Baptismal Awareness

The First Sunday after Epiphany / Year A
Matthew 3:13-17

Prince George of Cambridge was born on July 22, 2013, the first child of Prince William and Duchess Catherine.  At the moment of his birth he instantly became third in line of succession to the British throne.  One day, most likely, he will become the King of England.  Of course he knew nothing of this on the day he was born.  How could he?  No human brain at birth is capable of processing such knowledge.  Today, at age 6, Prince George surely knows something of his destiny.  Still, his awareness of what this means and requires will continue to develop, even long after he wears the crown at first.

When does Jesus become fully aware of who he is and what he is meant to do?  While he is born as God’s Son, as a human infant Jesus does not possess the faculties to know and understand this.  It is an awareness that grows in him over time, just as our own sense of self grows in us. 

Each of the four Gospels details the events surrounding Jesus’ baptism in the Jordon River.  They attest the Holy Spirit descends, alighting on him in the form of a dove.  They report there is also a voice from heaven proclaiming, “This is my beloved Son.  In him I am well pleased.” 

How does Jesus receive all of this?  Does it confirm what he already knows about himself?  Or, does it help him to make sense of something he senses, but never completely understands until now?  Or, does it come as a complete surprise, initiating something he never suspects about himself?  And how does Jesus receive what the Voice says to him?  Is he excited?  Humbled?  Shocked?  Terrified? 

Most of us don’t remember our baptism.  Like Prince George, who was christened three months and day after his birth, we were too young to take in the experience.  But at every baptism we attend and (like today) every time we renew our Baptismal Covenant we are given a window into what transpired in that moment.

When you were baptized you experienced a symbolic death.  Your old self was drown in the waters of baptism and you rose to your new life in Christ.  In that moment God adopted as a child and you became an heir to all the riches of grace and love God bestows on all God’s children, beginning with the Son.  The Holy Spirit fell upon you, as it did on Jesus, and you were marked as Christ’s own forever. 

This is a lot to take in as an infant!  Heck, it is a lot to take in as an adult!  So, just as George is developing his understanding of what it means to be a monarch, we are working on what it means to be a Christian.  Our Baptismal Covenant reminds us it has something to do with renouncing the works of evil, the corrupting nature of the world, and the sinister intentions lurking in our own heart.  It reminds us of the centrality of turning to Jesus as our Savior, our Lord, and our Guide.  Our Covenant reminds us of the importance of being in a faith community, of our on-going need to repent when we fail, of our call to proclaim Christ’s love in all we say and through all we do, of the importance of loving our neighbor, and of the necessity to treat all people with respect and dignity.

When the crown is placed on George’s head he will become the King of England and though he be well prepared for this moment, of this I am certain: his understanding of kingship and what it requires will continue to grow and develop long after he possesses the throne.  So too, you can come to the baptismal waters even as an adult very much aware of what it signifies and what it asks of you, but your knowledge of the Christian faith and life, as well as your practice of it, will continue to grow and develop long after the baptismal waters have dried off your forehead and clothing.

This morning we read about Jesus’ baptism.  He is empowered by God’s indwelling Spirit and informed by God’s very word.  Surely, this is a formative (if not transformative) moment in his life.  The same elements are here this morning.  God’s Spirit fills this space and touches each one of us.  We are empowered to be the people God has created us to be.  We are empowered to do the things God has called us to do.  And perhaps if you listen closely and with an open heart, you will hear a Voice say, “You are my child, my beloved.  With you I am well pleased”.

 

So, I am working on the history of our stained glass windows as a part of our celebration this year of the 125^th Anniversary of our first worship service in this space.  And as I learn about the windows I am sometimes able to learn something about the person in whose memory the window is given.  The September 1909 Vestry minutes record a Mrs. Col. Philips inquires if she can put in a memorial window dedicated to her husband to reside in the large space on the southern side of our building.  Her donation will depict the Apostles Peter and John peering into the Empty Tomb on the morning of the Resurrection as three angels in the panels below look on.  Woven on banners throughout these lower panels are the words of the Te Deum (an ancient hymn of praise dating back to the 4^th century). 

