The Joy of Recognition

       This last week of Advent has been an awfully dark and gloomy one. The clouds hang low to the earth; the winds howl as if in pain; constant drizzle falls on our Christmas decorations; we sadly remember the innocent deaths in Newtown; we listen to Mayan predictions of the end of the world; and we read about looming financial meltdown in the new year. The Light of Christ, our Advent Hope, seems to be doing a good job of hiding itself away. Like a child peeking in all the closets for hidden Christmas gifts, I am getting impatient this dark week for a glimpse of the promised Light.

          In our Gospel lesson today, John and Jesus are also in darkness, both still hidden away within their mothers’ wombs. The message of hope that they will preach is still silent; their witness of repentance and forgiveness has not yet come into the world; nothing about them is fully formed or even functional. And yet, when their mothers Mary and Elizabeth meet at that spring in the Judean countryside and lean in to greet one another with their miraculous news, John “leaps in his mother’s womb,” kicking for joy that God’s promises have been fulfilled. Imagine it: a moment of delight, a totally silent acknowledgment of God’s presence, a flicker of understanding, a rapid movement hidden beneath layers of clothing and flesh, yet signaling nothing less than the coming of God into the world.

          In this dark week, I heard a story of light and life on the radio, a story highlighted by a gesture that took me right back to baby John’s joyful leap. On Dec. 20, 1943, a young American named Charlie Brown was on his first World War II mission. Flying in the German skies, Brown’s B-17 bomber was shot and badly damaged. As Brown and his men desperately tried to escape from enemy territory back to England, a German fighter plane pulled up to their tail. Brown was sure that they were doomed. Instead of shooting the plane down, however, the German pilot, Franz Stigler, hesitated. Hoping to become a priest before being convinced to fight for his Fatherland, Stigler had recently lost his beloved brother in the war. As he looked at the wounded American plane, he thought of his brother and his God, and he knew what he had to do. Pulling up alongside the incredulous Americans, he did the unthinkable: he led them out to sea, away from enemy territory. Once they were safe, Stigler simply saluted his American counterpart and veered away. When Brown saw that salute, he knew that he had been saved, and the Americans returned in one piece to England. In the darkness of wartime, of course, neither pilot was able to tell his story. It wasn’t until 50 years later that Brown found the German pilot who had saved his life, and they were able to meet as friends.[1]

          Is this just a heartwarming story, or can we recognize in that salute something of the leap of joy from Elizabeth’s womb? In first century Palestine, a land of oppression and war, two lowly, unimportant Jewish women meet at a spring, yet they are women filled with God’s presence, and one of them carries God’s Son. In a split second, in a silent meeting, in the time of a baby’s kick, they are bound together in joy and hope, and they sing of the birth of the Kingdom of God. In twentieth-century Europe, in a dark time of world war, two ordinary pilots meet in the sky, and one of them recognizes the presence of God. In a split second, in a silent meeting, in the time of a short salute, they are bound together in joy and hope, and they lift up a corner of the Kingdom that is still coming into the world.

For me, such fleeting moments of recognition are holy moments, whether they involve recognizing Jesus or recognizing signs of Jesus' presence in our lives. For, after the birth in the stable, God’s Kingdom still stirs within our world like an unborn baby. It kicks and jostles, lives and grows, yet we do not usually see it. We only feel it when it leaps for joy or gives us a swift kick in the ribs. It is nevertheless present with us and in all that we experience, just as an unborn baby is always with his mother and a part of her life, and we know that someday it will have its own life and hold us in its embrace. It is in reaching out to one another in song and in witness, like Mary and Elizabeth, or reaching out to the “other” in honor and respect, like Franz Stigler, that we mark the moment of recognition. We feel the Kingdom move, and God rejoices with us, even in the dark.

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[1] From a book by Adam Makos, A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II, found at http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-12-20/adam-makos-higher-call-incredible-true-story-combat-and-chivalry-war-torn-skies-wor?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WAMU885DianeRehm+%28The+Diane+Rehm+Show+from+WAMU+and+NPR%29

Stir Up Your Power, O Lord

        I tend to divide my life into compartments in order to get things done, especially at this busy time of year. In order to work efficiently or to attempt to live in the moment, I often shut off my mind from thinking of anything but the task at hand. I will carefully decide what tasks will occupy my attention and when; I will hold back my heart from thoughts of absent loved ones when they are far away; I will even try to push God into a box on my calendar with specific prayer and worship times. With a strong will and good powers of concentration, I usually succeed in living a very efficient and orderly life. But sometimes, something will happen that causes the nice compartments in my head and heart to snap open, and my thoughts will seep through the carefully-arranged partitions like blood leaking from a wound.

