Sunday, December 25, 2011
Christmas Meditation: Another King?
Angels are part of our Christmas celebration, but like bows on packages, are mostly decorative. In his sermon, "Gosh, Some Angels," Walter Brueggemann says we need to take another look at angels. Perhaps this may help us rethink our understanding of Christmas. (from Luke 2:1-20)
Christmas meditation - 12-25-12.mp3
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad
As we draw close to Christmas, this morning's psalms seem jarring next to images of a babe in a manger, of shepherds, angels, and nativity scenes. Psalm 18 speaks of being in danger from enemies and crying out to God. And God responded to that cry.
Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
It is easy for some to dismiss such images of God as something archaic, a violent God of the Old Testament unlike the God of love we meet in Jesus. But I've noticed that most children who come from homes with loving parents where they feel safe and secure assume that their mother or father would whip all comers in order to protect them. And I wonder if that isn't what we see in this psalm. The childish boast that "My Dad can beat up your Dad" grows out of the sense of security children experience, and the psalmist seems to know something similar.
If one has experienced a security in the love of God, in God's parental care, it is pretty easy to think along such lines. In an ancient world inhabited by many gods, it is hardly surprising that some Old Testament passages sound a bit like, "My Dad can beat up your Dad."
Jesus does nothing to undermine the idea of God's parental-like love. Jesus repeatedly calls his followers to trust themselves to God's care. But Jesus does redefine what God's power looks like. The Apostle Paul calls this "power made perfect in weakness." And Jesus made clear what Israel (and the Church in our day) often forgot. God's parental love was not restricted to them. Indeed the call of Abraham was so that "all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
I felt very safe and secure as a child, and I probably thought my Dad could beat up some others. But to my knowledge, he never did. The safety and security of parental love is generally not experienced in such things.
As we celebrate the birth of one born to "save," we would do well not to reject an image of God as one who can and does protect and provide. The child born in a manger is not just a nice philosopher who teaches a good way to live. He is God's power unleashed for us.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Seeing the Future
There is a sense in which the father in this commercial sees the future. Nothing particularly dramatic about it, but he knows that a baby means a different life than the one he now has. And he must begin planning for that new day.
I think that biblical prophets are more like this father than they are psychics who promise to tell you your future. True, they've been given a bit deeper sense of what is coming than this dad, but they are not really predicting the future in the sense most people mean by that phrase. Rather they know God intimately enough that they know where things will end up when God acts. They know the character of God and so they know what will happen when God shakes things up.
That's what is going on in Mary's song in today's gospel. Mary's going to have a baby, and she knows that this baby will have a much bigger impact than the typical one. This baby is part of God's plans, and so she can sing her prophetic song just as surely as that father can see the need for a four-door car.
"(God) has brought down
the powerful from their thrones,
and Lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made
to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his
descendants forever."
God has; not God will, but God has. This is not so much a prediction of the future as it is a realization of what God's future looks like, a realizations that is so real for Mary that it seems already accomplished. As many have noted, prophets' sense of what God is up to is so vivid that they often get their tense wrong.
I think that people of deep faith always have a bit of this vision of the future within them. It is why they can actually love their enemies and work for a better world even when that work costs them dearly and does not show the sort of results our culture validates.
We're about the celebrate the birth of Mary's baby, as we most certainly should. But for that celebration to mean much, we also need to see a bit of the future that Mary sees.
Can you see the future? God's future?
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - A New Song?
There is certainly nothing wrong with reading the Bible for information, but that is hardly the only way to read it. In fact, Scripture often speaks powerfully when we listen in a very different mode. That happened to me today, though I can't say it was because I was being particularly attentive, doing lectio divina, or engaged in any other spiritual practice. I was rushing through the morning psalms, but nonetheless, a phrase struck me: "a new song."
I've heard and read that phrase countless times, but I'm not sure that it ever impacted me the way it did this morning. Perhaps the time of year helped, along with reading Hannah's song in the Old Testament reading. That song seems to be a model for Mary's song which follows on the heels of today's gospel reading. Those are both new songs, at least in the sense that they describe something new.
A new song. New songs are not a big part of this time of year. Even in contemporary worship services where people rarely sing any song more that 20 years old, worshipers want traditional carols at Christmas. That's fine with me. I love singing Silent Night, Joy to the World, and O Little Town of Bethlehem. But I wonder if our celebration of Christmas sometimes fails to leave much room for something new. It looks back and remembers. But does it look forward to the new thing that Jesus' birth heralds?