James Jasper Phillips is a native of Chuckatuck who graduates from the Virginia Military Institute in 1853.  He teaches at V.M.I. before returning to our area to form the Chuckatuck Military Academy.  He closes the school after secession and organizes the Chuckatuck Light Infantry, being elected its captain.  Eventually he comes to serve in the 9^th Virginia Regiment of Infantry, Armistead’s Brigade, and soon is promoted to Lieutenant Colonel as the unit is assigned to General George Pickett’s Division.  He is promoted to Colonel after the Battle at Gettysburg, where he is wounded in the famed Pickett’s Charge, in which he displays gallantry under fire.  Phillips later declines promotion to Brigadier General because others in line are senior to him.

After the war James Phillips returns to our area to engage in farming.  Eventually he moves to New York City where he builds a successful business in the trade of wholesale fruit and produce.  During this era of his life he organizes a professional association to establish and uphold standards in the industry.  He lives in New York until his death.  On February 14, 1908, Col. Phillips in buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery. 

A trade journal obituary states, “He was a man who always stood for honor and uprightness and was a forceful character, who made his influence felt in every circle in which he moved.”  In New York City he was “respected and loved by his keenest competitors in business, because his methods were always those of the true southern gentleman.”  The journal obituary goes on to say, “All the older members of the trade knew and loved and honored him, the younger respected him for his achievements and sterling qualities.”  A record in Confederate Veteran states, “Colonel Phillips as a man and soldier was possessed of great personal magnetism, so that all who came in contact with him learned to respect and love him.  Ever ready to uphold and maintain the just cause, with nothing to apologize for, ever liberal in his views and his help especially to old Confederates.” (Confederate Veteran, Vol. XVI, p. 650)

I like knowing when I come into this place to hear the words and witness of Scripture and to ponder what it is the Lord asks of me that I gather with all of you, faithful people seeking the same insights I seek and the same strength I need in order to do what we believe God intends for us to do.  I also like that we gather in a place graced with the memory of those who have come here over the years for the same reason we come today.  Their gifts bless us.  There witness inspires us.

So many have been here before us to whom God said, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  Listen carefully and I trust you will hear the Voice: “You are my child.  I love you.  With you I am well pleased.”

They Made a Home in Nazareth

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
The Second Sunday after Christmas / Year A

Matthew concludes his story of Jesus’ birth saga with these words: “They made their home in a town called Nazareth.”

Let’s do some historical work this morning by attempting to weave together what the Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us about Jesus’s birth and early years.  It requires some conjecture because their accounts don’t always sync up and neither writer sets out to create a “straight history” or timeline of events.  Still, here is something like what seems to have actually happened:

· Somewhere around 7-4 BC, Joseph and Mary are betrothed (a legal arrangement typically lasting about 12 months) in Nazareth.

· Soon thereafter the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, who most likely is in her early teens, and asks if she will bear God’s Son.  She consents.

· Not long after, Mary leaves Bethlehem to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is six weeks pregnant.  Elizabeth lives in a town only identified as being in the Judean hills, which places it around a week’s walking journey away.

· Mary returns to Nazareth after three months.  She is now visibly pregnant and Joseph, startled to be sure, determines to end the betrothal discretely.

· After an angel speaks to him in a dream, Joseph decides to stay betrothed.  Mary moves into his home, but they do not yet become husband and wife and have no relations.

· A census is ordered, requiring Joseph to travel to Bethlehem.  Mary goes with him.

· They arrive in Bethlehem and the time comes for Mary to deliver.  Accommodations are limited (perhaps due to the number of people travelling for the census) and the couple is forced to stay in an animal shed (or perhaps a cave where animals are kept).  It is here Mary gives birth to her baby.

· Shepherds from nearby fields visit the Holy Family after receiving direction from angels.  They worship the baby and tell their fantastic story to the parents.

· Jesus is circumcised eight days after his birth.

· Mary makes the appropriate offerings for the Rite of Purification forty days after giving birth.

· Mary and Joseph take the baby Jesus to the Jerusalem Temple where they present him and make an appropriate offering.  Here they encounter the prophet Simeon and the prophetess Anna.  Both praise and bless their infant son.

