I truly was happy for him and I found myself wondering what I would do if I was in his place. Would I see past the hair-covered front and all the reasons to get out of its way or would I see only in hindsight that I had missed the chance to be a part of something remarkable? His willingness to go for it is something I admire. It is a witness to me (and perhaps to you too) how Jesus calls us to say yes when opportunity knocks.
Grier is one of twelve members of St. Paul’s who serve on our Vestry. We are just coming off a two-day retreat where we reviewed the past year, considered current opportunities and challenges, and got our selves positioned to move forward. I am keenly aware of how each person on this Vestry had good reason to say no to the call to serve: too busy, too new to the congregation, too old, too unworthy, too whatever. But do you know what, when that hairy creature called on them to step forward, each person said yes. It is a good and godly group and it was a joy to gather with them Friday night and Saturday.
One of the new buzzwords in organizational life is “nimble.” It reflects the desire for a group like, say St. Paul’s, to be flexible enough to respond to opportunity. It is possible to be so weighed down by structure, responsibility, obligation, tradition, inertia, and a host of other things that opportunity would need to come in the form of a wrecking ball in order to make an impact. That, I trust, is not us.
And what about you? If you are like me then you know how to resist most things that are new. You know how to see the street or the woods 400 feet away and worry that you might kick the ball into it. ‘No’ becomes such an easy default response to opportunity. And in a world so crammed full of “opportunities,” saying ‘no’ is a necessary survival response. But what if I asked you, “Would you like to have a deeper, richer, more meaningful prayer life?” You might say ‘yes.’ To which I would respond, “Well, our Christian education program is focusing on prayer right now.” Would you decide to be here at 9:30 on Sunday mornings? It is an opportunity. And what if I asked, “Would you like to make a difference in the lives of people who are living on the margins of society… and in the process be blessed beyond anything else you have ever done?” Would you be interested in that? It is not a fantasy. It is something people here are experiencing every Monday evening when they serve in the Food Pantry. It is another opportunity.
Are you willing to drop your nets and follow Jesus to something you have never done before? Let’s be honest, laying down your nets is no small thing, is it? So much in our culture tells us that all we are and all we are to be involved with is picking up our nets and going to work and getting our kids to the game and keeping up the appearances of success and happiness. Yes, these things are important, but somehow they are hairier on the backside, aren’t they! They have a way of grabbing us and strangling us and making it so difficult – or perhaps an even better word is ‘radical’ – to grab on to an opportunity – any opportunity – that will help us to experience the fullness of life God intends for us.
Jesus said, “Drop your nets and follow me.”
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
You have come to St. Paul’s this morning on what truly is a historic day. A day unlike any other in the history of Christendom. A day not likely to happen again. A day not soon to be forgotten. A day, perhaps, one day to be enshrined as a holy day for generations yet unborn to celebrate. You see, on this day, no other than Grier Ferguson personifies the Gospel reading. Now, in and of itself, this may not be untypical. Surely there have been numerous other Sunday’s when Grier was a sermon illustration for, say, one or more of the seven deadly sins – wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, gluttony. And surely there are sermons to come where the preacher’s finger will point at him so as to demonstrate to the congregation what sin and sinfulness is all about. But what makes this day so unique is that Grier is lifted up as an exemplar of the life Jesus Christ calls us to and Grier as an exemplar of the Christian life is something that has never (and I mean ever) happened before, and most likely will never happen again. But today, ahhhh, is a day unlike any other day.
So, two weeks ago Grier comes to me and says, “Hey, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to miss the congregation’s Annual Meeting.” He explains that he has an opportunity to go with his son for a long weekend trip to San Francisco. “I’ve never been to there,” he tells me and so I send him off with my blessing. And what does Grier do in the city by the bay? He rides the cable cars. He goes to “check out the scene at Haight-Ashbury.” He and his son take in a professional basketball game. And then, on Sunday, they go to Candlestick Park to watch a playoff game between the 49ers and the New Orleans Saints, which, as it turns out, was one of the most exciting games in NFL history. “Well,” Grier said, “We got our money’s worth!”
Here is what I like about what Grier did: when presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, he took it! That may not seem like a big deal, but it is. The Greek god of Opportunity was said to be covered in hair from head to toe in the front and completely bald in the back. So, as Opportunity approached, you were not quite sure what you were dealing with. And, once he passed, there was nothing you to grab in order to get him back. It is old folk wisdom, but still true. As far back in 43BC, one Pubilus Syrus observed that opportunity is seldom presented and easily lost. Not much has changed in 2000 years.
I carry with me a memory of a rather insignificant event from years ago when I was a relatively new uncle. I took my four-year-old niece and three three-year-old nephews to a park with a large, open field. I brought with me a red rubber kickball and got the five of us to stand in a circle about twenty feet from one another. I then encouraged us to kick the ball back and forth. My niece had the first chance, but refused to kick. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think we should do this because the ball might go in the street.” I pointed out the street was a long, long, long way away; so far in fact that it would take at least five kicks for the ball even to get close. “Well,” she said, “it might go in those trees over there” – a good four kicks away. And with those two protests, play came to a halt before it ever got started.
There is any number of things that might keep any one of us from taking advantage of an opportunity. We might not recognize it for what it is. We might let duty or responsibility to other things supercede it. We might think it too costly, too extravagant, or ourselves too unworthy. We simply might be afraid to say yes.
In terms of its narrative description, Mark’s is the leanest of the four gospels. Some of you might still remember how his gospel spawned the “Teen-Speak” Easter Story. In Mark’s telling, things happen quickly without much explanation or description of deeper issues and concerns.
Case in point: today’s reading. All it says is that Jesus approached two different sets of brothers and invited them to follow him. Without apparent hesitation, each put down his nets and left everything. There is no description of how they knew Jesus or how Jesus knew them. There is no information as to why Jesus chose them over others. And there is no detail about how their families reacted to their decisions. Mark’s focus is on the opportunity Jesus presented and how Simon, Andrew, James, and John grabbed it. Given the chance, they kicked the ball as hard as they could. Given the chance, they went to San Francisco for an once-in-a-lifetime weekend with their son.
It strikes me that there are different kinds of opportunities. Some are life-changing – like the one presented to the disciples. Some are memorable – like what Grier did. Some call us to let our hair down and have some fun – like kicking the ball with reckless abandon. True, there are things we label as opportunity that are nothing more than distraction. Forgetting those and focusing on ones that are real, I believe there is something spiritual embedded deep within each opportunity. If it is a the call to discipleship, the spiritual nature is more obvious than when an uncle rolls out a ball, but still each opportunity has a spiritual element. Each offers a way to nourish our soul through change, challenge, exhilaration, and (remember this from last week’s sermon?) taking us to a place we would not get to on our own.
When Grier told me about his trip I truly was happy for him and I found myself wondering what I would do if I was in his place. Would I see past the hair-covered front and all the reasons to get out of its way or would I see only in hindsight that I had missed the chance to be a part of something remarkable? His willingness to go for it is something I admire. It is a witness to me (and perhaps to you too) how Jesus calls us to say yes when opportunity knocks.
Grier is one of twelve members of St. Paul’s who serve on our Vestry. We are just coming off a two-day retreat where we reviewed the past year, considered current opportunities and challenges, and got our selves positioned to move forward. I am keenly aware of how each person on this Vestry had good reason to say no to the call to serve: too busy, too new to the congregation, too old, too unworthy, too whatever. But do you know what, when that hairy creature called on them to step forward, each person said yes. It is a good and godly group and it was a joy to gather with them Friday night and Saturday.
One of the new buzzwords in organizational life is “nimble.” It reflects the desire for a group like, say St. Paul’s, to be flexible enough to respond to opportunity. It is possible to be so weighed down by structure, responsibility, obligation, tradition, inertia, and a host of other things that opportunity would need to come in the form of a wrecking ball in order to make an impact. That, I trust, is not us.
And what about you? If you are like me then you know how to resist most things that are new. You know how to see the street or the woods 400 feet away and worry that you might kick the ball into it. ‘No’ becomes such an easy default response to opportunity. And in a world so crammed full of “opportunities,” saying ‘no’ is a necessary survival response. But what if I asked you, “Would you like to have a deeper, richer, more meaningful prayer life?” You might say ‘yes.’ To which I would respond, “Well, our Christian education program is focusing on prayer right now.” Would you decide to be here at 9:30 on Sunday mornings? It is an opportunity. And what if I asked, “Would you like to make a difference in the lives of people who are living on the margins of society… and in the process be blessed beyond anything else you have ever done?” Would you be interested in that? It is not a fantasy. It is something people here are experiencing every Monday evening when they serve in the Food Pantry. It is another opportunity.