Amidst all the warmth and nostalgia of Christmas, I wonder if we don't need to add another tradition, a tradition of a new song. Perhaps we could write some new verses to an old favorite and add call to discipleship in our Christmas services. Regardless, what if every Christmas Eve Service included something that asked us to turn our gaze forward, to look for God's new heaven and new earth, and to join in the work of that coming reign of God? What if one of our special Christmas traditions was a renewal of hope, a hope rooted in a vision of God's future?
Sing to the LORD a new song, one like Hannah and Mary sang.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Remaking a Classic
But I'm not going to complain about this because I've noticed a bit of the same in the Bible. In today's gospel, Luke tells a story that looks like a lot of stories from the Old Testament. God is going to do something wonderful, and this will involve a previously "barren" woman giving birth. Sarah, Hannah, and now Elizabeth. Over and over God goes back to a tried and true story: life where it seemed there was none, hope where it had not existed, a future where one was not expected.
I take some solace from the fact that God sticks to a plot that we've seen before. Strangely though, it still seems to surprise us. We imagine that the story is all played out, that hope is gone, that this time there will be no happy ending. God has seemed too absent from our lives. The brokenness and cynicism of our world has the upper hand. The darkness has overcome the light.
And then an old, old story breaks through once more. Life in the face of barrenness. Hope where there had been none. Light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.
Sometimes, when we have a hard time seeing God, when we've relegated the power of God to some time after we die, it's good to remember that God keeps working from an old script. And we know how the story ends.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Sermon text - Saying "Yes" to the Impossible
Luke 1:26-38 (47-55)
Saying “Yes” to the Impossible
James Sledge December 18, 2011 – Advent 4
There is a scene in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass where Alice is speaking with the white queen. Alice has just learned that the queen lives backwards, remembering things before they happen. In the course of this conversation Alice becomes a bit bewildered and begins to cry. During the queen’s efforts to cheer her up, she asks Alice how old she is.
“I'm seven and a half, exactly.”
“You needn't say "exactly",” the Queen remarked. “I can believe it without that. Now I'll give you something to believe. I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”
“I can't believe that!” said Alice.
“Can't you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There's no use trying,” she said. “One can't believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Christians should surely know about believing impossible things. After all we speak casually of Jesus turning water into wine, and we say that he died and rose again on the third day. And of course there is that line in “The Apostle’s Creed” that says Jesus “was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary.”
Even though not much is made of this virgin birth in the Bible, it became a big deal for the Church. The Roman Catholic Church expanded it, saying that Mary’s own birth was miraculous – Immaculate according to the doctrine, and that she remained a virgin her entire life, never mind that the Bible speaks of Jesus’ brothers and sisters, and one of those brothers, James, becomes leader of the fledgling Church following Pentecost.
When the Protestant Reformation came along, the Reformers insisted that we should only believe those impossible things that were actually in the Bible. And so we tossed out Mary’s perpetual virginity and Immaculate Conception, but we kept the virgin birth. Protestants like believing impossible things as much as Catholics. We just have a different list.
All this is a long way of saying that while we Christians may disagree and even argue about which impossible things we must believe, it generally goes without saying that we expect people to believe impossible things, perhaps even six before breakfast.
However, there is not necessarily much impact from believing these impossible things. Think about it. How much difference does it make in the way you live that Mary was or wasn’t a virgin? I know Christians of deep faith, who live exemplary lives, some who believe in a historical virgin birth, and some who don’t. Believing or not believing this particular impossible thing doesn’t seem to make all that much difference.
But in our gospel this morning, Mary hears of an impossible thing that will not happen without her cooperation, without her “Yes.”
We Protestants have tended to diminish Mary, at times overreacting to what we have seen as unsupportable doctrines of the Catholic Church. But Luke presents Mary to us a both disciple and prophet. Confronted with God’s impossible plans, she scarcely objects, exhibiting a faith more trusting than that of Moses and many other heroes of the Old Testament. “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
And having said “Yes” to the impossible, the prophet Mary begins to see the impossible unfold. When she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, she sings of how God has “brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. (God) has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. Not God will, but God has. Mary has said yes to the impossible, and it is now a part of her. She experiences it as present in her life.
As Christmas draws near, we bring out some of those other impossible things that Christians proclaim. We remember a baby in a manger, shepherd in the fields, and we join with the angels in their impossible song of “Peace on earth.”