· The family settles in Bethlehem. 

· Sometime within the next year or so a group of Magi, having been guided by ancient prophecies and a star, approach Herod (the local king) to inquire where the new king of the Jews is to be born.  Scholars direct them to Bethlehem.

· The Magi go to Bethlehem and find Mary and the child living in a house.  They present the child with symbolic gifts and then determine not to report back to Herod.

· Herod orders the killing of all boys two years and younger in the Bethlehem region.

· In a dream, an angel warns Joseph of the danger and the family flees through the Sinai Desert to Egypt.

· The Coptic Church now identifies 26 different places (most located along the Nile River) where the family stops or stays over a three-and-a-half-year period.  Joseph keeps his family on the move to avoid detection by Herod’s spies.

· Upon learning of the king’s death, the family sets out to return to Bethlehem but then decides to settle in Nazareth to avoid living in a region under the rule of Herod’s son.

· The family makes a home in Nazareth. Joseph works as a carpenter and he and Mary have as many as six children together, along with Jesus.

By most any standard, Jesus’s first five years are incredibly stressful.  

When I was born my parents were in the process of transitioning from Pittsburgh to Ohio.  A few months later my mother’s father passed away.  I remember none of this, but my sister does.   Three years old at the time, she remembers living with grandparents while my parents dealt with the complexities of newborn twins and relocating.  It was a stressful time and my sister’s memories mirror this, but they are jumbled images because a childhood mind is not fully capable of understanding all that is happening.  Surely Jesus’ earliest memories attempt to make sense of the traumatic and a transient life-style marking his first years.

Then the Holy Family settles in Nazareth where, measured against their beginning, they make a remarkably steady and unremarkable household.  As the Scripture attests, they make a home. 

Gladys Hunt, in her book Honey for a Child’s Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life, writes this:

What is home?  My favorite definition is “a safe place,” a place where one is free from attack, a place where one experiences secure relationships and affirmation.  It’s a place where people share and understand each other.  Its relationships are nurturing.  The people in it do not need to be perfect; instead, they need to be honest, loving, supportive, recognizing a common humanity that makes all of us vulnerable.

I hope this rings true with your experience of home.  It may not, and if so I hurt deeply for you.  Still, it is something for which we long.  So Maya Angelou reminds us when she observes, “The ache for home lives in all of us: The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

St. Luke gives us the last words in the biblical record about Jesus’ childhood: “He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and people.”  We are told the child Jesus advances cognitively and physically while developing morally and socially.  Jesus grows into his teens to be smart, strong, good, and well liked.   Surely, having a home factors into all of this.

Given today’s lesson, you might ponder the facts of your early years.  What was happening in your family of origin when you where born?  What blessings did it afford you?  What challenges did it present?  How are you the product of each?  What has been your experience of home?  Does it represent safety?  Stability?  Affirmation?  How do you bring the story of your beginning before God and give thanks or vent anger or simply accept the past for the past while being open to the grace and blessings of the future?  How have your origins played out in the lives of those in your life today?  How might you describe to them the legacies you want to pass on?  What mistakes have you inherited and need to claim, asking for forgiveness?

This much we know… Jesus’ earliest years must have marked him, but they did not define him or limit him.

 

 

 

The Word Became Flesh

John 1:1-18
The First Sunday after Christmas / Year A

I am reading a book by Sy Montgomery called The Soul of an Octopus.  A naturalist and award winning author, Montgomery began to visit a Boston Aquarium on a regular basis to learn about and to forge relationships with these amazingly intelligent sea creatures.  In addition to writing about octopi, she also relates stories about the people who work at the aquarium.  I want to read for you a passage from the book where Montgomery describes a project undertaken by Scott, a marine biologist, to train Suriname toads:

Not only are these animals amphibians [with small brains] but they are also blind.  There blindness has sculpted their unique appearance: At the head of the toad’s six-inch, flattened brown body are two nostrils, each set at the end of a long, narrow tube.  The front limbs have star-shaped tactile organs on the fingertips to help the animals detect food...

Alas, the public seldom gets to see these exotic toads because the animals hide in the vegetation in their pretty, naturalistic exhibit…  Scott is trying to figure out a way to induce the toads to show themselves.