Are you willing to drop your nets and follow Jesus to something you have never done before? Let’s be honest, laying down your nets is no small thing, is it? So much in our culture tells us that all we are and all we are to be involved with is picking up our nets and going to work and getting our kids to the game and keeping up the appearances of success and happiness. Yes, these things are important, but somehow they are hairier on the backside, aren’t they! They have a way of grabbing us and strangling us and making it so difficult – or perhaps an even better word is ‘radical’ – to grab on to an opportunity – any opportunity – that will help us to experience the fullness of life God intends for us.
Jesus said, “Drop your nets and follow me.”
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Follow the Leader
One of my favorite authors is Candice Mallard who, sadly, has only written two books to date. The first was titled River of Doubt. It chronicles a trip Teddy Roosevelt took down an uncharted river deep in the Amazonian jungle after failing to be elected president in 1912. I am now reading Mallard’s newest book, Destiny of the Republic, which explores the 1881 election, presidency, and assassination of James Garfield.
Garfield, a U.S. Representative from Ohio, never wanted to be president. At the Republican Convention in 1880 he delivered an impressive nominating speech for one of the candidates. The party was deadlocked between that person and another and voting went on for days with no resolution. Out of nowhere a movement to draft Garfield began, even against his own protesting. Eventually, the convention made him its candidate by unanimous vote.
He never campaigned a day in his life. Garfield had always been recruited and then promoted by others. All he really wanted to do was work his farm and sit on the front porch of his home in Mentor, OH, near Cleveland. With this campaign, party officials urged him to take to the stump. But Garfield considered travelling from town to town asking for votes to be undignified for such a lofty office, so, instead, he stayed on his farm and greeted anyone who wanted to visit with him. Remarkably, this strategy worked and that fall he was elected in a landslide.
I share this story because it sits in such sharp contrast to political campaigning in our own time, where candidates can spends months and millions traipsing around the state of Iowa to garner only a few hundred votes. I also share it because it reflects something of what we see in the gospel reading for today. Jesus did not campaign to be the savior of the world. It was John who first proclaimed this identity when Jesus came to be baptized and then God pronounced it as Jesus arose from the waters of Jordon River. We heard this in last week’s reading. Today we hear the genesis moment of calling disciples. Various individuals approach Jesus and he offers the gentle invitation, “Follow me.”
A professor I once had defined leadership this way: A leader is a person who will take you someplace you would not get to on your own. A leader will take a person or a group to a place he, she, or it would not get to otherwise. It is curious that Jesus’ first act of leadership is to get a group of people to travel with him to his hometown of Nazareth, a backwater place held in high contempt by most. It is a trip that began a moral, spiritual, and vocational change in these followers that never would have occurred if Jesus had not led them.
There is a fundamental difference between leaders and managers. Managers maintain what is going well, they tweak things to make them better, and fix things that are broken. Managers play a very important role in the scheme of things and good ones are worth their weight in salt. But manager-skills don’t take you to places you cannot get on your own. To get to those places requires leadership.
Some people can do both – lead and maintain. We are blessed at St. Paul’s by the ministry of Al Reese, our Music Director and Organist. He selects the hymns and offertories, plays the instruments, and manages the music of the parish very well. He also instills courage and confidence in our choir members. Several of them have said to me, at one time or another, “Al is getting us to do things we didn’t think we could do.” That is leadership, isn’t it! And many of you have commented to me how good the choir sounds. It’s true. They deserve our thanks for their dedication and hard work and Al deserves a lot of credit for taking them to a place they would not have gone on their own.
St. Paul’s Church is blessed with good managers. Our Wardens and Vestry and numerous volunteers do so much to keep us going, and going at a high level. We tweak things to make them better and we fix things that aren’t working well. Joby Webb, who today completes a three-year term on Vestry, said that one of the things he has learned through his service is just how many people it takes volunteering their time to make our church work. He is right, it does take a lot of people and I am grateful to serve as Rector of a parish so deeply loved and supported by its members.
I am now in the fifth year at St. Paul’s. The time has flown by and I continue to enjoy being here. You know better now than when you called me what I manage well and what I do not. Given the capable staff and parish leadership around me, I have a better sense of this too. I manage what I manage well and can leave the rest to others. You may disagree, but up until now I have not had to lead you; to take you to someplace you would not go without me.
In 2012, this is going to change. I am going to invite you to follow me out of a hurting area of parish life that simply can be ignored no longer to someplace new. The material handed out at today’s Annual Meeting reports that in 2011 we spent $28,000 more than we took in. This year’s budget projects a $39,000 shortfall in revenue over expenses. We are in this situation not because of wasteful spending. We have a bare-bones budget that is actually 10% smaller than what the parish operated on fifteen years ago in 1997! Still, in the five budget cycles that I have been your rector, St. Paul’s has run an accumulated operating deficit of $125,000, not counting this year’s projections.
We have a revenue problem. There is no single cause and there is no single answer. I pledge to lead our current Vestry in an exploration of where we are and how we got here in order to develop a multifaceted plan to get us on firm financial footing and to replenish what has been lost. At the heart of this issue is a basic question: can we fund the ministry of the parish we want – a parish with a fulltime priest, quality music, and a part-time administrator – or can we live with a parish commensurate with our funding – a part-time priest, diminished music, and office volunteers.
Ultimately, every leader who wants to take a group to a place it could not go on its own will have to deal with the group’s fear. Yes, we would love to be at the place you want to take us - be it singing on Sunday mornings with confidence and grace or tackling a significant budget deficit - but we are afraid of what it will take to get there. Fear is faith’s opposite.
For those first disciples, the miserable trip to Nazareth was made palatable by the companion who led them there. It was made glorious by the ministry and miracles he performed there. I am excited by the challenge before us. You might respond, can anything good come out of a church that has to focus so much on money? Like Phillip said to Nathanael, “Come and see.” At the outset of our journey it sounds like we’ll be hearing a lot about a subject we would rather ignore. But like those first disciples, we are followers of Christ and he will be our companion along the way. I expect no less of a transformation to take place in us as took place in them. In time, we will say, as the disciples did, thank goodness we came to Nazareth.
Garfield, a U.S. Representative from Ohio, never wanted to be president. At the Republican Convention in 1880 he delivered an impressive nominating speech for one of the candidates. The party was deadlocked between that person and another and voting went on for days with no resolution. Out of nowhere a movement to draft Garfield began, even against his own protesting. Eventually, the convention made him its candidate by unanimous vote.
He never campaigned a day in his life. Garfield had always been recruited and then promoted by others. All he really wanted to do was work his farm and sit on the front porch of his home in Mentor, OH, near Cleveland. With this campaign, party officials urged him to take to the stump. But Garfield considered travelling from town to town asking for votes to be undignified for such a lofty office, so, instead, he stayed on his farm and greeted anyone who wanted to visit with him. Remarkably, this strategy worked and that fall he was elected in a landslide.
I share this story because it sits in such sharp contrast to political campaigning in our own time, where candidates can spends months and millions traipsing around the state of Iowa to garner only a few hundred votes. I also share it because it reflects something of what we see in the gospel reading for today. Jesus did not campaign to be the savior of the world. It was John who first proclaimed this identity when Jesus came to be baptized and then God pronounced it as Jesus arose from the waters of Jordon River. We heard this in last week’s reading. Today we hear the genesis moment of calling disciples. Various individuals approach Jesus and he offers the gentle invitation, “Follow me.”
A professor I once had defined leadership this way: A leader is a person who will take you someplace you would not get to on your own. A leader will take a person or a group to a place he, she, or it would not get to otherwise. It is curious that Jesus’ first act of leadership is to get a group of people to travel with him to his hometown of Nazareth, a backwater place held in high contempt by most. It is a trip that began a moral, spiritual, and vocational change in these followers that never would have occurred if Jesus had not led them.
There is a fundamental difference between leaders and managers. Managers maintain what is going well, they tweak things to make them better, and fix things that are broken. Managers play a very important role in the scheme of things and good ones are worth their weight in salt. But manager-skills don’t take you to places you cannot get on your own. To get to those places requires leadership.