Usually, I can indulge in watching a happy Christmas musical, for example, without any fear or unpleasantness invading my cozy thoughts. Yesterday, however, as I sat with parishioners at Derby Dinner Playhouse, I heard about the school shooting hundreds of miles away in Newtown, and I could no longer concentrate on the play. As I watched, Christmas joy, relaxed contentment, heart-wrenching sadness, and flaming anger all formed a swirling mass within me. I kept imagining the cute, probably eight-year-old actress in the play, lying dead in her schoolroom, while she really danced and sang, full of joy, on the stage. It was as if all of the world’s troublesome layers, so carefully filed away in my mind, came rushing in on me at once. It was a chaotic and unpleasant feeling, a cracked and unprotected openness, not just to the tragedy facing the families in Newtown, but to all the tragedy of the world, a tragedy that mixes badly with “decking the halls” and baking Christmas cookies.

          When I talked about the shooting with my daughter last night, she, who works every day as a therapist with children at risk, pointed out to me that in some parts of the world, and even in parts of our cities in this country, innocent young children are routinely and randomly shot at home and at play and even at school, yet we pay little attention to these deaths. They often don’t even make the news. When we do hear about them, we file them away in our minds to the outer layers of tragedy, to those compartments labeled “to be prayed for later.” How often things on which I am expected to take a stand as a Christian—poverty, guns, inequality, environmental tragedy, war—end up in the “I’ll do something about this later” pile or in the “this is hopeless stuff” bin.

          Today’s collect took on new meaning for me yesterday. Did you notice it at the beginning of today’s service? “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us, and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.” We can pray this timely collect, not just for the families in Newtown, begging God to come among them in their unfathomable grief, but also for ourselves and our community, as well. We who are far removed from the tragedy have the possibility of welcoming the unwelcome wound of Sandy Hook Elementary into our carefully-kept lives, into our joyful pre-Christmas preparations, as an Advent wake-up call, like the voice of John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness. We can let it knock down our carefully-built partitions and burst through our often sinfully-ordered compartmentalizing. We can pray that it will burst open a space for God’s powerful stirring to take place. It can remind us that our Christmas story is not all about sweetness and light, no matter what the Hallmark cards say. Our story breaks partitions of class and sensibility and practicality: Our God is born to a young, poor, tired unwed mother in a dirty barn. Joseph has to rethink his entire theology and value system to welcome Mary’s child. Dirty and disheveled shepherds follow a strange star. Jesus’ birth even leads a power-hungry King Herod to kill thousands of innocent baby boys. In one Advent sermon, Rowan Williams calls the baby Jesus himself, “the Burning Babe, who has come to cast fire upon the earth.”[1]

          Even though that fire burns only with love and justice, rather than hatred and violence, it is a divine fire that we should kindle in our own lives, not manage with walls and tame with partitions. It is a fire that could care less about the way that we have always done things. It is a fire that could care less about human-made categories and social constructs. It is a fire that can love a mass murderer and purify us as we sit in comfortable oblivion. It is a fire that can spread miraculous chaos into all of our lives, burning in love for the deliverance of the world.

          As the choir will sing during Communion [at 10 a.m. on Sunday]

“By your own Spirit, give your church a clear voice; in this world’s violence, help us make a new choice. Help us to witness to the joy your peace brings, Until your world sings.”[2] 

       Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.

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[1] Rowan Williams, A Ray of Darkness, 3.

[2] Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, “God We Have Heard It,” quoted in http://www.pcuse.org/news/2012/12/14/aftermath-two-mass-shootings-week.

Jared From Boston Won a Wrestling Match

In the year that the University of Kentucky basketball team played the University of Louisville in the Final Four, Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympic athlete of all times, and Johnny Manziel led Texas A & M to beat Alabama in football … Jared from Boston won a wrestling match.

Who on earth is Jared from Boston, you might ask? Well, who on earth is John, son of Zecharia, from the Judean wilderness? St. Luke sets the scene for Jesus’ birth by introducing John the Baptist, “the Forerunner” of the Good News, just like I introduced this Jared from Boston. All of the great powers and principalities of John’s day are set before us in great detail so that they can fall away to reveal a scruffy, little-known desert prophet—a prophet  through whom God’s light shines into the world.