How?  “You need to get within the mind of the toad,” he says.  “We’re engaged in toad psy-ops.”  How does a blind toad decide what is a safe, good place to stay – and how does he find it?  “You get to learn very fast,” Scott says.  “You learn to project empathy.  Remember the movie E.T.?  Its kind of like that.  You reach out with an invisible hand and read the organism.  You have to meet them halfway.  You have to be willing to listen.” 

…Aquarists learn the silent language of fishes.  Once, walking into a hallway… where some cichlids had just been moved from one tank to another, Scott had announced to me with concern, “I smell fish stress.”  The scent is subtle – I cannot smell it at all – but the low-tide odor Scott detects, he explained at the time, is that of heat-shock proteins…  The scent makes Scott feel sick to his stomach – not because the smell is nauseating, but because the thought that fish in his care are stressed fills him with the same urgency and dread he used to feel when his newborn son would cry.

Scott reads other fish cues just as fluently.  When we visited the cichlids in their new home, he compared those who had just been moved to those who had been living there for weeks or months.  The stripes on the new immigrants were paler.  “And look at this one,” he said, pointing to a fish who was already at home in the tank.  “See the sparkle in his eye?  Now look at this new one.  You don’t see the sparkle.”  Scott can read the faces of fishes as easily as you and I can read a person’s. 

On the first Sunday after Christmas the Lectionary always assigns the same gospel lesson – what is known as the Prologue to John, the first eighteen verses of Chapter 1:

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God…

The true light, which enlightens everyone,

was coming into the world.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us,

and from his fullness we have all received,

grace upon grace.

It proclaims the Creator’s intense, unceasing desire to be in relationship with us.  And while we strive yet struggle to cross the divide between human life and the animal kingdom, it is not possible for us even to conceive of the chasm separating us from the possibility of knowing the Holy One and interacting with the Divine. 

While we are very different from toads and cichlids, we do in fact share many characteristics.  We all have physical bodies.  We exist together within our planet’s environment.  We each have senses through which we can detect the other and the world around us.  As living organisms we eat, breath, grow, reproduce, and die.  We exist within time and space.  We share none of these things with God.  God does not have a physical body, is not a part of our environment, has no senses, does not eat, breath, grow, reproduce, or die.  God is wholly other from us, yet desires to be in relationship with us.

While we are not able in our humanity to become a marine creature, our faith holds God took on human flesh.  In Jesus of Nazareth we see the Light of God – not just a person reflecting a good and godly nature, but God incarnate, God with us, God becoming one of us yet still being God.  As we encounter God in human flesh we learn about the ways we can be like God.  St. Paul calls our common characteristics the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  This is (in part) who God is and it is what we see lived out by Jesus throughout the gospels.

I suppose if a Scott the marine biologist could become a Suriname toad while retaining his human nature, he might use the connection to entice the creatures out of hiding so they could be better observed by visitors to the aquarium.  God’s Word/God’s Light becomes human so we might reflect what we see.  As the moon reflects the sun’s light back upon the earth, God entices each of us to reflect the light of Christ to one another: 

· As God’s love comes to you, you can lavish it upon others and the world around you.

· As God’s joy fills your heart, you can be a witness to how to live with worldly cares and concerns.

· As God’s peace pervades your life, you can be a calming, stabilizing presence in a turbulent world.

· As God is patience with you, you can learn how to live with patience in a world where things often don’t go in the way you want them to when you want them to.

· As God is kind to you, you will discover kindness and thoughtfulness welling up inside you.

· As God is good with you, you will want goodness to mark how you relate to others.

· As God is faithful to you, you will begin to understand the value of being honest, true, and dependable in how you relate to others.

· As God is gentle with you, you will want to hold others with care while being caring of the world you live in.

· As God exhibits self-control with you, you will desire to have all your actions emanate from internal principles and values rather than be a haphazard response to how others treat you.

God has crossed the divide.  The Word has become flesh.  The Light has come into the world.  We have beheld the Light.  We have seen the Word.  The Light shines in us and through us.  The Word now reflects from our human flesh.  We now know who we are and what we can be… for ourselves, for others, for the world we live in, and for God.