Some people can do both – lead and maintain. We are blessed at St. Paul’s by the ministry of Al Reese, our Music Director and Organist. He selects the hymns and offertories, plays the instruments, and manages the music of the parish very well. He also instills courage and confidence in our choir members. Several of them have said to me, at one time or another, “Al is getting us to do things we didn’t think we could do.” That is leadership, isn’t it! And many of you have commented to me how good the choir sounds. It’s true. They deserve our thanks for their dedication and hard work and Al deserves a lot of credit for taking them to a place they would not have gone on their own.
St. Paul’s Church is blessed with good managers. Our Wardens and Vestry and numerous volunteers do so much to keep us going, and going at a high level. We tweak things to make them better and we fix things that aren’t working well. Joby Webb, who today completes a three-year term on Vestry, said that one of the things he has learned through his service is just how many people it takes volunteering their time to make our church work. He is right, it does take a lot of people and I am grateful to serve as Rector of a parish so deeply loved and supported by its members.
I am now in the fifth year at St. Paul’s. The time has flown by and I continue to enjoy being here. You know better now than when you called me what I manage well and what I do not. Given the capable staff and parish leadership around me, I have a better sense of this too. I manage what I manage well and can leave the rest to others. You may disagree, but up until now I have not had to lead you; to take you to someplace you would not go without me.
In 2012, this is going to change. I am going to invite you to follow me out of a hurting area of parish life that simply can be ignored no longer to someplace new. The material handed out at today’s Annual Meeting reports that in 2011 we spent $28,000 more than we took in. This year’s budget projects a $39,000 shortfall in revenue over expenses. We are in this situation not because of wasteful spending. We have a bare-bones budget that is actually 10% smaller than what the parish operated on fifteen years ago in 1997! Still, in the five budget cycles that I have been your rector, St. Paul’s has run an accumulated operating deficit of $125,000, not counting this year’s projections.
We have a revenue problem. There is no single cause and there is no single answer. I pledge to lead our current Vestry in an exploration of where we are and how we got here in order to develop a multifaceted plan to get us on firm financial footing and to replenish what has been lost. At the heart of this issue is a basic question: can we fund the ministry of the parish we want – a parish with a fulltime priest, quality music, and a part-time administrator – or can we live with a parish commensurate with our funding – a part-time priest, diminished music, and office volunteers.
Ultimately, every leader who wants to take a group to a place it could not go on its own will have to deal with the group’s fear. Yes, we would love to be at the place you want to take us - be it singing on Sunday mornings with confidence and grace or tackling a significant budget deficit - but we are afraid of what it will take to get there. Fear is faith’s opposite.
For those first disciples, the miserable trip to Nazareth was made palatable by the companion who led them there. It was made glorious by the ministry and miracles he performed there. I am excited by the challenge before us. You might respond, can anything good come out of a church that has to focus so much on money? Like Phillip said to Nathanael, “Come and see.” At the outset of our journey it sounds like we’ll be hearing a lot about a subject we would rather ignore. But like those first disciples, we are followers of Christ and he will be our companion along the way. I expect no less of a transformation to take place in us as took place in them. In time, we will say, as the disciples did, thank goodness we came to Nazareth.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Jesus Hiding in Plain Sight
When I was a child I looked forward to each month’s mailing of Highlights magazine for children. Each issue contained a craft project and jokes only children could laugh at. I still remember two, which at the time struck me as uproariously funny:
What did the monkey say when he laid his tail on the railroad track? It won’t be long now.
What is wide at the bottom, pointed at the top, and has ears? A mountain. What, you say that a mountain doesn’t have ears. Haven’t you ever heard of mountaineers?
Highlights also had monthly comic strips about Goofus and Gallant (two boys who faced a similar situation, but one responded appropriately and the other did not), and The Timbertoes (a family and their pets who were made out of the wood).
Far and away, my favorite feature was a page called “What’s Wrong with this Picture?” It contained a drawing of a typical scene—say children on a playground—but embedded within it were all kinds of hidden objects—an iron, an umbrella, a ruler… that kind of thing. I remember searching and searching until I found each and every one of the concealed items. They were right there on the page hiding in plain sight.
That memory came back to me last Sunday when I encouraged people to search throughout the worship space for the Christian symbol “ihs.” “ihs” has come to represent the name of Jesus because these are the first three letters in the Greek word for his name. In addition, “ihs” has become a devotional acronym meaning “Jesus humanity’s Savior.” By my count this symbol can be found six different places in St. Paul’s worship space in addition to the Newsome Window located just outside the Sacristy. Well, children of all ages took me up on my symbol-search challenge and they found it in not six, but in nine and even ten different places. Each has been there all along hiding in plain sight.
From word searches to hidden pictures and everything in between, human beings love this kind of challenge because our brains are wired to filter out information deemed to be irrelevant to the moment at hand. Magicians and those skilled in slight of hand make a living manipulating what we see and what they don’t want us to see. Last week I landed on one of those cable channel shows designed to reveal you how magicians pull off their tricks. We were told to keep our eyes on the performer’s hands as he did a trick while standing on a crowed city sidewalk. Knowing there was something I wasn’t supposed to see, I kept a sharp eye on everything else he was doing, but still missed how he did the trick. Even worse, when they rewound the tape and showed it again in slow motion, the program pointed out that among the people walking along the sidewalk behind the magician I was watching so intently were a penguin, a person in a bunny suit, and Santa Claus. I had seen none of them.
My brain had done its job. It did not consciously register what it determined to be meaningless data. This is something immensely helpful in a world so crammed full of sensory experience that to take it all in would be overwhelming. Perhaps this is why we like hidden picture comics and all things like it because we like the challenge of using our sight to see what is right there in front of us, but we had not seen before.
All of this brings a very helpful context to the season of Epiphany, which is the liturgical time we celebrate the revealing of Christ to the world. It is not just a season for people who have never heard of Jesus, but also for us who know a great deal about him. You see, it is possible that there are elements of our Lord’s words and witness that have been there all along, but we never noticed. It is possible that there is more to Jesus right in front of us hiding in plain sight. The readings from scripture will all sound familiar, but there is always more to them than meets the eye. The liturgy will not vary much from any other time of the year, yet we who come to it each week with something new going on inside of us always discover God present in the liturgy in some new way.
The fourth Century Christian theologian and poet Ephrem of Syria picked up on the paradoxical notion that Jesus is both revealed to us and hidden from us and he put it to words in a Hymn of the Nativity:
Your majesty is hidden from us;
Your grace is revealed before us.
I will be silent, my Lord, about your majesty,
but I will speak about Your grace.
Your grace made You a Babe;
Your grace made You a human being.
Your majesty contracted and stretched out.
Blessed is the power
that became small and became great!
This morning we hear again the story of Jesus’ baptism. In Mark’s Gospel, which was the first of the four to be written, only Jesus sees the dove and hears the voice of God speak. In subsequent gospels, all those present are said to see and hear. Either way, theologians talk about this as a moment when Jesus receives what is called “God-consciousness” – that is, the time when he comes to understand who he really is. Up until this event, Jesus’ own sense of person and mission in life must have been vague. Surely his mother told him the stories of his miraculous conception and the dramatic, heavenly events surrounding his birth. Doubtless he lived his life with deep devotion and a sense that he was called to do something special. But what? It was not until his baptism that his true purpose and nature began to come into clear focus for Jesus. Even for him, who he was was something hiding in plain sight.
The season of Epiphany celebrates the revealing of God’s incarnate Light to the world. The old, old challenge is still the same. We tend to see only what we want to see and only what we expect to see. But God wants us to see so much more than this. So let the Epiphany search begin. Can we see in Jesus more than we have seen before? Can we stop focusing in on what we have always known and come to expect in order to be open to the things that have been there all along hiding in plain sight.
What did the monkey say when he laid his tail on the railroad track? It won’t be long now.
What is wide at the bottom, pointed at the top, and has ears? A mountain. What, you say that a mountain doesn’t have ears. Haven’t you ever heard of mountaineers?
Highlights also had monthly comic strips about Goofus and Gallant (two boys who faced a similar situation, but one responded appropriately and the other did not), and The Timbertoes (a family and their pets who were made out of the wood).
Far and away, my favorite feature was a page called “What’s Wrong with this Picture?” It contained a drawing of a typical scene—say children on a playground—but embedded within it were all kinds of hidden objects—an iron, an umbrella, a ruler… that kind of thing. I remember searching and searching until I found each and every one of the concealed items. They were right there on the page hiding in plain sight.