  Every year, on this second Sunday of Advent, we lift up John the Baptist into our Christmas story, like a child placing a well-worn figurine into the old family crèche. We usually do so reluctantly, however. Discussing the Advent lessons with a colleague a few weeks ago, I remember her groaning, “It seems like every other Gospel lesson is about John the Baptist this year.” John the Baptist is indeed a disturbing and unappealing character in our story. It is not easy to sentimentalize him, as we do the shepherds and the three kings and the cute stable animals. John rants and raves and looks like a wild man, prowling around in the desert and crying out desperately for change. John stirs up the status quo, calling for “repentance”--a decisive turning from the way that things have always been. John makes us all uncomfortable.

Yet, John, son of Zecharia, is not only about hellfire and judgment and the need for change. In today’s lesson, Luke introduces his account of John the Baptist’s ministry with the prophet Isaiah’s comforting words to the exiled. Our Gospel lesson cites only part of Isaiah’s famous quote, which really reads:

“‘Comfort, comfort my people,’ your God says. ‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that she has fulfilled her term of service, that her sin has been accepted, that she has taken from the hand of the Lord double for all her sins.’ There is a voice of one crying out: ‘In the wilderness, clean off the path of the Lord. Make smooth in the desert plain a highway for our God. Every valley will be lifted up and every mountain and hill will be brought low, and the steep place will become a level place and the rough ground a valley. And the Glory of the Lord will be uncovered, and all flesh will see together.’”[1]

 In Isaiah’s proclamation, the messenger is sent as a comforter, as one who speaks tenderly to God’s tired and wounded people. Here, God is coming to be uncovered, to enter into the very midst of us and to allow us finally to see God’s mysterious, holy presence. God’s pathway must be cleared in decisive and earth-shattering ways, but it is being cleared for a God of compassion, grace, and forgiveness to come through, for a God who announces that the time of anguish and punishment is over.

John, son of Zecharia, stands with us in the wilderness of the world, a lone figure speaking God’s desire for both change and compassion, one man of God operating out of a totally different kind of power from that of Rome and the Jerusalem Temple.

So who, then, is Jared from Boston? He is a twelve-year-old little boy with cerebral palsy, confined to a wheelchair. Jared dreamed of wrestling, and although everyone knew that he could never really join in, they let him attend practices. When he bravely asked if he could have a real match in front of real spectators, the coach found Justin, another twelve-year-old boy, who went over to Jared, shook his hand, went down on the mat with him and managed to pull the almost-paralyzed little boy over on top of him, where Jared was able to throw his arm over Justin, pinning him down and winning the match. The smiles on both boys’ faces and the cheers of the crowd made the national news, and every anchor on the news team had tears in his eyes when the story aired.[2]

In the mighty world of sports, Jared and Justin are insignificant. To place them in any recap of the sports news of 2012 is ridiculous. They do not fit with Michael Phelps and Johnny Manziel and the Final Four. But a powerful light shines out of their story, a light of love and justice and goodness that makes us forget about all the rest, if only for a moment. Jared and Justin proclaim change and compassion and provide, in their courageous way, a glimpse of the upside-down power of the reign of God, the reign that began in a stable in Bethlehem, the reign that John, son of Zecharia, proclaimed in the wilderness.

As we read and listen to all of the “recaps of 2012” that will overflow in the media as we near the end of this year—the great sports moments of 2012, the great celebrity scandals of 2012, the great political figures of 2012—we need to keep our eyes open to the places where God’s power truly lies: in small changes that bring justice or peace, in the hearts of children, in the wisdom of the disabled, in the generosity of the poor. After all, in the last year of the tenure of Rowan as Archbishop of Canterbury, in the sixth year of Katherine as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, in the second year of Terry as Bishop of Kentucky, in the second year that Anne has been rector of St. Thomas, Martha, a ten-year-old girl with Down Syndrome, wrote in an Advent Meditation in Atlanta, Georgia: “A throne of love is in you. The love you shine on the earth makes the grass grow. People are different in many ways. Love other people who have disabilities and we feel happy and we all grow.”[3]

Amen.

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[1] My translation

[2] http://www.wcvb.com/news/sports/Boy-throws-wrestling-match-so-boy-with-cerebral-palsy-wins/-/9848968/17679578/-/item/1/-/cr21k8/-/index.html

[3] A meditation from “Advent and Christmas at Central,” December 4, 2012.