Let Heaven and Nature Sing

Luke 2:1-20
Christmas Eve / Year A

Christmas Eve 51 years ago was unlike any before or after.  As people around the world gathered with family and friends to celebrate Jesus’ birth, three men – astronauts – were farther from home than any human beings had ever been before.  The mission to send Apollo 8 into lunar orbit was something of a “Hail Mary” attempt by NASA to reinvigorate the space program following the disastrous fire that killed the crew of Apollo 1 during a routine test on the launch pad.  It was a bold attempt to get ahead of the Russians in the Space Race and perhaps even get back on track to achieving President Kennedy’s goal of a moon landing by the end of the decade.

Christmas Eve 1968, as Apollo 8’s crew prepared for a primetime, worldwide television broadcast live from just miles above the lunar surface, the most amazing thing happened.  The astronauts looked out one of the crafts’ windows and witnessed something no one had ever seen before or imagined.  Bill Anders grabbed his 70mm camera, loaded it with color film, and took a picture which has become one of the most famous and influential photographs.  Along its bottom edge you see the bright grey landscape of the moon’s craggy surface.  Above this foreground is the black void of space.  Suspended in the center of the dark nothingness is a radiant and stunningly beautiful blue and white distant world with the lower crescent obscured in shadow.  It is us as we have never seen us before.  The image quickly came to be known simply as “Earthrise.”

It continues to reorient our self-understanding.  The Earth appears fragile and finite.  It reminds us national borders are human constructs.  It speaks of the reality this planet is our only haven and our only home.  Just a few weeks after Earthrise was published President Nixon signed legislation creating the Environment Protection Agency and congress passed the Clean Water Act.  The image underscored the need to end the Cold War in order to lessen the possibility of nuclear annihilation and create a greater sense of the human family.  It deepened some people’s faith in a Creator; which was augmented by the crew’s decision to read the creation story from Genesis 1 during their Christmas Eve broadcast.  It was a transformative moment in human history.

300 years ago another such moment occurred when an English poet sat down to wrestle with a couple of biblical texts, primarily the 98^th Psalm and the third chapter of Genesis.  His name was Isaac Watts and in time he would come to be known as the Father of English Hymnody.  Listen to the words of the psalm from the King James Version from which Watts read:

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.

Sing unto the Lord with the harp;

with the harp, and the voice of a psalm.

With trumpets and sound of cornet

make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King.

Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof;

the world, and they that dwell therein.

Let the floods clap their hands:

let the hills be joyful together.

Before the Lord;

for he cometh to judge the earth:

with righteousness shall he judge the world,

and the people with equity.

Placing the psalm’s theology of Creation’s call to praise God beside the Genesis 3 story of the fall when the ground is infested with thorns as God’s punishment for Adam’s sin, Watts pondered how creation can sing God’s praise while being under this curse.  He concluded the complete fulfillment of the psalm’s vision will not be accomplished until Jesus returns again.  Setting his thinking to verse, he crafted the lyrics to what has become the most popular Christmas carol ever written:

Joy to the world!  The Lord is come:
let earth receive her King!

Let every heart prepare him room
and heaven and nature sing.

Joy to the earth! the Savior reigns:
let us our songs employ

while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
repeat the sounding joy.

 No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove

The glories of his righteousness
and wonders of his love.

To celebrate the 300^th anniversary of these words we at St. Paul’s have adopted the theme of “Let Heaven and Nature Sing” for our Advent worship by inviting nature into our worship and space in as many different and creative ways as we could imagine.  And after thoughtful discussion we decided to keep much of what we created in place for tonight’s service in order to reinterpret it to speak of our Lord’s incarnation into our world.  I hope and trust what you encounter here tonight will reverberate in some profound and powerful way.