That memory came back to me last Sunday when I encouraged people to search throughout the worship space for the Christian symbol “ihs.” “ihs” has come to represent the name of Jesus because these are the first three letters in the Greek word for his name. In addition, “ihs” has become a devotional acronym meaning “Jesus humanity’s Savior.” By my count this symbol can be found six different places in St. Paul’s worship space in addition to the Newsome Window located just outside the Sacristy. Well, children of all ages took me up on my symbol-search challenge and they found it in not six, but in nine and even ten different places. Each has been there all along hiding in plain sight.
From word searches to hidden pictures and everything in between, human beings love this kind of challenge because our brains are wired to filter out information deemed to be irrelevant to the moment at hand. Magicians and those skilled in slight of hand make a living manipulating what we see and what they don’t want us to see. Last week I landed on one of those cable channel shows designed to reveal you how magicians pull off their tricks. We were told to keep our eyes on the performer’s hands as he did a trick while standing on a crowed city sidewalk. Knowing there was something I wasn’t supposed to see, I kept a sharp eye on everything else he was doing, but still missed how he did the trick. Even worse, when they rewound the tape and showed it again in slow motion, the program pointed out that among the people walking along the sidewalk behind the magician I was watching so intently were a penguin, a person in a bunny suit, and Santa Claus. I had seen none of them.
My brain had done its job. It did not consciously register what it determined to be meaningless data. This is something immensely helpful in a world so crammed full of sensory experience that to take it all in would be overwhelming. Perhaps this is why we like hidden picture comics and all things like it because we like the challenge of using our sight to see what is right there in front of us, but we had not seen before.
All of this brings a very helpful context to the season of Epiphany, which is the liturgical time we celebrate the revealing of Christ to the world. It is not just a season for people who have never heard of Jesus, but also for us who know a great deal about him. You see, it is possible that there are elements of our Lord’s words and witness that have been there all along, but we never noticed. It is possible that there is more to Jesus right in front of us hiding in plain sight. The readings from scripture will all sound familiar, but there is always more to them than meets the eye. The liturgy will not vary much from any other time of the year, yet we who come to it each week with something new going on inside of us always discover God present in the liturgy in some new way.
The fourth Century Christian theologian and poet Ephrem of Syria picked up on the paradoxical notion that Jesus is both revealed to us and hidden from us and he put it to words in a Hymn of the Nativity:
Your majesty is hidden from us;
Your grace is revealed before us.
I will be silent, my Lord, about your majesty,
but I will speak about Your grace.
Your grace made You a Babe;
Your grace made You a human being.
Your majesty contracted and stretched out.
Blessed is the power
that became small and became great!
This morning we hear again the story of Jesus’ baptism. In Mark’s Gospel, which was the first of the four to be written, only Jesus sees the dove and hears the voice of God speak. In subsequent gospels, all those present are said to see and hear. Either way, theologians talk about this as a moment when Jesus receives what is called “God-consciousness” – that is, the time when he comes to understand who he really is. Up until this event, Jesus’ own sense of person and mission in life must have been vague. Surely his mother told him the stories of his miraculous conception and the dramatic, heavenly events surrounding his birth. Doubtless he lived his life with deep devotion and a sense that he was called to do something special. But what? It was not until his baptism that his true purpose and nature began to come into clear focus for Jesus. Even for him, who he was was something hiding in plain sight.
The season of Epiphany celebrates the revealing of God’s incarnate Light to the world. The old, old challenge is still the same. We tend to see only what we want to see and only what we expect to see. But God wants us to see so much more than this. So let the Epiphany search begin. Can we see in Jesus more than we have seen before? Can we stop focusing in on what we have always known and come to expect in order to be open to the things that have been there all along hiding in plain sight.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Altdorfer’s Nativity: God-with-Us in the Ruins
When you picture the Nativity in your mind’s eye, what do you see? Beyond the basic characters of Mary, Joseph, angles, shepherds, and a baby, and beyond the setting of stable and crèche, what feeling or feelings are expressed through what you imagine?
I did a google search on “greeting cards of the Nativity.” Some of the cards featured great works of art from past centuries. A few had a photograph of a stained glass window. Contemporary cards ran the gamete from cartoon characters to abstract renderings of the holy family and everything in between. But while the styles, appearances, and depictions vary widely, almost all connect at a similar emotional level. They share a sense of sentimentality. They convey peace and tranquility. Even if placed in a dark and lowly setting, most contemporary renderings have a feeling of warmth that speaks of a deep sense of hope and joy.
All of this being said, it is doubtful anyone today would create a painting of the Nativity that comes close to a work done by Albrecht Altdorfer in 1513. Altdorfer was a member of what is known as the Danube school of artists and he is considered to be the first person to focus on painting landscapes. Altdorfer places the Holy Family in the brick carcass of a house or building. As they huddle together under a shoddy roof, the entire structure looks as if it is about to collapse on Mary, Joseph, and their baby. The sky is dark and ghostly, more like what we associate with Halloween than Christmas. Three angels (who look like toddlers with wings) cling to the edge of the manger looking at the baby with rapt curiosity. Three other angels hover in the sky above, studying some kind of scroll-like document. Perhaps it is the song of Gloria they are to sing, or it might be the message of glad tidings they are to proclaim. Either way, the look on their faces says the angels are absolutely puzzled as to why the Lord of all creation would be born in such a setting. Mary is at peace as she gives thanks for the birth of her son. Joseph, standing behind her, cups his hand around a candle in an attempt to shield it from the elements.
Altdorfer’s Nativity has spoken to people at various points in history. Dietrich Bonhoeffer meditated on it during Advent in 1943. At the time, he was imprisoned by the Nazis and awaiting execution for his role in a plot to overthrow Hitler. Given his bleak future and the way war was ravaging his country, you can imagine how the painting might have conveyed to him something about God’s presence in the midst of a societal collapse and the mystery of God’s love in the wreckage of life. He wrote this to his parents:
The Altdorfer Nativity, which portrays the Holy Family at the manger amidst the ruins of a dilapidated house – whatever made him do that 400 years ago, against all tradition? – is especially on my mind these days. Perhaps Altdorfer meant to tell us, “Christmas can, and should, be celebrated in this way too.”
Deborah Smith Douglas, a writer and laywoman in the Episcopal Church, was drawn to this work in Advent, 2001 – only a handful of weeks after the events of September 11. She wrote this about what it said to her:
Altdorfer’s painting “speaks of the presence of God in the midst of the worst we know about helplessness, vulnerability, alienation, exile… [It] bears profound witness to the nature of God-with-us, the breathtaking presence of divine love, at home in the ruins, amid the fragility and brokenness of the human condition.”
No single work of art truly captures the magnitude of that moment in Bethlehem. Each is a best a single frame of a much larger motion picture reel. Certainly Jesus was not born in the shell of a 16th century German home and you can argue with the accuracy of other features in his painting if you like. Still, Altdorfer says something very important to us on Christmas Eve 398 years later. He points out that our warm, sentimental images of the Nativity are nothing more than another frame or two of the movie. The more frames we see, the greater sense we have of what the film is about.
Our theology holds that all of creation came into being through God the Son. In my mind’s eye, I picture it being something like The Scorcher’s Apprentice, where Mickey Mouse unleashes new-found powers to create incredible displays of beauty, awe, and wonder. Angels, archangels, and all the heavenly host watch in rapture as each new day and each new dawn brings another glorious manifestation of divine love and power. And when it is finished the Father and Son sit side by side and the heavenly chorus offers unceasing praise. But creation turns dark, infested by sin. In a move unthinkable, the Creator becomes a creature in an attempt to draw the whole world back to himself. It is a decision with celestial consequences. The song of angels goes silent for the throne is now empty and the person they sing to is no longer there.
Whatever the hosts of heaven thought of this plan we do not know. We can imagine they envisioned God the Son being born into a powerful royal family. Perhaps they steeled themselves for battle with the forces of evil. Surely none of them expected the baby to born in the kind of ruins Altdorfer depicted and surely none thought the only protection afforded God the Son would be the flickering candle cusped in Joseph’s trembling hands. This is not a “our cheeks are nice and rosy, and comfy, cozy are we” depiction of Christmas, is it. Surely Altdorfer got it right when he painted the angels hovering above the crèche checking over their marching orders in astonished disbelief.
This Advent I have heard several people say that this Christmas won’t seem like Christmas at all. The reasons vary: children have grown older and the magic of opening presents just is not what it used to be; young adults have left home and won’t be here this Christmas; unemployment, underemployment, or retirement have curtailed normal celebrations; the marriage is on the rocks; health concerns have changed and challenged our lives; a parent or sibling or spouse has died and Christmas is dominated more by absence than presence. Lurking in the background of our personal lives are ominous world events and troubling news at home. The peace and warmth and joy of Christmas seem to get briefer with each passing year. The Christmas we remember, which is the Christmas we want, does not seem to be the Christmas we get.