Of course we don’t believe that impossible thing, at least not in a way that makes any real difference in our lives. We sing of peace on earth, of a prince of peace, but we know that peace can be maintained only by the best military money can buy. And so even as our nation staggers under huge debt, talk of significant cuts in military spending is, well, impossible.
Meister Eckhart, a German priest and mystic who live in the 14th century once spoke of how, like Mary, we are all called to become part of the impossible thing that God is doing. He said, “We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.” And it requires our “Yes” for that to happen. Mary must say “Yes” to the impossible, and so must we.
Christmas celebrates the results of Mary’s “Yes,” but all too often it stops there. It forgets that when we say our “Yes,” and the Spirit comes upon us, we become part of God’s impossible plan as well. We begin to see and live out that new, impossible thing, the reign of God that Jesus says has drawn near.
Back in 1998, a six year old boy named Ryan learned from his First Grade teacher that many children in Africa had to walk incredible distances just to get clean water. Stunned by this, he decided that he should build a well for a village. He began raising money by doing household chores. After four months he had raised only $70 toward a $2000 well, but he kept at it, and in 1999, seven year old Ryan’s first well was completed in a Ugandan village. Since then, the foundation begun by Ryan, now a 20 year old college student, has completed 667 water and sanitation projects in 16 countries.[1]
Perhaps if Ryan had been older and “wiser,” he would have known better, known that this was an impossible task for a little boy with no money. But being a child, he was more open to the impossible that many of us are. And maybe that’s why God’s impossible plan begins with a 15 year old girl named Mary, who wasn’t old enough to know better.
What impossible thing of God is just waiting for your “Yes?”
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Lamps Trimmed and Burning
Jesus' parable is about the pose of the faithful between the time of his resurrection and his return, but most times I've heard this passage preached or taught the readiness Jesus speaks of has been disconnected from the Kingdom. It is no longer about Jesus or God's reign coming, but about our going. "You never know when you might die, so you'd better be ready."
It seems somewhat odd to me that even though many Christians pray the Lord's Prayer on a regular basis (When I was growing up the sports teams I played on prayed it before every game.), the first petition of that prayer seems almost forgotten. Our faith is not much about "Your kingdom come on earth" but rather, "God take us to heaven when we die."
Christmas is growing close, and soon we will be singing "Glory to the newborn King." But king of what? Ruler of what? We will sing "Let earth receive her king," but we have done a pretty good job of locking Jesus up in heaven. Lord's Prayer or not, we'd rather not have Jesus running our world, or even our lives. He might tell us to give our wealth to the poor. He might say that the prostitutes and sinners are in line ahead of us. No thanks, Jesus. We'll catch you later, after we die.
I wonder what all our preparation and getting ready for Christmas might look like if we actually entertained the possibility that Jesus could show up and take his place on the throne; if we thought he might suddenly become head of the banks and armies and governments... maybe even the Church.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - At the Edge of the Picture
Regardless, I gained some new insight into this passage when I read Fr. Richard Rohr's meditation for today. He was speaking of a different passage Matthew when he wrote,
As Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters, he will always love one and ignore the other” (Matthew 6:24). Our first and final loyalty is to one kingdom: God’s or our own. We can’t really fake it. The Big Picture is apparent when God’s work and will are central, and we are happy to take our place in the corner of the frame.
Many of us do not like to play supporting roles. We want to be center stage, not off at the edge. (Pastors can be particularly prone to this.) Yet, as Fr. Rohr so well points out, finding our proper place in the picture is freeing. Conversely, confusion about our place creates a life that is constantly at odds with what it is meant to be.Because I am a part of the Big Picture, I do matter, and substantially so. Because I am only a part, however, I am rightly situated off to stage right—and happily so. What freedom there is in such truth! We are inherently important and included, yet not burdened with manufacturing or sustaining that private importance. Our dignity is given by God, and we are freed from ourselves!
I think that one of the joys of Christmas is getting lost in the story, the painting if you will. We are happy to stand off to the side with the shepherds and play a supporting role. For that moment, God's story is front and center, and we are content with the role of faithful servants.
But soon Christmas is over, and the baby Jesus is grown and calling us to follow him and embrace the life he teaches. But we do not always care for the role Jesus gives us. We object to our place in the Big Picture, and so we push him to the side and claim the center for ourselves.
Gracious Savior, help us to keep you at the center when the decorations are all gone. Pour out the Holy Spirit on us, that we may discover the freedom and joy of living out our place in the wonderful work of art that is your coming reign.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)