Tonight we gather to celebrate our Savior’s birth.  It reminds us God becomes human flesh and lives among us to change something about us.  We describe this conversion using many different words and images:

·    From cursed to blessed

·    From lost to found

·    From aimlessness to pilgrimage

·    From self-interest to discipleship

·    From mourning to dancing

·    From isolation to community

·    From despair to hope

·    From fear to faith

·    From silence to singing

No matter what the idea or image, each describes a transformation; a new way of seeing the world and being a part of it.  Like Earthrise and like worshipping with an emphasis on singing with Heaven and Nature, each invites us to see ourselves in a way we have never before conceived or imagined.

As profound as the Earthrise image has been and as popular as Watts’ carol has become, neither begins to approach the cosmic impact of the birth we celebrate tonight.  The God who created us has come to us in human flesh to save us from ourselves and to sing for us the song of God’s glorious intention for all life. 

I am grateful for our transformative Advent journey with its invitation to add our voice anew to the choir of the saints in heaven and saints on earth who join with Heaven and Nature to sing God’s praise.  I wish you and all you love a very merry Christmas.

The Joseph Questions

Matthew 1:18-25
The Fourth Sunday in Advent - Year A

When describing events in and around the birth of Jesus, Matthew’s Gospel tells the story from the perspective of Joseph the carpenter.  The New Revised Standard Version of the bible, from which we just heard, states he is “engaged” to Mary, but this rendering is somewhat misleading.  A more accurate translation states they are “betrothed”, but very few today understand what this entails. 

In Jesus’ day betrothal is a legally binding relationship resulting in marriage, usually twelve months later.  Sometimes the groom states a preference for a particular bride, but more often the match is made at the discretion of the parents.  During betrothal the future bride (often a young teenager) continues to live with her parents and the couple does not engage in sexual relations.  They use the time to get to know one another and adjust to the idea they will become husband and wife.  There are occurrences of a bride moving into a groom’s home prior to the marriage through a ceremony known as a “home-taking”, but this continues to be a period of celibacy.

When the times comes for the wedding, the groom and his companions process to the bride’s home to escort her and her party back to the groom’s house for a celebration which might last as long as a week.  At a certain point during the festivities the bride’s father draws up a marriage contract after which the couple goes to a “bridal chamber” to consummate the marriage.

Something significant unfolds during the time Joseph and Mary are betrothed.  She becomes pregnant and he knows he is not the father.  There are only two possibilities.  Either Mary had a consensual relationship with another man or another man forced himself on her.  Either scenario releases Joseph from the betrothal.  Either opens Mary to shame, disgrace, and the potential of being stoned to death.  Most likely Joseph believes Mary has been victimized, which accounts for his desire to shield her as much as possible from the consequences of being pregnant.  That Joseph embraces a third possibility after a dream is truly remarkable.  The couple – she pregnant – remains betrothed.

Matthew tells us Jesus is born in Bethlehem.  He provides no details about the couple travelling there from Nazareth to be registered for a census.  All he says is that Jesus is born here.  He says nothing of a stable, angelic chorus, or shepherds watching their flock.  These details are found only in Luke’s Gospel.  Matthew alone tells of the Magi’s visit.  They find Mary living in a house with Jesus being a small child, most likely not yet two years old.  Neither Luke nor Matthew provides details of Joseph and Mary’s wedding and surrounding festivities.  Whatever occurs takes place after Jesus is born and most likely is a subdued affair given all that has transpired.

Omitting the miraculous conception, we still have no way of knowing how many betrothals in Jesus’ day are as complicated as this one and we have no way of knowing how common or uncommon Joseph’s response is to it.  What we do know is the culture’s general attitude about wives.  They are property and belong to their husbands, who generally regard them primarily as reflections of themselves.  Thus, more than a betrayal, Joseph (as a product of his culture) must have held Mary’s pregnancy to be a stain on his own reputation and social standing.  A typical man of his era would think primarily about how her pregnancy diminished him.

Matthew tells us Joseph is a “righteous” man.  I hear in this he has appropriated all the best of his tradition while rising above its limitations.  Yes, he is a product of his times, but he is better than his times.  Rather than acting ego-centrically (What does this mean for me?  How does it reflect on me?), he subjugates himself in order to think first about what he can do for Mary.  And he does this even before an angel comes to him in a dream.