If you could take all of this, break it down to its colors, put those colors on a pallet, take brush and put it to canvass to make something that expresses how it all feels, you might just come up with Altdorfer’s Nativity. If you were a person of deep faith, you might just come up with a painting that shows the Holy Family huddling in all the darkness and sadness and uncertainty of our lives. Christmas is celebrated not just in living rooms with happy children and perfect families. God is with us even more so in the midst of life’s brokenness and heartache and loss.
Christmas is about traditions, but there is only one tradition that really matters… God loves us enough to be with us no matter where we find ourselves in life. Christmas is about gathering with family and friends, but the friend that matters most is the one who was born in a manger and says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Christmas is about giving and receiving gifts, but the most important gift we need is the gift in the crèche on that first Christmas night… the gift of God-with-us.
Perhaps your life is in a good place on this night. Perhaps you find yourself getting the Christmas you always wanted. If that is where you are, I could not be more happy for you. There are hundreds of thousands of depictions of the Nativity out there to speak to you and where you are in life. But for some of us, I imagine this night is a night of mixed emotions. Yes, we know we are blessed and there is much to celebrate in our lives. But it is also a night that brings into shape focus the pain and heartache and brokenness and absences and losses in our lives. For us, the ruins in Altdorfer’s Nativity paint a picture of where we are. And there, in the very center of it all is God-with-us. Meditate on that image and allow it to speak to you, as it spoke to Bonhoeffer and Douglas and countless others. May you come to know in a new and renewing way the presence of God in your life.
I did a google search on “greeting cards of the Nativity.” Some of the cards featured great works of art from past centuries. A few had a photograph of a stained glass window. Contemporary cards ran the gamete from cartoon characters to abstract renderings of the holy family and everything in between. But while the styles, appearances, and depictions vary widely, almost all connect at a similar emotional level. They share a sense of sentimentality. They convey peace and tranquility. Even if placed in a dark and lowly setting, most contemporary renderings have a feeling of warmth that speaks of a deep sense of hope and joy.
All of this being said, it is doubtful anyone today would create a painting of the Nativity that comes close to a work done by Albrecht Altdorfer in 1513. Altdorfer was a member of what is known as the Danube school of artists and he is considered to be the first person to focus on painting landscapes. Altdorfer places the Holy Family in the brick carcass of a house or building. As they huddle together under a shoddy roof, the entire structure looks as if it is about to collapse on Mary, Joseph, and their baby. The sky is dark and ghostly, more like what we associate with Halloween than Christmas. Three angels (who look like toddlers with wings) cling to the edge of the manger looking at the baby with rapt curiosity. Three other angels hover in the sky above, studying some kind of scroll-like document. Perhaps it is the song of Gloria they are to sing, or it might be the message of glad tidings they are to proclaim. Either way, the look on their faces says the angels are absolutely puzzled as to why the Lord of all creation would be born in such a setting. Mary is at peace as she gives thanks for the birth of her son. Joseph, standing behind her, cups his hand around a candle in an attempt to shield it from the elements.
Altdorfer’s Nativity has spoken to people at various points in history. Dietrich Bonhoeffer meditated on it during Advent in 1943. At the time, he was imprisoned by the Nazis and awaiting execution for his role in a plot to overthrow Hitler. Given his bleak future and the way war was ravaging his country, you can imagine how the painting might have conveyed to him something about God’s presence in the midst of a societal collapse and the mystery of God’s love in the wreckage of life. He wrote this to his parents:
The Altdorfer Nativity, which portrays the Holy Family at the manger amidst the ruins of a dilapidated house – whatever made him do that 400 years ago, against all tradition? – is especially on my mind these days. Perhaps Altdorfer meant to tell us, “Christmas can, and should, be celebrated in this way too.”
Deborah Smith Douglas, a writer and laywoman in the Episcopal Church, was drawn to this work in Advent, 2001 – only a handful of weeks after the events of September 11. She wrote this about what it said to her:
Altdorfer’s painting “speaks of the presence of God in the midst of the worst we know about helplessness, vulnerability, alienation, exile… [It] bears profound witness to the nature of God-with-us, the breathtaking presence of divine love, at home in the ruins, amid the fragility and brokenness of the human condition.”
No single work of art truly captures the magnitude of that moment in Bethlehem. Each is a best a single frame of a much larger motion picture reel. Certainly Jesus was not born in the shell of a 16th century German home and you can argue with the accuracy of other features in his painting if you like. Still, Altdorfer says something very important to us on Christmas Eve 398 years later. He points out that our warm, sentimental images of the Nativity are nothing more than another frame or two of the movie. The more frames we see, the greater sense we have of what the film is about.
Our theology holds that all of creation came into being through God the Son. In my mind’s eye, I picture it being something like The Scorcher’s Apprentice, where Mickey Mouse unleashes new-found powers to create incredible displays of beauty, awe, and wonder. Angels, archangels, and all the heavenly host watch in rapture as each new day and each new dawn brings another glorious manifestation of divine love and power. And when it is finished the Father and Son sit side by side and the heavenly chorus offers unceasing praise. But creation turns dark, infested by sin. In a move unthinkable, the Creator becomes a creature in an attempt to draw the whole world back to himself. It is a decision with celestial consequences. The song of angels goes silent for the throne is now empty and the person they sing to is no longer there.
Whatever the hosts of heaven thought of this plan we do not know. We can imagine they envisioned God the Son being born into a powerful royal family. Perhaps they steeled themselves for battle with the forces of evil. Surely none of them expected the baby to born in the kind of ruins Altdorfer depicted and surely none thought the only protection afforded God the Son would be the flickering candle cusped in Joseph’s trembling hands. This is not a “our cheeks are nice and rosy, and comfy, cozy are we” depiction of Christmas, is it. Surely Altdorfer got it right when he painted the angels hovering above the crèche checking over their marching orders in astonished disbelief.
This Advent I have heard several people say that this Christmas won’t seem like Christmas at all. The reasons vary: children have grown older and the magic of opening presents just is not what it used to be; young adults have left home and won’t be here this Christmas; unemployment, underemployment, or retirement have curtailed normal celebrations; the marriage is on the rocks; health concerns have changed and challenged our lives; a parent or sibling or spouse has died and Christmas is dominated more by absence than presence. Lurking in the background of our personal lives are ominous world events and troubling news at home. The peace and warmth and joy of Christmas seem to get briefer with each passing year. The Christmas we remember, which is the Christmas we want, does not seem to be the Christmas we get.
If you could take all of this, break it down to its colors, put those colors on a pallet, take brush and put it to canvass to make something that expresses how it all feels, you might just come up with Altdorfer’s Nativity. If you were a person of deep faith, you might just come up with a painting that shows the Holy Family huddling in all the darkness and sadness and uncertainty of our lives. Christmas is celebrated not just in living rooms with happy children and perfect families. God is with us even more so in the midst of life’s brokenness and heartache and loss.
Christmas is about traditions, but there is only one tradition that really matters… God loves us enough to be with us no matter where we find ourselves in life. Christmas is about gathering with family and friends, but the friend that matters most is the one who was born in a manger and says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Christmas is about giving and receiving gifts, but the most important gift we need is the gift in the crèche on that first Christmas night… the gift of God-with-us.
Perhaps your life is in a good place on this night. Perhaps you find yourself getting the Christmas you always wanted. If that is where you are, I could not be more happy for you. There are hundreds of thousands of depictions of the Nativity out there to speak to you and where you are in life. But for some of us, I imagine this night is a night of mixed emotions. Yes, we know we are blessed and there is much to celebrate in our lives. But it is also a night that brings into shape focus the pain and heartache and brokenness and absences and losses in our lives. For us, the ruins in Altdorfer’s Nativity paint a picture of where we are. And there, in the very center of it all is God-with-us. Meditate on that image and allow it to speak to you, as it spoke to Bonhoeffer and Douglas and countless others. May you come to know in a new and renewing way the presence of God in your life.
Monday, December 19, 2011
A Psalm Searching for God's Faithfulness
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26
Your love, O Lord, for ever will I sing; *
from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness.
For I am persuaded that your love is established for ever; *
you have set your faithfulness firmly in the heavens.
“I have made a covenant with my chosen one; *
I have sworn an oath to David my servant:
‘I will establish your line for ever, *
and preserve your throne for all generations.’”