Preparing for Righteousness

I got into my car after a long day and absent-mindedly turned on the radio to my standard FM station, ready for some nice light pop music to accompany me home down Westport Road. When I heard the familiar strains of “White Christmas” come floating over the airwaves, I groaned inwardly. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Already?! It’s barely Thanksgiving!” I sighed.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know… Waves will crash and people faint, as the planets in the heavens start to glow …”

          “What!?” I thought, frantically tapping on the newfangled media screen on my dashboard.

          “Have yourself a merry little Christmas … the Son of Man draws near. From now on our troubles will grow worse each year,” I heard, as I hit the screen harder.

          “O figgy tree, o figgy tree, how full are all your branches. The reign of God will soon be here, with signs and portents, far and near …”

          Let me tell you—I was so distracted that I nearly ran off the road!

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          I know, these songs didn’t really come over the radio like that, but the mixed messages that we do hear during Advent are enough to boggle our minds. The media pours out syrupy-sweet nostalgia by the bucketful; the advertising industry cultivates our longing for immediate happiness; and the church urges us to wait patiently for something huge that we don’t quite understand. As we plop into our cars after a long day at the office, it makes sense that we feel confusion over what exactly we are waiting and preparing for this season. Are we preparing for warm and snuggly family time or for earthquakes and tribulation? Are we preparing for feasts and gifts or for chances to walk the way of the Cross? Are we preparing to remember the sweet baby in the manger or to welcome the Son of Man coming in the clouds? If we are being asked to prepare for all of this at once, it seems that we have been given a difficult task indeed.

          Before we run off the Advent road, trying to manage an impossible task, I would like to point to a common thread that runs through all of these seemingly conflicting messages. That thread is righteousness, as it is found in our reading from Jeremiah. I believe that, in all aspects of the season, we are to prepare for God’s righteousness. Now “righteousness” has gotten a bad rap in our minds these days, either as a meaningless “theology word,” or as a form of pious self-righteousness, associated with the kind of perfection-seeking and intolerant Christian who thinks that she is better than everyone else. I’m not so sure that any of us would rejoice if our friends described us as a “righteous” man or woman. We would much rather be called “loving” or “good” or “honest.”

Righteousness for Jeremiah, though, and throughout the Hebrew scriptures, does not have these unpleasantly pious connotations. Righteousness means “rightness;” it is the state of being in right relationship, in right order. For example, a friend of mine told me a story that he had heard about an American pastor traveling in Israel who experienced car trouble. An Israeli soldier stopped by the side of the road to help the stranded tourist, and after the soldier finished putting things right under the hood of the car, the American heard a familiar Hebrew word pop out of the soldier’s mouth: “Tsedek,” he said. All is in right working order again, all the parts of the engine are working together to do what they should. Because of the frequency of the word “tsedekah” in the Bible, every seminarian who has ever taken Hebrew class knows that it means righteousness. But to hear it in a real-life situation on the side of a road in Israel, referring to the workings of a car engine, helps to free the word of its churchy connotations.

The prophet Jeremiah, then, speaking to his suffering and exiled nation, reassures them that one day soon, God will once again put everything right for God’s people. The broken parts will someday fit together as they were meant to. One day soon, God’s people will live in a world where justice and right order reign, and that right order will come from right relationship with God. As my friend puts it: when the Lord is our righteousness, every part of creation—the natural world and the human world—will work together for the good of the whole, choreographed by a God who redeems and makes all things new.

Isn’t that what we are all longing for, as we get into our cars after a long day, or as we read the tragedy in the newspapers, or as we pray for our loved ones ….?

--We do long for a white Christmas … where the right weather for the season reflects right relationship within our families and within our circle of friends.

--We do long for a happy Christmas … where God will put right all of the brokenness that weighs so heavily upon our shoulders.

--We do long for a fig tree Christmas, where rightness reigns in the natural world and God’s blessing shines clearly upon the land.

--We do long for a just Christmas, where rulers promote right relationship in society, and everyone shares fairly in God’s blessings.

--We do long for a love-filled Christmas, where right relationship with God comes wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

--We do long for a hopeful Christmas, where we dream of time itself flowing like a stream into the rightness of a whole cosmos visibly structured by God’s eternal Word.

The thing about God’s righteousness is that it is built into creation and can therefore be found everywhere, if we are alert to it—even hidden within those annoying secular songs on the radio. It’s OK to leave the radio on, just don’t let it lull you to sleep. Rightness requires all of the parts to come together—God’s handiwork, together with yours.