Fast-forward to our time where we are conditioned to ask of any situation “What is in it for me?” “How will I benefit?”  “How will it enhance the ways others think me?”  “How will it bolster the way I think of myself?”  Joseph’s example invites us to ask new questions: “What does this situation need?” “What do I have to offer?”  “How might my personal sacrifice make things better for another?”

Let’s call these “Joseph Questions”!  They are questions we ask when we see ourselves in a new relationship with all around us.  Over the course of Advent we have described this new perspective through the metaphor of a cosmic song of praise.  Each of us is part of a choir whose membership includes every created thing.  Now we can choose to sing our part much like the soprano I remember in a church choir long ago who used her powerful voice to drown out every other person and section.  Or we can sing in harmony under the leadership of the Choir Director who has created us all and called us together.  We can always push for our advantage or, like Joseph, we can act in ways to enrich one another. 

What did You Expect to See?

The Third Sunday of Advent / Year A
Matthew 11:2-11

Not only do my favorite comedians make me laugh, they help me to see the world from a different angle.  Steven Wright, whose humor is drier than an overcooked side of bacon, contends “Everywhere is within walking distance if you have enough time.”  Another comedian surmised the sinking of the Titanic was a tragedy for everyone on board except the lobsters in its kitchen.  And   George Carlin, famous for his off-the-wall observations, declared, “Some people see the glass half full, others see it half empty, but I see a glass that’s twice as big as it needs to be.”  It is all about perspective, isn’t it!

Here is something I have learned from the pilgrimages I have undertaken in Spain, Scotland, and the Holy Land.  You go on a pilgrimage (or any journey for that matter) with an itinerary – where you will go, when you will be there, where you will stay, what you will see and do.  You go with an itinerary, but you come back with a perspective, often new and deeply formative. 

You never go on a pilgrimage projecting what your new perspective will be.  God, working in and through the experience, determines what it will be for you.  And what I have gained from a pilgrimage has never been exactly the same as what any other person travelling with me gained.  And yet we are bound together by being together, by walking with one another while something uniquely personal is happening to each one of us.

I am grateful for how each pilgrimage I have been on, like every experience I have had, has enriched my life.  Steve Job, the brilliant founder of Apple Computers, recognized how these experiences enhance a person’s world, and, conversely, how their lack depletes it.  Listen to what he said:

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences.  So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.  The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

While there is value in every new experience, it is not necessarily guaranteed a pilgrim will emerge from any one them with new insight or perspective on life.  Like T.S. Eliot noted in The Four Quartets, “We had the experience but missed the meaning.”  Sometimes, perhaps most times, discerning meaning takes time and effort.  It may only emerge way down the road and in concert with additional experiences.  Other times, the meaning is apparent, but appropriating it is a slow and arduous process.

I hear all of this in today’s Gospel reading as Jesus poses to the crowd a question about John the Baptist and his ministry: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?”  He is not asking about their itinerary.  He is not asking specifically about what happened when they encountered John.  He is not asking about their expectations.  He wants to know how it affected them.  What happened to you when you went out into the wilderness?  What did it mean to you then?  What does it mean to you now?  How are you different?  How have you been changed by what happened?  How have you resisted what the moment brought to you?  You had the experience.  Did you get the meaning?

You can’t open a dictionary or search the internet or turn to the Catechism to find answers to these questions because they are intensely personal.  What unites fellow pilgrims is not a shared outcome, but being together with one another throughout the journey and supporting one another throughout the process of discovery and transformation. 

These are good Advent questions and good questions for each of us to ponder as we worship with Heaven and Nature singing.  What did you come here expecting to see?  If you want to, you can get a notepad and make a list of everything we have added to our worship space.  If you are talented, you can sketch it.  But we all recognize there is a huge difference between the inventory of what is new and the meaning it has and holds for each one of us.  What is happening to you as a result of what we are doing in our Advent worship?

Last Sunday evening our Youth Group members were excited to show their friends our worship space.  And we had a really interesting discussion about what we have done, why we have done it, and what each of us might add to it.  We tried to talk about what it means to each of us, but the answers to this question proved more elusive.  I suspect the same is true for us adults.  By all accounts we are enjoining the experience, but the meaning is still percolating… and this is OK. 