You spoke once in a vision and said to your faithful people: *
“I have set the crown upon a warrior and have exalted one chosen out of the people.
I have found David my servant; *
with my holy oil have I anointed him.
My hand will hold him fast *
and my arm will make him strong.
No enemy shall deceive him, *
nor any wicked man bring him down.
I will crush his foes before him *
and strike down those who hate him.
My faithfulness and love shall be with him, *
and he shall be victorious through my Name.
I shall make his dominion extend *
from the Great Sea to the River.
He will say to me, ‘You are my Father, *
my God, and the rock of my salvation.’
Perhaps you have heard that Time Magazine has named the Protestor as the Person of the Year. Around the world and in our own country, this has been twelve months unlike any other. Disenfranchised people taking advantage of new social media have gathered in ways never before seen to demand a better, more just world; one where each individual’s voice matters. Change has come; sometimes slowly and other times with breath-taking speed.
Here in America, citizens are exercising their constitutional right to gather and to speak out. Folks in other countries, who do not have these rights, risk injury and death to affect change. Listen to one account of a Christian minister who felt called to participate in a protest:
Utterly terrified, I made my way to the line between the [protestors] and the police, held my arms out, and began shouting to my… brothers and sisters: “Peaceful Protest Everyone,” “Keep the Peace,” “Do not respond with violence.” My brothers and sisters on the police force began advancing behind a wall of horses and heavy bicycles. I linked arms with a young man in dark clothing on my left and a gnarled grandfather on my right. We stood still until the officers approached us and began throwing their bikes into our bodies, shoving us toward the sidewalk. I stared into the eyes of the most aggressive officer, who was seething, and shouted above the noise, “Why are you causing violence to peaceful people? Think about your actions! Think about your humanity!” With an open hand he rammed my throat. The old man to my left was attacked similarly and reached back with a cocked fist, but I yanked him back.
A minute later, an officer threw me to the ground and punched me numerous times. With hands cuffed behind my back, I was led into a police van and caged alone for a half hour. In the dim light and cramped space, I sang “This Little Light of Mine” and recited Psalm 23 to stave off a gnawing fear. Eventually, a few more [protestors] joined me and we were transported to a holding facility where they split us into pairs and left us in tiny concrete rooms for several hours.
The rooms were voids in every way: windowless, empty (no facilities, no benches), lit with glaring fluorescent bulbs, gray and white. My void-mate was a terrified kid who had gotten in over his head. He gave me heart by singing protest songs while I shared some meditation techniques for maintaining self-possession in trying moments.
Eventually we were hauled off to the [local] jail and had our handcuffs removed after four long hours of immobility. As I walked through the metal detector at the jail, a fellow [protestor] I hadn’t spoken with yet looked at me in my collar and said, “You’ve just been baptized.” They outfitted us in thin cotton jail uniforms, and proceeded to move us from cell to freezing cold cell for the next eight hours without any clear purpose or explanation.
During that time, the adrenaline wore off and my bruises and lacerations began aching intensely. I asked officers and staff at least six times to see a nurse and was consistently denied that, as well as water and food. During the final hour a nurse took pity on me and found an ice pack for my face. Not all the staff, it seemed, had contempt for their charges. Finally, at 5:00am we were released to the street after obligating ourselves to appear before a judge at a future date.
This treatment could describe an incident in Athens, Cairo, Damascus, or any other number of hotspots around the world where basic human rights and basic human dignity are not afforded to average citizens. Amazingly, the event described took place in Seattle, Washington where the Occupy Movement was trying to win certain rights for truckers who drive shipping containers in and out of the port. What kind of rights? Well, one demand is that the truckers be allowed to use restrooms at the port facility; something so basic it is hard to imagine they don’t have it already.
This morning we recited portions of the 89th Psalm, the fourth and final psalm we encounter in Advent. It begins by proclaiming the magnitude of God’s love and faithfulness, then describes one manifestation of it – the reestablishment of David’s throne. The poem was written by a person who scholars call a ‘monarchist’ – a person who believes God rules the world through the actions of the king. It is an assumption challenged by others in scripture and it became a problematic viewpoint as time went on and no one of royal linage was raised up to take the throne.
Eventually the psalm came to speak of a messianic hope; describing a historical figure sent from God to embody God’s love and God’s faithfulness. We Christians proclaim Jesus to be this person and from his life we know that the messiah will not be a ruling power who achieves military victories and never knows defeat. We know that his kingdom will not be of this world and yet this world can and should look like his kingdom. His enemies will not be people, but attitudes and behaviors: violence, injustice, and hatred. He will succumb to each before rising from the dead. And now, reigning in glory, it is Jesus who leads us – his devoted followers – to be incarnations of his faithfulness and love in the world.
The yearning for a monarchy established by God is still strong in some. Most of us, however, become suspicious when a political figure tries to ram down our throats a specific version Christianity, as Rick Perry did in his recent ad called “Strong” – the most disliked video ever on YouTube. We do not want one person in power attempting to use that power to force one brand of religion on all people. At the other end of the spectrum, there is something unnerving about a minister standing in solidarity with protestors and getting arrested. It is unnerving to me because it clearly demonstrates a person living out his faith to a degree that I am not. I suspect that he embodies the image of the 89th Psalm in a way I do not.
As I said at the beginning of the sermon, we only read a portion of the psalm, which is fifty-two verses long. In its entirety, it fondly remembers God’s promise to reign through David’s line forever and it describes David’s rule in glowing terms. But the setting in which the psalm was written was a time after the fall of the kingdom, which resulted in the end of the royal line. For the poet, all the ills of society can be attributed directly to the lack of a king. The final verses of the poem interrogate God; asking why previous promises have not been kept. One commentary gives the following title to the psalm: “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old?”
For Christians, the answer to this question is right here living within each one of us. God’s love and God’s faithful are proclaimed and lived out through our attitudes and our actions. They are known when we stand up to and against violence, injustice, and hatred. They are known as we offer peace, reconciliation, and blessing to all. In a world so hostile to God’s love and faithfulness, it is no wonder Jesus described our call as picking up a cross every day and following him. He, who brought God’s hope to the world, now gives hope through your life and through mine as we allow Christ to reign in our hearts and in our lives.
Your love, O Lord, for ever will I sing; *
from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness.
For I am persuaded that your love is established for ever; *
you have set your faithfulness firmly in the heavens.
“I have made a covenant with my chosen one; *
I have sworn an oath to David my servant:
‘I will establish your line for ever, *
and preserve your throne for all generations.’”
You spoke once in a vision and said to your faithful people: *
“I have set the crown upon a warrior and have exalted one chosen out of the people.
I have found David my servant; *
with my holy oil have I anointed him.
My hand will hold him fast *
and my arm will make him strong.
No enemy shall deceive him, *
nor any wicked man bring him down.
I will crush his foes before him *
and strike down those who hate him.
My faithfulness and love shall be with him, *
and he shall be victorious through my Name.
I shall make his dominion extend *
from the Great Sea to the River.
He will say to me, ‘You are my Father, *
my God, and the rock of my salvation.’
Perhaps you have heard that Time Magazine has named the Protestor as the Person of the Year. Around the world and in our own country, this has been twelve months unlike any other. Disenfranchised people taking advantage of new social media have gathered in ways never before seen to demand a better, more just world; one where each individual’s voice matters. Change has come; sometimes slowly and other times with breath-taking speed.
Here in America, citizens are exercising their constitutional right to gather and to speak out. Folks in other countries, who do not have these rights, risk injury and death to affect change. Listen to one account of a Christian minister who felt called to participate in a protest:
Utterly terrified, I made my way to the line between the [protestors] and the police, held my arms out, and began shouting to my… brothers and sisters: “Peaceful Protest Everyone,” “Keep the Peace,” “Do not respond with violence.” My brothers and sisters on the police force began advancing behind a wall of horses and heavy bicycles. I linked arms with a young man in dark clothing on my left and a gnarled grandfather on my right. We stood still until the officers approached us and began throwing their bikes into our bodies, shoving us toward the sidewalk. I stared into the eyes of the most aggressive officer, who was seething, and shouted above the noise, “Why are you causing violence to peaceful people? Think about your actions! Think about your humanity!” With an open hand he rammed my throat. The old man to my left was attacked similarly and reached back with a cocked fist, but I yanked him back.
A minute later, an officer threw me to the ground and punched me numerous times. With hands cuffed behind my back, I was led into a police van and caged alone for a half hour. In the dim light and cramped space, I sang “This Little Light of Mine” and recited Psalm 23 to stave off a gnawing fear. Eventually, a few more [protestors] joined me and we were transported to a holding facility where they split us into pairs and left us in tiny concrete rooms for several hours.
The rooms were voids in every way: windowless, empty (no facilities, no benches), lit with glaring fluorescent bulbs, gray and white. My void-mate was a terrified kid who had gotten in over his head. He gave me heart by singing protest songs while I shared some meditation techniques for maintaining self-possession in trying moments.
Eventually we were hauled off to the [local] jail and had our handcuffs removed after four long hours of immobility. As I walked through the metal detector at the jail, a fellow [protestor] I hadn’t spoken with yet looked at me in my collar and said, “You’ve just been baptized.” They outfitted us in thin cotton jail uniforms, and proceeded to move us from cell to freezing cold cell for the next eight hours without any clear purpose or explanation.
During that time, the adrenaline wore off and my bruises and lacerations began aching intensely. I asked officers and staff at least six times to see a nurse and was consistently denied that, as well as water and food. During the final hour a nurse took pity on me and found an ice pack for my face. Not all the staff, it seemed, had contempt for their charges. Finally, at 5:00am we were released to the street after obligating ourselves to appear before a judge at a future date.
This treatment could describe an incident in Athens, Cairo, Damascus, or any other number of hotspots around the world where basic human rights and basic human dignity are not afforded to average citizens. Amazingly, the event described took place in Seattle, Washington where the Occupy Movement was trying to win certain rights for truckers who drive shipping containers in and out of the port. What kind of rights? Well, one demand is that the truckers be allowed to use restrooms at the port facility; something so basic it is hard to imagine they don’t have it already.
This morning we recited portions of the 89th Psalm, the fourth and final psalm we encounter in Advent. It begins by proclaiming the magnitude of God’s love and faithfulness, then describes one manifestation of it – the reestablishment of David’s throne. The poem was written by a person who scholars call a ‘monarchist’ – a person who believes God rules the world through the actions of the king. It is an assumption challenged by others in scripture and it became a problematic viewpoint as time went on and no one of royal linage was raised up to take the throne.
Eventually the psalm came to speak of a messianic hope; describing a historical figure sent from God to embody God’s love and God’s faithfulness. We Christians proclaim Jesus to be this person and from his life we know that the messiah will not be a ruling power who achieves military victories and never knows defeat. We know that his kingdom will not be of this world and yet this world can and should look like his kingdom. His enemies will not be people, but attitudes and behaviors: violence, injustice, and hatred. He will succumb to each before rising from the dead. And now, reigning in glory, it is Jesus who leads us – his devoted followers – to be incarnations of his faithfulness and love in the world.
The yearning for a monarchy established by God is still strong in some. Most of us, however, become suspicious when a political figure tries to ram down our throats a specific version Christianity, as Rick Perry did in his recent ad called “Strong” – the most disliked video ever on YouTube. We do not want one person in power attempting to use that power to force one brand of religion on all people. At the other end of the spectrum, there is something unnerving about a minister standing in solidarity with protestors and getting arrested. It is unnerving to me because it clearly demonstrates a person living out his faith to a degree that I am not. I suspect that he embodies the image of the 89th Psalm in a way I do not.
As I said at the beginning of the sermon, we only read a portion of the psalm, which is fifty-two verses long. In its entirety, it fondly remembers God’s promise to reign through David’s line forever and it describes David’s rule in glowing terms. But the setting in which the psalm was written was a time after the fall of the kingdom, which resulted in the end of the royal line. For the poet, all the ills of society can be attributed directly to the lack of a king. The final verses of the poem interrogate God; asking why previous promises have not been kept. One commentary gives the following title to the psalm: “Lord, where is your steadfast love of old?”
For Christians, the answer to this question is right here living within each one of us. God’s love and God’s faithful are proclaimed and lived out through our attitudes and our actions. They are known when we stand up to and against violence, injustice, and hatred. They are known as we offer peace, reconciliation, and blessing to all. In a world so hostile to God’s love and faithfulness, it is no wonder Jesus described our call as picking up a cross every day and following him. He, who brought God’s hope to the world, now gives hope through your life and through mine as we allow Christ to reign in our hearts and in our lives.
Monday, December 12, 2011
A Psalm for When You Are Down in the Dumps
This morning we recited the 126th Psalm. It is a very helpful reading when you or a friend is down in the dumps. It looks backward to a time when things were really bad, remembers what God did to make things better, and then, in an act of hope and faith, asserts (to use a contemporary expression) this too shall pass.
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, *
then were we like those who dream.
Once again we read a psalm based in and around the Babylonian exile. “Restored” – past tense – places its composition sometime after the exiles had returned to Jerusalem. The dreaming it refers to is not like what we experience when we sleep nor is it the idleness of day-dreaming - like imagining what you would do if you won the lottery. This dreaming is rooted in reality and possibility.
Several years ago a friend gave me a $50 bill as a birthday present; not a check, which I would have had to process through the bank, and not a gift card, but cold, hard cash. It did not have to be factored in to the monthly budget, nor was it subject to the I.R.S. The gift came with one and only one stipulation: I was to use to buy something for me. The real blessing of that unexpected present was that it allowed me to dream. I considered several possibilities, none of which would have been guilt-free had I charged it or written a check.
Each of us has experienced the connection between restored fortunes and this kind of dreaming. We know it when we have recovered from illness or injury. We know it when we finally find a job after months of unemployment. We know it when the last final has been taken and the final paper has been turned in. We have all had many experiences like this: some minor, others major, and a few life-changing.
My birthday present fits in to the minor category, but it was still a blessing. Any guesses what bought with it? Several high-end cigars and I really did enjoy them, like the next verse of the psalm says,
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, *
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
Laughter… Did you know that children laugh more than adults? Before they can even speak, babies laugh on average 300 times a day, while the typical adult laughs around 20 times. Laughter is universal and while there are thousands of different languages and dialects spoken around the world, we all laugh pretty much the same way. Even children born deaf and blind retain the ability to laugh.
We do it to express joy, at humor, when tickled, and to cope with adversity. It is good for our body and our health because it releases endorphins in the brain and lowers blood pressure. Other primates laugh, especially when tickled. Dogs laugh too. They do it with a different cadence in their panting, which when recorded and played in an animal shelter promotes calmness, play, and pro-social behavior among kenneled dogs.
Shouts of joy… I suspect that watching sports is when most people today shout for joy with the most reckless abandon. This fall, before the final play in the Miami vs. Virginia Tech game (a game which was very tense, very close, and very dramatic), Hokie fans were in a state of joyous, raucous hysteria that reached a crescendo as they sensed improbably victory was within reach. The TV announcer said, “I have never seen a setting like this. These fans are losing their minds.”
We shout for joy when a couple is pronounced husband and wife, at a baby’s birth, and at graduation ceremonies. Etched in our national consciousness are images of people pouring into Times Square on VE and VJ days; kissing and hugging complete strangers and shouting at the tops of their lungs. These moments of relief and celebration invite reflection:
The Lord has done great things for us, *
and we are glad indeed.
Up to this point, everything in the psalm is a memory of the traumatic event of the exile and its blessed ending. With that recollection firmly rooted at the heart of faith, it turns its focuses to the present; to what it is like being down in the dumps:
Restore our fortunes, O Lord, *
like the watercourses of the Negev.
Even those with a minimal knowledge of the region’s weather and landscape understand the meaning of this prayer. We know what it is like to be down on our luck, under attack, and hanging on by a thread. We know what it is like to be spiritually dry, personally isolated, and bound tight by shackles others have made for us or by chains of our own making. And we know what it is to long for deliverance, refreshment, and relief.
We begin each Sunday in the four-week season of Advent singing verses from the hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” Like the psalms we have been reading, it is a hymn cast in the experience of exile:
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.
To be alive is to know periods of exile, of dryness, of being down in the dumps, but it is also to know the laughter and joy of being restored. I suspect that as we grow older the dumps get a little easier to manage because we have a built many memories of being restored. When we are younger, even the slightest time in the thinnest of dumps is filled with drama. With benefit of age and experience we come to expect that the dumps will pass.
The psalmist expresses this faith derived from experience so beautifully:
Those who sowed with tears *
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, *
will come again with joy,
shouldering their sheaves.