I continue to pray God will use this space and time to form and shape each one of us.  I am grateful for the experience, and look forward to having a deeper sense of its meaning.

What is Lost or Left Behind?

The Second Sunday of Advent - Year A
Matthew 3:1-12

Before the Liturgical year gives us a babe in swaddling clothes, it gives us a peculiar loner in the wilderness.  Perhaps no greater difference between the Church’s sense of time and the culture’s “holiday season” is found than here.  While the culture bombards us with the promise of happiness through material gifts, the church gives us John the Baptist and his warning of a coming judgment of fire.  While our culture portrays how a variety of products will produce the perfect expression of love, John insults people by calling them a “brood of vipers.”  While the culture implores us to live it up at this time of the year, the Baptist demands we repent.  No wonder so few want to celebrate (or maybe it is more accurate to say ‘observe’) Advent.

The text tells us John appears in the wilderness and tells us the odd (but memorable) details about what he wears (clothes made from camel hair) and eats (locus and wild honey).  His is a lean lifestyle to be sure and leanness is the opposite of what many of us will be experiencing over the course of the next few weeks.  What might John’s lifestyle say to us at this time of the year?  How might it be an Advent call pointing the way for a joyful Christmas celebration?

If you were not around in the 1970’s the name Euell Gibbons may not ring a bell, but for those of us who were it is sure to elicit a smile or chuckle.  Gibbons seemed to spend much of his life trying to figure out want he wanted to do with it.  Through it all he developed a passion for foraging wild food sources.  He became a best-selling author of several cookbooks that encouraged people to use natural ingredients such as rose pedals and dandelion roots in their recipes.  Gibbons’ fame skyrocketed when he starred in a commercial for Grape Nuts cereal, famously asking, “Ever eat a pine tree?” “Many of its parts are edible,” he told viewers.  Gibbons put eating naturally on the map while at the same time becoming the source of many parodies, often laughing at himself as good-natured humor was poked at him and his eccentric eating habits.

Euell Gibbons stood out because he was different.  At a time when TV dinners were all the rage, he reminded us of our roots in eating roots off the land.  While the march of progress has much to say for it, some valuable things have been pushed aside and forgotten.  In a world moving steadily and happily toward processed foods, Gibbons reminded people other and older alternatives still exist.

John the Baptist was a similar figure.  He did not dress like everyone else and he certainly did not eat like everyone else.  Living in the wilderness, as he did, by definition is an alternative life-style.  He eschewed the halls of powers and societal institutions framing much of life in his day and charted his own course.  He held a deep conviction that the more immersed a person becomes in all these trappings the less able he or she will be to discern God’s presence in the world.

John called on people to repent; a word literally meaning to turn around, to do a 180 in order to return to your roots.  And he initiated people into this movement through an act involving one of nature’s most basic elements: baptism by immersion in the waters of the River Jordon.  When I visited the site where many hold John’s ministry unfolded, what stays with me is how cool and refreshing the water felt.  The Jordon Valley is hot and dry.  The only green in it grows by being connected to the water of the river.  Wading into it and going under was wonderfully restorative, physically at first, but then spiritually as well. 

I am sure it spoke to those John baptized and reminded them of their need to get back to basics, to return to those things that are necessary, but over time have been forgotten or ignored.  The more immersed a person becomes in the trappings of this life the less able he or she will be to discern God’s presence in the world.

I like that our Advent liturgy is built on a very simple premise: God created all things to join in a harmonious song of praise.  It invites us to ask several questions:  What is this song and when do I join in it?  When am I silent?  Why do I so often sing a different song?  And the Advent question: How do I get back to singing with Heaven and Nature?  How to I rejoin this harmony?  And finally, the Christmas Question: How will this help me to discern God’s presence in the world?

Advent invites us to shut off the cultural noise surrounding us.  It is intended to be a lean time affording us the opportunity to return to what we have lost or left behind.  As we do these things, it promises we are better positioned to discern God’s presence in our world and in our life.  I don’t advice you to wear clothes made of camel hair nor do I counsel you to eat bugs or pine trees, but I do ask where you will begin.  What will be your first step into Advent?