Tears… There are different kinds of tears. We cry for joy, when something gets in our eyes, and when we are profoundly sad. Each of these experiences produces a different kind of reaction in the body so the chemical composition of one kind of tear is different from other kinds of tears. Infants cry in three distinct ways. There is a basic cry, usually indicating hunger, there is an angry cry, and there is a cry of pain. Every parent knows the difference. There seems to be a link between crying and the experience of perceived helplessness. That sense of helplessness may come from receiving unexpected good news or it may come from being in a situation where we are powerless to affect its outcome.
The psalmist is describing tears of sadness; tears of mourning. Often times these tears are shed only in our hearts and the secrete recesses of our soul. It is not uncommon for these tears to go undetected by others and even for us not to recognize that we ourselves are crying. Sadness and grieving have a way of numbing us to our own reality and experience.
To my eye, the psalmist demonstrates his or her maturity by using the metaphor of planting to describe this difficult and challenging experience. In an agricultural society, the planting season was a lean time. Yes, the winter was past, but it was still way too early for any new crops to appear. Of the little grain that was left to eat, much had to be sowed back into the fields. This was a time of hunger, want, and uncertainty. And then came the waiting, waiting, waiting, and waiting for that new grain to mature; signaling restoration and triggering shouts of joy.
It is a wonderful image for when we are down in the dumps because it suggests that even though there are many things beyond our control, there are some things we can do to help restore our fortunes. What are one or two or three things I can do to get myself going again? Figuring that out somehow always factors in to the miracle of the restoration which comes from beyond our efforts. What “sowing” is for you depends on who you are, what you need, and why you are down in the dumps.
Let me suggest one thing suggested by the psalm that is universal. The 126th Psalm is part of thirteen grouped together because they were said or sung by pilgrims on their way toward Jerusalem. They are known as the “Psalms of the Ascent” because Jerusalem is built on high ground. These works supported the travelers in their physical journey to the Temple, but also in their spiritual journey through life. As such, its place in the canon of scripture suggests that one seed we should sow especially when we are down in the dumps is a seed which is spiritual, which connects us to God.
“The Lord is my help,” one psalm proclaims, “my light” says another, “my salvation.” Worship, prayer, acts of devotion and charity, talking with a priest or spiritual friend, intentionally seeking beauty and solitude, focusing in on the basics of life – each of these has a profound way of opening us to God’s presence. And being attune to God’s presence has a way of buoying us through the time of waiting until one day we find ourselves bringing in the sheaves.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, *
then were we like those who dream.
Once again we read a psalm based in and around the Babylonian exile. “Restored” – past tense – places its composition sometime after the exiles had returned to Jerusalem. The dreaming it refers to is not like what we experience when we sleep nor is it the idleness of day-dreaming - like imagining what you would do if you won the lottery. This dreaming is rooted in reality and possibility.
Several years ago a friend gave me a $50 bill as a birthday present; not a check, which I would have had to process through the bank, and not a gift card, but cold, hard cash. It did not have to be factored in to the monthly budget, nor was it subject to the I.R.S. The gift came with one and only one stipulation: I was to use to buy something for me. The real blessing of that unexpected present was that it allowed me to dream. I considered several possibilities, none of which would have been guilt-free had I charged it or written a check.
Each of us has experienced the connection between restored fortunes and this kind of dreaming. We know it when we have recovered from illness or injury. We know it when we finally find a job after months of unemployment. We know it when the last final has been taken and the final paper has been turned in. We have all had many experiences like this: some minor, others major, and a few life-changing.
My birthday present fits in to the minor category, but it was still a blessing. Any guesses what bought with it? Several high-end cigars and I really did enjoy them, like the next verse of the psalm says,
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, *
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
Laughter… Did you know that children laugh more than adults? Before they can even speak, babies laugh on average 300 times a day, while the typical adult laughs around 20 times. Laughter is universal and while there are thousands of different languages and dialects spoken around the world, we all laugh pretty much the same way. Even children born deaf and blind retain the ability to laugh.
We do it to express joy, at humor, when tickled, and to cope with adversity. It is good for our body and our health because it releases endorphins in the brain and lowers blood pressure. Other primates laugh, especially when tickled. Dogs laugh too. They do it with a different cadence in their panting, which when recorded and played in an animal shelter promotes calmness, play, and pro-social behavior among kenneled dogs.
Shouts of joy… I suspect that watching sports is when most people today shout for joy with the most reckless abandon. This fall, before the final play in the Miami vs. Virginia Tech game (a game which was very tense, very close, and very dramatic), Hokie fans were in a state of joyous, raucous hysteria that reached a crescendo as they sensed improbably victory was within reach. The TV announcer said, “I have never seen a setting like this. These fans are losing their minds.”
We shout for joy when a couple is pronounced husband and wife, at a baby’s birth, and at graduation ceremonies. Etched in our national consciousness are images of people pouring into Times Square on VE and VJ days; kissing and hugging complete strangers and shouting at the tops of their lungs. These moments of relief and celebration invite reflection:
The Lord has done great things for us, *
and we are glad indeed.
Up to this point, everything in the psalm is a memory of the traumatic event of the exile and its blessed ending. With that recollection firmly rooted at the heart of faith, it turns its focuses to the present; to what it is like being down in the dumps:
Restore our fortunes, O Lord, *
like the watercourses of the Negev.
Even those with a minimal knowledge of the region’s weather and landscape understand the meaning of this prayer. We know what it is like to be down on our luck, under attack, and hanging on by a thread. We know what it is like to be spiritually dry, personally isolated, and bound tight by shackles others have made for us or by chains of our own making. And we know what it is to long for deliverance, refreshment, and relief.
We begin each Sunday in the four-week season of Advent singing verses from the hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel.” Like the psalms we have been reading, it is a hymn cast in the experience of exile:
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.
To be alive is to know periods of exile, of dryness, of being down in the dumps, but it is also to know the laughter and joy of being restored. I suspect that as we grow older the dumps get a little easier to manage because we have a built many memories of being restored. When we are younger, even the slightest time in the thinnest of dumps is filled with drama. With benefit of age and experience we come to expect that the dumps will pass.
The psalmist expresses this faith derived from experience so beautifully:
Those who sowed with tears *
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, *
will come again with joy,
shouldering their sheaves.
Tears… There are different kinds of tears. We cry for joy, when something gets in our eyes, and when we are profoundly sad. Each of these experiences produces a different kind of reaction in the body so the chemical composition of one kind of tear is different from other kinds of tears. Infants cry in three distinct ways. There is a basic cry, usually indicating hunger, there is an angry cry, and there is a cry of pain. Every parent knows the difference. There seems to be a link between crying and the experience of perceived helplessness. That sense of helplessness may come from receiving unexpected good news or it may come from being in a situation where we are powerless to affect its outcome.
The psalmist is describing tears of sadness; tears of mourning. Often times these tears are shed only in our hearts and the secrete recesses of our soul. It is not uncommon for these tears to go undetected by others and even for us not to recognize that we ourselves are crying. Sadness and grieving have a way of numbing us to our own reality and experience.
To my eye, the psalmist demonstrates his or her maturity by using the metaphor of planting to describe this difficult and challenging experience. In an agricultural society, the planting season was a lean time. Yes, the winter was past, but it was still way too early for any new crops to appear. Of the little grain that was left to eat, much had to be sowed back into the fields. This was a time of hunger, want, and uncertainty. And then came the waiting, waiting, waiting, and waiting for that new grain to mature; signaling restoration and triggering shouts of joy.
It is a wonderful image for when we are down in the dumps because it suggests that even though there are many things beyond our control, there are some things we can do to help restore our fortunes. What are one or two or three things I can do to get myself going again? Figuring that out somehow always factors in to the miracle of the restoration which comes from beyond our efforts. What “sowing” is for you depends on who you are, what you need, and why you are down in the dumps.
Let me suggest one thing suggested by the psalm that is universal. The 126th Psalm is part of thirteen grouped together because they were said or sung by pilgrims on their way toward Jerusalem. They are known as the “Psalms of the Ascent” because Jerusalem is built on high ground. These works supported the travelers in their physical journey to the Temple, but also in their spiritual journey through life. As such, its place in the canon of scripture suggests that one seed we should sow especially when we are down in the dumps is a seed which is spiritual, which connects us to God.
“The Lord is my help,” one psalm proclaims, “my light” says another, “my salvation.” Worship, prayer, acts of devotion and charity, talking with a priest or spiritual friend, intentionally seeking beauty and solitude, focusing in on the basics of life – each of these has a profound way of opening us to God’s presence. And being attune to God’s presence has a way of buoying us through the time of waiting until one day we find ourselves bringing in the sheaves.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
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